| Jeux des Mois, partial catch up |
[Nov. 16th, 2011|09:17 pm] |
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So, it's been a while since I've posted. Here's a bunch of new games I've played since then. Note that most of this was written before my daughter was born, so if you are hoping to hear about how awesome fatherhood is or how my ongoing game of SpawnCraft is going, this is not that post.
( Read more... ) |
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| Board Game Geek: Why So Narrow? |
[Jul. 9th, 2011|12:20 pm] |
So, as you probably know. boardgamegeek.com is the go-to site for information about board games—the IMDB analogue, if you will.
Like many sites of this ilk, this site invites users to rate games on a scale of 0 to 10 stars, and shows the average rating for each game. Take a look at the most voted-on games published in 2010. Note that these are the games are not necessarily the best games; they are the games with the largest "rating sample size." Presumably "rating sample size" has a lot to do with popularity, so we would expect the ratings to skew high here.
But the thing that strikes me about this list is the density of the user ratings. The ratings for the first 10 range from 7.14 to 8.00. The first 100 range from 6.20 to 8.47. That seems like a pretty narrow band to me. It's also striking that the rankings don't get above 9.0. (A search of all games with 100 or more votes shows that the highest all-time average rating for a standalone game is 8.86.)
Thoughts?
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| Jeu de Semaine, no. 7 |
[May. 30th, 2011|09:23 pm] |
StarCraft III was a little too busy getting married when this first came out, and finally had time to play just recently. What's striking about this game is the meticulous brand management going on. Making a sequel to Starcraft requires navigating the dire straits between the Scylla of hardcore eSports players and the Charybdis of casual gamers. The former group is not just a small vocal minority, they are aspirational role models; lots of players look up to these guys, the same way that many amateur poker players lose their shirts trying to become pros. So keeping both groups happy is vital to the longevity of Starcraft.
( Read more... ) |
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| Jeu de Semaine, no. 6 |
[May. 24th, 2011|08:50 pm] |
Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure
When we consider the graphic-adventure genre, we must concede that its fundamental vulnerability as a form lies in the incompleteness of emulation as a technique. The challenges comprising any particular oeuvre demand that the player bring to the simulacrum his own wordly understanding of the game-world's combinatorical semantics. No experimental framework—no opportunity for iterative construction of predictive models of the play environment—is offered. Play-patterns devolve into exhaustive search, in the form of either hunting for pixels or of capricious and arbitrary combination of objects.
( Spoilers... ) |
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| Floggin' some Steam |
[May. 22nd, 2011|09:54 pm] |
So a few years back, the Magic folks printed a bunch of "cards from the future," including this one:
Image from magiccards.info
This card is basically a prank. The rules of Magic don't say what a "Contraption" is, or what it means to "assemble" one. Wizards has since said that "Contraption" is a kind of artifact, but have not revealed the meaning of "assemble." They may never.
For armchair card designers, this does make a fun game out of imagining what kinds of riggers might exist, and what
kinds of Contraptions they might assemble.
This leads me to an interesting design challenge: is it possible to design
a card set that makes Steamflogger Boss a meaningful and relevant card, without changing the rules of Magic.
( Here's my attempt: )
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| Random Game Theory Question |
[May. 4th, 2011|02:16 pm] |
Here's the setup:
You and another contestant are given a prize pool of $1000, and the two of you have one minute to come to an agreement as to how to divide the money between yourselves. If you come to an agreement within the time limit, you each get your agreed-upon share, plus, you get an extra prize of $X and the other contestant gets an extra prize of $Y. X and Y are known by both players at the start of the game. If no agreement is reached, neither of you gets any money.
How does your strategy change as the values of X and Y change? |
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