Dale Yu: What’s In A Color? / Viva Topo

Like many gamers, I have a distinct color preference (when it comes to gaming).  I like to play yellow pieces when I play games.  I always have, and I suspect I always will.  One thing that I’ve also found out playing with other gamers is that most of us have a color preference.  Surely, some of us are more obsessed with playing a particulr color than others, but I would venture to guess that most of us have some color preference as compared to those who will play “whateverâ€?.

At the Gathering of Friends, some people’s desire is so strong that I have actually seen someone add a second tag to his name tag proudly proclaiming “I PLAY GREEN!â€?.  This is clearly a successful technique because I have always seen Ralph Anderson play green at the Gathering except for one particular game.  That game was a new 2F prototype by Friedemann Friese… And Friedemann happened to also be playing in the game!  Between the green hair, green shirt, green pants, green socks, and green Chuck Taylors as well as the fact that it was Friedemann’s game, Ralph had no chance at the green pieces.  Otherwise, people generally let Ralph have his way. 

When I was organizing the initial Queen City Confluence, I asked the attendees for their favorite color of game piece.  My intent was to make personalized T-shirts, and I figured that I could incorporate their favorite color choice into the design.  (There are a few examples of personalized meeples between the next few sections of this article!) I figured that a few people would have a strong predilection to a particular color and I would be able to even out the numbers for each color with all of the undecided people.  I was surprised to find out that over two-thirds of the gamers had a color they liked to play.  While that was interesting, it was actually distressing to find out that five of us wanted to play yellow – because I would have to fight for my preferred pieces more often than usual!

So why yellow for me?  I’m not completely sure.  If you were to ask me today, my stock answer is: “Well, I’ve been yellow since the day I was born, so I might as well play yellow in this game.â€?  If you don’t know me, suffice it to say that I’m of Asian descent and not always politically correct!  However, I think the real reason is likely because my initial game group (in college) forced me to play yellow.  In that formative group, we had five regulars and there were definitely players for green, red and blue each.  One other player preferred black when it was available.  Thus, Yellow was the one color that no one else really wanted to play, and I always ended up with it by default. 

We soon were down to only four players in that group, and we soon fell into a rut (as far as picking colors go).  There were clearly some advantages to this setup.  Games could more easily be set up and put away.  If we had to stop a game in the middle for whatever reason, it was always easy to come back and pick it right up because we always knew what color to play.  If someone was distracted while playing (perhaps – even studying while trying to fit in a quick game!), it was always easy to quickly look at the board and figure out what you needed to do.

In the past few years, my need to play yellow has waned somewhat.  This has happened for a few reasons.  First, I’ve started to play a lot of games with my kids, and they seem to have a different “favoriteâ€? color each week.  Trust me – there is no way to reason with a three year old that HAS to play yellow!  So, in order to keep the peace in the family, I’ve learned to play other colors.  The other reason is that for whatever reason, I’ve managed to surround myself with gamers that also like to play yellow!  We’ve all had to develop compensatory mechanisms to play games with each other.

The least successful mechanism that we’ve tried is to have none of the yellow players play yellow.  What happens in this situation is that everyone will eventually try to play the yellow pieces instead of their own color.  This behavior is funny for a few minutes – but really frustrating when a game breaks down because someone had been playing the wrong color all day.  And anyways, why create a solution that guarantees that everyone is unhappy with?  Why not let at least one player be happy with the color choice of meeple? 

We also have other solutions that work – such as the “host ruleâ€?.  In our group, three of us play yellow.  (For those of you keeping records: myself, Scott Tullis, Valerie Putman).  We have developed a fairly stable rule that whichever one of us is hosting the gaming gets to play the preferred yellow bits.  This does seem to defuse a lot of the color showdown as it has become a fairly ingrained rule.  If we are at a neutral site, the other thing we fall back on is the owner of the game.  My wife has often suggested that us men be chivalrous and allow Valerie to play yellow when she’s around – but this clearly isn’t a good solution!  It’s arbitrary and is clearly untenable because I’ll never be able to play yellow using that solution!

Otherwise, we’ve had to rely on our backup colors.  I personally choose to play black if it is available followed by blue.  As most German games use the same basic colors, this usually gives me an opportunity to play one of my preferred colors.  The only thing that is funny about my backup color is that my primary yellow nemesis, Scott Tullis, has the exact same backup color scheme as well!  If nothing else, this has forced us to be extremely diligent about making sure the other isn’t moving our pieces around when we play games together.

But why do I need to play yellow?  I don’t really know – maybe it’s a comfort thing.  When surrounded by a new game with a whole new set of rules, it is nice to at least have the same color sitting in front of you as a frame of reference.  While learning that new game, it is one less thing to worry about because I know which color I am always playing.  Perhaps it is a psychological thing – because clearly yellow is the color played by the cool kids! 

I know that other gamers have their own color preferences for their own reasons… I took it upon myself to ask this question on a few mailing lists to which I belong.  I also looked at some other attempts to quantify our preference for particular colors.  Am I crazy for wanting to know this?  Maybe.  But the results will surprise you.  Will I let you know what color was most popular?  Yes!

But not in this column.  I’m still having my crack research staff collate the data. Keep your eyes peeled for the results in the coming month!  In the meantime, you can still add data to my study by letting me know what color you prefer to play…

KID GAME OF THE WEEK

I’ll also take this time to introduce the first edition of what will hopefully be a regular feature:  The Kid Game of the Week.  As some other columnists have been ready to point out, I’m not one to share information/opinions on BoardGameGeek.  And apparently, there is more interest in children’s games than I had anticipated.  Rather than bore some of you on a regular basis with an entire column devoted to children’s games, I’ll give you little bits each week… At this time, I plan to give a short synopsis of one game each week.  That gives me about a year and a half to come up with something new to appease the masses!

VIVA TOPO (Selecta)
Designer: Manfred Ludwig
Age (on box): 4 – 99
Time: 20-30 minutes
Players: 2-4
Can it be played by adults: YES

Viva Topo is the Kinderspiel des Jahres winner for 2003.  It is a clever little game where the players take on the role of a family of mice.  These mice are trying to escape the clutches of the evil cat that chases them.  Their reward for surviving is cheese!  The player who collects the most cheese wins the game. 

Each player has 4 mice that start in the center of the board.  The board is ringed by a circular track.  The cat starts on this track staggered almost an entire lap from where the mice will enter the track.  Players roll a die which has either 2-5 pips on it or a cat symbol (twice).  If you roll a number, you move one of your mice that number of spaces.  If you roll the cat symbol, the cat advances one space on the track (though you do get to move one of your mice one space as well).  If your mice are ever caught by the cat, they are “eatenâ€? and removed from the game.

If your mouse can make it all the way to the end of the board, he will be rewarded with a cheese wheel (consisting of six wedges).  However, it’s not easy for all the mice to make it around the track, so there are some other safe spots in each corner of the board which could provide you with 1, 2, 3, or 4 wedges worth of cheese if your mice can safely reach those locations.

This game is great for small ones. For starters, the mice and the cat are just so darn cute.  The game, like all Selecta games, has a great set of nice wooden bits.  It is a game that you would be proud to show your friend’s parents and make them jealous that their copy of Chutes and Ladders is clearly inferior to the games that your kids play!  (Just kidding!) The box is also quite sturdy and will stand up to plenty of rough treatment from your children.

The game teaches kids a few things.  Kids can use the game to learn how to roll a die, read a die and move the dobbers the right number of spaces.  It is also a good game to try to get kids to look at more than one objective.  Players will have to decide whether it is more useful to move a mouse which is lagging behind in order to move it further from the cat or whether it is better to sacrifice that mouse and move a different one closer to the cheesy goal.  Higher level decisions concerning whether the child wants to take the assured score of a smaller piece of cheese versus risking it all to get a larger piece of cheese also need to be made.  This is an important skill to learn, not only for boardgaming, but in general. 

In a more abstract sense, my 5 year old has also been able to pick up on the idea of basic probability with the game as he tries to learn how to gauge risk when 1/3 of all rolls on average will bring about a cat.  Obviously he doesn’t know how to calculate the expected value of the cat’s movements between his rolls, but at least he is starting to consider that as a possible outcome of the turns. 

So – the important question for most of you – can I play this one with adults?  Yes.  The game is actually quite good even when played with just adults.  It is certainly lighter fare, but as evidenced at Gulf Games, it was played and enjoyed by tables of only adults at least once a day.  There is enough decision-making to be had to get a rewarding game experience.  For comparison, I would put the decision making around the level of TransAmerica.  It’s a cute little game and deserves consideration for your game closet as it is good for both kids and adults and comes in at around 20 minutes which is good for either situation (gaming with kids or light gaming with adults).

That’s it for this week…
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor.

Comments:

< Back Home