Complex vs simple is a false dichotomy in board games. The key is teachability. How far does your design go to help new players teach it to others? Theme and presentation can go a long way to make people want to teach it to others.

Hot take: frustration in board games is more often down to a misaligned magic circle than to players' not handling losing well.

Wake up babe, new boycott just dropped Hasbro is the latest corporation to funnel money to JKR's hate campaign. Please stop supporting as many Hasbro products as you can. Kicking myself as I bought Sanibel literally yesterday...

This is a very good, insightful thread. Both for designers but also, especially, for critics.

A common kind of situated experience: Interpretive Charity Playtest groups don’t just share context; they share *interpretive charity.* Early playtesters tend to: - assume the game is worth understanding - forgive rough edges - try to infer the designer’s intent 🎲✂️(13/19)

I don’t know for certain why this happened, but one pattern stood out: Inside the company, the game is played quickly. In my groups, it’s played more slowly, and at that pace, the experience is dull. 🎲✂️(9/19)

A game communicates what it is and how it should be played through things like its: - title - art - marketing - rules and how they’re written The problem is early test groups often share unspoken assumptions and behaviors the designer doesn’t notice - because they’re always present. 🎲✂️(6/19)

A game's learning curve should end with the players able to play the game fluently, or with them well-versed in the game's layers of strategy? I think those two goals are not the same, yet we use "learning curve" as a description for either path.

What's the worse way to end a game? - Losing due to somebody else's kingmaking move. - Losing due to a rules mistake you discover too late.

Democratizing the arts looks like universal income, low-barrier grants for both emerging and working artists, well-funded municipal arts & recreation programs, vibrant third spaces, and a well-funded public school system with progressive curriculum. Not a free pass for corporate-owned slop engines.

It seems my personal hell is having an arm injury that keeps me from writing, playing and requires such strong pain killers I can't even focus long enough to read a book.

I liked Wonder Man. It was fun.

RIP Jacques Zeimet, who had a gift for creating easy games, that were just simple enough to be not "too simple" but interesting.

This video does a great job of summing up why games criticism is in a slump, and why it has such a hard time moving beyond buying guides and personal recommendations. Discernment needs standards, and standards aren't the same as gatekeeping.

'Unbiased review' is an oxymoron. Biases shape our perspective, and that is what boardgame critics offer. Criticism is always a conversation with your audience. And if they can't tell where you're coming from, how do you ever expect to be understood? Don't sand off your biases, make them obvious.

Describe your Bluesky account in a single image:

Tbh if god commanded me to stop writing about games, I'd assume he'd just misunderstood my point. And I would start explaining myself in far more detail.

One of the most insidious (and insipid) beliefs in boardgames is that we are all equal when we sit down to play a game together.

Every writer who generates a slop image for their work is a class traitor. "I can't afford a visual artist" So your solution is stabbing artists in the back? Stealing from them? Furthermore, slop-generated imagery suggests slop-generated writing. That's how you're presenting yourself.

I firmly believe that intentionality leads to better game design, but assuming intentionality leads to worse criticism.

Maybe what some people call nostalgia is really just players treating games of their past as cultural artefacts.

Hot take: the final step of board game development is when you have to translate the rules in the rulebook into something the players at your table can grasp.

The correct answer to this is "Yes, and everyone else too."

Quick reminder via Board Game Beat @wericmartin.bsky.social Privilege is one hell of a drug.

This is so accurate, it should be used as a textbook definition.

I keep thinking “my god the people they’ve killed seem like exceptionally good folks” and I think the lesson there is that they’re not exceptional, but that wonderful people abound and that a baseline distrust in humanity is a shitty conservative trope that privileges power over collective strength

Well, yes.. but the game sold well, and isn't THAT what board games are really about?

Last night saw our first play of Arcs Blighted Reach Act I. The group's frustrated confusion is giving way to begrudging appreciation. But I'm sill salty that all rules text prioritises being "technically correct" over easily useable. I find no joy in being a rules lawyer at the table.

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

I'm fascinated by the valorization of depth in board games. Is it just a fancier way to demand high replayability from a design, or is there more to it? Does a deep game design satisfy a specific need players have?

Italian voice actor Carlo Bononi was the voice of all of the characters on Pingu. A trained clown by trade, he used a theater technique called grammelot, which consists of "speaking" in a mix of babbled gibberish noises. He improvised all the voices live and unscripted.

I've always considered it a failure of imagination that so few conflict-based board games allow for a coalition among lower-ranked players as a viable path to success. This "only the strongest will succeed"-narrative of these games feels increasingly archaic right now.

Played The Flow of History solo to freshen up some rules. And I must say, the deluxified version of the game is remarkably pointless. A felt pouch that serves no purpose. Player tokens that keep falling over. Resource markers too small to be easy to use. I'm not mad, just disappointed.

Trotz labiler Gesundheitslage haben wir uns hinter unsere Mikros geklemmt, um das neue Jahr mit einem Redebedarf zu starten. Diesmal u.a. zu Weimar, Boss Fighters QR und echoes Tatort. #brettspiele

*me, when random chance spares me a couple of minor inconveniences* "Look, everything's coming up Milhouse!"

The IP in question is and should be treated as toxic, no matter what. Its creator's psyhotic descent into unmitigated trans-hate has poisened that well for the rest of her life at least. Don't support any product or publisher that tries to profit of it, and thereby finance trans-hate.

Last night I learned that I am utterly useless in social deduction games, while on painkillers* We played Avalon and everyone at the table clocked my allegiance, and I was consistently fooled by everyone else's. (*-this might also be true, regardless of any painkillers)

“ICE agents, get out now because historically, this ends with you hanging from a lamppost and your body paraded through the streets.” - the …we rate dogs guy

I read a comment by a publisher defending the theme of manifest destiny as this board game is a great tool for discussion. Here are my issues with that... (thread👇)

Starting a solo game of Civolution at 10 PM, while hopped up on painkillers. Let's goooooooooo........

The paradoxical thing about competitive board games is, that you invite your friends over to spend a couple of hours with them. During which you treat them as if they are not your friends. And this somehow deepens your friendship, it's really strange.

Just watched Monkey Man. People aren't losing their minds over Dev Patel enough.

Like many others, I’m missing @tinstargames.bsky.social this morning. While I can’t claim to have known Steve that well, we’ve been moving in the same online circles for, god, I have no idea how long. Gaming Outpost? Usenet? He had a genius for wickedly clever little games. I especially love this:

Shocked and saddened, indeed. What a loss.

For some reason I was in the mood to play a game in which local resistance fighters take on a fascist occupation.

They hanged propagandists at Nuremberg.

One of my absolute favourite novels. Prose that is precise and efficient, yet full of character.

Stranger Things finale was pretty decent, actually. I appreciated the writers prioritising emotional catharsis over gut punches in the name of 'drama'.