Aaron Lawn: Things I Don’t Miss

I’m not a recent convert to boardgames, or gaming in general, so sometimes it amuses me to look back over the years and notice little changes¹.  A week ago, while we were battling through another game of Das Kollier², it struck me just how long it had been since I had to wade through a horrible fan translation of rules.

I don’t miss it one bit. 

I’m certainly not saying there isn’t still a reasonable amount of fan translation³.  There is, but it’s mostly relegated to those who absolutely must play the newest games as fast as possible.  Several years ago I made the decision that as the Domestic publishers started to ramp up their importing and publishing activity, I no longer needed to import as many games.  This meant less hunting for rules, and less reliance on fan translations.

Pull up a rocking chair – why… back in the day…

Not only did we have to deal with all the standard rules mishaps (overlooking items, lack of clarity, etc), we also had to view it through a translation that likely as not, was conducted by Babelfish.  Oh, how awful that was.  Let me reiterate.  I don’t miss it.

So, despite that all, there are still fan translations for the small games, or the unloved games that appear in Europe ⁴ but never get a domestic release.  Some of these are good games, and occasionally a great one slips through the cracks.  But for the most part, since about 2005, we’ve been in the position of having enough domestic companies that almost all Essen games make it over here.  Even for the ones that don’t, more and more companies are doing their own translation into English, in expectation that those crazy Americans will be flying to Essen and buying their game.

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¹ or big ones.  I can be as blind as the next person.

² Otherwise known as – the game we can’t play the same way twice.  Let’s take a moment to look at this game.  Point one – The English translation we have printed out isn’t the same as the one on the ‘geek.  Point two – one of the few comments on the geek is “the rules listed here are mistranslated – here the right translation”.  Point three - another one of the few comments is “the translation of the translation isn’t quite right – I think it’s this”.  What does this add up to?  Confusion.  Plus we only play the game once a year, so we can never remember what we decided at the end of the last game.  We do like the game though.  Either that or we’re into inflicting punishment on ourselves.

³ Agricola, Melissa, Cards, Hooray!

⁴ and occasionally japan.  Which is actually where I see the most interesting games being released but not getting a domestic release.  Z-man has done a reasonable job at getting some Japanese releases, but for the most part the Asian take on board games doesn’t make it into the States.  Which is too bad, especially since I have a great fondness for quirky games.

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