The Berlinger Test: Five Rules for Articles about Tabletop Games

In the spirit of my post on mainstream articles about board games (8 years ago, already? wow!) and the Finkbeiner Test for articles covering women in science, here are five rules for not sucking in your article covering a new tabletop game or the people who play tabletop games.

Your article may not mention:

1. That tabletop games are relics of the past.
   Corollary: or any of the following phrases: "old-fashioned", "back to basics", "remember [something from thirty years ago]", "[back of the] closet/attic/basement", "dusty", "nostalgia", or "comeback".
2. That generally only young children enjoy tabletop games.
   Corollary: or that "nowadays" older children and adults enjoy other activities, such as video games.
3. That tabletop games promote obvious, superficial benefits.
   Example: such as family togetherness, strategic thinking, decision making, or basic math and reading skills.
4. Any game originally published before 1990 as a comparison or as an example.
   Exception: unless your article is about a new game that is explicitly derived from that game.
5. The author's own lack of patience, lack of intelligence, or propensity to cheat at games.
   Clarification: thereby insinuating that people who play games are fanatics and nerds who take gaming too seriously.

In essence, your article about tabletop games should have the same integrity that is required when writing about a sports event or new video-game release. The tabletop game industry is a more than billion dollar a year industry (not including tabletop gambling, which is something like a hundred billion dollars); smaller than the sports and digital game industries, but not a quaint hobby or pastime. More than a billion people play tabletop games; they come from every social, national, religious, ethnic, professional, class, age, and gender group.

It's not a problem that you're ignorant about tabletop games, just like it's not a problem if you're ignorant about mutual funds or macrame. But your article about mutual funds or macrame shouldn't condescend to those who deal with them, nor your readers who have already seen hundreds of articles on the subject over the last twenty years, even if you haven't.

Purple Pawn: Trying Something New

I'm playing around with a new site: Purple Pawn.

The simple idea is to spin off the game news to its own blog. The grand idea is to create a large blog covering all tabletop news, industry, and media. Here are the qualifications:

- I'd like to do it without stepping on my friends' toes. For that reason, I'm not going to cover Euro game industry news, which is covered well by Boardgame News (except for coverage of mainstream press coverage). I'm also not going to duplicate any of the database or forum functionality of Board Game Geek.

- The only other site doing comprehensive tabletop gaming news that I know about is Gaming Report (although they don't cover classic games and card games). I'm not sure if what I'm doing duplicates what they're doing.

- Eric Arneson does a nice board game site at About.com, but it's not frequent or comprehensive. There are a few other sites doing specific aspects of news: war game news, poker news, chess news, and so on.

- To do this properly, I need a whole lot of a) contributions, and b) editors.

Contributions are either links to news that should be covered, or complete articles. Editors are people who want to come aboard and publish regularly (once a day, at least). Editors will eventually make some money, should the site ever make money.

If you want to join me, drop me an email.

For everyone else: The site is still in pre-alpha, may die off at a moment's notice. It depends on how many additional editors I get.

Shabbat Gaming

Gaming after Friday night dinner with non-gaming friends: Apples to Apples. Of course.

Otherwise

David takes what I wrote about Miss Manners and makes a nice game article out of it called Playing Nice.

Living Dice is the latest site to try to become a center for game day event scheduling. Give it a whirl.

Session Report, in which I play Dungeon Twister for the first time

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Game Club session report is up. Games played: Odin's Ravens, Notre Dame, Atlantic Star, Dungeon Twister.

First play for Dungeon Twister. I force everyone to play Atlantic Star again.

1500 and counting

This is my 1500th post. I've still got a copy of El Grande: Decennial in shrink to give away still. Stay tuned.

Want a Job as QA of Games?

Lisa Burns, Sr. Staffing Engineer at Pyramid Screening Technology sent me this position she's trying to fill. Email her or call her at 925.460.9222 if you're interested.

Tell her I sent you and I'll get a finder's fee that will keep me blogging for another half a month!

Position: Director of Operations - Gaming
Salary: Competitive
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Package: Medical, Dental, 401k

POSITION SUMMARY
The Director, Operations and QA is responsible for leading all aspects of Quality Assurance and IT strategies for Namco titles. Incumbent is responsible for managing up to 100 full-time and temporary employees across multiple game platforms. This person works closely with Executive Staff, Producers, Lead QA Testers, the QA Teams, Sales, Marketing and others groups to provide services and solutions. This person will exhibit outstanding leadership and mentoring capabilities and use those skills to facilitate the career development of employees.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
· Manages Quality Assurance; builds and maintains a strong leadership team
· Managers Customer Service; ensures customers are provided solutions in a precise, effective, and efficient manner
· Sets policies, objectives and direction based on company goals and objectives
· Determines staffing needs for all products, and hires, trains and maintains high performance test teams for successful product rollout
· Creates clear career paths for the testing department
· Manages and fosters good relationships with development teams and external groups
· Communicates findings of test teams to executive staff and development teams
· Works closely with development teams to develop, evaluate, implement and improve test processes and procedures
· Ensures services exceed expectations both internally and externally

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES
This position has supervisory responsibilities

QUALIFICATIONS/REQUIREMENTS
· 7 + years experience in the Quality Assurance area, with 5 + years experience managing a game Quality Assurance department
· Excellent knowledge of development and Quality Assurance processes, procedures, and practices
· Proven hiring and performance management skills
· Excellent written and verbal communication, multitasking and analytical problem-solving skills
· Must be able to prioritize and perform multiple tasks simultaneously in a fast-paced environment, with the ability to adapt to changing priorities based on company goals and objectives
· Must have excellent interpersonal and negotiation skills in handling difficult situations with the ability to negotiate and recommend solutions to all levels of management
· Excellent knowledge of current video games and systems
· Expertise in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Excel, Word) and Bug Tracking Software
· Strong understanding of testing and debugging techniques

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE
Bachelors Degree in related field

WORK ENVIRONMENT
The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees in this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications of employees assigned to this job.

Top 25 Linux Games

Jimmy Atkinson writes to tell me about his list of top 25 Linux games. It definitely gives Windows a run for the money.

Number three is FreeCiv, by the way, which also won a BGIA last year.

Game News

Board Game News tells us that Fantasy Flight Games will be publishing a Battlestar Galactica game. There's an article in the Star Tribune this week about Fantasy Flight Games, too.

Cerise Magazine has an interesting article on whether woman gamers should worry about embracing femininity.

Bernie discusses a competition junkie's complaint about games that let everyone have a chance at winning.

Nebraska TV recommends using board, card, and dice games to help kids learn math.

Yehuda

Slashdot looks at 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

The full books aren't yet available, but Wizards of the Coast has released some soft cover previews of parts of the new system. Slashdot reviews the books on classes and races as well as monsters and worlds here.

Remember that one of the other major features of 4th edition is going to be its integration by design into online play.

Other

Gamers With Jobs reviews the upcoming Risk: Black Ops, a new version of Risk with objectives that can drastically shorten the game time.

Webomatica lists the board games that scarred him for life and the lessons learned.

The Sheboygan Press was so excited after doing it's piece on why everyone should vote Sheboygan onto the new World Monopoly board that it tried to find other games that also feature Sheboygan. It found some, including The Creature that Ate Sheboygan.

The New York Giant's football players spend their down time playing Spades, apparently.

You can no longer play cards at the YMCA in Waukesha, Wis, following objections from the Christian Civil Liberties Union.

The Game-a-Day Journal is a blog where the author produces a new minimalist Flash game every day. With each game, he explores how the game explores an experience or question about life.

Yehuda

The Other Games in the Box

I have nothing but praise for publishers or designers who include rules for additional games that can be played using the components of the game you just purchased. They've made a decision that they're not going to make you pay more to play a game that doesn't really need any more stuff.

It's giving away games for free. Kind of.

That a game box contains more than one game is a bit of extra incentive to buy the game to begin with, if you know this in advance. Or, finding additional games in the box might be incentive to buy the next game by the publisher or designer, since there's that possibility of some freebies included.

Of course, like other "freebies" - the flip side of a hit record[1], the 250g container of this food taped onto the side of your kilogram purchase of some other food, or the bonus gift that they'll throw in if you buy today - the additional game may simply not be good enough to warrant its own box. But it's free, hey? Who's complaining.

There are exceptionally good "other" games; I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure my readers can supply a few.

Sturt's Stony Desert

On the flip side of the tiles that come with the game Down Under (2007, designer: Günter Cornett, publisher: Bambus Spieleverlag) is the game Sturt's Stony Desert. It's a bonus game, completely and unnecessarily included.

The main side of the tiles with which you play Down Under are very pretty with indigenous Australian art symbols by the illustrator Ro Sate. The flip side tiles with which you play Sturt's Stony Desert are also pretty, all black with white drawings that look like wood carvings.

I like Down Under. It's a slight game which plays fairly quickly, which means that I'm not entirely sure how many games it's got in it before it begins to feel played out. But, as of now, I'm enjoying it for both 2, 3, and 4 players.

I tried Sturt's Stony Desert for the first time yesterday, and I'm afraid that either I'm playing it wrong or it's not passable as a game.

The heading text says that the game plays 2 to 4 players but that's a misprint; it's clearly a two player game only. You divide the tiles into two piles: those that have 2 curving roads and those that have 3 curving roads. You first place 25 of the two-curve-tiles into a 5 by 5 grid, attempting to connect your two sides of the board while denying your opponent from doing the same for his two sides of the board.

When that doesn't work - and it can't because you can easily block a road with the roadless side of another tile - you start laying the three-curve-tiles on top of the two-curve-tiles. This is where the game breaks down.

For one things, graphically speaking, it's extremely hard to see at a glance which tiles can still be played on and which ones can't. The tiles are thin and nearly all black. That's annoying. They could have made the three-curve-tiles have a different color background.

For another things, it's not overly challenging to make a connecting road, and once you do, your opponent must break it. And then on your next turn you get to make a another connecting road and your opponent must break it. And so on. The paths become ever more loopy and harder to trace, which means sitting and tracing them one by one each time it's your turn. This doesn't make it difficult it just makes it slow.

For the payoff, which we never got to, having quit in boredom and frustration, it's not worth the boredom and frustration.

Like many games, it's not based on a bad idea; the game looks like it could be challenging and maybe enjoyable. But it must not have been play-tested enough with real people. Sorry, Günter.

Also

My daughter and I also played Gin Rummy one evening this week. She hasn't quite got the idea of knocking down, and it kills her on most hands.

Shannon Appelcline has a nice article about game expansions on Board Game News.

Hikaru no Go was a fantastic anime series based around a boy and a spirit who play the game Go. Now there's a series Shion no Ō based around a girl who plays the game Shogi (source).

The New York Times on the new socialization of video games.

The Daily Texan on the spread of Go to a local Go club.

Yehuda

[1] Some of you older people might know what that means.

The Press Won't Shut Up about the World Monopoly Vote

For the last two years whenever Monopoly ran a vote on some new localized Here and Now edition, the affected local presses urged their readers to vote, so as to ensure that their (the press's) area got included in the new edition.

Now, they didn't just simply report the fluff piece of news that Monopoly was creating a new version. They actually urged their readers to go out and vote. To ensure that their area got on the board.

Why?

Pride? Do citizens care enough about this, about anything, to act cohesively, even if its just for something as trivial as a spot on a board game? I don't recall (not that I looked too hard) these same newspapers urgently following up a story about the homeless by urging their fellow readers to show some pride by giving to homeless shelters.

In certain cases, this appeal to pride came in the form of a comment about their city having just lost some major sporting event or business deal to some neighboring city; so the least the city residents could do is to beat them varmints at something far more trivial.

Silliness? The newspapers must realize that the entire business of voting for a spot on a board game is plain silly. But maybe the editor insisted on running the story, or it was a slow news day, or the writer really wanted to write about toys and games but couldn't admit it to him or herself. So he or she tossed in an "appeal" to their readers to vote for their town, implying ha ha, we're just kidding, we don't really care but we made you smile.

Economics? Is there economic benefit to having your city's name in print on a Monopoly board? Maybe a few more people will remember your name on the board the next time they want to take a vacation and end up taking it your way. Or maybe the press releases can attract a few extra tourists. You may even get to add a description of your little town to be included with the game. All those people who buy and play the game and read the rules will learn about your town.

That may kind of make some sense if you're a small town, but a big town? Is London going to get more tourists if it lands a spot on England: Here and Now?

Who plays this game, anyway?

People play Monopoly, it's true. Because that's what's lying around. But most Monopoly games are bought and never played. Most of the games are bought by parents or grandparents for their kids who would rather be playing video games, or who already have two or three copies of the game, anyway.

But this one is a themed version, you say. Well, how often did they play non-themed Monopoly until now? Do you think a themed version is going to make them play it more? Even if it did, are they going to choose to play Boston Historical Sites Monopoly over Spongebob Squarepants Monopoly? Sure, it will get played: once when it's bought, and one more time at Christmas, and then it's back to the closet. Then the next edition of Monopoly arrives.

This is partly because today's kids prefer to play video games, and partly because Monopoly is not a particularly good game (long, lucky, player elimination, take-that mechanics, and play that revolves around failing rather than succeeding are some reasons why), and partly because Hasbro owns all the shelves on toy stores around the U.S. and doesn't want you to know that's it's not a good game.

Games of Monopoly are collected, not played. Which is fine, if you realize this. In which case, Monopoly is not a game, it's a craft or an art piece. You buy it to look at it at the box, not to play it.

If so, the only business you're going to drum up with your name on a Monopoly board is within the few weeks you get with the press releases; after that, the only ones who will notice that your name is on the board are the people who live there.

World Monopoly

The press just can't shut up about this. Around the world, the population of the world is being urged by its newspapers to vote to get their city on the board.

If Oshkosh actually makes it to a top spot on the board, Oshkosh may benefit from it with a few weeks of press coverage. But then what? A year from now, a few thousand of these games will actually have been played, and a few tens of people might know more about Oshkosh, and a few ones may stop by on their next vacation.

And Oshkosh can feel proud that it galvanized the precious time and spirit of its community to band together for something trivial, which just shows you what you can do if you try hard enough to do something free, painless, and effortless.

But will Oshkosh succeed? No way. Not unless they rig the vote, like so many others have done before in these Hasbro shindags. The top vote getters are going to be the top populated cities, with a teeny amount of wiggle room one step up or down. And big cities don't need a spot on the board.

So what, exactly, is the point? And why won't the media stop talking about it? I think it's because, when it comes to board games, they simply have nothing better to talk about.

Look Who's Talking

Some of the cities whose press has urged its citizens to get out the vote as of Jan 31:

Boston
Cape Town
Cardiff
Dublin
Edinburgh
Great Ocean Road
Hawke's Bay
Istanbul
Izmir
Jerusalem
Kuala Lumpar
Kyiv
New Dheli
NYC
Queenstown
Pittsburgh
Rome
San Fransisco
Sheboygan
Sydney
Tamworth
Toronto
Vancouver
Washington, D.C.
Winnipeg

Yehuda

Session Report, in which we lose more respect for Lost Valley

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Odin's Ravens, Notre Dame, Lost Valley.

We still love Notre Dame, but we think that Lost Valley needs an overhaul.

Welcome to any new visitors from Boing Boing, Kotaku, Joystiq, Raph Koster, and others. Check out the highlights on the right sidebar. (Actually, this is not my first time getting linked from any of these sites (maybe Kotaku), but it's the first time I got linked from all of them at once. So much for Tracksy.)

Simon J pointed out this article: one Chess master forfeited a game for refusing to shake the hand of another Chess master. After an appeal, the game may be replayed if an apology occurs. Those wacky Chess masters!

TV channel KVEW, an ABC affiliate, has a series of videos called Gamer Geeks, wherein a lovely young newscaster tries to make sense of board gaming geekery.

More on the dangers of Monopoly: four dudes killed another over a game in Hartford, CT. They probably forced him to play the shoe, too.

The York Press covers the irrepressible Beyond Monopoly club.

Nuremberg Toy Fair

Foxmind wrote to tell me that they will be showing off some new games at the upcoming Nuremberg Toy Fair, including: Kajunga, a survival game; Dig It, a multi-level brain teaser; and Trixo, "a new dimension to Tic Tac Toe".

For more on upcoming releases at the festival, check out BoardGameNews.

Israel

On the Israel scene, Israel's government has invited the remaining Beatles to play on Israel's 60th birthday. Apparently, the last time the Beatles were scheduled to come to Israel, the Israeli government refused on the grounds that their music would corrupt the country's youth. Oh, the shame.

Yehuda

Panic in the Streets! It's Snowing!

When snow falls in Jerusalem, as it does 0 to 3 times every winter, panic ensues:

- Schools close

- Everyone goes home from work, even private businesses

- Disaster relief is put on emergency alert

- Hundreds of thousands of residents stockpile canned goods and rations

- The army deploys on full alert

- Someone in the municipality checks to see where they last put the city's one snow plow.

And so on.

It makes no difference that the amount of snow that actually sticks to the ground is barely enough to scrape together into a snow cone. A Jerusalemite's reaction to snow is something akin to a Republican's reaction to a looming cessation of a tax break for millionaires: shear panic.

Game News

Greg Costikyan positively reviews Fluxx, prompting Boing Boing to mention it, prompting voluminous discussion.

The Building Futures game is a game from RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects:

According to the RIBA, the game brings together up to 25 people 'in an informal setting…..encouraging debate about issues and aiming to reach consensus'.

Participants, such as designers, planners, policy makers and developers, are split into teams of four or five and are given 'statement cards' and 'proposal cards'. Each team has to come up with a proposal which is then debated by all players.

Friday Night at the ER is a game about hospital management, designed to help hospital departments to work together more efficiently:

The lessons were seemingly simple: Managers produce better results working collegially than when they care only about their own little piece of the system. Developing strategies is more effective than just handling a series of crises.

Played out over a simulated 24-hour day at a hospital, "Friday Night at the ER" graphically shows the downside of short-term thinking, faulty assumptions and an every-manager-for-himself philosophy.

The Indiana Tribune Star has an article about gaming, and whether it's in your blood.

Vancouver's 24 Hours pimps board gaming as a way to reconnect.

Ohio's Crescent also pimps board games.

XBL Arcade mentions board games that have recently been ported to the XBox and what's coming soon, including: Chessmaster Live (should now be available), Alhambra, Talisman, Lost Cities (and other Knizia titles), Ticket to Ride, and Puerto Rico.

Update: I didn't read the original article properly, as was pointed out to me by the first commenter. I'm sorry for that. Alhambra was canceled though it was one of the original three Euro titles announced together with Settlers and Carcassonne, which both thrive. Talisman is in limbo, and Puerto Rico appears to still only be in rumor stage.

Boylston Chess scoops a game of chess which took a violent turn this week.

Yehuda

Linkety Link - Feeling Lazy

Drained, actually. I'm winding up the last days of my current "corporate blogging" position and I just want it to be over already. It's dragging on ...

The Murray State News talks up board games.

The Orilla Packet & Times presents a short history of board games from the collectors point of view.

The Sneeze bemoans one of the unfair cards of Candyland.

Scott Jon Siegel's latest board game in the Escapist is unfinished; he's hoping his readers will help him balance the game.

Session Report, in which we play Notre Dame for the first time

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Notre Dame, It's Alive.

Our first group play of Notre Dame. We all liked it.

Bernie DeKoven did his gig in Tel Aviv at the Educational Centre for Games in Israel.

The next major board game controversy in the works: This guy's made a trivia / board game about serial killers.

Based on Monopoly by way of Trivial Pursuit, Hobson's game rewards those who know their John Wayne Gacy from their Bundy. The well-informed land on an unnamed victim's house and deliver a body to the dump. The person with the highest body count wins, but to get there, knowledge is not enough. The game is seeded with what Hobson calls "entangling situations," such as random discovery or chance intervention by law enforcement. Still, justice rarely prevails.

The names of the serial killers are all immortalized, while the name's of the victims are deemed unimportant. Way to go, guy, whose day job is illustrating children's books. Expect lots of news coverage in about six months.

Yehuda

Balancing Forks

Congratulations to my friend Shlomo and his new wife Stefanie who were married yesterday. Shlomo is a dear old friend who comes to game group whenever he visits Israel (not this time, however). You can see pictures of the wedding here.

I mostly spent my time at the wedding dancing, but I did manage to accomplish the following, too: Four forks in balance



You can also do four this way:



And even six (or more):



Game News

Georgia Boardgamer has a nice article on video games vs board games.

Fair Play is a themed board game about the cotton industry that seeks to raise awareness of the fair trade social movement.

Techcrunch speculates that Scrabulous is looking to sell itself to Electronic Arts at the last minute. EA currently has the license for online Hasbro games such as Scrabble.

The Hub, part of the Lansing State Journal, pimps board games. Some of those polled come up with a few good ones.

In other news, Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void does a podcast interview with the Rabbi turned founder of thriving internet diamond business ice.com .

Linkety Link

Hasbro keeps alive the non-news about Monopoly by asking for votes on a new World Here and Now edition. Last year's country-specific Here and Now edition votes were marked with vote rigging, apathy, and the occasional minor mention in a local newspaper during slow news weeks. I'm not expecting much more for this one.

The Standford Daily uses Apples to Apples as a metaphorical tool to comment on local conditions. This brings A2A into the somewhat exclusive league of "games uses as metaphors" which until now included Chess, Go, Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, and only a few others.

MSNBC has a neat article on parents playing with kids.

The Sun Journal (Maine) on The Dragon's Lair, a new game store in Norway, Maine, and its owner, Karl Otterson.

Seattle PI reviews the new play: "Monopoly!"

Deputy Dog lists controversial and propaganda board games. Mixing the two doesn't really make sense, but there you go.

The Houston Chronicle disses DVD games.

The Queens University Journal on better board games.

Requested links

A whole bunch of sites have asked me for links lately, so here you are. These are all game related; non-game related sites need to give me a good reason.

The game You've Been Sentenced.

The video game Amaze at ITF games. They've offered me an evaluation copy to download and review, which I haven't gotten around to, yet.

doof.com, online multi-player games.

OffGamers, a place to buy WoW stuff.

MLG Pro, covering sports video games, and their new uploadable video site.

Griddly Games, offering sports board games.

Bureaucracy

It's us hopelessly naive types who are always disappointed with reality.

In spite of everything, I still believe that the function of bureaucracy is to ensure that everything that needs to be remembered is recorded, that people who need something get it, and that people who don't don't. Unfortunately, reality ensures that bureaucracy prevents those who need something from getting it.

No Rest for the Weary

I began snoring a few years back, and decided to do something about it. A family doctor gave me a referral to a sleep clinic on the basis of my having sleep apnea. Based on this referral I made an appointment with a sleep clinic. Done?

No. The sleep clinic can't see me until my health clinic gives me an approval based on my referral. So I go to the health clinic to get the approval. Done?

No. The health clinic won't give me an approval, because my referral has to come from either a neurologist or an ENT, not a family doctor. So I go to an ENT. Then I go back to the health clinic. Done?

No. The health clinic doesn't like what the ENT wrote. Apparently, the reason the ENT gave for my needing a sleep clinic isn't a good enough reason.

Now at this point, two doctors and a sleep clinic know I need a sleep clinic, and the health clinic knows this, too. A naive person might think that the health clinic would step aside or help me straighten everything out, rather than continue to stand in my way.

No. I have to go back to my ENT and get a new referral with one of the approved reasons for seeing a sleep clinic. And what are the approved reasons, you may ask, as I did? They refused to tell me, because they didn't want me or my ENT to just write down a fake reason expecting it to get rubber stamped. The ENT is supposed to know the approved, secret reasons.

...

The ENT obviously doesn't know what your secret reasons are, I said, seeing as she already gave me a referral with these reasons. I think we can expect that the ENT assumed that the reasons given were sufficient, or she wouldn't have given me this referral, no? We can't help you, says the health clinic.

So I go back to the ENT and relate my sad story. The ENT says (surprise) that the reasons she gave me were perfectly sufficient and I should go back and tell this to the health clinic (I'm not walking between two offices in a building, you must understand. Each of these visits is to a different part of town on different days, and each visit is about 30 to 60 minutes.) She can't think of what reasons would possibly be more sufficient than the ones she already gave me (secret reasons, no less).

The ENT writes on the bottom of my previous referral that my reasons are certainly sufficient and if anyone questions it, they should call her cellphone number. I take this back to the health clinic. Done?

No. The health clinic tells me that nothing has changed and that it's still not sufficient, but that they will run it by Doctor so-and-so and call me back. A day later they call me back and say it's finally approved. Done?

No. I still have to go back to the health clinic and wait again to get the approval in writing to run it over to the sleep clinic. They won't fax it for me.

Credit Card Woes

My American credit card company called me about some suspicious transactions in mid-December. Turns out someone was using my card to rack up small online charges at places like Skype and music places I'd never heard of. My American credit card company immediately took care of the problem and sent me a new card.

I had to rip up my old card. I ripped it up and threw it out, only to discover that I had instead ripped up my Israeli credit card by accident. So for a week or two I was out both cards.

Getting back my Israeli card was more of a hassle, since I had to go down to my bank branch and agree to new fees. You can't just do it through the credit card company. But eventually I get a new one with the same number as the old one, after paying an annual fee and agreeing to monthly fees to boot.

This month's Israeli credit card statement, on my new Israeli credit card, contained a bogus charge to an online music store that I'd never been to. It was made around the time that I received the new card in the mail.

OK .... the Israeli credit card company canceled my card and is sending me a new one. They'll cancel the bogus charge after sending me a form to fill out and sign and I send it back (already done).

But wait. The same type of charges on two different credit cards? Either someone copied my credit card info from my wallet, intercepted my mail, or is logging my keystrokes on my computer.

As to the last, I've run a dozen programs now and I can't detect anything. As to the other two, they don't seem all that likely. Maybe it's pure coincidence?

Now I'm nervous.

Game News

Here's a link into coverage of yet another police raid onto a small poker game. This time the illegal activity was collecting $5 from each player to pay for the food and drink. Follow the links to read the detailed stories.

The Calgary Herald covers the local Euro-gaming group.

The Dice Tower's podcast episode 114 is a diverse look back at the year 2007. If you pay careful attention, It's Alive is briefly mentioned as having been a nice surprise.

In the Israeli town of Sderot, whose schoolyards and playgrounds are still being bombarded with daily barrages of rocket fire from Gaza, there are many different ways to cope. According to this Haaretz article, "The Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council ... has modified the Monopoly board game to allow players to "fire" Qassams, as a way of reducing stress."

"Board game" searches on Lycos are up 400% (whatever that means).

Yehuda

Kotaku on Board Games, Again

I count my victories with each top video game blog that gives a nod to board games. Joystiq does it on a regular basis now with Scott Jon Siegel's Off the Grid column. Now Kotaku mentions board games twice in three days running.

First, Logan Booker on Kotaku's Australian site mentioned how he's into Arkham Horror after several years of Settlers of Catan. I sent him a few emails with other suggestions.

Then on Sunday, Flynn Demarco on Kotaku's American site ran a mysterious article covering Metro Detroit Gamers' work in bringing board game nights into local lobraries (sourced article here).

Hmmmm. My sinister plans for taking over the world seems to be working.

Of course, the number of people who play board and card games is likely still ten times or more the number who play video games, but who's counting?

Game News

Nexus, the operators of the subway system around Newcastle and Gateshead in Northern England, have created a portable room sized "board game" that teaches the dangers one may encounter in the subway system.

The game "... focuses attention on consequences of stone throwing, graffiti, fare evasion, and anti-social behaviour on trains." According to the director of rail infrastructure at Nexus, "Not only do the overhead lines carry 1,500 volts of electricity but the trains can travel at speeds of up to 50mph and people don't appreciate how difficult it can be to get out of the way."

The players stand on the game as representatives of their own pieces, and, if I understand correctly, simulate throwing rocks, spraying graffiti, evading fares, and exhibiting anti-social behavior while being shocked to death and getting crushed by massive barreling trains. Sounds like fun, and educational, too.

Yehuda

Hasbro Flexes it's Muscle with Scrabulous

We knew it was coming. Hasbro has ordered the creators of the popular Facebook application Scrabulous to cease and desist.

Like in so many similar instances, the events unfold as follows:

1. Big Company doesn't give the people what they want; namely, a Facebook application version of their game.

Knowing a company like Hasbro, this is probably because the idea has been under discussion for a year while they look into the millions of dollars the idea would require, the vast majority of which would be spent on security, DRM, locks, logins, pay schemes and other features to make the idea as difficult as possible to the people who actually want to use it.

2. Enterprising Young Dudes whip one up without too much trouble in a day or so.

3. It explodes into popularity.

4. Big Company sues Young Dudes. Allegedly for doing so without their permission and for providing a service which BC is unwilling or unable to provide. Or in the name of protecting the company. But really, BC is doing this in order to buy out YDs, or because it's finally ready to launch its own application and doesn't want the competition.

We've seen this story before.

PhotoshopTalent is running a contest which claims to be a "board game design" contest, but which is obviously simply a "funny board game like picture" contest.

The Ithaca Journal gets nostalgic over evening card games from times of yore.

The Leaf Chronicle (TN) finds local places that gamers go.

Another violent outburst and robbery at a card game (Racine). But, hey, if you're going to get all primal at a card game, don't do it a week from the date of your parole. (Sheboygan)

Yehuda

Felafel With Bernie DeKoven

Bernie DeKoven is a major industry player who's behind the MajorFun game awards, Junkyard sports, the blog DeepFun, and a whole lot of other things. He's also written some books: The Well-Played Game and Junkyard Sports. Until today, I didn't know that he also designed several games and was part of the New Games Foundation.

Bernie is Mr Fun. His mission is to reintroduce the path to fun to people, which includes less about the mechanics, winning, and rules of games and activities, and more about the connection and enjoyment.

I met him for lunch at a felafel stand. He's in Israel visiting his son and grandson, and will be doing a workshop on the Magic of Play in Tel Aviv at the EGCI on Jan 15 at 5:00 pm. Call Helena at 054-4717314 for details.

Bernie's blog started a while ago, but was never the main focus of his work. At the end of last year he put it on hiatus for an unspecified time while he regroups his blog's purpose.

I suggested to him that since he has many years of treasure-filled posts that new readers rarely see (people don't generally look at past years' posts), he should do a weekly roundup of past years' posts once a week to reintroduce new readers to some of his older material. He welcomed the suggestion, and hopefully we'll be seeing these posts soon.

We also talked about blogging, Israel, and fun. I invited him and his son to my game sessions, but they didn't give me any positive responses to that, so it seems unlikely, for the present.

Yehuda

Game News

An article in the South China Morning Post talks about games and mentions the game Bang, but I don't have access to read more.

Logan Booker, the editor of Kotaku, mentions that he's played Settlers and now played Arkham Horror, but nothing in between. I've already emailed to him that he's in for a word of happy gaming if he's willing to start branching out to other games at the top of BGG, but he hasn't yet answered my email.

There's a play Monopoly! by Mike Daisey running from January 18 to February 3 at the Capital Hill Arts Center in Seattle. Seattlest ran an interview with Mike, in which he talks about variants he used to play with classic games:

In Monopoly!, I talk about the game Risk, too, how we would play with homemade boards of giant sheets of butcher paper, and invent countries. We’d let the war grow and grow and if it ever got trapped in a particular corner, we’d just tack on new pieces of butcher paper and let it grow in different directions. We played Monopoly similarly, we played on four boards at once so that the game would get hideously complicated. You’d have to have asset transfers between different players, there was a Council of Four who were allowed to vote on the value of currency. The games sort of grew in on themselves and became deeply interesting. That becomes sort of a thread in the show Monopoly! about the nature of games, the nature of desire.

Despite all of its competition suffering from product recalls and booming year-end game sales, Hasbro is cutting 200 jobs and its shares are at a 52-week low. This after buying Cranium for $77 million.

One of the guys who sued the creators of Trivial Pursuit and lost has just been ordered to pay over a million dollars in legal costs.

In Australian Catholic University, a professor studied the effects of the drug ecstasy by having frequent users and regular people play a board game he developed.

There's an All-Ivy online Risk tournament going on with over 11,000 student, professors, and alumni participating.

The band Hawk Nelson's next CD release will include a board game in the packaging.

"African artist Meschac Gaba makes big interactive games. His take on a standard board game at the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Maison, is so big that real people are used as pawns. Players move around on a special rug and race to their homelands." (source)

Robbie Williams now loves Scrabble (in addition to Checkers).

Finally, a funny Geek story about encountering the stereotypical undesirables in game stores.

Alone Again, Artificially

Rachel went back to Toronto last night. She'll be back in Israel for Passover. I'll be visiting her in Toronto for the last two weeks of February, give or take. Sigh.

We played two games of Puerto Ric before she left. I used my classic set of buildings. I won both games, much to Rachel's disgust.

The first I won with massive corn shipping together with a Commodity Exporters. Victory points ran out like the dickens. The second game I won by stopping the boats and a coffee monopoly with Factory, building three big buildings by the game's end to her none.

Game News

The game If You Had to Choose is allegedly helping these people at a homeless shelter make better choices.

Future Focus, a board game about Diabetes.

The latest "video game turned into a board game": Guitar Hero.

Sign On San Diego covers a game store with Euro games.

Post Crescent also recommends board games for families and suggests both old and new ones.

Zen Personal Finance reviews the new Game of Life and finds that, amazingly, they've managed to make one of the worst games in the world even worse.

Another entry in the overpriced financial board game market (quote more than just a board game unquote): Millionaire Maker Game (only $75).

40 Harrison soldiers returning from Iraq were given gift bags, and those "soldiers who are considered a center of influence with young people will be given a Future Soldier Footlocker Kit that includes the Daring Eagle board game, Mission Command card game, and Army National Guard trading cards."

People are cheating at online Scrabble. Whodathunk?

A reader tip on the new electronic face of Dungeons and Dragons.

Shabbat Gaming

Puerto Rico

I'm glad that Nadine and Rachel and I got in at least one three-player PR game before Rachel returns to Canada on Monday. The three of us playing PR was our shabbat afternoon tradition for the last few years.

We played with half the buildings from my funky sets, something Nadine and I don't get to do when we play online, since no one has tried to program any of them yet.

For those who don't know, many of my alternate buildings for Puerto Rico are better than, and in any case a nice change of pace from, the original buildings.

We played one game, and quickly decided that Rachel was going to win by a decent margin. She had corn in the opening, and was already running ahead in shipping points, while still not neglecting a decent money infrastructure. I was going to have more building points, but not enough. And so it was, but closer than I imagined. Rachel won 59 to my 56 to Nadine's 54. Pretty close after all.

Rummikub

The next day we were invited to lunch, and as I arrived about a half hour before lunch was to begin, I had the opportunity to play a game with my hosts' 11 year old boy. I picked Rummikub off the shelf.

Rummikub is a game of luck, skill, and pushing your luck.

A good player will beat a beginning player most of the time. However, the mastery required to be a good Rummikub player is not very deep. Once you've got the basic pattern recognition down, the only thing you can do is wait around for the tiles you need to show up.

Other than this basic mastery of pattern recognition, the only other skill potential in the game is deciding when to play your pieces and when to hold them. Playing your pieces gets them out of your hand, but also gives your opponent the opportunity to get his own pieces out; unless you somehow block the pieces he was going to use.

On the other hand, holding the pieces introduces the risk of getting caught with playable pieces if your opponent suddenly goes out. In this way, it's kind of a push your luck game. Many people don't bother with this aspect of the game. Playing against someone who plays this way can be rather dull, so I also don't bother to do it most of the time.

I picked or played most rounds, not bothering to hold onto anything I could play. When I couldn't see anything to play at a glance, I just passed, without giving the board the extra minute of careful checking to ensure that I wasn't missing anything. Again: better to be am enjoyable opponent, than a boring one, especially against an 11 year old boy.

My opponent also played rather quickly, so the game ended up being both enjoyable and quick. And I won right when we were called to lunch.

Game News

The Big News of the day is that Hasbro is expanding its already vast monopoly by buying Cranium Industries.

Hasbro is also moving forward on the new Trivial Pursuit game show.

The Baltimore Sun on Maryland game groups.

As reported on Techdirt and other places, every major internet site on the planet is being sued over a ridiculous patent which supposedly covers online solitaire. Truly amazing.

Adam points to a nice article on the Geek on simple counting techniques to determine if someone has a bomb in Tichu.

Session Report, in which we ring in the new year with confused robots

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up (oops! corrected the year :-|). Games played: Havoc, Robo Rally x 2.

Game News

The Washington Herald on a new board game about drug smuggling. The smuggling mechanic is both risky and rewarding. From the designer: "This started out as a game about decisions between good and evil ... From there, it evolved into a fun game."

The Escapist on some ancient playground games that tell stories of dire human peril.

New entrants in my list of celebrities who play games: Michael Bolton and Nicollette Sheridan attribute their rekindled relationship to their joint love for Scrabble. Kayne West and Consequence keep losing at Connect Four to Beyonce.

Yehuda

Weekend Update

A quiet shabbat, but I got in three games of It's Alive with a guest after lunch.

This was a guest to whom I taught Havoc a year or two back, and he went out and bought it. He hasn't been over since then, but he also claims to occasionally play Settlers with his nephews and nieces.

I taught him my game and he asked to play two more times, despite losing each time. He was getting better by the third play, at least.

Best of Board Game Geek 2007

Aldie posted a fantastic series of posts collecting the highest rated content of BGG over the past year:

Top Images
Top Strategy Articles
Top Session Reports
Top Reviews

There are lots of gems in some two hundred articles and images. Among them is this fantastic story about someone's last game of Chess, and a great article about how the game Zendo is the right way to teach kids about science.

Game News

The Herald has an article that explains why a board game business based around licensed games is a Bad Idea.

Jon Scott Siegel posts another intriguing game design in Escapist. Actually, it doesn't look like much of a game, but it does look like an interesting look at a single game mechanic.

The Financial Times gives a shot at suggesting some alternate games for the holiday season.

BizThoughts runs the idea of a Board Games Cafe as a business past its readers.

Play 2 Relax doggedly continues the Games Carnival.

Bernie (via kottke) links to an event called Scrabble for Cheaters, which looks like it could be turned into an interesting variant for Scrabble.

Ten amusing principles in game design from Chimera.

Yehuda