Alfred Wallace: Games, Games, and More Games

In the past few weeks, I’ve been involved in a great deal of gaming—in many different ways, and with many different kinds of games.

First, the playing of These Games of Ours.  Back on September 22, I made my way out to Josh’s for some games.  Our original third, Nick, had something come up, but Jean was kind enough to pitch in.  The “star” game of the day was Phoenicia.  I’d played Outpost and Scepter of Zavandor before, so it was good to complete the set.  It was not the smoothest game, rules-wise.  It’s always impressive how experienced gamers, who between them have a gabrillion games and experience playing similar games, can still manage to mess up five pages of rules sometimes.  We abandoned the first game when we realized that we had the production and VP icons confused.  (!!) The second game was without troubles like that, but we were still looking through the rulebook like a foreign tourist with a phrasebook—that is, often, and never completely sure we were doing the right thing.

I managed to win.  Jean managed to have a lot of points with relatively little production; Josh had a lot of production but had trouble converting it into points.  (Partly, as it turned out, due to a missed rule.) So far, I like the game.  First, because I won.  Second, because it’s shorter than Outpost and Scepter.  Still, I’m not sure I’m going to buy it; it’s one of those games I’d play someone else’s copy, but wouldn’t have around myself.  That’s an odd category for games…

After games, I stuck around a while chez Cranky and watched the Penn State debacle against Michigan.  While so doing, we got to talking about portable game systems, and quick as lightning I’d agreed to buy Josh’s PSP and games therefor.  I’d been looking at the PSP and Nintendo DS for a while, but never managed to pull the trigger. 

I’m curious what my PSP game tastes will run towards, and how they correspond to my boardgame tastes.  So far, my favorite games are a puzzle game (Lumines), a highly open-ended RPG-ish game (Pirates!), a combination of the two (PuzzleQuest)…and one game where I punch people into jelly with my virtual fists (Fight Night).  The jury, in other words, is still out.  The great thing about PuzzleQuest is that you fight your epic battles against fell creatures by, essentially, playing a boardgame against them, and that’s good stuff.

One thing that’s captured my attention lately is trying to turn my games into academic and professional assets.  To this end, I’m working on a paper proposal for the Pop Culture Association, which in their upcoming meeting will have a number of panels devoted to how the American Civil War, and reconstruction, have been remembered in popular culture.  Me?  I’m going to try games.  Games, as we know them, have received relatively little attention from the academy.  I hope to chip away at that a little bit.  The trick is finding a subject that can be handled in about fifteen minutes.  Slides, of course, are a must.

Well, I’m off again—among other things, I have some miniatures to paint up.  There’s a thousand-point Warmaster Ancients army of Arthurian Britons that are demanding primer.

Also, to complete the gaming: I’ve got an Amun-Re game set up on SBW.  The name: “Will PSU Beat the Hawkeyes?” and the password, as ever, is bgn.  See you there!

© 2007 Alfred Wallace

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I’m Nintendo-biased but think the GameBoy DS has more and better boardgame styles of games on it.  With the stylus interface, its just crying out for a good version of Carcassone or some such thing. Advance Wars - wargamers would find this series fairly good (video wargamers find it excellent) Puzzle Quest - as you mentioned, pretty good abstract boardgame/RPG/videogame Worms 2 - a singleton/squad-based wargame that some wargamers might enjoy And then the host of Role-Playing type games, some of which are turn-based and along the lines of an optimization problem rather than a foofy storyline. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Oct 5, 2007 at 08:45 AM | #

Yeah, I have to second the recommendation for the Nintendo DS.  It is a great little machine.  When I first heard about it I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world (2 screens - what a gimmick) but the games are really good and the touchscreen makes for some innovative gameplay. Posted by Kevin Gonzalez on Oct 5, 2007 at 11:49 AM | #

Amazingly, when I tried to teach Phoenicia at the Buckeye Gamefest about the only thing I adequately conveyed to people was which icon represented production, and which was VPs.  I had at least one high-pressure opponent who rattled me incessantly with his demands for precise, cogent rules descriptions.  What nerve!  Where’s the fun in early onset senility if people like him are going to force me to try to recall such minute details as, “does a smelter give you the second level of mining even if you never had a prospector?” Of course the inevitable “why did I waste my money on a prospector?” query followed closely.  Honestly, I never promised to provide any understanding for the game’s finer points!  I just wanted to see if I could bully a newer group into letting me win.  Of course they didn’t, and the quietest, least pressuring opponent sailed unerringly to the most decisive victory I’ve seen in any 5-player game of anything. And don’t listen to all those DS fanboys.  When you get bored with the PSP I’ll sell you a DS, too.  I’ve been needing the lighter model for some time, due to my Mr. Burns-like infirmity. Posted by Josh Adelson on Oct 5, 2007 at 07:01 PM | #

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