Media Watch

Links to coverage of board and card games, especially designer games, in the mainstream news media.

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Media Watch: King Philip’s War News Again After 300+ Years

Protests continue against John Poniske’s King Philip’s War, currently on preorder from Multi-Man Publishing. An excerpt from an article in the March 20, 2010 Cape Cod Times:

“It’s pretty disturbing to think that they would actually make a game of a very horrific history that started with the King Philip’s War,” said Jim Peters, executive director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs and a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe who has also recently waged a battle against the Indian symbolism in the state seal. “It’s just an ongoing insult to the indigenous people of this country.” ...

“I don’t think (Poniske) took into consideration that the descendents of the people that he wishes to exterminate in his game are still here,” [Julianne] Jennings [a Nottoway Indian and adjunct professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Eastern Connecticut State University and Rhode Island College] said.

“It’s an awful idea for them to do,” said Ellie Page, historian for the Pocasset Wampanoag tribe of Fall River. “To make a game out of it is to diminish the sacrifice that these people had to go through at that time.”

Unlike the article in The Providence Journal that I linked to on March 16, this piece seems more balanced in how Poniske’s game is presented, but it still gives the impression that people have no idea what they’re really protesting. Do they think King Philip’s War will be like Yahtzee, with players rolling dice and yelling, “Yay, I massacred half a tribe!” when they get three-of-a-kind? Have they looked at the Multi-Man website to see what these games are like?

What’s the real issue here: the depiction of Native Americans as killers? As victims? Their mere presence in a game because “game” = “trivialization” or “mockery”? Amazon.com lists dozens of books about King Philip’s War, and I’ve seen no protests directed at those authors because they wrote about the historical situation covered in Poniske’s design.

Games have taken stuttering steps towards being acknowledged in the mainstream as something beyond child’s play – which is similar to what happened with comic books in the mid-1980s thanks to Maus and The Dark Knight Returns, decades after underground comics for adults had already appeared from Crumb, Shelton, Stack, Wilson, Williams, et al. Of course comics are still regarded as children’s material by most people, so games obviously have a long way to go, too.

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Media Watch: Doggone Grief Board Game Helps All Ages

From the “Really? They have a game for that?” category comes this article that ran in the Akron, Ohio Suburbanite:

Whether you are a child, teen or adult, the loss of a special person hurts a great deal. The pain affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, behaviorally and spiritually. Aultman Grief Services has created Doggone Grief – a board game to help people of all ages verbally communicate their mixture of grief emotions....

“Most kids’ first loss is their pet, so it seemed natural to develop a dog-themed game to assist in the communication process,” said [director Brenda Brown], “and dogs show emotion really well too.” ...

Matt Gagnon, the counselor at Oakwood Middle School in Plain Local Schools, said, ”Doggone Grief is a great concept because there are not many fun activities relating to grief on the market.”

For more details on the game, head to the Doggone Grief page on the Aultman Grief Services website.

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Media Watch: Tim Holland, Backgammon Master, Dies at 79

From the March 16, 2010 New York Times:

Tim Holland, who was widely considered the world’s greatest backgammon player during that ancient board game’s modern heyday, in the 1960s and ‘70s, died on March 10 at his home in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 79…

Mr. Holland won the World Backgammon Association championship in 1967, 1968 and 1971. (No championship tournaments were held in 1969 or 1970.) Besides retaining the title, he pocketed more than $30,000 in prize money for each of those championships. By the early 1970s he was averaging $60,000 a year in tournament money, and that did not include significant earnings from bets he had placed on himself or his percentage from the winnings of the highest bidders at tournaments where the best players were “auctioned off.”

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Media Watch: Game based on King Philip’s War angers Native Americans

From The Providence Journal:

A new board game that pits 17th-century Colonists against New England’s Indian tribes is sparking a 21st-century skirmish between the publisher and Native American leaders.

The game, called King Philip’s War, allows players to defeat Colonial or Indian forces in “a momentous example of New England frontier savagery,” says Multi-Man Publishing, a military game company in Millersville, Md.

That quote comes from the opening paragraph of Multiman’s webpage for King Philip’s War, which is designed by John Poniske, and the full paragraph makes clear that the “savagery” took place on both sides of the battle:

King Philip’s War 1675-1676 was a momentous example of New England frontier savagery. A loose coalition of angry tribes inspired by King Philip (the Wampanoag sachem, Metacomet) burned and sacked settlements throughout the colonies of Massachusettes, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the then separate colony of Plymouth. Ultimately, more than 2600 Colonials were captured or killed. Twelve Colonial settlements were completely destroyed and six more heavily damaged. Boston itself very nearly came under attack. At the same time, countless Indian villages were burned and 6000 Indians were slain or captured, and sold into slavery. In all, 1,200 homes were burned, and vast stores of food destroyed. Metacomet himself was eventually ambushed, beheaded, and quartered.

For more details about King Philip’s War – which is currently in preorder status – visit the Multiman page linked to above.

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Media Watch: Game Designer Welcomes Anomia

In February 2010, Ron Fletcher posted a Q&A in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine with game designer Andrew Innes, who self-published the word/party game Anomia in 2009 (3-6 players, ages 10+, 30 minutes, $20):

Has the recession affected your venture?
There seems to be a growing audience for affordable parlor games. And I remain surprised that it took only seven weeks to network and raise the $20,000 needed to self-publish the game. I pre-sold 500, manufactured 2,500, and have sold over 900, mostly through the website. I’m in a few independent, local stores. The next goal is to find a distributor and get into more retail stores.

As Innes explains on the Anomia Press website, “In the spring of 2009 I started Anomia Press and set out to raise enough money to pay for the first printing of Anomia. I used Facebook, Twitter, email, and this website to appeal to the hundreds of people who had attended play-test sessions [since 2004]. I asked everyone to pre-purchase copies of Anomia to help subsidize the first printing.” In-your-face marketing at its finest.

Oh, and as for how to play the game, here’s a description from the publisher:

Draw a card from the center pile and flip it over. Does the symbol on your card match one on another player’s card? If so, you must quickly face-off with the other player by giving an example of the person, place, or thing on their card before they can do the same for yours. [Categories include restaurants, radio stations and shampoo brands.] If you blurt a correct answer out first, you win their card and drawing continues. Sounds simple, right? Wrong!

Wild cards allow unlike symbols to match, increasing the number of things you must pay attention to. Cascading face-offs can occur when you hand over a lost card revealing a new top card on your play pile.

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Media Watch: Rare World War II Game Bought by Essex Museum

From the BBC comes this story about the purchase of the 1941 game Adler Luftverteidigungs Spiel in an auction for £600:

“I’ve been looking for this particular game for over 40 years,” said the [House on the Hill Toy Museum] owner Alan Goldsmith....

“When [the Allies] bombed Dresden and burnt the factory down all the games went with it, other than the ones that were sold before them, so they’re extremely rare.”

He added: “You have 88m guns and one person is defending the Fatherland, the other person is the English bomber pilot.

Sounds like a good description of Friedemann de Pedro’s Duel in the Dark. Interesting to see game settings repeat like this over the decades…

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Media Watch: How to Sex an Abalone

From a Ryan Bradley article in The Atlantic:

1. Pick up the abalone. This may require prying the abalone from its hold, and using a stainless steel putty knife is recommended.

But let’s back up for a minute, because maybe you’re wondering, What is an abalone? Or, Isn’t it a board game? And maybe, Why should I care about the sex of a board game you crazyperson? To answer: It is both a sea snail and a board game. But you can’t sauté the board game in butter or sell it for $50 a pound in Japan. People don’t form international smuggling rings or get themselves eaten by great white sharks over the board game.

Au contraire, Mr. Bradley – everyone knows that the easiest way to slide those marbles down your windpipe is to coat them liberally with a beurre blanc. As for becoming a shark meal out of desire for a board game, well, maybe someone else can speak to that…

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When You Come Knocking – Game Design in Unusual Places

In early March 2010, the San Jose Mercury News published an article about a special game designed for the more than 300 block leaders within the California town of Cupertino:

Groups of block leaders were invited to play a board game called When You Come Knocking, designed by the city to test knowledge of city resources, emergency situations, block leader training and different scenarios when introducing themselves to strangers....

“When playing the game, block leaders can discuss the situation and ask each other if they had encountered the circumstances and share what has worked and what they could do in that situation,” said Julia Kinst, a block leader. “We wanted to create a game that was fun, but could also help facilitate discussion and learning.”

The game was inspired by a pilot version called Blockopoly by Kinst and her husband Llew. The couple designed the game last summer as part of a joint project with the city and a De Anza College communications class to organize a meeting of 40 block leaders in the southern parts of the city.

Stories like this fascinate me – not because I think the game will be fun to play, but because of the way that game design creeps into unusual and unexpected places. My wife has worked as a freelance magazine writer full-time since 1997, yet you’ll almost never see her name on the newsstands because she mostly writes for specialty and trade publications, publications that don’t carry the cachet of mainstream mags but that do pay salaries that will keep us clothed, housed and fed.

Aspiring game designers might burn with the desire to create a game that will excite friends and family. Aspiring professional game designers, on the other hand, might look for situations in which they’ll be paid for their creative work, even if their game never makes it onto the larger marketplace.

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Media Watch: Werewolf: How a parlour game became a tech phenomenon

From the Wired.co.uk website:

Werewolf is a game of deception and manipulation. It has infected almost every significant tech event around the world, from the informal Foo Camp conferences run by O’Reilly to the music, film and interactive-media crossover of South By Southwest (SXSW). During lunch at San Francisco’s giant Game Developers Conference, or in the bars after closing at ETech, games of Werewolf break out spontaneously. Its core premise is simple – a room is split between villagers and werewolves, and the former aren’t aware who are their enemies, determined to eat them. Can the werewolves eat their prey before the villagers identify and lynch the werewolves?

In practice – perhaps unsurprisingly, given the kind of people playing – the games played at tech events are rarely that simple. Groups splinter off according to arcane variations – someone wants to play with the Slut and the Invalid, someone else with the Vigilante and the Veterinarian, someone else with all four. Rules agreed, the splinter groups reform, spectators gather, and the games begin. And it may be hours before they stop. Although in principle a round of Werewolf can take as little as 30 minutes, epic rounds last for hours - and one round is rarely enough. The next morning, appropriately, you can spot the werewolves by the red rings round their eyes.

Margaret Robertson’s article, scheduled to appear in Wired UK‘s March 2010 issue, includes tons of details about Mafia, its inventor Dimitry Davidoff, and the game’s transition to Werewolf.

(HT: Alf Seegert)

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Media Watch: Girl, 11, becomes youngest professional Go player

From The Mainichi Daily News:

An 11-year-old girl has become the youngest professional Go player in history.

Rina Fujisawa, a fifth-year elementary school student in Tokyo, passed the fiscal 2010 qualifying exam for professional Go players held at Tokyo’s Nihon Ki-in (Japan Go Association) on Saturday.

The short article notes that her father is an eighth-dan and her grandfather was a title holder. I’ve played only a few games of Go – and had my head handed to me each time – so I’m amazed to see someone this young turning pro, despite reading 18 volumes of Hikaru no Go over the past several months. (Hikaru did have help from the spirit of a Heian-era Go master and, um, is fictional, so the two situations aren’t really that comparable. Hikaru no Go is a fantastic series, by the way, whether you have an interest in Go or not. I’m continually amazed and pleased by the diversity of manga compared to the comics around when I grew up. Kids today have a great selection available to them!)

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Media Watch: Pink Ouija Denounced as “Dabbling in the Occult”

Hasbro released its girl-friendly pink Ouija in May 2009, but awareness of the game has now exploded across the blogosphere, such as this article on FoxNews.com that quotes Stephen Phelan, communications director for Human Life International, as saying, “There’s a spiritual reality to it and Hasbro is treating it as if it’s just a game… It’s not Monopoly. It really is a dangerous spiritual game and for [Hasbro] to treat it as just another game is quite dishonest.” From later in the article:

Asked how the game differed from magic kits or Harry Potter-themed merchandise, Phelan replied, “The difference is that the Ouija board is actually is a portal to talk to spirits and it’s hard to get people to understand that until they actually do it. I don’t pretend to know how it works, but it actually does.”

Phelan also noted that the pink version of the game is explicitly marketed to young girls who may want to partake in “something dangerous” during a late-night sleepover.

OneNewsNow.com, which features “news from a Christian perspective,” published an article on the pink Ouija on February 3, 2010, which featured this choice comment from a reader: “Ouija boards are evil and a powerful tool that Satin uses to put people in bondage once they become involved with it.”

Oh, that Satin, always up to something…

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Media Watch: Turning Computer Applications into Games

“Imagine Microsoft Office turned into a video game. One where learning a productivity app is a delight. One where the core loop of gameplay involves using and gaining skills in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

It sounds a bit unlikely doesn’t it?”

That’s how game designer Danc – yes, that’s the only name given – introduces Ribbon Hero, an application he helped design that can now be downloaded from Microsoft to turn Office into a game. Here’s how Ribbon Hero came about:

Ribbon Hero, in part, was born from a speech I gave back in October 2007 on applying the design lessons of Super Mario Bros. to application design. I made the following bet:

• If an activity can be learned…
• If the player’s performance can be measured…
• If the player can be rewarded or punished in a timely fashion…
• Then any activity that meets these criteria can be turned into a game.

Not only can you make a game out of the activity, but you can turn tasks traditionally seen as a rote or frustrating into compelling experiences that users find delightful.

Of course many game designers and publishers take this same approach for educational subjects like mathematics and spelling, and the games produced tend not to be enjoyable. What’s the secret of designing a successful and fun game that is also educational?

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Media Watch: Inside Fun

The Concord Monitor features a handful of modern games in its Friday entertainment section. From the article:

Outside, winter continued its dreary thudding across the landscape. Inside, a handful of Monitor staffers enjoyed card and board games.

No question: Inside was the place to be.

W. Eric Martin, editor of BoardgameNews.com, dropped by this week to offer a sampling of quick pick-me-ups…

Yes, I played the role of game fairy, toting a sack of games to the Monitor’s office and giving people a more enjoyable lunch break than usual. I did this in February 2009 as well, at the request of my friend Clay Wirestone, and based on that experience this time I brought games that (1) have rules that are easy to explain, (2) have short playing times or are played in rounds and (3) emphasize fun over strategy.

Transamerica was the clear winner of the afternoon, with Swat! being second favorite. Best line from the write-up: ”Beer & Pretzels would come alive with a crowd of people and actual intoxicants.”

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Media Watch: Much ado about Monopoly

Barbara Simpson of the Simcoe Reformer calls out her fellow Canadians for being duped by Hasbro’s “vote for the cities” competition, while giving Hasbro its due for landing thousands of dollars of free publicity:

Dear Mr. Pennybags: We applaud your ingenuity.

In the classic game of property, you’ve maneuvered your monocle-wearing self to the lucrative Go square. You’ve cashed in on Canadians’ strong side of pride in their home communities by creating an online square-naming contest to brand a new version of your dusty old board game.

Touché, Mr. Pennybags, touché.

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Media Watch: School Counselor Creates Board Game

“Two years ago, Myrtlewood Elementary School guidance counselor Poppy Moon was in a kindergarten class when a student passed gas.” Thus begins the epic tale of Poppy Moon’s effort to bring about a board game so revolutionary that it will undo thousands of years of human development and render farts humorless among the elementary school crowd. Then she’ll lend Sisyphus a hand and finally get that boulder to stay put.

If you’ve ever wanted to ask a fellow player, “why is it important to take a bath or shower every day?” then run – don’t walk – to pick up a copy of Snoots Toots and start collecting those snoodles!

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Media Watch: eBay Boots Game Auction for Nazi Association

From the (UK) Telegraph:

Mr [Dave] Davidson said: “I couldn’t believe it when they sent me an email telling me my Dad’s Army board game could insight violence and hatred. It’s so annoying because any human being with an ounce of common sense can see Dad’s Army is the most harmless TV programme in the world....

He said Ebay was “run by a system, by robots, with no brain who probably just vet the content without looking into anything properly”, adding: “It’s moronic.”

The eBay robots later reversed their decision according to the Daily Record.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

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Media Watch: User Interface Overload

Loyd Case at MaximumPC.com uses cards from Dominion and Race for the Galaxy to make points about the user interfaces in Outlook and Excel in Office 2010:

Wow, those cards look complicated. We’ve got these Roman numerals running down the left side. There are circles and symbols at the top, some of which are color coded. And there are even weirder symbols attached to some of the Roman numerals. The density of information is pretty high, and you need a legend (which each player has) to understand all the symbols…

The planet Race for the Galaxy cards, in other words, represent a heavily overloaded user interface.

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Media Watch: Garry Kasparov on Chess and the Computers That Play the Game

In a dismissive review of the book Chess Metaphors by Diego Rasskin-Gutman in The New York Review of Books, Garry Kasparov talks about his experience playing chess against computers and specialized programs, why those computer challenges have disappeared from the mainstream media (while becoming ubiquitous at home), and why poker-playing computers might teach us something new. On his 1997 tournament loss against the computer Deep Blue:

It was an impressive achievement, of course, and a human achievement by the members of the IBM team, but Deep Blue was only intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better.

Later in the piece:

With the supremacy of the chess machines now apparent and the contest of “Man vs. Machine” a thing of the past, perhaps it is time to return to the goals that made computer chess so attractive to many of the finest minds of the twentieth century. Playing better chess was a problem they wanted to solve, yes, and it has been solved. But there were other goals as well: to develop a program that played chess by thinking like a human, perhaps even by learning the game as a human does. Surely this would be a far more fruitful avenue of investigation than creating, as we are doing, ever-faster algorithms to run on ever-faster hardware.

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Media Watch: Making Family Board Games Electronic

ScienceDaily.com reports a new method of merging technology with ye olde board games. From the article:

At first glance, the technology, by School of Computing graduate Mike Rooke and Professor [Roel] Vertegaal, [associate professor at the Human Media Lab at Queen’s University,] looks like a set of white, cardboard hexagons taken straight from the game board of Settlers of Catan. However, with the help of an overhead camera and a projector, each piece of cardboard becomes a mini-computer capable of displaying video images.

The camera tracking and projection allow researchers at the HML to anticipate technologies 5-10 years down the road, when thin-film Organic LED screens will allow these kinds of board games to become practical. “We just started thinking about, ‘What if these new screens exist? What could we do with them?” says Professor Vertegaal.

A video demonstration of the technology is on display at the Human Media Lab’s website:

As noted on that page “the game simulates a future in which OLED or FOLED displays cover board game tiles without bezels. This allows not just for interactive computer game graphics on compound cardboard screens, but also for the use of tangible interaction techniques to affect the state of gameplay.” You can download a copy of Rooke’s and Vertegaal’s paper “Physics on Display: Tangible Graphics on Hexagonal Bezel-less Screens” on the same page. Vertegaal will present this paper at the Fourth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction at MIT on January 25, 2010.

(A slightly different demonstration of the technology by the Human Media Lab, ”Organic Catan,” can be seen on YouTube. HT: Jennifer Schlickbernd)

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Media Watch: Catan, More Catan, Apples to Apples & DIY Surgery

A round-up of game appearances in the mainstream media:

• CNET reporter Ina Fried became part of the story while covering a Settlers of Catan tournament in Seattle: “I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say my combination of luck and shamelessness handed me the victory on this night. To those whose cards I stole along the way, I’m sorry and it really was nice of all of you to include me. Sorry for being such an inhospitable guest.”

• Mary Stegmier in the Waterloo, Iowa Courier profiles Cup of Joe and The Core, two local stores that carry board games. Says Jon Dennis, Core employee, “With board games, people get to sit down across the table from another person and interact with somebody without technology. You can laugh a lot more with and at people when you are sitting right across from them.” What are games good for? Helping you laugh at people.

• Becca Owsley in the Hardin County (Kentucky) News-Enterprise reveals herself to be far more OL than Y&H during a game of Apples to Apples: “During this particular game we realized how little the teens seemed to know about historical people, events and pop culture… A card with the name Jesse Ventura was thrown onto the table. First the judge read the name wrong and said, ‘Who in the world is this?’” Hope you shook your fist at the kid, Becca.

• Okay, this isn’t a boardgame, but I thought you might appreciate a peek at iSurgeon, an iPhone app from plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer that lets you take pictures of people, then mess with their images while accompanied by the sound of sandblasters and screaming. The app also features a game in which you can try to match the depicted nose, hip or breast augmentation. Amaze your friends, embarrass your enemies!

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Media Watch: Property Investor Invents Board Game

From radio station WHYY in Philadelphia, PA:

Joel Harden got the idea for Mogul while trying to explain to his son what exactly he does at work. But with a 30-page rulebook explaining refinancing, amortization and foreclosure, the game seems beyond the grasp of most 12-year-olds, and many homeowners of 2 years ago.

Indeed – a real estate student is quoted as follows in the radio segment: “He said you need to know percentage math – but after my brief review of rules I disagree. You need to know a little bit more.” The complete rules are online should you care to check them out for yourself. Here’s a sampling from page 13 of this $100 game to whet your appetite:

THE POTENTIAL TENANTS SQUARE

When you land on this square, pick up three Potential Tenant Cards. If you have a property for rent matching the zoning type, you may move the tenant into your property and collect market rents each time you pass the Collect Rent Square. You may also sell or “broker” any unneeded tenants to other players who have a property type that matches this tenant for a “Realty Fee”. You cannot save a tenant card beyond your turn. If you cannot move them into your property, you must either broker the tenant to other players or return them to the bottom of the pile. The fees charged for finding a tenant to another player are entirely subject to negotiation, as it is in real estate commission law in most states. Players may broker tenants as a group or individually to multiple players. If a bid includes real estate, closing costs of 5% of the appraised value must be paid to the bank by either the buyer or seller, determined by agreement. Bear in mind that once you move in a tenant, you cannot replace them with a “better” tenant (i.e. you cannot “swap” a gross lease tenant for a triple net tenant).

*Explanation of Types of Leases*

-Triple Net Lease is a lease where the tenant pays for all of the expenses for the property except for your mortgage. Remember: a mortgage is not an operating expense. If you have a Triple Net Lease, clear out all the operating expenses from your operting statement for that property. In addition, remove this property from the count when determining how many Maintenance Cards to draw from the pile, as maintenance is an operating expense that a Triple Net Tenant would pay.

Only nineteen more pages of rules after this!

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Media Watch: Randomness: Blight or Bane?

From Greg Costikyan’s presentation at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas:

Our sense of fiero or accomplishment at winning a game depends on the feeling that we have, in some sense, mastered it, and either that we out-played our opponents, or at least, in a soloplay game, overcame the challenges it posed by dint of hard work and skill. If, instead, we feel that we just got lucky – or, worse, that someone else won even though we were obviously the smarter player, because they just got lucky – we’re likely to think less of the game.

But clearly many, many games have some random elements, and some are highly luck-dependent, and yet people continue to play them. What really is the role of randomness in games, and how can designers work to harness it to beneficial effect?

Follow to link to read his presentation. The summarized version: It depends.

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Media Watch: Boardgaming in Asia

Okay, these links might not be the newest, but I don’t think I ran them previously, so here goes:

• The Star in Malaysia ran an article of the “gee whiz, some of these games don’t use dice” variety, with pics of folks playing Blokus (no surprise there) and Rette Sich Werr Kann (big surprise there).

• China.org.cn starts its game article with Shadow Hunters, then moves on to Three Kingdoms – “inspired” by daVinci’s Bang! – Race for the Galaxy, and (insert double-take here) Uno.

Another article touting the growth of gaming in Vietnam has taken ill and died since I bookmarked it. Perhaps I pressed too hard on the “save” button.

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Media Watch: Games People Play

And by “people” the newspaper means me, as I was invited to the offices of my local newspaper, the Concord Monitor, to introduce a few games to staff members so that they could write about them in the Friday Entertainment section. Most of the games went over well, although For Sale was dumped all over by the other two players. My fault for choosing an auction game as an opener without knowing more about their tastes and gaming background. The most well-received title was 10 Days in Asia, which captivated all four players. You can see an online version of the article, complete with candid shot of me, at the Concord Monitor website.

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Media Watch: Board Game Sales Up 6% in 2008 Thanks to “Staycations”

An article on Bloomberg.com reports that researcher NPD Group Inc. found a 6% increase in board game sales in the U.S. in 2008, despite an overall 3% decline in toy sales. What’s behind the increase? The crummy U.S. and world economy, which reportedly has families turning to “staycations,” that is, vacations which are spent staying at home and obsessively counting the few pennies in their bank account over and over again. Oh, and playing games, which are cheaper than a movie, lift tickets, a concert, and most other forms of entertainment. (Rolling down a grassy hill excepted, naturally.)

The media have been hammering this “board games are hot in a recession” meme repeatedly since the start of 2009. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune ran an article titled “The game’s afoot with board game resurgence,” which opened with this less-than-enticing paragraph:

If you remember the thrill of laying a Z on a triple letter score, rolling a second Yahtzee, or even making it to the Lost Candy Castle without being waylaid by Lord Licorice, then there’s a room full of like-minded competitors waiting to welcome you into their “sounds like hurled.”

Curse that Lord Licorice! He’s like the second coming of Osama bin Laden, only tastier. Race the Wind gets a name check, and Euro games receive the expected one-sentence intro.

Read more...

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