HoNoToGroABeMo Day Thirty-One: It Is Done
6 years ago
2:50 PM
For those of you not in the know, I'm all about games-- little lead men being pushed around, boardgames with pieces and paper, games with cards, games with computers (less so), games played on the Internet, party games played with packs of hysterical drunken people, roleplaying games that challenge the imagination to make a world.
Lewis Pulcipher is a big chicken in the henhouse of my world. He designed a game called BRITANNIA, which is sort of a game like diplomacy but it's about the development of civilization in Great Britain. Not really MY cup of tea, but lots of people like it. I respect him.
In any event, he had lots to say about the boardgaming industry these days, on his website recently. Here are the salient points.
GAMES ARE DIFFERENT THESE DAYS (versus the 'heyday' of the early 1980s, when I was growing up) BECAUSE...
1. Many people who prefer complex games have moved to computer games.
2. People are much more visually oriented than in the early 80s
3. People are much less word-oriented (which is related to being more visual, but not quite the same thing)
4. Young people are much less competent mathematically.
5. Attention spans are much shorter in many young people.
6. Many younger people nowadays appear to do things to "kill time", rather than from any inherent interest in the activity.
7. Many young people simply haven't been exposed to board wargames.
8. The effects of the "cult of the new".
9. Differences between generations (Gen X vs. Baby Boomers, etc.)
10. "age of instant gratification"
11. Boardgames take much more effort to learn how to play (and you need other players, too)
12. Video games we see a movement away from complexity of play.
Comments, copyright 2005 Lewis Pulciper, all rights reserved, from his website.
I agree with a lot of this, but NOT all of it. For one thing, I would not say that kids are less gifted mathematically today. And I grew up in the 80s... there just wasn't that many distractions available to me back then.. the hot video system was ATARI (Pong). The only affordable home PC was the TRS 80, and that was almost entirely text based. There was a lot of video tech available but at a high price (remember when video rental places were big business? We had something called EROLS in my area back then... it was a HUGE force on the local consumer market).
On the gripping hand, there's much here that I WOULD agree with, especially the high degree of nihilism, indifference and 'attitude' I see in the generations that followed mine.
Lewis Pulcipher is a big chicken in the henhouse of my world. He designed a game called BRITANNIA, which is sort of a game like diplomacy but it's about the development of civilization in Great Britain. Not really MY cup of tea, but lots of people like it. I respect him.
In any event, he had lots to say about the boardgaming industry these days, on his website recently. Here are the salient points.
GAMES ARE DIFFERENT THESE DAYS (versus the 'heyday' of the early 1980s, when I was growing up) BECAUSE...
1. Many people who prefer complex games have moved to computer games.
2. People are much more visually oriented than in the early 80s
3. People are much less word-oriented (which is related to being more visual, but not quite the same thing)
4. Young people are much less competent mathematically.
5. Attention spans are much shorter in many young people.
6. Many younger people nowadays appear to do things to "kill time", rather than from any inherent interest in the activity.
7. Many young people simply haven't been exposed to board wargames.
8. The effects of the "cult of the new".
9. Differences between generations (Gen X vs. Baby Boomers, etc.)
10. "age of instant gratification"
11. Boardgames take much more effort to learn how to play (and you need other players, too)
12. Video games we see a movement away from complexity of play.
Comments, copyright 2005 Lewis Pulciper, all rights reserved, from his website.
I agree with a lot of this, but NOT all of it. For one thing, I would not say that kids are less gifted mathematically today. And I grew up in the 80s... there just wasn't that many distractions available to me back then.. the hot video system was ATARI (Pong). The only affordable home PC was the TRS 80, and that was almost entirely text based. There was a lot of video tech available but at a high price (remember when video rental places were big business? We had something called EROLS in my area back then... it was a HUGE force on the local consumer market).
On the gripping hand, there's much here that I WOULD agree with, especially the high degree of nihilism, indifference and 'attitude' I see in the generations that followed mine.
