Matt J. Carlson

Matt Carlson's column will appear on BGN roughly every other Saturday. Here's what Matt has to say about himself:

To the rest of his family, it seemed as if Matt Carlson was playing games from the day he was born. His first held office was "Vice President of Games and Snacks" for family meetings. Growing older, he frequented his town's hobby shop to check out any newer games that weren't to be found on the shelves of the local department store. In the 1980s, he was tempted to the dark side of computer and video games, if for no other reason than a lack of ready boardgame opponents. Discovering Settlers of Catan in the early 1990s, he began pushing it on every acquaintance he could find, beginning a resurgence in his boardgaming habits.

Matt now lives in central Indiana where he leads the boardgame club at the public high school where he teaches. He also cofounded a biweekly boardgame club at his church's coffeehouse, and he gets in a bit more gaming when time allows.

Matt started writing about games on GamerDad.com, and he continues to write a biweekly column entitled GamerDad Unplugged where he attempts to coax still more gamers into the boardgaming fold. His other online writing includes posting columns for the Gone Gaming blog (all of which is included in the archives below for easy reading) and reviewing material for the nonprofit Parent's Choice.

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Headlines May 17, 2008 - Thoughts on Next Fall May 3, 2008 - Matt Carlson: A Game About Farming April 19, 2008 - Matt Carlson:  The Gamers Determine the Reality April 5, 2008 - Matt Carlson: Concentrated Gaming March 22, 2008 - Matt Carlson: The Return of the Club March 8, 2008 - Matt Carlson: Secondary Boardgaming February 23, 2008 - Matt Carlson: A Risky Retrospective February 9, 2008 - Matt Carlson: Is Your Game Tight or Baggy? January 26, 2008 - Matt Carlson: Unnecessary Pieces January 12, 2008 - Matt Carlson: A Hello, a Lack of Dimes, and an Election December 26, 2007 - Matt J. Carlson: Christmas Traditions October 17, 2007 - Matt J. Carlson: Gaming Saturation

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Articles

Thoughts on Next Fall

I’ve had little time to play games or write about games in the past couple weeks.  I’m awash in finals, reviewing for finals, and dealing with the stream of students hoping to get enough help to turn an F into a D, D into a C, etc… all in the last week of school.  Clearly I need to teach them all some boardgames to help them plan ahead.  To set a good example, I thought I might ponder some planning ahead of my own and try to narrow down possible boardgames to add into our club’s collection next year.

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Matt Carlson: A Game About Farming

Have a hankering to play a boardgame themed around trying to scratch a subsistence off the land?  Cultivate crops and harvest them in order to try and provide for your family.  What game am I talking about, none other than The Farming Game.  Wait, were you thinking about some other farming game?

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Matt Carlson:  The Gamers Determine the Reality

Once again I find that some of my more interesting gaming reflections come from my weekly high school gaming group.  This week a student brought in one of his favorite games, Pirateer.  While it isn’t quite my cup of tea, they played it all afternoon long and seemed to have more fun than anyone else in the club.

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Matt Carlson: Concentrated Gaming

Looking back over the past few weeks of gaming I’ve come to realize that I don’t have a lot of spare time for playing longer games during the regular school year.  As a result, a large proportion of my games played fall in to that one hour or less mark.  Thankfully, I’ve found a few titles that are fairly quick to play but can still satisfy a deeper gaming itch.

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Matt Carlson: The Return of the Club

After writing about popular games in my high school boardgaming group, several readers chimed in with additional suggestions.  One that came up several times was Diamant.  In the U.S., it goes by the name Incan Gold and is co-published by Funagain and Sunriver Games.  I acquired a copy and gave it a run-through with some adult friends at a casual get-together on Saturday, then brought it out again for our high school club Tuesday afternoon.

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Matt Carlson: Secondary Boardgaming

For the past few years, I’ve been the sponsor of my high school’s boardgaming club.  We meet once a week after school for about an hour and a half.  With such a short meeting length, it really limits what games we can bring to the table.  It has been interesting to watch which games turn into regular favorites.

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Matt Carlson: A Risky Retrospective

There has been a bit of a buzz around an the next version of Risk to be published in the summer of 2008.  Risk: Black Ops is a limited edition preview version that has made a small splash, partly due to its slick nearly all-black pieces and packaging.  I was able to look over the new rules and was struck by a fit of nostalgia that made me contemplate changes to the basic game.  Despite Hasbro’s large corporation persona, one has to admit that their many recent remakes of the core Risk game have made some nice improvements.

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Matt Carlson: Is Your Game Tight or Baggy?

Recently, I have had the pleasure to play several games of In the Year of the Dragon.  In the game, players take on the role of a faction in China attempting to survive the harsh conditions and events that occur throughout a single year.  In only twelve turns (one for each month of the year) players take a single action and then recruit an apprentice or master worker to add into their growing organization.  With so few actions within the game, I began to ponder my opinion on tight games – games that have very little wiggle room for mistakes.

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Matt Carlson: Unnecessary Pieces

Last year I had the distinct pleasure of being able to take the year off and watch over the first year of my son’s life.  While watching “The Boy” did take a lot of my time, being off from work helped to give me time to come back to the gaming table on a regular basis.  Now that I’m working again, I often find myself restricted to gaming at home and having friends come over to play.  This situation has also made aware of an important new requirement in the games that I play.  A good game should have a few unnecessary pieces.

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Matt Carlson: A Hello, a Lack of Dimes, and an Election

I believe I’m the last of the Gone Gaming writers to make my way onto the regular ranks of Boardgame News.  Searching through the back-issues of Gone Gaming you can see that I joined their ranks a bit later on as well, having written about 24 articles over the past 18 months.  Some have already kindly been moved onto BGN by the lovely Eric Martin. (Gotta start buttering up the editor asap…) You could read through all those posts to get to know my gaming style and preferences, or I can simply tell you that I am a high school science teacher who loves almost any game (some more than others, of course) and see myself as somewhat of a gaming evangelist. 

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Matt J. Carlson: Christmas Traditions

This time of year is always rife with traditions at my house. I’m descended from Scandinavian and German stock, so we tend to make a big deal out of Christmas, particularly Christmas eve when we would exchange presents as a family. I’ve always been a fan of boardgames, so I would often get games as presents. However, on Christmas morning we would all get up and open a few more presents from “Santa” in our stocking. Next to each of our stockings (there were four of us kids) would be one last present, a brand new boardgame! That’s four new games entering into our family’s game closet every year. As THE child in the family who was into gaming (I was in charge of “games and refreshments” whenever we had an official family meeting), new games were a big deal. Having most of our important traditions and activities happen on Christmas eve left the entire Christmas day for me to try to con my brothers, sisters, and parents into playing a game. We’d get all four new games onto the table at some point during the day, and sometimes even a few repeats. While I’ve loved boardgames as long as I can remember, I attribute some of that lasting appeal to the annual appearance of a new game from “Santa”.

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Matt J. Carlson: Gaming Saturation

If you had asked me a few years ago if it were possible, I would have denied it but I now think I’m reaching a saturation level for my boardgaming habits. Sure, I’d love large chunks of time to devote to some more plays of a few longer games (Die Macher, Here I Stand, Twilight Imperium 3 or Revised Axis and Allies anyone?) but I’m finally at a point in my life where I can honestly say I don’t feel like I have time I’d rather trade in for more boardgaming.

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Matt J. Carlson: Balancing a Game

I recently misread a post over on Boardgame News on the game called Age of Discovery. I thought the writer was talking about Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, but it turns out Age of Discovery is a different game (although with enough similar terms to make me confused.)

In any case, the point of the article was about game balance and it got me thinking. There are clearly some games that have victory conditions that could have been better balanced. I can’t believe this is a design choice when one of a few simple possibilities could have been added to the mix to better balance the game.

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Matt J. Carlson: Lightweight and Feeling Good…

After a hiatus of far too long, I’m back and pushing my thoughts out there to the blog-reading community. After enjoying a visit to Gen Con and then writing profusely about it it is time to wind down and collect my boardgaming thoughts. One such thought has centered around lightweight, fast-playing games. I do enjoy stretching my gaming muscles in longer games that take an hour or more to develop and finish, but I find a significant fraction of my gaming time revolving around gaming with relatively lightweight gamers. Thus, I have turned an eye toward finding a selection of favorite lightweight games.

In my book, a lightweight game needs to play fast. If I’m going to commit a chunk of time to a game I expect to get some nice, deep thinking about it. This is my main objection to Cosmic Encounter; it is great in theory and I love the “festive” nature of the game, but far too often the game can drag on past its initial welcome. If the game is going to have shifting fortunes and a significant element of chance I prefer it to land in the 30 to 45 minute mark so that a truly poor string of luck does not drag out for extended periods. However, I often find nonrandom, pure abstracts to be a bit too dry for my taste, so there has to be some sort of balance between luck and strategy.

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Matt J. Carlson: A Couple of New Ones…

Well, not much to say this week, I’ve got vacation hanging over my head so am rushing around to put that together.

I’ll be seeing some nieces and nephews, they’re all still fairly young so I think I’ll just bring along Igloo Pop and No Thanks! as they can fit quite a range of players as well as a decent range of numbers of players.

I’ve manage to game quite a bit in the past two weeks, just a little above normal and that is mostly due to my recent aquisition of Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery by Tropical Games. That is a long name, but the game deserves it. As I’m sure other people might have mentioned elsewhere, there aren’t a lot of new mechanics to be seen here, but they are all well-oiled and work together to make a very nice game. My favorite style of game, in fact. Lots of agonizing choices where there are several good things you want to do but not enough resources to pull them all off. It seems like a fairly quick game but does tend to pull in at around two hours, and not the one hour I keep thinking it takes… To top it off, the game has a nice snowball (or engine building or “garden-tending") style to it so everyone’s strategies tend to pay off in greater and greater amounts as the game goes on… I’ve played it 3 or 4 times in the past week and will be playing it some more in the future, I’m sure.

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Matt J. Carlson: Board Game, Madame? Red or White?

As gamers begin to build their collection of games, soon there are more games available to play than gamers to play them with. The solution? Create more gamers. A key part of creating a new gamer is to find the right game for the person and the situation. Thus, the boardgame sommelier is born. (Sommelier = dude who picks wines for other people). Perhaps it should be Gammelier (using a long “a” sound)? (Although if I were sticking with the French I guess it would Jouelier… but where’s the fun in that?)

To some, matching a game to a person can become a game in itself. Analyze a persons habits, preferences, and hobbies and then try to find a game that they will enjoy. It is easiest to start with broad categories like party or dexterity games and then narrow it down to a few likely candidates. A very good “gammelier” will also take into consideration the overall quality of the game as well as how well it fits the target player. If a game has an excellent reputation, it might be a better choice than a mediocre title that makes a more solid match based on theme and mechanics.

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Matt J. Carlson: A Simile of Games or “Die Polyps”

As gamers determined to proselytize the unwashed masses of non-gaming folk, we need to take it upon ourselves to provide a welcoming atmosphere. In any hobby, a vernacular arises around important people, actions, and other subjects. Walk into a bowling alley on league bowling night and try to hang out with the crowd present. You will quickly see the need to know the difference between a spare, a split, and a turkey. We have some of our own in the boardgaming world: grognard, eurogame, and meeples. While it is great to have some terms that describe useful ideas and concepts within our hobby, we have to try to remember to remain as friendly as possible to newcomers if the hobby is going to continue to grow (at least I would like to see that).

In general, I find boardgamers to be some of the friendliest people I know. We’re generally not cliquish (well, aside from invitation-only conventions, but even there the folks are friendly to new faces) and are typically glad to see newcomers arrive at our gaming evenings. However, there are a few habits that sometimes arise in the online boardgame community that can be frustrating to new boardgamers. One of the common ones, and the subject of this brief post, is the boardgame simile.

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Matt J. Carlson: Cities, Curses, and Churches

Last weekend I had the chance to participate at a friend’s “Game-a-thon”, a day of open gaming at his house where folks drop in when they can. I was able to stay for a few hours and had my choice of playing in a game of Shogun (the new version of Wallenstein) or playing several shorter games. I chose to play some shorter games, as I thought I would have more fun, and it would give me an opportunity to play with some folks I don’t get to play with as often.

First up was Saint Petersburg (Rio Grande Games). I enjoy this game immensely, although have been a tad burned out on it as I get to play it against the computer frequently using the freeware computer program (check out the WestPark Gamers web site to download it). The computer AI is not too bad, and I win four-player games only about 1/3 of the time. I got lucky in the first Noble round, picking up the 18-cost noble that provided a steady income of 6 rubles and 3 victory points from then on out. Things continued to fall into place for me and I outpaced the rest of the group by about 20 or so points. The game ended very quickly with all the blue buildings coming out before people had very many nobles. I took advantage of the observatory to pick up a couple of extra nobles during the blue building rounds, and made sure to hold a noble upgrade or two in my hand even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to put them down until late in the game. All in all, I think my computer playing experience served me well, although I will also admit that I had some nice opportunities fall in my lap. If you haven’t played the game, I highly recommend it. It contains a strong “build-up” element requiring players to initially focus on income and then transition to victory points later in the game. At the same time it also offers a few distinct ways of obtaining victory points (focusing on buildings or nobles or a mixture of both). All this is combined in a quick-playing (roughly an hour) game that is simple to explain to new players (takes about 10minutes or less to get up and playing.) I highly recommend St. Petersburg to help casual boardgamers make the leap into the build-up or “snowball” style of boardgames.

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Matt J. Carlson: Taking It Like a Viking

I got a chance to play Fire and Axe (by Asmodee) the other day and had a good time. Now, I’m not one to eschew a luck factor in my shorter-length games, but I had heard that this one might have a bit too much luck for some folks’ taste. Some have gone as far as suggesting a few house rules to help mitigate poor rolls. In particular, when trying to raid a village a die is rolled up to three times in succession in order to loot the village or town. Rolling pooly and losing three crewmembers by failing all three rolls can be a frustrating situation, especially if the probability of success was high. One suggestion to correct this is to add a +1 for each successive roll. Since it was my first game, I wasn’t ready to adjust the rules quite so much, but thought perhaps the last roll (of 3) could get a +1 just as a thank-you-for-playing parting gift…

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Matt J. Carlson: Luck and Length

It has been a pretty sparse time for boardgames, the only games I’ve played recently have been a full game of Die Macher and a dozen or so games of Yspahan against the computer. (Using the recently released computer version with an AI opponent, check out WestparkGamers.de. It is designed/programmed by the same folks as the excellent Saint Petersburg PC game, although I feel that the AI is currently a bit weaker than in St. Petersburg… If you go download Yspahan, be sure to also download the English or other appropriate language file as well. It comes in German, English, French, and even Romanian!)

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Matt J. Carlson: A Eurogame Review

Everything on the Internet seems to come in waves. Even before reading Shannon’s recent post about reawakening his interest in role playing games, I had been preparing this post on a game I have that I have become reacquainted with in the past month or two. While it has a lot of American boardgame tendencies, there are a few strong Euro attributes that contribute to making it a gripping title that has eaten into gaming time I might have spent on other boardgames. What game am I referring to? None other than the new edition of that classic Euro-American hybrid game, Dungeons and Dragons (referred to as D&D for the rest of this article.) For those unfamiliar with the game (and there isn’t an entry for it over on BoardGameGeek), it is like a longer, more complex version of Dungeoneer, Return of the Heroes, or Descent. While different than many Eurogames that it predates, there are still a number of mechanics found in popular Euro titles, making it a game that many gamers just might want to check out. If that piques your interest, read on to find a more thorough review.

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Matt J. Carlson: Thoughts on Princes of Florence

I was recently lucky enough to get in my first game of the popular The Princes of Florence. It has a lot going for it and, like all really good games, consumed all my waking thoughts for several hours after it finished.

For those unfamiliar with the game, there are seven turns during the game, with each turn having an auction phase, then an action phase where each player gets to perform two actions. This is very similar to another game I enjoy, Goa. The object of the game is to play profession cards (like “Bell Maker” or “Alchemist”) which then produce a Work which gives a player a combination of money and victory points. When a Work is played (as one of a player’s two actions), that work provides an amount of money and/or points depending on what that player has built up in and around their villa. The theme here is that the players are trying to attract the best talent by building and acquiring buildings, landscape, and “Freedoms” (freedom of opinion, religion, and travel, all of which supposedly inspire various artisans to more impressive works.) So, if I play the Bell Maker, I would earn a better work if I had the Workshop, a local forest, and if I had freedom of religion. Having only some of those items makes the value of the card less. There are also some wildcard items that help improve every work. Jesters provide two work points to any played Work, and the number of played AND unplayed profession cards held by a player also add one work point each. I guess the thinking here is that artisans like to work together, and they’re easily amused by jesters…

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Matt J. Carlson: Gen Con Trade Day

As a teacher, I’m always on the lookout for games that could possibly be used in class. Unfortunately, I’m a high school science teacher, which significantly reduces the possibilities. If I were a social studies teacher, I could look to card-driven historical games which are in a mini renaissance at the moment with games like Here I Stand and Twilight Struggle having significant historical content. (In fact, the historical event cards made my wife a fan of the area control/light wargame Twilight Struggle. One of the upper level teachers in my building has a home-brewed World War II game that is played over several weeks as part of a modern history class. I believe this is the same instructor who does a class-wide simulation of the oil rush along with barons and shady dealing.

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Matt J. Carlson: The Holy Grail of Solitaire Gaming

I’ve been traveling a lot lately and, ever hopeful, I bring along a game or two “just in case” I rustle up a few people to play a game. Unfortunately, I’ve spent most of my time in hotel rooms monkeying around on my computer or reading fiction, with no gaming opponent in sight. I came to the realization that what I really needed was a good solitaire game. However, after analyzing the situation further I understood that what I was truly looking for probably didn’t exist. While there are some solitaire games that will satisfy my gaming itch, the aspects of boardgames that excite me the most just don’t translate over to solitaire play.

The simple explanation lies in the joy of interacting with friends and acquaintances. A solitaire game just can’t provide the fun of hanging out with friends, and it can’t provide the challenge of playing against a creative, responsive human opponent. To further complicate things, I pride myself on being a rather persuasive gamer, which gives me a slight edge in games requiring direct player-player interaction and adding to my enjoyment of them. Ignoring the glaring lack of human interaction, there has to be some sort of optimal solitaire game. Here is a small attempt to qualify what that Holy Grail of solo gaming might include.

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Matt J. Carlson: San Juan? - No Thanks!

I had the pleasure of spending a good portion of the past week, hanging out with old college buddies in sunny Puerto Rico. Not one to miss a gaming opportunity, I brought along a few games to show off:

• San Juan: How could I pass this one up? Puerto Rico is too big to bring on a plane, and would have been a bit much to spring on my non-gaming friends.
• No Thanks: This is my go-to game for non-gamers, its small size makes it nice and portable.
• Bang! I brought Bang! and its expansion, Dodge City as I thought the theme would work well with our group of five.

In the end, No Thanks was the big winner, being played at least seven or more times, stirring up much discussion. We got in one play of San Juan which went over “Okay”, and Bang! never made it to the table.

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Matt J. Carlson: Gaming by the Numbers

As I write this, I’m reminded of the scene in Dead Poet’s Society where the teacher mocks the analysis of poetry using numbers and a graph to represent a poem’s quality. However, as I played a game of Louis XIV last night, I was struck by the idea of trying to analyze a game using a numerical scale for a number of different axes. I was contemplating that Louis XIV is not confrontational, and thus not of interest to several players in our club as they are very much into confrontation.

As I thought about other games I realized I might be able to rank games onto a scale of 1 to 10 (or -5 to +5, whatever) to signify how much direct player confrontation occurs. I use the word confrontation, as cooperative games like Lord of the Rings allow some player interaction, but it isn’t one player trying to take advantage of another. Cooperative games of this nature would surely fall on the far end of the confrontation scale. Zero sum games where anytime one player wins another loses, like wargames, would then be on the high end of the scale (10). I’m sure the topic would be great fodder for gamer discussion on just how confrontational a game might be. I’m sure this is not a new discussion at all, but was got me interested enough to write about it is the idea of looking for additional game properties that might also be laid out on an axis (1 to 10) to further categorize games.

If such a system could be constructed, gamers could figure out what their preferences are, and then try to match them to games that closely fit their style. If a player has no preference for a particular axis (say, they think confrontation is fine, but they don’t need it to have fun) then they could just ignore that axis when trying to match a good game in “game space”. Here is a half-hearted attempt to try to quantify independent attributes about a game. This attempt to analyze games is not to weed out the stinker games from the good, but to compare solid designs to each other to match an individual player’s likes and dislikes. Games with rules universally regarded as unplayable should be considered “broken” and not placed on the chart at all.

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Matt J. Carlson: Spread the Joy

For most of my life, I have been the preeminent “gaming guru” of my social circle. That doesn’t mean I’m the best player, but it does mean I’m the most enthusiastic about games. There are many advantages to being the local guru, as I tend to be the game supplier on any given gaming night I can be sure to bring games that I want to play. This also means I tend to be the game teacher, so have a slight leg up on the competition as I’ve spent more time thinking about a game before it comes to the table for the first time. However, there are some drawbacks. As the designated guru, it falls upon me to find the next interesting game. Now, this isn’t too bad as I enjoy spending some of my time researching new games on the internet and trying to calculate if it is a game that I would enjoy and would be one that could be brought to the table for playing.

Any hardcore game fan will realize both of those conditions are necessary for a good game. It doesn’t matter how much I think I will like a game if I won’t be able to ever arrange a time and a place to play it. The biggest drawback comes in as the supplier of boardgames. While it is nice to have a bit more control over what gets played on any given evening, it also means that if I don’t own a game and can’t afford adding it to my collection, I just won’t ever get to play it. This also means I tend to never get to play some of the older classics, as I typically have my eye on the newest and brightest stars on the horizon and don’t have the cash to go back and pick up some of the older “classics”.

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Matt J. Carlson: Beyond Nickles and Dimes

No, I didn’t drop off the face of the Earth. December was a busy month: a new baby, holidays, and several grandparents to visit. However, I’m back now and hope that some regularity will resume with my biweekly scrivening.

It’s a new year and since many of the big boardgame conventions are in the late summer and fall, gamers tend to take the time to look back at the past year rather than ahead to games coming down the pike. Since the end of the year is often a bit heavier on game releases than the start, there is much less information to discuss than might otherwise be the case. In fact, some people consider the game year cycle to start and end in mid to late summer so that the ‘year’s’ worth of games can start and end with the fall crop.

Not one to buck too many trends I thought I would join in with the discussions, but I just couldn’t do it with a vanilla style. The games that I played the most over the past year are as follows:

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Matt J. Carlson: Two-Player Gaming

It is often hard to gather together a large group of friends to play a boardgame on a weeknight. However, my wife and I do find time to get together to play two player games from time to time. She prefers spatial-reasoning games like RoboRally, while I savor games where there is a large development effect (as in planting and tending a garden or what some call “snowball” games. Unfortunately, our favorite games (RoboRally and Puerto Rico as examples) do not play very well with only two players.

Thus, I am always on the lookout for more games that can fit the two-player bill. Two-player games are often in a class of their own. One problem that immediately jumps out is the problem of a runaway leader. In a multiplayer (three or more) game, the other players outnumber the leader and can gang up. But in a two-player game, there’s only the losing player. Unless the game has some sort of artificial catch-up mechanism, it can be a very hard row to hoe in order to catch back up to the leader. If a two-player game is sufficiently complex to allow me to enjoy developing my own little empire, the game tends to take two or more hours to play. If one player gains a distinct lead, then the losing player could find themselves sitting through a losing battle for upwards of an hour. This is not a tantalizing proposition for a fair-weather fan of boardgames (such as my wife), and even though I just love games I don’t find it all that enjoyable either.

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Matt J. Carlson: TGWP

I recently heard the acronym, TGOO, which stands for “These Games of Ours” and is meant to describe the general category of European/Designer games that are so popular nowadays. Today, I would like to take a break from that and talk about TGWP, which stands for These Games Wii Play. Those of you who are aware of pop culture may have stopped reading already, as I have shown my hand by using the word Wii instead of We. Today is the official launch date for the Nintendo Wii, the newest video game console by Nintendo (to be contrasted with Microsoft’s X-Box 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, but the Wii really shouldn’t be compared directly with those other two consoles.) Before you give up reading right now, my thoughts today are not going to focus so much on videogames in general, but I would like to make the case that fans of Boardgames should sit up and take notice of this new release, as there are some technical developments that should rock the world of videogames and be of interest to the types of people who play boardgames.

Even the most die-hard boardgamer or grognard has to admit that computers have been a good thing for the hobby. While some purists may scorn at playing games online, the many resources for discussion and information are simply too useful to overlook. For many, videogames serve as a stop-gap gaming measure for those unable to get out and about to game as much as they would like. With today’s introduction of the Wii console, videogaming has taken another step closer towards meeting a small part of the average boardgamer’s needs. Before you exclude yourself from this list, take a moment to consider your feelings towards filler games or the party game genre. If you’re willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes playing Loopin Louie or some dexterity game like Crokinole, you should seriously think about some of the opportunities provided by videogames.

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