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From the depths of BGG: An historical account of an elaborate Victorian murder party, where the host started preparations weeks in advance by "planting cryptic personal messages in London newspapers as clues" They did not have to go so hard. boardgamegeek.com/blog/13034/b... Posted Nov 28, 2024

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

A game can look like one thing while it does another thing entirely Patrick Klepek on Balatro, a video game rated 18+ by PEGI that looks like poker but contains no gambling. patrickklepek.substack.com/p/is-balatro... Posted Dec 17, 2024

submitted 80 days ago • 0 comments

"He'll be worth $50,000 in the end" A poignant vignette on parenting, marriage, and The Game of Life by Youngna Park youngna.substack.com/p/eight-vign... Posted Dec 2, 2024

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

"Cards and gambling authority John Scarne claimed to have invented one of the greatest board games of all time. Was he bluffing?" Blake Eskin on the strange history of Teeko, an abstract game—and also a fantasy of intellectual achievement and community. www.blakeeskin.com/articles/a-w...

submitted 96 days ago • 1 comment

A case study on the fonts of Pentiment, a video game about books and writing and how words carry the awkward heft of history. lettermatic.com/custom/penti... By @rileycran.bsky.social, posted Nov. 15 2024

submitted 100 days ago • 0 comments

Lighthearted fun from the depths of BGG: A Marxist critique of the Zoch Verlag edition of Potato Man. "Can anyone recommend a more recent version of Potato Man which shows a deeper engagement with the principles of Marxism?" boardgamegeek.com/thread/34081... By Frederic Heath-Renn, Nov. 19 2024

submitted 106 days ago • 0 comments

People always say "Kill your darlings," but why? Kory Heath tells us why: "Darlings" can be "monkey traps;" fantasies about our work that aren't realistic. Design is the process of escaping these traps. www.koryheath.com/monkey-traps/ Posted June 2, 2014

submitted 107 days ago • 1 comment

Sad to hear that Kory Heath has passed. Here are the rules to Heath's game Zendo, which (truly!) teaches the players how to become scientists. It is a masterpiece. (The rules call for Looney Pyramids, but you can play Zendo with anything you have around.) www.koryheath.com/zendo/

submitted 108 days ago • 1 comment

From the depths of BGG: A sweeping treatise on the value of traditional games as a bulwark against the cultural ravages of modernity. Also a Schnapsen tutorial. By the pseudonymous Marcus Ludicrus, posted November 17 2024. boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/346...

submitted 110 days ago • 1 comment

Tim Clare on how playing games to promote brain health is like having sex to burn calories: it’s missing the point

submitted 131 days ago • 0 comments

Just visited Game Market West, bringing the scrappy, DIY, low print run culture of Japanese Game Markets to the US www.gamemarketwest.com/oct-2024-games

submitted 140 days ago • 0 comments

A poem about the game of go by Jorge Luis Borges. The original Spanish, 1978: borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2014/06/jorg... Translation into English by abstract game designer Luis Bolaños Mures, 2024: boardgamegeek.com/thread/33196...

submitted 147 days ago • 0 comments

A poem about the game of go by Jorge Luis Borges. The original Spanish, 1978: borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2014/06/jorg... Translation into English by abstract game designer Luis Bolaños Mures, 2024: boardgamegeek.com/thread/33196...

submitted 147 days ago • 0 comments

Mats Steen suffered from a degenerative muscle disorder, but lived a rich emotional life in World of Warcraft. A remarkable true story about the power of virtual worlds by Ben Machell www.thetimes.com/article/5ecd... Posted Oct 5, 2024

submitted 152 days ago • 0 comments

From the depths of BGG: A deeply personal meditation on card games and philosophy by enigmatic pseudonym Marcus Ludicrus: boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/343... Posted Sept. 29, 2024

submitted 156 days ago • 0 comments

How to share painful truths about history without turning audiences away? Laura Jedeed shares a deep lesson from LARP-museum Colonial Williamsburg: "Only when people feel secure will they feel ready to grapple with realities that might upset them." www.politico.com/news/magazin... Aug 31, 2024

submitted 178 days ago • 0 comments

In an influential article for The Games Journal, J. Mark Thompson identifies four key features of abstract games: 1. Depth, many levels of skill 2. Clarity, find moves using heuristics 3. Drama, reversals of fate 4. Decisiveness, better player wins jnsilva.ludicum.org/TJ/TJ1920/De... July, 2000

submitted 179 days ago • 1 comment

From the depths of BGG: What makes traditional card games great? Nate Straight says they are: 1. Fractal, games within games 2. Free-flowing, get you “in the zone” 3. Friendly, loose enough for chitchat 4. Frustrating, dramatic reversals of fortune boardgamegeek.com/thread/33639... Sept 8, 2024

submitted 180 days ago • 0 comments

"May," "must"—game rulebooks often use these simple words in surprisingly precise ways. Confused? Fret no more: Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 2119 defines these words with such force as to be a brand upon the brain. datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc... By Scott Bradner, March 1997

submitted 183 days ago • 0 comments

On bias in game reviews. “Unbiased reviewing” is a fantasy. What matters is whether our biases are handled in a fair and healthy way.

submitted 199 days ago • 0 comments

A great pleasure of handicap play: You get to see the reigning champ sweat. Richard Garfield on "Playing on Hard Mode." When the playing field is level, everyone brings their best game. boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/164... Posted August 19, 2024

submitted 201 days ago • 1 comment

An analysis of 50 years of GenCon programs! Neal Baker finds that GenCon is all about education: GenCon events teach how to engage more deeply with the hobby and with fellow gamers, like learning to lead fulfilling RPG sessions. analoggamestudies.org/2024/06/50-y... June 23, 2024

submitted 204 days ago • 0 comments

We will be at SDHistCon this November 💫

submitted 205 days ago • 0 comments

How do you design a strategic card game that can sustain hundred or thousands of plays? Tom Lehmann details the development of Race for the Galaxy: youtu.be/JcyyeAww2wc Presented at GDC 2018

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People reject "educational" games. But all games teach. Tom Lehmann (Race for the Galaxy) on a deep moral lesson about luck: Good decisions don't always have good results. sites.google.com/site/ptlehma... Feb. 22, 2005

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From the depths of BGG: Uwe Rosenberg details the history and design philosophy of Bohnanza, perhaps the greatest game about beans boardgamegeek.com/thread/39414... Posted March 30, 2009

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What separates political games from "edutainment?" Perhaps a willingness to fight. @danthurot.bsky.social profiles three recent political games with teeth August 8, 2024

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Is the never-ending gauntlet of corporate IP games really just because consumers are looking for a cheap hit of dopamine? I’m not so sure. Recognizable IP solves 2 huge problems: trust and marketing It’s easy for core gamers to underestimate how risk averse and not-online most people are

submitted 212 days ago • 0 comments

I wrote about why games have so many annoying little numbers: Numbers make people feel safe. feedbackloop.games/posts/safety...

submitted 213 days ago • 0 comments

We bravely ask: Are numbers bad? When games can represent life, death, glory, and suffering with rich narrative mechanisms, why do they so often rely on dry, boring abstractions like hit points? Because numbers make players feel emotionally safe. feedbackloop.games/posts/safety...

submitted 215 days ago • 0 comments

From the depths of BoardGameGeek, an unusually good interview of Uwe Rosenberg by N. Ma on the emotional and mechanical style of Eurogames. Risk? A game for 15-year old boys. Monopoly? A game that solipsistically confirms our distrust of others. boardgamegeek.com/thread/39354... March 27, 2009

submitted 218 days ago • 2 comments

In 1983 the video game market was nearly destroyed by a crisis of trust. So many terrible products were pushed to market that people just stopped buying games. By the editors of TV Tropes. tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwik... (Maybe the board game market is relatively small because people don’t trust it.)

submitted 219 days ago • 0 comments

A thoughtful, wide-ranging video essay on games and toys, game-like toys and toy-like games, and the emotional risks of defining our interests and identities in the negative, in terms of what we don't do. By @amabel.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/amab... July 27, 2024

submitted 220 days ago • 0 comments

Elden Ring limits communication to 372 words, forcing its players to become poets. @redford.bsky.social on constraints that set you free defector.com/elden-ring-m... (I love this awkward graffiti when it's beautiful or goofy, but am annoyed when it's mean-spirited or insulting) July 26, 2024

submitted 222 days ago • 0 comments

Matteo Menapace on game design as a tool for policymaking medium.com/@baddeo/game... (Menapace's award-winning work, Daybreak, is a rich model of nature and policy. But his teaching starts with adding policy-related stories to Snakes & Ladders. Story motivates systems understanding!) Jun 21, 2023

submitted 225 days ago • 0 comments

Scott DeJong (@scottdejong.bsky.social) argues that educational games go bad when they try to replace teachers. Games provide rich experiences, and teachers provide context and guidance that builds deeper understanding theconversation.com/video-gaming... Jan 17, 2023

submitted 226 days ago • 0 comments

Luke Plunkett (@lukeplunkett.com) on the simple, playful joy of moving pieces on a map. bsky.app/profile/afte... (We play games because some action they ask of us is intrinsically pleasurable. Different strokes for different folks—and this guy likes moving other guys around a map.) July 23, 2024

submitted 227 days ago • 0 comments

A short blog post by Paul Gestwicki on recent tabletop games where damage limits abilities rather than reducing hit points. paulgestwicki.blogspot.com/2024/07/repr... (Does removing abstractions bring players closer to a game? I think this isn't as simple as it seems!) July 2, 2024

submitted 228 days ago • 0 comments

@pyrofoux.bsky.social describes a core tradeoff for procedural generation: Encoding human knowledge in a generator means writing a more complex procedure, which means fewer outputs! Oatmeal generators have many more outputs, but less human knowledge www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG7v... Jan 2024

submitted 229 days ago • 1 comment

@marcelineleiman.bsky.social on how to make a great solo mode for a multiplayer board game: You have to capture the vibe of the game and its key decisions without wasting players' time (I think a natural corollary is that some games can't have great solo modes!) boardgamegeek.com/thread/33371...

submitted 230 days ago • 0 comments