The trick with wishlists is that you have to write more ion it than you are expecting to get. This way there is still some surprise involved.

Gateway Games: No thnaks, 6 nimmt! Gifttrap, Blokus, Trans-America, 10 days-Series.

I like http://www.thethingsiwant.com for my wishlist. I keep separate lists for different things (games, movies, books, etc.) and generally have enough options on there that I’ll never get it all, meaning there’s still surprise in the gift receiving process for me. My family doesn’t always use it as the “you must get things from this list only” type of list, either.

This site does have the ability for people to indicate that they plan to get the item. It doesn’t hide that information from me, so I don’t actually go to the site itself from late Sept through Christmas, but they have a bookmarklet for adding gifts, so the only time I need to actually go to the site is to remove items I’ve received or purchased.

I use the BGG wishlist functionality to manage my wishlist. If anyone wanted to give me a game, I’d send them there. I find that I prefer to have all my collection details in one place - and that includes the things I am thinking about as well as the things I already own. I still muck it up sometimes, but it’s reasonably smooth.

And I officially love your parents :-)—they rock.

Your parents probably don’t want the game because it’s a game, they probably want it because it’s something you worked on. My parents are the same way: they know they’ll never use the software I’ve worked on (and in fact don’t even own the necessary computer equipment to run it), but because it’s something I did they want it. It’s very cool in a “my parents love me” sort of way, but I don’t think it really counts as a “game gift” even though it’s a game that is a gift, because the point of the exchange is the object, not what the object actually does.

As far as wishlists go: I was surprised a couple of years ago to have several people just sort of randomly come across my wishlist on BGG and get me games off of it. I hadn’t been all that diligent about keeping it up either, which resulted in one duplicate since the list was so small. To suddenly have people who knew about it and were using it meant that I had to start actually updating it!

A fancy new girl?  Now there’s a gift you both can enjoy.

Game gifts I’ve given to those on the fringes of the gaming community (who have either shown interest in gaming or who I think have the interest) include No Thanks!, 6 Nimmt! (or the many other names for it), Ticket to Ride, Wits and Wagers, Diamant and Qwirkle. They’ve all been hits.

I think that Blokus, Acquire (if a decent edition were still available), Say Anything, Felix and perhaps even Carcassonne would also be workable gifts. I think that Carcassonne’s farmer rules might push the edge for a first-time gift, though…

For myself, I have had an issue with the BGG wishlists. Since they are the source of the Secret Santa presents, I have had to segment out my wants - keep some titles off to give my family ideas of what I’m interested in. This year, I got caught by the early sending out of names and a late Secret Santa package, which made me really dig deep to try to find things that I was interested in that were not on the wishlist. Like Melissa, I tend to use it as a central point for all of my gaming wants and the few games I have no desire to ever see. Perhaps we need to suggest to Aldie an extra checkbox for showing to Secret Santas?

I stumbled across (via my brother) Amazon’s handy wishlist utility that lets you tag onto your official amazon list anything from anywhere else on the internet… I used it to add a bunch of possible games from various sites around the internet.

It was handy as some of my family already knows how to use the list, and it has the ability for people to check off things if they intend to buy them (to reduce duplicates.)

My family has always done wish lists to santa (from when I was little) and we continue that up to today to help my folks purchase things, etc… usually with a nice selection of things so what I actually get is a surprise.  It’s often necessary as we get & give a lot of books/DVDs/(and for me - games) and that’s hard to keep up with without someone listing the few new ones they are hoping for… With the in-laws, we used to not have list but have started to do that there as well. 

I have found that I’m not a good surprise person, so much of the time I’m happier with something that is less of a surprise and more likely something I’ve really wanted…