Nigel Pyne

Well this evening – Sat 15th Feb 2014 at 5pm GMT – I’m going to be having a mini-showdown with Tiffany (TheOneTar video reviews), Ricky Royal (Box of Delights video reviews) and Rhiannon Ochs (co-host of Spooning Meeples) on a Google hangout.

What game are we playing?

oddball Aeronauts

Holiday gaming is pretty straight forward for me –

Mother-in-law down for one day so we’ll play Scrabble with her. The only time I play but I enjoy it.

Boxing day is always a family game of Mah-Jong. We crack open a big tub of peanuts and are only allowed to eat them with chopsticks. Love playing Mah-Jong and we always have a good time.

I grew up playing hobby games with two of my brothers and we always play something. From my childhood, we used to play a lot of Buccanneer – we ‘inherited’ the original 1950s? game with cut-glass beads set in metal for rubies and diamonds, small gold-painted pieces of metal for gold, small wooden barrels for rum, etc. It’s a great set and we break it out at Christmas sometimes. But this year it’ll be Blood Bowl Team Manager because I have it and have still yet to play it.

Is there an online barrier? I am unaware of a site that is really friendly to prospective new gamers. Sites such as this one are great for established gamers but if there was a resource promoting those games that new gamers could learn fast and have fun with then it would also be a resource for gamers to point their prospective gamer friends towards. Such a site could have rules explained in video form, example turns in video form, recommendations, reviews, next steps, etc. but be totally focussed towards the ‘casual’ (aka gateway) games. Would this help?

Why do I play games?

Short answer. Because they’re great entertainment – they’re fun!

But why are they fun for me?

Long answer –

Gaming became big for me through RPGs. I’ve always loved reading and stories. And with an RPG there is a story that I can contribute to and be a part of. Just like with a book or movie you’re reading/watching for the first time, you don’t know what’s going to happen next in a game so there’s a level of excitement in gaming. Fear the unknown? Heck no – relish it!

Am I ever going to fight a dragon? Or build a galactic empire? Or escape from an ancient temple? Not on this planet at this time, but games can let you imagine this and provide a framework within which you can generate your own story. And I’m not just talking about RPGs now – the card and board games I gravitate towards do this as well.

The fact that this is achievable with a group of friends – or strangers – is a massive plus. It’s a fantastic social, story-crafting experience.

So that’s why.

As an aside, it would be interesting to ask a non-gamer – why don’t you play games?

Volume would only be a problem if there was no way to really assess that volume and be able to pick out the individuals that suit you.

But with sites such as this, with all the reviewers and bloggers out there and the fact that you can download the rules to any game that takes your eye, you can really make an informed decision on what you will buy.

And as there’s more competition for our hard earned wages, companies will have to raise the bar in order to get our attention. Average won’t cut it.

But is it possible there are more games you would like to play than you’ve got time to play them? Absolutely. It’s not the volume that’s bad though, it’s time that’s evil 😉

A Question of Balance!

I just read one of the reviews here on Boardgaming.com that raised the issue of if the two factions are balanced. I would preface here that depending on how the decks are played you can find yourself in a situation where one faction appears to overbalance the other.

However, when we play tested the factions available in oddball Aeronauts we played in excess of 200 games and the win/loss ratio was 50/50. If anyone wishes to repeat this exercise they’re more than welcome 😉