Who Did It? The Story of the Clue VCR Game

Tim Labonte writes to tell me about his documentary on Clue: The VCR Game, the first VCR game from 1985 (30 years ago). Tim and co interview most of the people involved in the creation of the game, including the designer, the producers, the actors, and so on. It's very well done and worth the look if you're into the game history at all.

Ten Weird and Wonderful Song Transformations

Here are ten weird and wonderful cover songs on Youtube in no particular order, covering but utterly transforming an original smash pop hit. Most of the original songs are Hip Hop. Most of the transformations are soul or folk.

1. Tori Amos covers Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit

Tori Amos does a lot of soulsy covers of odd source material, including heavy metal and death metal originals (e.g. Raining Blood by Slayer).

2. Einat & Hakim cover The Black Eyed Peas' I Got a Feeling

These guys are pretty funky Israelis.

3. Alanis Morissette covers The Black Eyed Peas' My Humps

A joke, but shows that Alanis can't help sounding good even when she's not trying.

4. Jonathan Coulton covers Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back

Also a joke, I suppose, but it's hard to listen to this and think that he's not singing something profound.

5. Pomplamoose covers Beyonce's Single Ladies

Pomplamoose has a number of odd, weird, funky covers, including an awesome cover of Lady Gaga's Telephone (which itself has an entire bevy of weird covers, from country rock to classical).

6. Sarah Bareilles covers Beyonce's Single Ladies

Another cover of Single Ladies, this demonstrates Sarah's talents, which go far beyond simple pop and ballad numbers.

7. Karmin covers Chris Brown's Look at Me Now

The most viewed cover on Youtube (56 million views and counting), the cover is funny, sweet, and silly; the original song is none of these. It's dumb, racist, sexist, stupid, and talentless. Karmin does a number of other interesting covers.

8. Mat Weddle covers Outkast's Hey Ya

Mat is aka Obadiah Parker.

9. Butch Walker covers Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me

Taylor twitted about how much she liked this cover and invited Butch to integrate his sound into one of her performances. Skip to about 2:40 if you don't want to see Butch peeing.

10. Greyson Chance covers Lady Gaga's Paparazzi

There are lots of kids and amateur wannabees covering pop songs on Youtube, but few can transform a recognizable smash pop hit and - astoundingly - make it better. And he's only 13, for crying out loud.

Bonus

Birdy covers Bon Iver's Skinny Love

Bon Ivers is relatively unknown, and the original song is folk music. But it's still amazing. And she's only 15 years old.

Videos of the Hesped for My Father

By Rabbi Rattner, who led the kolel that my father attended for 12 years or so. The original video included a 16 minute introduction about the importance of a hesped in Jewish tradition; I cut that part out.

Part 1:



Part 2:

Shatner and Nimoy at Dragon*Con

Even casual Trek fans MUST watch Shatner and Nimoy's panel from last month's Dragon*Con, embedded below. Absolutely hysterical.

37 Vintage Board Game Commercials from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s

Just testing out YouTube's play-list embed feature. Enjoy. Don't miss "Mystery Date". Clip four has several commercials together. And yes, "Ball Buster" was a real game, near as I can tell.

Ben Kenobi, Private Jedeye

Have to pass on viral videos once in a while, just to keep up with the Joneses.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

(via, via)

Yehuda

P.S. You may also like Sith'd, by the same team.

10 Spoof Board Game Commercials

To make a spoof commercial about a fake board game, all you need is a basic idea and a little artwork; the jokes and bad acting write themselves.

Mush Mouth - Stupid game ideas like this actually exist in the recycling bins of game publishers.



Number Scrabble - Demonstrating that obvious adaptation ideas don't always work. Letter card games that play like rummy are no better.



Smack the Lion - Those wacky Japanese.



Grand Theft Auto: The Board Game - Applying real world violence to a board game is a little too obvious.



Communist Monopoly - These guys had a similar idea a decade earlier than GTA, and it still seems fairly old.



NAMBLA - This one is probably offensive to most people, as is the organization.



25 Years to Life



Muttonopoly



Chess For Girls - One of several board game commercials done by Saturday Night Live. Actually makes a decent point.



Ball Buster - This was a real game, believe it or not. I don't think the commercial is a spoof.



Blackout

To make up for the previous entry which was a real game, you can view Blackout. It's a little too racy for my blog.

The Guide to Board Game Tutorial Videos

I found a series of videos explaining how to play Jacks at Expert Village. 16 videos, on such esoteric topics such as "How to bounce the ball" and "How to drop the jack on the floor". They're quite, uh, quite.

Expert Village also has video instruction for dozens of board and card games.

Of course, the slickest and best video instruction on board games comes from my friend Scott, aka Board Games With Scott. He hardly needs introduction, being far more famous than I am in and out of the board game world.

I was going to compile a list of additional resources on video tutorials, but I see that an attorney who goes by the name dominojones on BGG has already done so in a Geeklist: The Definitive List of Board Game Videos and Interactive Tutorials. Enjoy.

Yehuda

BGG.con - the mainstream news video

Star Telegram covers the con here:

http://www.star-telegram.com/videos/

This link probably won't work for very long, so get it while you can. Derk does some narrating, and mentions that one geek came all the way from Israel.

Yehuda

From Chag to Shabbat in 82,800 Seconds

Digg's Registration
Gender SelectionWhile religious Jews in the U.S. struggle to make it through three days of chag and shabbat this weekend, followed by another three days next weekend - which means they're not reading this on Friday - us Israelis no sooner finish chag that we start our preparations for shabbat, having only most of a Friday in between the two.

A few things about my last week ...

Train

On Tuesday I took a train to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, my first such experience on the Israeli Jerusalem/Tel Aviv line. Parking in Jerusalem is free, and the Jerusalem station is only 15 minutes from my apt in light traffic.

The train takes around an hour and a half to get to Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, which is how long it takes in heavy traffic by car, and it costs 36 NIS, which is far less than I would pay in gas. The ride is smooth, the trains are new, the seats are comfortable, it's not crowded, and I can read or sleep. It's fairly close to perfect, assuming that I travel off-peak and don't need to go far from the TA train station when I get there.

Scooter and Boat

When I got to TA, my "boss" picked me up on his "toos-toos", or scooter. I'd ridden on the back of a motorcycle once about twenty years ago. I had to get onto the back of this thing, my crotch essentially in his butt, my hands on his waist, and my head in a piece of plastic that seemed more likely to twist my head out of its socket than protect me if I flew off and landed on it while driving. And that's more intimate I ever want to get with a co-worker.

The thought that immediately leaped to mind was how similar the experience was to being on a motor-boat. The exhaust of the scooter smelled like boat fuel, the shifting balance like waves, the wind in my face like that off the water, and when I got off it felt like I was returning to my land-legs. It was all so familiar; my family had a motor boat when I was little, and my wife's family has one in Georgian Bay.

The only thing missing was the seaweed and spray.

All the kids

My stepson Eitan just came back for a two week trip. He's here for two weeks and then goes back, hopefully taking the dog with him. Which means I'm now officially off dog-minding service.

There was a brief 20 seconds this afternoon when all four kids were together in the house at the same moment, which hasn't happened since last June. Then Ariella went out, Tal went off to her mom for the weekend, Eitan went out, and then Saarya went out to his mom for the weekend. Leaving me all alone again. Sniff.

They'll be buzzing in and out over the next few weeks.

Speaking of games for girls

Via Feministe:



Yehuda

Gamers Gone Wild on Local TV

The gaming convention Gamers Gone Wild was briefly covered by a local news channel. The comments at the end by the newscasters are classic.

Google is tentatively looking into Ad-Sense for online games. Makes sense. Integrating the ads into the Flash will result in a much higher click-through.

Scott Nicholson apparently gave a well researched talk on gaming in libraries. Lots of interesting details about forming game groups in public places and the results of doing so.

There's a new blog carnival for game designers. And another carnival called game carnival. Unlike previous carnivals, these both specify that board gamers are welcome.

(Meanwhile, there's also a new blog carnival about modesty.)

Capforge points us to this story in Entrepreneur magazine about Don McNeill who has made over $5 million from his board game You've Been Sentenced.

The Bicycles, a pop group, are launching a DVD board game about themselves.

Following his invincible Checkers program, Jonathan Schaeffer is working on creating an invincible poker program.

Lucknow Newsline in India tells its readers to get back to board gaming.

Yehuda

Game Night A'coming

There was no game night last week, so I'm in withdrawal. Tonight should fix it, I hope. Tonight should also be the inaugural meeting of the Beit Shemesh gaming club. I'm looking forward to hear how it goes.

I'm finding it a hard job to create the Hebrew Apples to Apples cards, mainly because my Hebrew is so poor. I envisioned simply organizing my various teenagers to do it for me (for pay, of course), and they've done some, but not enough. But I can't help but think this would be easier for a native Hebrew speaker.

Game News

Flywheel posts the awesome report of Improv game design.

Rule 0 makes fun of the Clue theme.

Game Tycoon compares board games to computer games, and finds (surprise) that board games are more social.

Island Run is a rolled up customizable game with a nautical theme for promotion. I emailed them asking for a copy of the rules.

Just like it did when it busted GO's pen and tablet based computing in the early nineties, Microsoft looks poised to bust the Entertaible with a new focus on horizontal desktop computing.

The Border Mail covers the upcoming Australian Games Expo.

And an amazing Jenga move:

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

Tal had her friend Ruti over for shabbat; Tal and Ruti are probably The Menorah Games' biggest fans. So naturally, they played the game about a dozen times, with me playing a few times. I think Tal won most of them.

Tal is still bemoaning the new theme, and tried to convince Ruti to bemoan it as well, but Ruti seemed to think it was cute.

I also taught my non-gaming friends how to play Settlers of Catan, now that they have a child almost old enough to play something well (6 years old). Unfortunately, I really lack games for kids in my house. I have to correct that if I'm ever going to do more game demos for parents and such.

They really liked Settlers, and I spent some time telling them how to make the games they play now better, too, which seemed to impress them. Maybe I'll turn it into a lecture series or something.

I played Set with Tal and Ruti and won without much difficulty. Challenge me, I dare you.

A video interview about the Entertaible. It's beginning to suffer now from being announced too early. I want to try the damn thing out already.



Yehuda

Dirty Soles, Communists, and Ball Busters

For some reason, the organization of people who enjoy walking around barefoot refer to themselves as "Dirty Soles". Ever since, they've had to disclaim that their organization is not fetishistic, but naturalistic.

Purposely naughty? Or just a bad choice of name?

In Israel there is a small window of opportunity in the big cities for barefoot walking, between the cold of winter and the heat of summer. It's already almost too late, but I managed a barefoot walk today to the bakery and back. It was my first (and probably only) time this season.

The first time is the hardest, when your feet tenderly feel every pebble and burr in your path, and aren't accustomed to the gradually baking sidewalks. Each time you reach a bit of shady sidewalk is a real pleasure.

Whether this is healthy - because of the free flowing air to the feet - or unhealthy - because of the exposure to random germs and stuff - is beside the point, really. It's just being alive.

Jokes or Games?

Speaking of naughty or nice, one can never be too sure what's a joke and what's not in the game world.

This game "Communist Monopoly" is a joke:
And it looks like the game Class Struggle is, too. But it has a BGG entry, and looks like it was produced by Avalon Hill.

And what about this game supposedly being created by China as an alternative to traditional Capitalist online games? (source)

Lastly, whether or not this game "Ball Buster" is a joke, surely the advertisement must be one:
Yehuda

Checkmate and the Buddha

A cute board game related romance called Checkmate on Youtube.

Off the Grid on Joystiq reviews RoboRally.

The Escapist covers a few aspects of games and religion.

Speaking of religion and games, I've never covered Buddhist games ...

Karma Chakra: Karma Chakra "gives players his/her own freedom to visualize, imagine, think & discuss about Buddhism at many different levels".

Buddha Wheel: "The Game of Many Lives".

Some say that Go is the ultimate Buddhist game.

If you want a more cosmopolitan religious game, you can try the Trivia game Enlighten, "an interactive game that entices people to explore, dialog and expand their spiritual knowledge of the world".

Yehuda

Video Clip: Lightsaber Duel, Part II / Eurogame Convention in Kansas City

Blinding Light Productions have posted a followup to their brilliant first lightsaber duel, released exactly a year ago. Enjoy.
(via CriticalHits)

---

If you're in Kansas City over the next few days, drop by Blockhead, a 3 day Eurogame convention. Free admission.

March 16-18 2007
Center of Grace Gymnasium
520 Harrison Street
Olathe, KS 66061

All proceeds benefit Pathway to Hope, an organization that exists to encourage, educate, and empower the individuals and their families whose lives are affected by mental illness.

Yehuda

Watch. React. Tell a friend.

It must be the game designer in me, but I am always fascinated about how advertising design comes about. Whenever I see an ad or a product, I wonder who got the job of choosing the color, the font, and especially the text.

Really. Where do they come up with this stuff?

Lazy Sunday

Take NBC.

There was a funny video called Lazy Sunday from Saturday Night live. NBC, in their infinite foolishness, but like so many other companies before them trying to "control the brand", watched the popularity of this skit blossom around the internet spawning dozens of parody/tributes, and then decided to serve notice and take it down from everywhere and put it only on NBC's site.

Here is what you read when you go to NBC's site to watch the video:

Now, instead of searching the web for "borrowed" NBC highlights, you can go to the source! We've taken your viral favorites and gathered them into one convenient location. Watch. React. Tell a friend.

Wow. Who writes this stuff?

Do they really think that people search the web for "NBC highlights"? Or, do they think by calling it that that this will make it into a brand? And how did it become a "viral favorite" to begin with?

Envision the youth of today, each one telling his or her friend: "Oh, you have to check out the latest NBC highlight!"

Do they think that adding the word "borrowed", and in quotes no less, is going to make the clip better on NBC's site?

And, just to appear hip and cool, they want you to "watch," "react," and "tell a friend." But no, not by allowing the video to be embedded in your own web site, emailed, or posted in a popular location, but by requiring people who want to watch the NBC brand of video to "conveniently" have to go to NBC's site to watch it.

You asked for it... you got it. Here's the Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia!
Can't wait to share this clip with a friend? Fill in an email address and click send to make his or her day.

Yes, because a separate website and only being able to share by sending an email, which is collected without any sort of disclaimer by NBC, is so hip.

Their branding is so important to them, that they don't even call the video by the popular name it has acquired around the internet, but by the internal name that they gave it:

Saturday Night Live: Chronicles of Narnia

Writing Ad-copy

OK, so it's not so much NBC's cluelessness that I care about here; I want to know who is the guy or gal that sat down to write this? Did they have to be mind controlled by the suits? Or did they know what they had to say and spend a few minutes trying to come up with a way to spin it? Where does one get a job like that?

Really.

Just take a look at any of the ridiculous blurbs on a cereal box:

Post Honey Bunches of Oats cereal is one of America’s favorite breakfast cereals. With delicious, crunchy oat clusters and three kinds of flakes, every spoonful tastes a little different. Honey Bunches of Oats contains just the right amount of sweetness to appeal to the entire family. It’s the cereal you’d make if you made cereal!

Someone had to write this. I imagine a middle-age ad man in a sunlit room in the country on a golden, beautiful morning. He pours himself a bowl of cereal and milk. He tastes it, like a fine wine. Crunches disturb the bird-song of the country.

Suddenly, he says to himself: "It's the cereal I'd make if I made cereal! By golly! We should write that on the box!"

The text is sent around the massive Kraft foods bureaucracy. Meetings are scheduled. Department heads put their teams together. Arguments break out. Fisticuffs fly. A crisis in management. Suddenly, the boss slams his hands on the table. Quiet reigns in the board room.

"I like it," says the boss. There is an outbreak of applause.

And that's how dumb things get onto your cereal boxes.

It is apparent that I know nothing about the advertising industry. Just think of getting paid to come up with things like this. Man, I could do that.

Yehuda

The Myth of Multiple Paths to Victory

Gamers value board games that provide multiple paths to victory. A game with multiple paths to victory is one where more than one strategy may be successfully used during a game.

A game with a single path to victory is one in which a single strategy dominates. For instance, ....

Well, like ....

Um ....

Hmmm.

I just went through the 265 games that I have rated on the Geek and couldn't find a single example. All I could find were games where there were no choices at all, such as Candyland.

In even the simplest games, such as Chinese Checkers, Sorry, or Connect Four, players generally have a choice between aggressive and defensive play styles, or some combination of both. You can play safely, trying to minimize the possibility of being hit by your opponent, or aggressively try to hit your opponent. Or, you can ignore your opponent altogether.

Whether victory is decided by the most points, most money, first player to reach the end, or last player remaining, the types of tactics in which you engage are determined by the strategic options you employ: slow, cautious, and steady, fast and risky, or aggressive and interfering.

In contrast, the games touted as having multiple paths to victory actually give less strategic options.

Why? Because no one can interfere with your gaining points. Someone can expend resources to block you off from one avenue, but you have a dozen other avenues still open. Interaction becomes far less important, except for limited short term annoyances that you are able to do while maximizing your gain, anyway.

The game becomes, perforce, more tactical, and less strategic, which I admit is highly counter-intuitive. The game becomes less interactive and more like mutual solitaire.

For example, when the winner of the game is the one with the most points, and the only way to get points is to gain doohickeys, your options are to gain the doohickeys recklessly, gain them cautiously, work to prevent your opponent from doing so, or some combination.

In contrast, when you can gain points either by a) gaining doohickeys, b) gaining sets, c) retaining money, d) scoring interim positions, or e) being first to do hoozitz in any of seven territories, your strategic options decline.

You can either maximize your points each round by hill climbing, or plan to maximize your points over several rounds by investing and then reaping. And that's it, really.

If you extol games with "multiple paths to victory", you are really extolling games with more tactics and less strategy. More calculation and less interaction. More planning and less instinct.

Which is great, if that's what you like.

Game News

First of all, lay off Britney Spears already, please. It was funny when she was a dope, and titillating when she showed her privates, but making fun of someone suffering from a mental breakdown is inexcusable. I mention this because of another jab at her in the form of a fake board game Britopoly, which is simply mean, not funny.

Lost level pleads with game designers to make their in-game penalties something that creates more of a challenge, and not something that simply makes the game less fun to play.

Gilad Yarnitzky, a fellow Israeli board gamer, is doing a series on board gaming in Israel on Board Game News. Speaking of Board Game News, Eric Martin, the new editor of Board Game News, has just opened up free guest membership to those who want to comment on the site. BGN is the second best stop for board games on the Internet, after Board Game Geek.

The Wall Street Journal talks about Hasbro's openness to new board games, but I don't have registration access to the site. If anyone can send me the complete article, I'd be much obliged. Update: here it is in full. (via Eric)

d21 talks about the down side of Settlers becoming a huge success if it moves to XBox, since the lure of monetary gain might take over the fledgling board game design world.

The Human Side of Computer Games Dept

Jeff Orkin is hosting an open game development process, to see what happens if games are designed from the bottom up according to what players actually wish to do, in The Restaurant Game.

David Sirlin describes how to design games that are both fun to play and also accomplish useful things as a side effect.

Your Assistance is Required Dept

Nigeria is trying to up its chess performance at the next Africa Games, and is getting a boost from a partnership with grandmaster of England, Nigel Short. Nigel Short is rumored to have responded to an email from one of their players asking him to assist in winning Ten Milion Chess Games (10,000,000) if he deposits a mere Seven Hundred and Fifty chess games into the Nigerian chess player's track record.

Yehuda

Seasonal Weekend Gaming

Shabbat lasts 25 hours from sundown Friday evening until stars out Saturday night.

In the winter, that means early start times of 4 or 5 pm and early end times of 5 or 6 pm, while in the summer, shabbat might start at 7 or 8 pm and end at 8 or 9 pm. This depends on where you live, of course. Times might be earlier or much later. Above the arctic circle, special rules apply.

Theoretically, regardless of the time of year, shabbat should be a good time for gaming. No electric use that wasn't set to run before shabbat started, and no work to go to (usually). No major travel.

In the winter, game time means after dinner on Friday evening; shabbat is too short on Saturday. You might play after shabbat on Saturday night, of course. In the summer, dinner is so late that you can't play on Friday night, but you will probably have time on Saturday afternoon, after lunch and a nap.

Of course, you have to have gamers in your area or family, and your meals can't be too long.

Friday evening we ate out until around 10:30. Nice conversation and all that, but too late to game when we got home. Saturday was too short for gaming, factoring in shul, lunch, nap, and Rachel's weekly lecture (currently, we are working through Job).

However, this week's lecture was at Nadine's house, and despite the fact that it finished only a short time before the end of shabbat, we decided to play our regular game of Puerto Rico. One is allowed to end shabbat later (not earlier). So we just ate into our Saturday night a bit.

Which is not a big deal, since the Third Ear video store's copy of the last disk of West Wing's Season 7 is currently out for repair anyway.

Puerto Rico

Rachel drew corn, which prompted both Nadine and I to proclaim her the winner before the game started. And so it was.

Of course, I helped it along a bit by refusing to do what's normal. I opened with Builder/Small Market. Nadine left Rachel the other Small Market, opting for a manned indigo instead.

I took several corns in the next few rounds, an early Large Market, and then a tobacco to give me some shipping and trading leeway. Unfortunately, despite good plays on my part to manipulate the Trading House in my favor, it's just not a strong enough strategy to beat the usual strategy, which Rachel always favors.

Rachel produced everything but coffee, plus Factory and Harbor. That's still pretty unbeatable. I could have done the same, but chose not to, which is why I lost.

Nadine had a coffee monopoly, and even locked a boat, but she had a very slow start, and so wasn't able to catch up with building points.

Game News

CSI games has a nice article on competition as a vehicle for moving a story.

There's a Rugby inspired board game in the works, based on Aberflyarff RFC, the creation of the late legendary cartoonist Gren.

Here you can watch a two-hour game of Risk time lapsed into less than two minutes.

Yehuda

Oh Hell, Down to the Wire

Tal and I played a quick game of Oh Hell last night, which I won. On the last round, Tal and I were exactly ten points apart.

The last round, a single card is dealt, so Tal could still have won if she had bid 1, which would have forced me to bid 1, and if she had then won the lead. The net result would have been +6 for her and -5 for me.

Unfortunately for her, the King of Diamonds was the trump-determining card, and I held the Ace of Diamonds in my hand.

Via Raph, a site that implores you to join First Life (Not Second Life).

Zenspace adds to the fray on whether videogames are art. Zenspace appears to be writing various papers about videogames and posting them on completion.

The Stanford Daily hits the right note about board games.

The latest issue of Toronto's Broken Pencil is all about games.

A beautiful new Indian board game in the Risk family is being developed at The Uttarakhand Board Game. The board, pieces, and rules are available for download and beta-testing.

NearbyGamers is another site providing meetup services for tabletop gaming.

My sister-in-law sent me this cute video about a grandmaster playing simultaneous games (not all the same game).

Yehuda