W. Eric Martin: Forty Thoughts on Gamers and Gaming

1. You should always carry a game with you when you leave the house. You never know when the opportunity to introduce someone to a new game might arise, and showing always trumps telling.

2. These opportunities happen more frequently if you talk about games every chance you get. I used to be reticent on the topic of games and didn’t bring up the subject around people whom I had just met. Thankfully I’m no longer that person, and I play many more games as a result.

3. Play games in public spaces. At worst, someone will scoff at you because they are unkind; at best, you will share a love of games with someone who wants to play more with you.

4. Ask random strangers if they want to learn a new game. Sometimes, they’ll take you up on the offer.

5. Give games as gifts. You’ll increase your chances of playing something in the future if more households have more games.

6. Most people I meet say they like games. Then they admit that liking doesn’t equate to playing. If they have played games recently, they’ve typically played solitaire games like Minesweeper or Bejeweled.

7. If you play a game in a public space, you’re sure to hear one of three questions from curious onlookers:

• If the gameboard has a map of any kind, “Is that like Risk?”
• If the game includes letters on tiles or cards, “Is that like Scrabble?”
• If the game uses money, “Is that like Monopoly?”

9. Expect to receive many bad games as gifts from friends and family. They know you love games; they just don’t know which games you love.

10. My desire to play games multiple times with different numbers of players before reviewing them has left me with dozens of mediocre games on the shelf that I’ve played once or twice and never revisited. I’ve finally learned that it’s better to write something quick about a game and move on than pretend that I’ll be gifted with a block of time in which to do nothing but play, play, play.

11. I feel like I’m finally getting a handle on how to review games. Of course I felt that way last year as well, but looking back, I realize that I had a lot to learn. Ideally, I’ll be satisfied with what I write today, but dissatisfied with this work in the future once I have more experience. That’s the essence of kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement which I don’t practice as regularly as I should.

12. Brian Bankler did a great job of summarizing his reviewing philosophy: “I owe you nothing.” What’s unstated, yet implied, in his manifesto is an important corollary: “I owe myself everything.” I write reviews and columns to make something clear to myself. Ideally you, the reader, will get something out of it as well, but if not, that’s okay.

13. Reviewers have the right to sell games that they’ve received for review from publishers. That said, I’ve decided to blaze a different path with review copies that have been given their walking papers and raise money and awareness for a cause. If they don’t leave my house after six months, I’ll just convert them into chew toys.

14. Remember that even with the worst game, the designer had good and honorable intentions. I’d like to think so anyway.

15. This belief is strained, however, when you play awful kids’ games that lack any element of decision-making and seem designed solely to part some parent from a Jackson because Junior is squalling over the attractive box.

16. Oh, and don’t forget gimmicky games that promise an educational hook, yet appear to be nothing more than an uncreative port of real world elements into some game-like structure: Elementeo, meet Science Fusion; Science Fusion, Elementeo.

17. On second thought, never mind – game designers are people like everyone else.

18. Give a man a game, and he will play for a day; teach him how to design a game, and you’ll be playing crummy prototypes for a lifetime.

19. Mocking someone for the type of games they play is like mocking someone for the type of books they read. It says a lot more about you than them – and not in a good way.

20. Every game is a puzzle. Some of them are just more obvious about it than others.

21. If I could bring the focus that I have while gaming into the rest of my life, I would be a more productive and successful person.

22. Game publishers in the U.S. should take a look at Alexandra Harney’s book The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage to get a better idea of what’s happening in thousands of factories on the other side of the world. Wal-Mart and other mass marketers conduct audits to show that Chinese factories are meeting health, safety and labor laws, but Harney reveals that most Chinese producers have multiple shadow factories – factories without fire extinguishers, insurance or adequate restrooms where workers put in 80-90 hour work weeks to keep up with orders. From the book:

23. Let me extend the reading suggestion to online retailers as well, as Harney also discusses the negative effects that result when companies try to undercut one another at every turn – not that retailers are at risk of silicosis, but still....

24. I’m surprised by the number of manufacturing specialists in the game community, people who know exactly what it costs to make a game and how much games should sell for and how many copies a publisher should make and why game Y with such-and-such components is a ripoff compared with game Z that has more components for a lower price. If I didn’t know better, I might confuse them with Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

25. If I enjoy a game and want to keep it and play it more, then I got a bargain, whatever the price might have been. If I want to get rid of the game, then I paid too much, no matter how cheap. I’m not a fan of The Secret, but I’m much happier now than I was in my youth when I tried to buy everything on clearance and searched a half-dozen bookstores to find which one had the lowest price on a title that I wanted. Worrying about spending a few “extra” bucks here and there is pointless and small-minded. I now try to focus on positive actions that can have a meaningful impact on my well-being. By taking care of the dollars, the pennies will take care of themselves.

26. Game publishers should never attempt to explain or justify the prices that they charge. People who buy games based on price will never be satisfied with the explanation, and you will have wasted your time.

27. If every game on the market cost 25 percent more, people would buy fewer games and play the games they already own more often; that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

28. No, I haven’t played all the games in my game room, but neither have I read all the books on my bookshelves, eaten all the food in my cupboard, or worn all the clothes in my closet.

29. In a solipsistic world, every game is multi-player solitaire.

30. Gamers are like Esperanto speakers. No matter where you travel, you can almost always find a gamer at your destination who will act as a host and make you feel welcome.

31. Approach each game night with a plan; otherwise you’ll end up staring at the game wall again and not playing anything.

32. Play in order to make the friendship last longer than the game.

33. If someone shows up at the gaming table who makes everyone else uncomfortable, then you either (1) lose the social misfit or (2) lose everyone else.

34. You know that pun you make every single time we play that one game? It’s not funny, and I’d appreciate you not telling it anymore.

35. It might pain you to sit and stew while someone slowly figures out what to do in a game, but I find it even more painful to listen to you give unrequested advice. Encourage speed and learning through trial and error, but let that player make his or her own choices.

36. When contemplating multiple options in a game, I can mull them over thoroughly and try to imagine what the result will be in each circumstance, or I can just do something and see what happens. Through thinking, I may convince myself of what will happen after a certain move, but experience has consistently proven to be the better teacher.

37. Internal monologues should stay that way.

38. I’m glad that my brother is an omnivorous gamer like me. When confronting a stack of games of potentially dubious quality that publishers have sent for review, it’s comforting to know that I can put any game on the table and he’ll play it – twice. If only he didn’t live three thousand miles away…

39. Sometimes it really is all about the games.

40. I turned 40 last week and feel fortunate that my life is largely how I wish it to be and am thankful for the support of readers and advertisers who are helping me put as much time as possible into this site. Here’s to another forty years!

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