Online gaming keeps a tally of your win/lose record and eventually it becomes more about ranking than actually playing the game for enjoyment.  So although it’s very accessible and you can let computer do all the tedious work like keep score, it just isn’t fun after a while.  Taking out the face to face aspect of boardgaming is also quite ironic, since it is a big part of what the hobby is suppose to be about.

That’s an interesting take on it, Jason. Personally, I ignore my win/loss record.

I find that online gaming gives me some great social contact, especially at times when I would not otherwise be gaming (or interacting with people) - just with a wider social network, spread around the globe rather than within driving distance of my home.

Jason I would agree with Melissa.  I play a bit on BSW and I have absolutely no idea where to even find my total games played let alone my win/loss ratio.

For people who care about that sort of thing, as you said you can let the computer do all the tedious work.  There are plenty of players and clubs that keep all these stats just like the ones that are available on-line.

The only time I have kept a record is when our group was running a Tichu tournament, otherwise games are just played.

I find Melissa’s comment Few are games that I actively choose to play in person interesting since all of them bar Attribut (due to the lead balloon experience) and Piranha Pedro (don’t know anyone who owns it) I do play face to face.  Admittedly a few of the others get played at lunch time sessions at work, which may fall into Melissa’s “filler” category.

Oh, one more comment - Caylus “would choose to play”?  ROFLMAO ;-)

Melissa… BTW, if you need resources for the town, Tichu is an awful way to go about it… Way too much time for the points involved.  You’d be better off in a game of speed Emerald (5 minutes or so) to gain points for the town.  As you know, this would be maximized using players all from your town as well as using a room in the town.

Dale

I kind of stay away from gaming online because:

A) I’d rather read and write for BGN

B) I’m afraid of getting addicted and losing my wife and job

C) Getting together face-to-face is one of the main reasons I got into gaming in the first place.

Still, this world-wide community that we have, even here on this site, is certainly appealing, and I may break down and try it if I have to go for a long period of time without a gaming group (hmmm...definite signs of an addiction)

"The town needs resources”?! I never realized that Tichu filled a societal niche. I’d say that I’m clearly missing something on BSW, but I’m missing a lot since I haven’t been able to run it on my Mac for the past few months. Plenty of other online gaming sites though…

Eric

Eric, it’s about the metagame on BSW

You can check out Boomer’s site—which uses information that I originally developed…

http://www.brettspielwelt.info/meta1.html

Most people don’t need to know anything about the meta-game at all, but for the town officers, it’s a constant thing to think about

dale

I looked into the BSW metagame (very briefly) but it was more than I could figure out by poking around for half an hour or so… so I gave it up.

As it stands, I’m not so much into multiplayer online vs people I don’t know.  The comfortableness and politeness you tend to get in face-to-face games just isn’t there.  When I play online it is almost always a planned gathering of friends.  When we accidentally get an outside player it is often a bad result, as they are trying to hurry everyone up, whereas the game is frequently new to some of us.

I agree that playing with strangers is not everyone’s preference (or even mine, really). The benefits to playing online, for me, are about playing with people I could not otherwise play with and playing games at times I could not otherwise play them. The only real frustration is the limited choice of games available.

I must confess to never having played an online game and the issue just commented on about playing against strangers is part of the reason why. I would be interested to know whether the concept of “online gaming” includes both human vs human games (as most of the preceding comments seem to suggest) and human vs CPU games. I quite like the idea of playing games against a computer, at my own pace, having played a little bit of chess using a Chessmaster PC program some years ago. Are there online versions of Eurogames out there that allow one player to play against a program, make moves at his/her own pace and save partially completed games to return to later?

Tim, Ticket to Ride is the only online Eurogame that has AI that I can think of. The game is on the Days of Wonder website, and you need to have an account with credit time in order to play. (Credit time is earned by purchasing a DoW game, as they include codes in their rulebooks.)

Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico and Ingenious are all available as PC games with AI opponents.

Eric

Tim, off the top of my head I can think of a few games that have been automated with an AI opponent - Ingenious, Yspahan, St Petersburg and even a prototype Agricola. There’s also the famous Puerto Rico spreadsheet. I personally only count “games” that involve interaction with others - but that’s my personal measure and not something I would impose on others ;)