Special Features 10 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Kotaku Article: Winning is Killing Gaming

Quinns has again been published on gaming enormo-blog Kotaku, talking about a wonder of the board game world! This month he discusses how, unlike video games, it doesn’t matter how good you are at boardgames. The article starts like this:

I remember a colleague taking a 5 minute break, away from the jittery job of reviewing Battlefield 2. “It’s fun when you win,” he said, exhausted. “And boring when you lose. Haven’t we moved past that yet?”

No, we haven’t. For a medium that’s evolved from play, video games have an overwhelmingly binary view of success and failure, one so crippling that if we settle into a single player game and make no progress, or lose every multiplayer match in one night, our lives will have been worsened. And we never ask why games are like this. After all, how else could it be?

Board games have the answer.

…and continues vigorously until it stops. Quinns would point you towards the article himself, but he’s currently in hiding from furious gamer-gangs, who cry his name on every street corner. Go read! Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain.

Since our last foray into Actual Journalism was so well received (It was? — Mark.), we’ve decided to give it another go. This time, we take a look at Game Salute, a company headquartered deep in the hinterlands of New Hampshire, a state that somewhat resembles in shape a standard reference pear.

Game Salute styles itself as a new kind of publisher, one that does much more than handle marketing and fulfillment (fulfillment meaning “getting the game out to customers”, from receiving, to warehousing, secure storage, picking, packing, shipping, tracking, sales to stores globally and customer service).

Among the flexible services they offer are solutions for other publishers, and, intriguingly, managing Kickstarter campaigns, boasting such success stories as Alien Frontiers, as well as unique titles ranging from Chicken Caesar to Pixel Lincoln.

It was started as a response to the many pain points its CEO Dan Yarrington saw in the board game industry. To find out how the cure compares with the disease, we sent Actual Journalist Mark Wallace off to have a good long chat with Yarrington, and he came back (from a phone call, not from New Hampshire) with this exciting and informative Q&A!

Quinns’ latest Kotaku column is up! Our boy’s talking about the joy of games-as-physical-objects, with nods to Netrunner, Tzolk’in, Memoir ’44, String Railway and SO much more. Look at him go!

“Last weekend we played the epic WW2 swear-a-thon that is Memoir ’44: Overlord, but my friend also brought two backpacks of his girlfriend’s military equipment. We played wearing wobbly helmets and camo trousers of impossible size. Why? Because it was funny, mostly, but also because when you augment a game’s components to such a ridiculous extent, you can’t help but share something, and remember that game for the rest of your lives.”

Has anyone else noticed that there’s a power to this hobby? Quinns has, and he won’t rest until he knows what he’s talking about. Go read, people!

[A feature we’ve always dreamed of providing is actual board game journalism. What might that look like?

Step forward Mark Wallace, board gamer, author and contributor to Wired and the New York Times. We let him off his news-leash to cover the economics of licensed board games. Are they good for the hobby, or crowding out our shelves?

These are his conclusions. If you like this sort of thing, please do drop a comment letting us know.]

Tabletop gaming may be touching new heights of innovation and engagement, but the industry is at pains to appeal to new customers. While bigger “independent” publishers like Fantasy Flight Games can make a strong showing of it, there are dozens more smaller publishers whose owner-managers must hold down day jobs while struggling to produce great games — games that are often ignored by retail outlets. In many stores, it can almost seem that tabletop board games are solely represented by TV and movie spinoffs.

Even if they’re lucky enough to find a well-stocked local game store, the potential audience for boardgames is at pains to tell one startlingly expensive game from another. And having been weaned on Candyland, Sorry, and the Game of Life, they are startled again at the different kind of effort that’s required to learn and play — much less enjoy — many contemporary games.

Quinns: Hi Tom! I understand you’ve had no electricity. That’s a fitting start for SU&SD’s iOS correspondent. Who’s the man you turn to when the lights are out? It’s TOM O’BEDLAM.

Tom: You’d think, but the batteries went out on my iPad five minutes into the powercut. Without electricity, the iPad is a very ugly mousepad.

Quinns: Awful. So, what have you been playing this week? Was it terrible? iOS ports of board games are terrible, right?

Tom: They’re not that terrible! Most are distinctly unterrible! Not all of them are Dominant Species! I’ve been playing the new iPad release of Stone Age, which has been ported by Campfire Creations. It’s gorgeous. One of the nicest looking ports I’ve seen so far.

(SU&SD is proud to introduce Matt Thrower, Pro Wargamer, who offered to cover wargames for us. It all sounded a bit suspect, so we sent Brendan to investigate.)

Brendan: Hi. Matt, right?

Matt: Hi there! Come in, come in. Did you have a pleasant journey?

Brendan: I don’t know. What was that waste I had to cross?

Matt: Not now, Brendan. Come with me. The US has declared victory in the war on terror.

Brendan: Right. Wait, what was that? And how do you know my name?

Paul: How’s your tux?

Quinns: A little tight. How’s yours?

Paul: I went with the dress. It was cheaper. HELLO, ladies and
gentlemen, boys and antiboys. It’s time for our top 5 games of 2012, which will almost certainly be as well-organised and halcyon as our top 10 Upcoming Games of 2012 feature, which ended up being 14 games, none of which we agreed on.

Quinns: Step this way, banishing all preconceptions from your mind, AND ALSO any thoughts that this feature is three months later. And let’s kick things off with…

Quinns: You know when you buy a game, and you know it’s going to be good… and it is?

Space Cadets is a game where 3-6 players fly a Star Trek-like space ship together in real time. That makes it a lot like SU&SD favourite Space Alert, but where that game compresses your flight (and the game’s jewel-like puzzle) into a brown-trousered 10 minutes, Space Cadets’ flight fills a whole evening.

It also has everyone manning different stations. We’ll be doing a full
review when we’re a more competent crew, but for now, let me just walk you through each station. I can’t think of a better way to persuade you why you need this box in your life.

Paul: Right then, shall we look inside a box that hasn’t been opened in at least sixteen years?

Imagine Paul sat by a crackling fire, speaking calmly to you in his warm, academic, almost mahogany voice…

In fifty years time I shall be a very wrinkly and very old man, but all the stats suggest I’ll still be very much alive and, I imagine, probably still playing board games too. I imagine myself sat with the odd youngster now and then, perhaps grandchildren, great nephews, or just
the odd whippersnapper who has tossed a coin in my cup and told me to get a job, but whoever it is I’m sure they’ll ask me what board games were like in my day.

“Board games?” I’ll ask, with a Santa-like twinkle in my eye, a Twainish bounce in my crazy-old-dude hair, “Oh, well it was all very different back then. They didn’t self-assemble, for a start. In fact, it was all something like this…”

“Why is everything going wobbly?!” the Dickensian sprog would cry. “I am afeared!”

“Worry not, tis but a flashback! A flashback to… TORPEDO RUN.”

Kotaku Article: Winning is Killing Gaming

Game Salute: A New Kind of Publisher?

Kotaku Article: The Magic Touch

Some Actual Journalism: Licensed Games

The iOS Roundup! 14/04/2013

Your Primer on… Wargames

Our Belated Top 5 Games Of 2012

Your Guide to Space Cadets

Retrospective: Ambush!

Paul’s Nostalgia Trip

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