Better with Age

I love the idea of print-and-play games. It’s fantastic to be able to try before you buy. But, I’ve run into a couple of problems with the execution. Namely, I don’t have the library of game bits to fill out a proper PnP game, and second, the cost can be as high as a retail version of a game, and that doesn’t even account for my time. After I printed and played Tiny Epic Defenders, despite my enjoyment of that game, the hours and expense made me rethink my stance on PnP. That’s a long introduction to saying that Dead Drop is the perfect game for PnP. You only need a handful of cards, some reference cards and some tokens. I knocked mine out for a few bucks and an hour of time.

My PnP Copy

3 Last Chances

I’m currently backing three board and card games on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is the crowdfunding phenomenon that has really started to revolutionize the board game industry. I have a lot of thoughts about Kickstarter as it relates to board games, and I’m working on a full blog post about that. For now, though, I wanted to bring people’s attention to these three amazing projects. I’ve had the opportunity to play all of them before release, thanks to the publishers providing free print-and-play versions, so these recommendations come from my actual experiences. All are ending soon, so if you think they’re something you’d be interested in, don’t miss your opportunity to pledge.

Why be Humble?

I don’t like video games. I don’t hate them. I can definitely get sucked into them and lose hours. Overall, though, I feel that there is not enough of a payout. I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment even after I finish one. In a tabletop game, win or lose, I know I’ve had an enjoyable time with friends. Video games feel like more time staring at a screen, and I do that enough already: work, email, writing blog posts, skype, TV, movies, all screen staring. For me, gaming is a chance to get away from the screen.

So, given that I’m not a video game fan, why have I bought so many? My Steam account currently has 88 games, and my Android account has 90. That seems preposterous for a person who professes not to enjoy them. Clearly, I’m lying about something. Well, let me tell you my little secret. I have never played the majority of them. Moreover, I never intend to play most of them.

Why would I buy games I never intend to play? There are lots of factors that all boil down to one name: The Humble Bundle. With a pay-what-you-want model for DRM-free files and the ability to apportion my payment to certain developers or charities, Humble Bundle represents the emerging face of e-commerce.

Volunteering for Exploitation

My friend teaches at a Christian university. A few weeks ago, he told me he has to teach three extra classes a week for no pay. This has to be done as part of a new “Christian charity” requirement of one hour a day. Now, I fully support the idea of volunteering. I don’t care if it’s justified by Christianity or any other excuse, it’s a good thing. I have a huge problem with it in this case, though, because it’s not charity at all. Let’s look a little bit deeper.

What is he teaching? Business writing and introductory English. Who is he teaching? Existing university students. If you don’t see why this is a problem, you have no sense of morality. How is this Christian charity?  These classes benefit the university, which is a business, not a charity. It does not matter if these are mandatory, credited classes or supplementary, optional classes, providing perks adds value to the university. Value-added perks aid in recruitment, retention, satisfaction, student success in and after school, and thus, future recruitment.

There are a lot of companies doing great work with CSR around  encouraging volunteerism. Perhaps if this university offered to pay instructors additional hours for their outside volunteer work, that would be Christian charity. Perhaps if they required teachers to instruct these extra classes in orphanages, impoverished schools, or as skill training for laid-off workers, that would be Christian charity. It is none of these things, though. It is exploitation of the labor force in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Kissing a Frog

The title metaphor does not work. You see, in the story of the frog prince, you start with something vaguely revolting, but then discover the beauty within. In this case, we start out with something lovely that then sheds its skin and reveals itself to be a frog. Now, we try to train and guide that frog into being a prince. Even though the metaphor has failed from the outset, I will still sprinkle frog references throughout, because they amuse me, and because I still want a prince out of this deal.

Photo by Nathaniel Hobbes

The titular frog is a clever card game called The Agents, funded through Kickstarter and released late last year. The core of the game is that agent cards are not played into your own tableau, but into one of two “factions” you share with the players to your right and left. The clever part is that each agent has a different function on each end, commands and data tokens, and whichever you don’t take for yourself, you give to an opponent. Commands are powerful abilities that manipulate the cards in play, while data tokens combine to give you Intelligence Points (IP). To win the game, you must have the most IP, but to draw more cards, you have to spend IP. This means every game is fraught with difficult choices, balancing risk and reward.

I really wanted to love this game. I love the theme of duplicitous agents competing for intelligence. The grim, spare, comic-style artwork by Danny Morison bowled me over. (It reminds me of Mike Mignola’s work.) Most of all, I love the innovative core mechanic, and the sheer number of choices and consequences that mechanic brought about. I tried out the print-and-play version, really liked it, and was sure it was going to be my new favorite game. Furthermore, it was the first game I ever kickstarted, and the campaign was a heck of a lot of fun. After I backed, I got a personal message from the creator, Saar Shai. He is a genuinely nice guy, ran a great campaign, and is really open to feedback from his fans. It’s an impressive game from a first-time designer.

Photo by Nathaniel Hobbes

The trouble is, the game doesn’t quite work. There is something missing from making it the game I want to reach for on the shelf, the game that I get excited just thinking about the next time I can play it. The same goes for my gaming circle. Nobody hates it. In fact, everybody wants to like it more than they do. It’s just that, after a game, nobody wants to play again. So, after a couple dozen plays with lots of different players, I put the game on the shelf. I never even got to play most of the expansions I’d pledged for. It was a frog, and my dreams of a prince had died.

Superdark

There is no place for Superman in the modern world. Superman represents a certain kind of pre-Cold War optimism and jingoism that naively believes that complex and relative concepts such as “truth, justice, and the American way” can be understood and implemented by one man with virtually unlimited, incorruptible power. In the cynical postmodern age, who can take such an idea seriously? Who could trust a man who aligns himself so closely with the government?

The most recent Superman film tried to deal with this. It tried to portray a Superman who was more independent and distrustful, refusing to be controlled by the government. It didn’t work. In fact, it was that film that inspired this post. The attempt to make Superman relevant to a modern American audience was shaving the corners off a square peg and finding it still didn’t fit.

Captain America works in his new film only because he is  an anachronism. He doesn’t fit, and that’s the point. When I first heard there would be a Captain America movie, I was curious to see if they would update the origin as they did with Iron Man. If the serum were administered during the Iraq war, the character would be fundamentally different. Instead, they stuck close to the original story, with a nice nod to the real-world role of the comics character as a hawker of war bonds. The first film played with the cliches surrounding 1940s film making and gave a rollicking adventure.

The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, works so well because it points out how the “good guys” of SHIELD are corrupted down to the very core and up to the highest levels of government. By taking this symbol of patriotic fervor and thrusting him into today’s word of data mining, wiretaps, and American interventionism from the Cold War forward, we see how much the world has changed. The movie is about the clash between our ideals and our present reality. At least in the movie, our ideals win out.

Hiatus

This blog has been quiet for a long time. It’s funny to say that because it was never actually loud. Six posts over three years does not make a blog. As I stated in my first post, I wanted to overcome my resistance to putting my work, my words, out into the world. Moving past resistance would allow me to engage in dialogue with like- and differently-minded people so that the cross pollination would make us all better.

Noble as that goal may have been, it did not, does not, will not happen without some measure of self-discipline. I never held myself to a regular update schedule. I had ideas. I often thought of returning to this blog, composing new entries in my mind. It never stepped over into action, though, nor could it, by itself. Without a deadline, without a semi-rigorous update schedule, these ideas, fine though they may have been, were never a high enough priority to overtake other activities (or inactivities; I’m not picky).

In the last year, that has started to change. I have been diligent with the serial fiction I’m writing on twitter. I tweet nearly every day. Other habits have built up, such as sending one long-form email to a friend or family every day and keeping a daily journal. As you see, these habits involve writing. That’s good, as it aligns with my long-term goals. Now, I believe it is time to add to that.  This blog is how to do it. I am aiming for a weekly update schedule, every Wednesday.

When I consume media, books, movies, music, and games. I go through a process of analysis. When I write about it, that process is deepened and extended. Sometimes, it surprises me. This is what I have learned from my twitter story, from emails, and journaling. But no one writes for themselves alone. Ideas exist in conversation. What is presented here is the truth of that moment of writing, not the last word on anything. Take the next word, please.

 

I Want My Time Back

My newest time-wasting obsession is Race for the Galaxy, the science fiction themed card game from Rio Grande Games.  It’s a role selection game with a lot of hand management.  I’ve really become hooked, and sometimes I find myself spending too many hours playing or planning the next game.  At times, I even dream about the game.

What do I like about it?  Depth.  When everything goes well, which is hardly ever, the game runs like a machine, and it feels great.  The rest of the time, there is a nail-biting, cold-sweating, lip-chewing dilemma with ever turn–nay, every phase of the game.  Can I develop this phase and still settle this world I need?  My opponent chose to consume, so should I change which world I settle?  Every game is different, and as soon as I finish a game, I’m eager to try again.  I get so excited about this game, that just thinking about it to write this review, I had to take a break and play a game against the computer.  I’m done now.  I hope I can finish writing this before the addiction strikes again.

The game has multiple paths to victory.  It’s all victory points, but there are many paths to get them.  You can build a large military and conquer high-point worlds, you can settle worlds that produce valuable goods, then trade those goods for enough cards to pay for high-point worlds and developments.  You can produce a lot of goods and consume them for victory points, or you can collect cards of a certain theme and try to get the development that gives you bonus points for each card of that theme.

Winning the game is all about getting an advantage and keeping it.  You have to have something you do better than anyone else.  At the same time, you have to take away your opponents’ advantages.  If they are stronger in their area than you are in yours, they can ignore you, and if you get stronger in their area, you effectively blunt their keenest thrust.  We call this building an “engine.”  If you build a trade engine, I can play cards that allow me to “leach” whenever you trade, which allows me to pursue my own engine (exploring and settling military worlds, for example) while gaining fringe benefits from you pursuing your goals.

Hot and Cold on Punditry

Some months ago, I watched two films back-to-back.  They were Davis Guggenheim’s Al Gore vehicle, An Inconvenient Truth, and Martin Durkin’sThe Great Global Warming Swindle.  Both films were well-made and interesting, but neither one was particularly good.  You might think if a movie is both well-made and interesting, that’s the definition of a good movie, but I can’t agree.  Being well-made merely made these films more slick, more effective, and more compelling, rather than more true.  What made the movies interesting was not their truthfulness, but instead their techniques, their manipulations, and their propaganda.  Both films are propaganda pieces by pundits trying to peddle their views for political purposes.  Though I intentionally watched both films together to get a balanced view, I still don’t believe that I am accurately informed about global warming.

This is because, ultimately, I don’t feel either film was really trying to educate me, but only to manipulate me.  That leads to larger questions regarding punditry in general–it either tries to confirm the beliefs that people already have, or change their minds.  It is in no way intended to present the facts on both sides and let the audience make an informed decision, nor even is it an attempt to make a reasoned case for one side or the other.  It is the very essence of Infotainment.

I know I’m biting off a challenge by casting Al Gore as a pundit, but I think it’s reasonable.  The literal meaning of “pundit” is an expert who is called upon to give public opinions.  Gore has definitely cast himself in this vein, and since (even if expert) opinions are involved, it goes beyond fact to prescriptions.  So I don’t get accused of equivocating the literal meaning with the currently popular pejorative meaning of the word, which refers to the use of one’s expertise and public access for partisan purposes, I believe Gore is also a pundit on this level, using his environmentalism for personal and party gain (in addition to using his position to gain authority and power to act on his ideas), ultimately leading up to a recovery of his image following a failed presidential bid, and a recovery for his party.  Really, does any reasonable person really think global climate change was Gore’s number one priority in running for the office?

I know I’m always going to have to screen everything I read, watch, or hear, but I don’t believe I should have to.  I find it hard to believe that truth is so irrelevant that we seriously believe it can be so easily manipulated.  That we really believe that the truth is so simple it can be summed up in some pundit’s schpiel.  On the other hand, since everyone has a bias and impartiality is a myth, why not have people’s bias out on their sleeve?  Perhaps the benefit of punditry is to make the pundit’s slant on the issues obvious so that you can adjust.

The Most Fun You Can Have for a Twenty Buck Game

When I heard the Wii Zapper was going to be bundled with a “training” game, my first thought was, “so what?” The last thing I thought I needed was some stupid piece of plastic that came with a half-rate game. Then I tried Link’s Crossbow Training. The next day I went and got my own copy.

No only does this game provide training on how to use the zapper, it’s one of the most fun games I own for the Wii. Finally, another game does what Wii Sports does–it provides an addictive, fun game that is accessible to new players. The only problem is the same one Wii Sports has–it is too short. When you finish the levels, you are still hungry for more.

There are three kinds of levels: target shoots where game controls the camera you just take shots, defender levels where you move the camera by putting the cursor on the edge of the screen–you can turn in a circle and blast whatever you see, and ranger levels where you move your feet with the nunchuk thumb stick, your facing with the gun, and run around blazing. Though target shooting Hogan’s Alley style may sound boring, the game keeps it interesting through ramping up the difficulty in scale.

Back in the day, I was a Counter Strike junkie. The problem was, I stank at it. No really. I mean it. Really. Stank. The concept was great, but the controls were too much. Now with the Wii Zapper, I get all the same game elements in a control scheme I can handle–one that is intuitive to use. This was the reason I got the Wii in the first place. The ranger levels in Link’s Crossbow Training really caused me to get my Counter Strike jones on. I should write somebody a letter.