Slight correction, I think you meant “Activity” for the first use of “Time’s Up.”

Great point on innovation, which further underscores how far from the mainstream we really are.

Yes and no.  I found it when searching for Time’s Up! (with the exclamation mark.  BGG has Time’s Up, Activity, Word Trio and Word in Time as possible names although admittedly it uses Activity as the main one and it may even be the more well known one.  However since 6 Nimmt! is listed as Category 5 that argument does not always hold water ;-)

Ah, ok. With the link leading to what BGG is calling “Activity,” I thought that’s what you meant.

I don’t get it. First you say:
> Over the years a lot of creative thinking and innovation has gone into boardgames.  Off the top of my head here’s a few:

Then after listing them you say:
> Here’s a few games that we thought might work in encouraging, or at least demonstrating, creative thinking and would work with non-gamers:

But you list games that as far as I can tell
a) are already aimed squarely at non-gamers, and
b) don’t actually have any of the creative characteristics you started your article off by listing.

The gaming community has long hasd the notion of gateway games--games which introduce some of the more creative aspects of modern board game design at an easily digestible rate for non-gamers. But none of these games seem like that kind of game, so I think I’m just completely missing the point. As usual, it’s probably just me.

Curt, I’m seeing two points in the article, and Fraser appears to be deftly moving from one to the other, without much warning.

Fraser, are you trying to discuss creative and innovative thinking in game design, or creative and innovative thinking in game play?  “Here are examples of A.  Let’s now see if we can find B in these representative samples...”

I think you’ve fallen into a common dual trap of confusing the game mechanism with the game experience, and under-rating classic games. Some of the games you mention as a worthless baseline (Scrabble particularly) are still better than the vast majority of “our” games published in any given year.

It’s easy to demonstrate how far games have come by comparing the game experience of Monopoly with the game experience of Settlers of Catan. When I say I’m a boardgamer, by far the most common follow-up I get is “you mean like Monopoly?”. As it turns out, Monopoly is a great frame of reference for pitching Settlers. They’re both dice-driven, they’re both about controlling real estate, and they’re both fundamentally deal-making games, but Settlers plays in 45 minutes, nobody is ever eliminated, the economy is productive instead of destructive, you’re constantly making deals, and the probabilities of the game and worth of the properties are far more transparent. Talking about just one or two of these things (I find the constructive economy and the lack of player elimination are good) can be enough.

Similarly, it’s hardly a huge leap to go from the quite respectable Clue to Sleuth or Mystery at the Abby.

Anyway. What people care about is the game experience, not innovative or creative game mechanisms. Which is convenient, because the big difference modern eurogames have made is in the quality of the experience of playing, not in the mechanics used. You drill down on Settlers and you see it’s not that distant a relative from Monopoly. But the play experience is vastly different.

On the VP track, my recollection is that Moritz Eggert taught us that it German it is referred to as a “Kramerleister” (spelling?), after Wolfgang Kramer.

You have have a better memory that I do Jeffrey, I had to ask Moritz because I remembered he had explained the term for the scoring track but thanks to asking him late in the piece and opposite sides of the planet and all that his response came back after the article was published.  The term is Kramerleiste, pronounciation is roughly “Kraah-meh(r)-ly-steh”

Yes I did switch trains of thought.  The article is based around something we are trying to do at work, which is promote innovation and promote creative thinking.  I want to use boardgames, because it something I know reasonably well, but unfortunately none of the people I actually work with attend Gamers@Dockers sessions and are all non-gamers.  My first attempted point was that there has been much innovation in boardgames, but a lot of it would be difficult to explain to non-gamers.  The second point was trying to come up with games or exercises for non-gamers that promotes or shows creative thinking during the process of playing the game

You forgot to mention the “Kosmischer Aschenbecher” (cosmic ashtray) from Andromeda as an innovative game mechanism (with an equally creative nickname).  Hey, it beats drawing cubes out of a bag!

I couldn’t agree more, with respect to card-driven games.  Maybe it’s just because I grew up with games tyrannically dictated by roll-and-move or spin-and-move (e.g. Monopoly, Life, Smurf Ahoy), but I find card-driven play so liberating, a great mix of chance elements and strategic play.

Some of my favorite games right now are Shadows, Queen’s Gambit, Bang!, Ticket to Ride, Race for the Galaxy, Roma, Lost Cities, Catan Card Game, San Juan… I just think a hand of cards is a great way to run a game.