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Musings on… 2005 Games Played (#30)
Edited By David Fair
March 2, 2006
Every year, Mark Jackson compiles list after list of gamers annual games played more than 5 of 10 times (affectionately known as Five and Dime lists). This year, you can see the lists and the analysis, as well as read more about the process, by seeing the Five & Dime: 2005 Recap.
David Fair:
No surprise that Ticket to Ride is still doing well, though I am surprised that it is still number one. That makes TTR and Puerto Rico the only games to ever repeat at number one. Impressive, especially given that TTR: Europe is also in the top ten. I am stunned the Saint Petersburg is on the list. I can not get anyone to play this anymore. Must be the BSW players logging it .
Ingenious/Einfach Genial shows up at number 4. This is a move up from last year, and the highest an abstract game has ever placed. Not surprised, really, as this game has never failed to please with any one I have introduced it to. Liar’s Dice fell a long way this year. About time. I don’t get what makes this game that popular. Oh, I like it well enough, and am usually able to do quite well at it, but I don’t see how it hits so many dime lists.
Mark Jackson:
[Regarding Ingenious] See, I just don’t get this… Ingenious did absolutely nothing for me. The thought of playing 10+ times a year makes my skin crawl.
Nick Danger:
Ah, and for me this game highlights one of the things I like about certain games. Games where the strategies and tactics don’t jump out kick you in the groin. Games where subtle moves rule the day and can be the difference between victory or defeat.
Ingenious is often touted as having too much luck and lack of control. Toss in there games like: Street Soccer, Carolus Magnus, Tally Ho, and Sunken City as a handful of others I seen hit with this label. Maybe it’s the wannabe detective in me but I love taking games I hear this kind of thing leveled on and finding ways to control the outcome.
Playing these kind of games won’t elicit responses like “He beat me going with the elephant strategy!� You can beat people at these games and they won’t necessarily know why they lost. So they blame it on luck and chaos.
Now I should say that I’m not meaning to put words into Marks mouth and say that is why he doesn’t care for the game [Ingenious]. Nay, in fact knowing his fluffy tendencies I’m betting that reason doesn’t come into play at all, but by mentioning the game as one he doesn’t like it gave me a crack to crawl through and highlight something I see quite often, people knee-jerking that a game doesn’t have depth because it didn’t jump up and give ‘em a Moe Howard poke in the eye.
Notice, I say this as a reformed knee jerker myself. But now I enjoy putting a game under the spy glass and looking for the things others have missed. The big payoff is having someone say that a game is mostly luck as you beat them time after time after time.
Mark Jackson:
[Regarding Liar’s Dice] What makes it popular is that it’s easy to teach, it’s well known, it scratches the poker/bluffing itch, and it works incredibly as a closer, since you just pick up & go home when you’re knocked out.
Shannon Appelcline:
I think it’s worth mentioning the games that face an “import bias�. There are three of them: Diamant, Geschenkt, and Schotten-Totten, none of which had enjoyed American distribution by the end of the year.
Does their high placing bespeak how much better they’d do if they were actually in print in the US, or just the insularity of the online boardgame community?
Erik Arneson:
Because of the “import bias� that Shannon mentioned, I actually think that Diamant’s rank of #5 overall is the most impressive performance, by a large margin.
Jason Little:
What I found most interesting is how against the grain my tastes apparently are. Of the Top 25 Games, there are 10 games I rate pretty darn low, and would be quite content to never actually play again: Ticket to Ride, TtR: Europe, Shadows over Camelot, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, St. Petersburg, Ra, Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, TransAmerica .
Of these 10, I’d personally consider all but Power Grid to be Gateway Games. Perhaps I’ve got a personal bias against what I consider a certain lack of strategic options that I think these games have in common (again, barring Power Grid—I just didn’t like the math in that one) .
All of these games developed a serious “rutâ€? for me in terms of gameplay. The first playing might be novel, clever and engaging. But the second playing was slightly less so, followed by a more pedestrian third playing—by the time the fourth play came around, it no longer offered anything “newâ€? but always felt “been there, done that.â€? On the other hand, of the remaining 15 games I do like from the list, I’d also consider For Sale, Ingenious, Lost Cities, Coloretto and Bohnanza as Gateway Games.
If I’m not mistaken, other than Shadows or Memoir ‘44, don’t all the games in the list that would play in 45+ minutes have an online version (on BSW or elsewhere). I’m sure that heavily influences the ratings.
I’ve got a feeling that if Age of Steam were categorized under one heading instead of several for each map, and had a snazzy online interface, it would crack the Top 20, if not the Top 10.
Greg Schloesser:
Wait ... am I understanding you correctly that you are asserting games such as Puerto Rico, Power Grid, St. Petersburg and Settlers have limited “strategic options�? Holy cow ... each time I play these I feel there are SO many paths to pursue. Limited “strategic options� is something these games most certainly DO NOT possess. Indeed, some of them may possess too many options!
On the other hand, some of the games you mention you enjoy—For Sale, Coloretto, Lost Cities—have VERY limited strategic options. Oh, they are certainly fun (well, I’m not a fan of Coloretto), but I would in no way consider them to be heavy on the “strategic optionsâ€? scale.
Jason Little:
I made a point to exclude Power Grid (it does have lots of options—I dislike it for other reasons). But I do think PR, St. Pete’s and Settlers lack long term replayability due to a fairly limited scope of strategic options—be the first to wharf/harbor and ship your opponents into the ground in PR, get lucky and grab the Mistress in St. Pete in the first turn or two, etc.
While there may be several options to pursue, after a while, every game played tends to feel the same. Either I was positioned to follow Strategy X to the win, or someone beat me to the punch. You’re still in the same car, taking the same route from Point A to Point B. The only thing that changes is whether you’re the driver or one of the passengers.
Many of the other games I do like from the list are definitely in the filler/light/short time frame series of games. I’m not as concerned about multiple strategies, deep thought commitment and the like when investing 10-20 minutes in a game. But when I’m asked to commit 45-120+ minutes in a game, I hate getting the feeling that it’s one big flash of déjà vu.
Greg Schloesser:
I’ve played Puerto Rico probably a dozen times. That’s a lot, but admittedly no where near the number of times folks like Alex Rockwell have played it. Still, a dozen plays is substantial enough for me to truly believe that there is no one path to victory. In all of the games I’ve played—and many of those are with some pretty astute gamers—I think I’ve only seen the “wharfâ€? strategy work once. It wasn’t tried in all of those games, but it was in some ... and it failed most of the time.
I honestly believe there are many viable strategic options and paths to victory, and the game does not grow stale or stagnant for most people. I think there is a valid reason it is so popular with “gamers�.
I think the same can be said for both Settlers (which I’ve played dozens of times) and even St. Petersburg. Admittedly, I’ve only played the latter about 6 or so times, but it still feels fresh for me and filled with viable options.
Jason Little:
As great as this information is, it only tells part of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it’s possible to get the sort of additional information I’d love to see:
1) Discrete playings
2) Time spent playing
Discrete Playings would be interesting to see, since numbers are skewed by multiple people logging sessions, and not always equally. If two people play Lost Cities and both log it in games played, it registers as 2 games played, but it’s only 1 discrete game with 2 players. If 6 people play Bang! and only 3 people log that game, the results are a bit more skewed. 1 discrete game was played, 3 games were logged, but 6 people participated.
Time Spent Playing would ideally take the discrete playings multiplied by the average game length to find out how much time is spent on these games. Shorter games are easier to shoehorn into odd times and subsequently easier to get plays in… However, are 4 playings of Lost Cities, with a total time investment of 1 hour “equalâ€? to a single 6 hour session of Twilight Imperium?
Lost Cities gets logged as being played 4 times, while Twilight Imperium only gets logged as being played once… even though more time was actually invested in Twilight Imperium—an interesting distinction, as I think the actual time invested is a pretty good measure of a game’s value.
I guess I’m most impressed by the games on this list that require fewer players and take longer to play—since they’ll be skewed the least by multiple logs of a single discrete game and show the greatest total time investment in a particular design.
Shannon Appelcline:
I’m not convinced that multiple loggings are statistically significant. My guess would be that the number of games double-logged (or more) is very small. There’s just not enough penetration of the idea of gaming logging into the psyche of even serious gameplayers.
Of the 20-30 people that I fairly regularly play with, only 1 or 2 of them log regularly, and I can only imagine 1 of them actually submitting his list to the Nickel and Dime. If we had any nickels or dimes in common (and I’d bet we don’t) that’d still be a very slight bias.
Morgan Dontanville:
Man, am I out of the loop here. I’ve played all of these games, and I would only suggest playing:
For Sale
Diamant
Puerto Rico
Geschenkt
6 Nimmt!
Settlers
Power Grid
Liar’s Dice
Schotten-Totten
I could be coerced into playing some of these other games, but 9 of them are such awful experiences for me that I’d rather not be playing anything rather than playing these:
Ticket To Ride
San Juan
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Carcassonne
St. Petersburg
Ra
Coloretto
Alhambra
Bohnanza
Of the games on this list there are only 9 that can’t be played online:
For Sale
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Shadows over Camelot
Geschenkt
Memoir 44
Coloretto
Bohnanza
Schotten-Totten
Louis XIV
This makes Geschenkt the only import only game that isn’t accessible through BSW (Schotten-Totten has a domestic release as BattleLine). St. Petersburg has gotten a spike on BSW after they set up a solo play program.
It is pretty amazing that with the exception of Louis XIV there aren’t many games on this list from 2005 that aren’t re-releases/rethemed and those that are fillers or party games.
(Ed. Note: Ticket To Ride: Europe is available online)
Larry Levy:
Wow, that’s a remarkably strong statement, Morgan. I certainly don’t try to get all those games on the table and there’s really only two I’d describe as favorites (San Juan and Bohnanza), but I wouldn’t refuse to play any of them. Well, okay, Alhambra with six players I’d actively avoid, but that’s it.
In fact, in Mark’s entire list, there isn’t a game that I’d absolutely refuse to play. TransAmerica is probably the closest to that, but I was roped into a game a couple of years ago, so I guess it doesn’t qualify (and it is a pretty harmless timewaster). The only one I haven’t played is Memoir ‘44, since it really isn’t my kind of game, but if someone really wanted to play and asked me to help him out, I’d certainly give the game a try.
Not surprisingly, these are all decent games and, more to the point, they aren’t particularly polarizing. That’s how you get on a lot of 5&10 lists, by appealing to a lot of people (or, at least, not having a lot of people refuse to play), which is why I found your reaction surprising, Morgan.
Morgan Dontanville:
Yeah, I just didn’t like these games.
Admittedly, I’ve only played T2R twice and T2R:E once, but I’m done with that experience entirely.
Coloretto I’ve only played once, and while I think it is a clever design, it just feels like we are voting in a US election—chose the pile of crap that will do us the least harm. This just doesn’t lead to satisfying results.
The rest I’ve played enough to know that I just don’t get any joy from them, and exploring them further is futile for me.
These games are of the few that I’ve played where I remember that board games are actually contending with other forms of entertainment for my time. In most cases games will supersede, but when playing these suddenly I think about that book I want to finish, or the Netflix movie that is sitting on my TV, or the sleep I need to catch up on. Mostly, I’d rather do just about any other pleasing activity than play these games again. I’ve certainly passed up on game nights and in some cases left early because of these non-polarizing games.
Because of their predominance, every once in a while I give in and immediately regret it.
But, that’s the beauty of taste, if there were a game that made everyone happy then there would be little need to release any others. There are people that don’t like PR or Caylus. There are people that hate Age of Steam. Hell, this is why there are so many Munchkin expansions. We are all come to the table needing different things for our enjoyment.
Richard Young:
I guess this list puts me in the “Man from Mars� category and feeling a lot like Jay when I don’t even recognize half of the titles on this list. Maybe this represents main-stream gaming nowadays but I’m seriously outside it in that case. Nor am I a grognard, so I must fall into some kind of strategy gamer limbo.
Of the few games on that list I have played, only Puerto Rico and Louis XIV are on my “willing to play again� list. Power Grid and possibly Ra, which I haven’t yet played, are on my “want to play� list. Others I have played such as Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan and San Juan are on my “must avoid� list, having totally exhausted what fleeting interest I may have had in them. Most of the others I’ve scarcely heard of and what little I have heard doesn’t enthuse me overly.
I have to believe that a lot of people are also still playing Monopoly, Clue and Risk judging by the units sold through the big chain stores. So I don’t know what to make of this list to be honest. I’m not sure what it actually represents even in terms of general popularity in gaming tastes. They most certainly aren’t the games people around me are playing. It appears very Euro-centric but perhaps that is by design.
Beyond the mass market games we know still continue to sell very well, where are all the other Avalanche, Columbia, GMT, Hasbro/Avalon Hill, Days of Wonder, Eagle and Fantasy Flight games? I know they are getting played and some of them are even pretty decent. Where are games such as Age of Steam, Struggle of Empires and War of the Ring or Revolution? Those are some of the games I see getting a lot of play.
With all of the caveats and warts we have discussed with the BGG List, I think it still tells me a lot more than the Five and Dime one did.
Larry Levy:
Rick, Mark has conducted what we professionals call a “non- scientific survey�. He is a eurogamer and, not surprisingly, most of his gaming friends are eurogamers as well. Most of the user groups and forums where he asked for contributions are dominated by eurogamers. So for this group, this most certainly is main-stream gaming. I don’t think the list is intended to reflect anything more universal than what these people are playing.
[Regarding Monopoly, Clue, Risk, etc.] Well, a lot of those games that get bought never get played (since they’re given as unwanted gifts), but even taking that into account, sure, these games are highly played, but not by this group. It’s probably been five years since I’ve played any of these games.
[Regarding Avalanche, Columbia, GMT, Hasbro/Avalon Hill, Days of Wonder, Eagle and Fantasy Flight games]
Well, Mark’s list is just crawling with Days of Wonder games. Outside of HeroScape, I’m not sure what Hasbro games you’d expect to find here--it’s not like they’ve produced too many great adult games lately. AH had a pretty good year and I’m sure quite a few folks put House on the Hill, Nexus Ops, and Vegas Showdown on their lists, just not enough to make the final count. Avalanche, Columbia, GMT...these are wargame companies and the group being questioned are not primarily wargamers. And I’m not even sure if these companies are producing too many big sellers among the wargame crowd--these are pretty small companies, aren’t they? (Well, Columbia may not be that small.) Until recently, most of the Eagle games seem to have had more time devoted to their production values than to playtesting. However, it looks like they now have two hits on their hands with Conquest of the Empire and, particularly, Railroad Tycoon. Nice things happen when you bring on an experienced Eurogamer designer like Martin Wallace to help out! RT will certainly appear on some lists next year. FFG is also doing well, but most of their better games are on the pretty long side.
[Regarding Age of Steam, Struggle of Empires, War of the Ring or Revolution]
Well, you must know some gamers with a lot of time on their hands! Look, I think AoS is fantastic, SoE is very good, and the other two are supposed to be excellent as well. But Revolution is a five hour game, WotR takes at least three hours, and AoS and SoE certainly approach the three-hour mark. Games of this length are harder to get to the table, even if an effort is made to do so. So the number of people who get 5 or 10 plays out of SoE or (my god!) Revolution are naturally smaller. It isn’t a reflection of their quality, just of the nature of the games. 5&10 lists are usually made up of new games, shorter games, and a few old favorites. I mean, Puerto Rico is still my favorite game, but I didn’t get in five playings last year and may never do so again--there are just too many good new games to try. On the other hand, For Sale will probably always be on my 5&10 list, because it’s a convenient filler to play while you’re waiting for the other group to finish their game. There’s lots of factors other than quality that go into what games a group or an individual plays.
Richard Young:
Letter to self: do your homework! Alright, I chased down a few links (which I really should have done before lashing out in all directions), and found out more about the Five & Dime outfit and how their lists are compiled. At least enough to now understand where they are coming from. I’ve struggled back down from Mars and decided that we’re only continents apart in game taste rather than worlds. Thanks also to Larry for his clarification which supports what I had found.
I appreciate what the Euros have done for the hobby; but, after a brief fling, it turns out that I don’t get many of them really. It’s interesting Larry that you bring up Martin Wallace’s name as a Euro designer brought in to brighten up Eagle Game’s fortunes. In my view Martin is one of the primary creators and proponents of what I’ve seen referred to as “hybrid� or “crossover� games - those that are either Euros with war-gamey bits or war-games that have been Euro-ized to some degree.
Setting aside his railroading games which are in a niche of their own, most of the other Warfog titles are arguably hybrids, and are among my favorites (three Warfrog titles reside on my current top ten). War of the Ring I also consider to be a hybrid but it a subjective call - many would likely argue it is a pure war-game. Wallenstein and Age of Napoleon also fit the hybrid category, as does Friedrich.
Yes, most of these as well as the ones mentioned in my previous post, are longer games. That reason alone would place them in the hybrid category in addition to containing, in most cases, the type of conflict more usually associated with war-games. Our group prefers meatier game experiences, and we have gravitated to games that nicely fill our evening sessions which generally run from four to six hours. We don’t insist that a game should take that long to play but we aren’t fussed when it does. Gaming tastes vary considerably and we found that some of the fluffier offerings, while giving us the chance to play four of five games per session, just weren’t scratching our “itch.� Of those on the list, the one that came the closest is Puerto Rico. We still play it on occasion.
I’m not arguing that a game that plays in under an hour can’t have some depth. It is just that for us either the depth wasn’t there at all (mostly the case), or the nature of the game play while rich just wasn’t the sort we were looking for. I suspect the age and gaming backgrounds of most of us account for our preferences and admittedly put us in the dinosaur category. Fortunately, there have been quite a few excellent titles in recent years that make us feel we haven’t been totally left behind.
Seth Owen:
One of the clear dividing lines between wargamers and eurogamers is the formers greater tolerance for lengthy games. Almost no wargames (and the ones that are so short are very ‘light’) are playable in less than an hour, whereas quite a few euros are playable in that time. 2- to 3-hour games comprise the bulk of the euro titles (with a bias towards the 2-hour length) while most wargames struggle to stay under 3 hours. Game lengths over 3 hours are very rare among the euros, whereas they are common among wargames (most ‘serious’ wargames take at least 4 hours to play) and many well-regarded wargames can take several multiple sessions. This naturally affects how many ‘plays’ a game gets. While I don’t think there is a better way to assess popularity, it’s appropriate to keep in mind that counting ‘plays’ will be biased against wargames.
Richard Young:
Seth reminds us of some important considerations regarding how to assess game play statistics. I especially appreciate his point on how the game length will affect a measure such as “number of playings.� Another consideration is the number of players. The lighter Euros, in addition to being far shorter, usually also involve multiple players rather than just two players which is usually the case with most war-games. Many players playing a shorter game several times in the same space of time two people would play a given war-game once, is bound to skew the stats. I don’t think any broad conclusions can be drawn from such measures. The nature of the list itself however certainly reflects the prevailing taste of that particular group of individuals, which was also what Seth was telling us.
While retaining a wargamer’s attention span, the folks in our group prefer multi-player games to the traditional two player games. This is what makes us particularly interested in the “hybrid� category (for lack of a better label - maybe “strategy game� would do). The Warfrog games are all multi-player, and many of the better Phalanx titles are too.
Mark Jackson:
I don’t want to sound defensive, but I think you some of you guys are wanting to saddle the cat. Cats are great for whatever cats are great for (can you tell I’m not a pet person?!), but they’re not really built for being broken, haltered & ridden across the wild range in search of stray cattle.
The Five & Dime lists are what they are. It’s a list of games which have received multiple plays as reported by the online community of gamers who are obsessive enough to track the number of times they play a particular game. The invitation was issued through two private mailing groups as well as Spielfrieks & the forum part of BoardGameGeek.
Some of this discussion is beginning to feel like a bad movie review… wherein the reviewer proceeds to outline the movie he would have liked to see on the subject and reviews the film in light of this non-existent figment of his imagination.
Mike Siggins:
And oddly enough, apart from the online bit, this is exactly how they started! (ed. note: Mike Siggins, AKA Sumo, was the publisher of original 5&10 Lists)
David Fair
It has always been self-selecting to self-report on the trivial. In my game groups, there are three of us who log all our games played, but I am the only one who submits them for the five-and dime.
Those who game regularly, but don’t log all games, may have chosen to do so during National Games Week (may have… there was an incentive to post reports at the NGW site). BoardGameNews has a list of the one hundred most popular games reported as having been played (National Games Week 2005 was from 11/20-11/26). See the article National Games Week 2005 - Top 100 Games.
I think the differences in this list, and Mr. Jackson’s compilation list, are likely due to audience as well as more people being willing to log games for a week than for a year, and, in a huge way, this list favors longer games, as people make special plans to play them during NGW (for example, Titan was reported as played more than Diamant despite taking around 150,000 times longer to play).
Larry Levy:
What amazed and pleased me about the NGW list is how well represented Euros and deeper American games were. The high placement of Settlers, Carc, and TtR wasn’t too surprising. But I never would have thought that Puerto Rico would have been listed higher than Monopoly, or that Shadows, Power Grid, T&E, El Grande, Princes, Civ, and Samurai would have made the Top 50. Of course, the principal reason is probably what Dave mentions, the bias toward people willing to log and post games played. There were probably lots of families that took advantage of National Games Week to get Monopoly or Sorry on the table, but had no thought to actually report this fact. Still, the list looks awfully good to these Euro-centric eyes!
Richard Young:
I think this list makes an interesting contrast to the Five & Dime list and certainly highlights the “they are what they are� comment we’ve seen regarding lists of this sort. It reflects more of a North American sensibility than the other, but both have been given enough background for us to understand better what to make of them. I see more games I recognize but still aren’t seeing many of the ones our group are into so there still seems to be a mainstream aspect to it and really highlights what the kids are into these days (cards and “clix�). I imagine a list from CSW or GNs.com would look different again.
Musings On… is a roundhouse forum discussion on games and topics related to gaming. if you are interested in participating in future discussions, please email David Fair at dafair followed by the at sign and gmail.com.
© 2006 Rick Thornquist
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Mar 2, 2006 at 07:31 PM in Special Features, Musings on... / 1126
