This past week, I’ve come across two pages that have got me thinking about “fiddliness.” The first was a post on Boardgamegeek entitled “American style games vs. German style games: fiddly is good.” The second was about Magic: The Gathering’s new set entitled “Time Spiral.” Both got me thinking about how there’s good fiddly and […]
Review: Straight Outta Lynwood
After last Sunday’s premier of a Robot Chicken episode that featured a Weird Al video, the Adult Swim bump said something to the effect of: “If you took a time machine back to 1986 and said, in 20 years, Micheal Jackson = flamed out, Weird Al = still relevant, we’d have laughed our asses off.” […]
OSU/GAMA/Wargamer Study Results
Remember that survey I asked you all to take? They have the first “sortie” of data back. They haven’t gone indepth with the analysis yet (and they admitted it was flawed in a few ways) but what we do have back are some not so surprising results- perhaps surprising in how overwhelming they are. 93% […]
From A&B to Remotes & Nunchuks
This week for me has been all about the Wii. I was interested to know what the price was, but I already knew I was going to buy it. Mainly I wanted to know how long it would be before it was mine.
Twice the work, double the crazy: Playtesting your own RPG
My current project (well, it’s been my current project for about 5 years now) is a supplement for d20 Modern. It introduces new classes, new character options, all that good crunchy stuff. It also has a very specific setting to the game that would need to be conveyed in a sourcebook to a GM. I […]
Hard Truths About Game Design
It sounds like a riddle: “What job pays less than minimum wage, but everyone wants?” Sadly, the answer I’m looking for is Game Designer. You might eventually be able to find a high paying job as a game designer for a video game company, but if you want to design for any other field, you […]
The Digital World of Analog Play
One of the stories posted in nearly all the news sites I read is that Microsoft is going to make three Spiel Des Jahres winning boardgames available as downloadable content from Xbox Live. Turning boardgames into videogames has been going on for a long, long time: my parents used to play Backgammon and Bridge on […]
GTF Principle
Quick, what do: Dungeons & Dragons Magic: The Gathering Diskwars and Mage Knight have in common? They enjoy or enjoyed commercial success by the GTF (Get There First) Principle.
A Solid "1"
A friend of mine has a rating system that he uses mainly for tv and movies (no, not the -90 to 90 scale that many of us here are fond of.) He rates them on a scale of 1 to 5, but not necessarily on quality. To briefly summarize as best I understand it, A […]
When Genres Collide
This is the first in my series of (hopefully) weekly columns talking about various design issues in different mediums. I have a certain aesthetic sense in how all things gaming and literary work, and I hope to share with you all some of my insights. I’ll also talk about various game designs, provided it doesn’t […]
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