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Llyranor posted:Sidenote: in one of his behind-the-scenes videos, he mentions making his kids pick up the components he throws onto the floor for his gimmick I mean, giving kids tasks so they can help is generally a good idea, thats basically a chore. That's not really any more awful than making your kids set the dinner table or rake leaves or do the laundry.  I'm not going to go hard on defending it, I just know a lot of experts generally seem to agree that giving kids chores is a good thing, it's not like he's making them mine coal or something.
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Nov 6, 2022 17:41
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:
None of your reasons follow that point. The size of a hobby has no bearing on whether or not there can be good game reviews within it. The amount of playtime you have or awareness of the broader hobby also does not directly translate to better or worse reviews. This thread's history has nothing to do with board game reviews. I dislike most of the bigger reviewers for a host of reasons, but that's not to say they haven't produced any good reviews that are informative and helpful for consumers. NPI about 2 years ago probably struck the balance best before they went off into navel gazing land and lost the thread, but SUSD have had plenty of quality reviews mixed in to their jokey stuff, and SVWAG consistently put out quality reviews even if I don't care about most of the games they cover these days. TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mean, giving kids tasks so they can help is generally a good idea, thats basically a chore. That's not really any more awful than making your kids set the dinner table or rake leaves or do the laundry. Children doing "chores" in a workplace is generally considered child labor.
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Nov 6, 2022 17:46
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Bottom Liner posted:Children doing "chores" in a workplace is generally considered child labor.
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Nov 6, 2022 17:56
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Bottom Liner posted:Children doing "chores" in a workplace is generally considered child labor. please brave goon report Tom to the labor authorities
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Nov 6, 2022 18:06
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Bottom Liner posted:None of your reasons follow that point. The size of a hobby has no bearing on whether or not there can be good game reviews within it. The amount of playtime you have or awareness of the broader hobby also does not directly translate to better or worse reviews. This thread's history has nothing to do with board game reviews. I would, in fact, say that having awareness of the broader hobby would, in fact, make you a better reviewer. If you would like to continue to argue the point that being educated in a subject would not make you a better reviewer that's entirely fine, I will never agree, but I do concede that a "I've never played this type of game" review is useful too, but people should know that's the case. "Gloomhaven is poo poo" is a useless statement coming from a guy who only plays Werewolf variants and thinks anything else is overcomplicated trash. "I don't really like RPGs-in-a-box, but here's how it went for me" is an extremely useful statement, and "I love RPGs in a box, and I think Gloomhaven is a giant piece of poo poo, here's why" is also useful, depending on what kind of consumer you are. Yet, I will always argue that in fact, its a bad thing to not even try to understand why someone would like a game before passing judgement, because when you do that, you basically just assume these people hate themselves and hate having fun or something equally stupid, which is a baffling and nonsensical thing that many people do, even on this site. Someone enjoying something you don't like shouldn't be so confusing, and it's always good to ask people "hey - why do you like this?". I promise you, you will get a good answer eventually. Unless someone literally just tells you "actually, my idea of fun is chewing broken glass, and Gloomhaven recreated that experience wonderfully! Thank you gloomhaven!" before peeling his own face off like that guy in Night Breed. Then I guess I'm wrong in that instance. I have no idea why my mind went to Gloomhaven for these examples. Bottom Liner posted:Children doing "chores" in a workplace is generally considered child labor. Then I guess you have some phone calls to make.
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Nov 6, 2022 18:10
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I would, in fact, say that having awareness of the broader hobby would, in fact, make you a better reviewer. If you would like to continue to argue the point that being educated in a subject would not make you a better reviewer that's entirely fine, I will never agree, but I do concede that a "I've never played this type of game" review is useful too, but people should know that's the case. "Gloomhaven is poo poo" is a useless statement coming from a guy who only plays Werewolf variants and thinks anything else is overcomplicated trash. That's exactly the point. I don't need a reviewer to play Warhammer and Oathsworn to give me a good review of a Splotter game. I would much rather have someone with a dedicated niche than a Tom Vasel that spends about 10 seconds thinking about every game under the sun with about as many brain cells and says nothing of value about any of it.
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Nov 6, 2022 18:12
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Bottom Liner posted:That's exactly the point. I don't need a reviewer to play Warhammer and Oathsworn to give me a good review of a Splotter game. I would much rather have someone with a dedicated niche than a Tom Vasel that spends about 10 seconds thinking about every game under the sun with about as many brain cells and says nothing of value about any of it. goons please report this to the bureau of labor for uncompensated child posting (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 6, 2022 18:16
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Bottom Liner posted:That's exactly the point. I don't need a reviewer to play Warhammer and Oathsworn to give me a good review of a Splotter game. I would much rather have someone with a dedicated niche than a Tom Vasel that spends about 10 seconds thinking about every game under the sun with about as many brain cells and says nothing of value about any of it. yes and if you keep to that niche its fine. if you feel the need to go "I played Gettysburg and it was poo poo" then you should probably not be reviewing games because your reviews on subjects outside of your sphere of knowledge are going to be worthless trash!
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Nov 6, 2022 18:36
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PRADA SLUT posted:goons please report this to the bureau of labor for uncompensated child posting Why are you so unpleasant and constantly posting dumb snark in this thread. You don’t actually have to respond to every post with useless drivel like this. I appreciate BottomLiner’s thoughtful contributions to this thread. edit: sorry didn’t see that he had been probed already when I posted this. Anyway, finally went ahead and spent a trivial amount of money on the second [B]Istanbul[b/] expansion. Someone in this thread convinced me to get it a while ago and I’m just taking the dive. I have very limited experience in the traditional euro space but I’m always surprised how little love this game gets. It’s a real gem in my household. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 18:37
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Bottom Liner posted:That's exactly the point. I don't need a reviewer to play Warhammer and Oathsworn to give me a good review of a Splotter game. I would much rather have someone with a dedicated niche than a Tom Vasel that spends about 10 seconds thinking about every game under the sun with about as many brain cells and says nothing of value about any of it. I feel like a good way to solve this argument would be to make clear the differences between reviews and critques. They're essentially the same thing when used broadly or in layman, just "a person's thoughts on the quality and worth of an item" but there are very clearly different tiers to how reviewers handle things versus how critics handle things. I'd taken this statement TheDiceMustRoll posted:Game reviews in general are not nor ever going to be very good. to mean that Game reviews in general are not going to be on the level of other reviews. Personally I disagree with that, but I would agree that at the moment they are in their infancy and it will be a while yet before we see more of a deeper board game analysis to go along with the recent board game renaissance. To me, there are a few different tiers of review. Lowest tier is your ad-pulls, 1 or 2 sentences long, something you'd find in the review section of any store site. These being low tier doesn't mean they're useless, it just means that there is very little required for someone to leave a remark and click some stars or write a number. In aggregate they can be used to show proof of something greater, such as showing how much the thing appeals to the consumers or marking a shift in review quality if the thing in question gets review bombed. Higher up on the tier you've got your reviews and overviews. These are generally useful but they are also incredibly susceptible to bias if they are sponsored in some way by the product they're showcasing. This is especially a muddled territory for tabletop games because the bigger reviewers, your toms vasel and your dicks ham, their reviews are also acting as an advertisement. What I imagine TheDiceMustRoll is wanting for are reviews that are from the highest tier of critique. And if they don't mean this then lol this post as been for nothing, but oh well. The highest tier imo is basically the analysis, the essay, the in-depth look and dissection, breakdown, deconstruction, reconstruction, etc. There aren't a lot of those for board games. Art has had entire books written about one singular painting, entire plays have been written in response to political turmoil, a group of people made feature length longform essays detailing everything they found wrong with the star wars prequels, and there are entire religions devoted to studying, discussing, evaluating, reevaluating, and philosophizing about the same books. We don't really have much of that higher level of societal critique for board games, the incredibly indepth mechanical dismemberment of games, works of literature built around the study of a singular game or game mechanic, or the like. EXCEPT WE DO. There are 3 major successful examples I can think of. Not that these are the only 3, just the only ones coming to mind right now. I'm sure there are several others. The Landlord Game was a board game that was designed around not being fun and as a criticism of landlords. It was built using the medium of board games to serve as a much-needed critique of a problem we still have in the present day, the trouble of people going around purchasing up land solely so they can make others pay for being there, being able to just pull in a lot of side income from these land investments. What elevates the Landlord Game though is that someone looked at it and thought "gee, this is good" and then stole the design for themself, published it, and now their version of the game, Monopoly, is one of the most well-known board games ever with tons of different versions and licenses and advertising and brand deals and in the process, Monopoly became the criticism that the original game was criticizing. Monopoly itself is the sort of thing that the Landlord Game was warning about and Monopoly's continued success in spite of its quality has lended itself to many higher-effort reviews that are more like analyses or critical takedowns of everything Monopoly stands for and represents, of capitalism itself. The other example is chess. I'm not gonna go into chess because goodness gracious this post is already too long but chess has been something so massively studied that you can and will find all manner of written works studying it, reviews and critiques examining it, even focusing on using chess as a means of creating entirely new content that can be tied back to the themes of chess. Chess is elevated in this way. 3rd example is kind of a copout because I'm just gonna say "card games" and leave it at that since obviously there's more to it than just card games. Specifically I just mean anything people use for gambling. Your blackjack, the tons of different types of poker, etc. Even going back further to card games that the original tarot deck used before those became more associated with mysticism and fortune telling. It's important to note that the examples I thought of were all games that are very very old. The youngest is Monopoly. I suspect that in 40 years time, if life does not leave this body in that time, we'll see some more and more studies, analyses, essays, books, art, film, and even games that exist to elevate some of the games we enjoy now, elevating some of the new renaissance into being something ripe for deeper discussion, to talk with those at salons or discuss with the guy down the road who lives in a jar.
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Nov 6, 2022 19:22
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I mostly just want people to have a bit more honesty about where they're coming from when they review games of any kind. If you hate worker placement preface any review with that. If you're the kind of person who wants to gargle GW's CEO's piss then lead with that. If I know where your biases lie then I know when to and when to not listen to you. I don't care for the Dice Tower, but when one of their official reviewers says without irony "I cannot in good conscience recommend you buy this game" and they are talking about a game released under the Dice Tower's "Essentials" line, in front of his boss then that is something you should listen to because it's probably the most honest thing that dude has ever said in his life (this happened). I want to know where you are coming from, what your biases are, etc. For example, If you asked me for a review of Heroquest, and I was some utter schizo who had been blocked by the official Heroquest twitter because I told the person running the account to kill themselves, and then I said to you "Yeah heroquest is bad" entirely because I'm an unstable lunatic who took offense to being blocked for a very good reason, would you, in fact, upon hearing this information, take my review seriously or would you think "Oh, you're an idiot with a twitter beef. I should ask someone else."
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Nov 6, 2022 19:41
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mostly just want people to have a bit more honesty about where they're coming from when they review games of any kind. If you hate worker placement preface any review with that. If you're the kind of person who wants to gargle GW's CEO's piss then lead with that. If I know where your biases lie then I know when to and when to not listen to you. I don't care for the Dice Tower, but when one of their official reviewers says without irony "I cannot in good conscience recommend you buy this game" and they are talking about a game released under the Dice Tower's "Essentials" line, in front of his boss then that is something you should listen to because it's probably the most honest thing that dude has ever said in his life (this happened). I want to know where you are coming from, what your biases are, etc. What was the dice tower essential that one of the dice tower reviewers couldnt recommend just out of interest? And board game reviews are a lot like video game reviews; Just pick a reviewer you enjoy watching/reading, and get to know their tastes, and listen to what they like/dislike about a game, ignoring the final score. Once you know how someones tastes compare with yours, you can go "Oh, they hated it because of X, but I dont mind games doing X that much, so if thats the worst thing about it i'll probably have a good time" or "They love all games that have mechanic Y, but I'm much pickier about that. Put it in the maybe pile." Or do what I do and go entirely by gut, theme and box art, safe in the knowledge that many of your board games will be lucky to make it to the table once a year so whatever looks good in a kalax is fine.
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Nov 6, 2022 19:51
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mostly just want people to have a bit more honesty about where they're coming from when they review games of any kind. If you hate worker placement preface any review with that. If you're the kind of person who wants to gargle GW's CEO's piss then lead with that. If I know where your biases lie then I know when to and when to not listen to you. I don't care for the Dice Tower, but when one of their official reviewers says without irony "I cannot in good conscience recommend you buy this game" and they are talking about a game released under the Dice Tower's "Essentials" line, in front of his boss then that is something you should listen to because it's probably the most honest thing that dude has ever said in his life (this happened). I want to know where you are coming from, what your biases are, etc. Yeah ok that's way simpler than my overwrought thing lol TheDiceMustRoll posted:For example, If you asked me for a review of Heroquest, and I was some utter schizo who had been blocked by the official Heroquest twitter because I told the person running the account to kill themselves, and then I said to you "Yeah heroquest is bad" entirely because I'm an unstable lunatic who took offense to being blocked for a very good reason, would you, in fact, upon hearing this information, take my review seriously or would you think "Oh, you're an idiot with a twitter beef. I should ask someone else." annnd that post took a weird turn
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Nov 6, 2022 19:54
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mostly just want people to have a bit more honesty about where they're coming from when they review games of any kind. If you hate worker placement preface any review with that. If you're the kind of person who wants to gargle GW's CEO's piss then lead with that. If I know where your biases lie then I know when to and when to not listen to you. I don't care for the Dice Tower, but when one of their official reviewers says without irony "I cannot in good conscience recommend you buy this game" and they are talking about a game released under the Dice Tower's "Essentials" line, in front of his boss then that is something you should listen to because it's probably the most honest thing that dude has ever said in his life (this happened). I want to know where you are coming from, what your biases are, etc. Not really related to your point but let’s not use the word Schizo please. The way you are using it here is horrible.
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Nov 6, 2022 20:01
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SiKboy posted:What was the dice tower essential that one of the dice tower reviewers couldnt recommend just out of interest? Foundations of Rome. It was over the production value/price vs the actual game you're getting. Tom was Megasabin posted:Not really related to your point but let’s not use the word Schizo please. The way you are using it here is horrible. I apologize. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 20:15
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FirstAidKite posted:. I don't really share your optimism here. People don't just write about Chess, Monopoly, and Poker because theyre old, they write about it because they have an absolutely ludicrous amount of social capital behind them. The closest any modern game has is either D&D (which isn't a board game), MtG (sorta-ditto), or Catan, all of which is still far behind Chess and will never come close. If even the highest praised critical darlings of our day like Food Chain Magnate, SidCon, Resistance, Spirit Island, ONUW, etc., get even a fraction of the literature written about them even Roulette gets in 50 years I will be incredibly shocked. This isn't really a matter of game quality either, it's honestly much more about being spoiled for choice. Even the most dedicated board game hobbyists aren't going to play their favorite games more than 15-20 times a year (not counting lifestyle games like MtG or minis games), and most will play waaay less than that. It also helps that no one entity owns any of the Chess-tier games other than Monopoly, so they'll always be widely available and easily played on some form rather than relying on limited print runs Countblanc fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 21:23
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Imho all You need to know about Tom vasel's critical standards is his review of a Hollandspiele product that he then deleted due to the backlash about how terrible the critique was. You're forced to accept one of two conclusions: A) he knowingly releases poor quality reviews B) he doesn't stand by his critism which begs the question why he released it at all.
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Nov 6, 2022 21:39
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Friends brought Nemesis over for game night, played For Sale (travel version of this is great value proposition since you can just use other game currency instead of the card stock coins) and Sushi Roll (Sushi Go/Party superior, there’s a reason this is only the second time we’ve got it to the table). Played both Alien and Aliens muted on the TV with the Alien soundtrack playing for ambiance. Did take the entirety of both films as we had 3/5 being new to the game, myself included. Survived an early queen and scourge of adults to get towards endgame and prepping for hibernation when an event card spread exactly enough fire to end it in the least climactic way possible. Frustrating way to end a 5 hour game as new players who didn’t know that 4 fire on the board should be a “pants on head fix it now” situation when there isn’t imminent risk of meltdown or getting eaten. Clearly a game that requires a very fairly comprehensive knowledge of what can happen in the event deck as well as what items are out there. Still fun, had a great time racking up 5 adult corpses as the soldier, excited to try again in the future.
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Nov 6, 2022 21:55
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Countblanc posted:it's honestly much more about being spoiled for choice. I think a big part is that the experiences are uniquely mechanical in a way that most forms of entertainment aren't. Video games are more visceral or narrative by nature, and it's easy to quantify things like performance, graphics, writing, and connect that to how enjoyable the game is. Board games increasingly rely on those conventions for marketing appeal but at their heart are still almost purely mechanical and require the consumers to engage directly with those mechanics (app-driven games aside) over every other aspect. It's understandably harder to think about how games work and what makes them good or bad without being able to lean on everything else directly propping up the experience. It's a lot harder to just go along for the ride with a board game than a movie, video game, etc, and that also makes it harder to write about in a critical way.
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Nov 6, 2022 22:02
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Gonna open a game review channel where for each game you can choose between three different reviews, tailored for your particular situation:
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Nov 6, 2022 22:06
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Anyone honestly thinking games are this unique subjective construct that therefore defy practical critique are going to have their minds blown to discover that people have been meaningfully critiquing subjective things like capital-a Art (or food!) for hundreds of years.
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Nov 6, 2022 22:18
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The Eyes Have It posted:Anyone honestly thinking games are this unique subjective construct that therefore defy practical critique are going to have their minds blown to discover that people have been meaningfully critiquing subjective things like capital-a Art (or food!) for hundreds of years. Most forms of entertainment or art don’t require the audience to do something to make them work. You don’t have to be involved in the cooking to experience the taste. You don’t have to run the projector to watch the film. There’s an extra layer in physical games that the audience and critic have to engage with when most people just want a straightforward “is the game fun or not” answer which is why I think so much of the board game review sphere is lacking. I think SUSD do a good job of conveying the feel of a game without getting into much if any of that mechanical layer, which is probably why they’re successful. There’s also the social element of board gaming that makes things fuzzy. Root is one of my favorite games with experienced players, but with new players taking 10 minutes a turn it’s an absolute slog. Should that be reflected in a review or should the game be judged purely on its merits? Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 23:15
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Bottom Liner posted:Root is one of my favorite games with experienced players, but with new players taking 10 minutes a turn it’s an absolute slog. Should that be reflected in a review or should the game be judged purely on its merits? Not to be contrary, but is that not one of its merits or demerits? Playing with new players is not as fun as playing with entrenched players. The rulebook is unclear and/or has typos. The font on cards is too small. The language-independent iconography of this game takes a lot of getting used to. The big stupid tree actually just gets in the way. This game is really really mean. These are all things someone might want to know ahead of time as a part of determining if it's how they want to spend their entertainment dollar, even if they are not things that could be extracted from the pure relation of ideas that makes up the game's rules.
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Nov 6, 2022 23:34
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Bottom Liner posted:Most forms of entertainment or art don’t require the audience to do something to make them work. You don’t have to be involved in the cooking to experience the taste. You don’t have to run the projector to watch the film. There’s an extra layer in physical games that the audience and critic have to engage with when most people just want a straightforward “is the game fun or not” answer which is why I think so much of the board game review sphere is lacking. Video games. You dismissed that with "Video games are more visceral or narrative by nature, and it's easy to quantify things like performance, graphics, writing, and connect that to how enjoyable the game is." which is as far as I can tell another way of saying "I'm drawing an arbitrary line and saying videogames are different mainly because if I dont my point is obviously wrong". A videogame can have good performance, shiny graphics, passable writing (very few videogames have writing that rises above passable tbh) and still be a lovely game. A videogame can have bad graphics, run like rear end, have literally no story and still be a great game. We could just as easily say "Board games are more visual and social by nature, and its easy to quantify things like art style, production value and rules clarity and connect that to how enjoyable the game is". Add in the fact that you dont need any level of game mastery to give a full review to a board game. If you are poo poo at a board game and lose every time you can still talk about every stage beginning to end, whereas if you are mechanically bad at a video game you can only review the game up to a certain point because thats all of the game you get to see. Board games arent uniquely hard to review, its just that 99.9% of board game reviewers are loving awful, either as reviewers or as human beings, sometimes by both metrics. 99.9% of videogame reviewers are also awful, but thats a bigger base to be working from, so that 0.1% translates to a bigger number so you can find one you like more easily.
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Nov 6, 2022 23:40
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Tekopo posted:I still think that board game critique is still in its infancy, although there are some steps up. I liked SpaceBiff because basically he writes reviews like I write reviews, but even then I don't agree completly with his reviews either. In the end I enjoy SUSD videos for overviews/just pure entertainment, just ignore their recs even if I do watch their videos, and remain puzzled when they take potshots at stuff I like for no loving reason (wargames, 18XX, more complex euros). What was the dig at 18xx? Was it in the City of Big Shoulders review? I agree almost completely with your write up here. For me the tipping point was Blood on the Clocktower but their review of Western Empires/Mega Civ/Adv Civ really bugged me. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 23:41
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FulsomFrank posted:What was the dig at 18xx? I agree almost completely with your write up here. For me the tipping point was Blood on the Clocktower but their review of Western Empires/Mega Civ/Adv Civ really bugged me. There's no "the" dig, he Quins just takes sideswipes at the family at very little prompting. He likes to think of himself as an evangelist of the hobby, and that comes with some level of "I like boardgames, but not those boardgames." 18xx is those boardgames, to him.
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Nov 6, 2022 23:46
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Quinn and other people in SUSD do the thing where even though there are some very legit criticism of the 18XX community, heavy euros or (extremely legitimate, holy loving poo poo) wargaming community, they start tarring the entire community with a very broad brush. Even when they had someone with wargaming experience doing some reviews for SUSD, the reviews I read, which were modelled as conversations, were always of the "well this isn't like THOSE wargames" kind. Although it might sound like i have some animosity towards SUSD, I fully understand that they are making videos and reviews to specific audiences. The issue that I have is that every time they half-jokingly say something like "don't worry, it's not THAT kind of euro" or something like "this might look drab and boring, but...", there's a bit of me that is kinda annoyed about it, because I legit think that there are audiences for heavier game that just don't manage to enter the hobby because they get scared off, or get warned of the community, or some such thing when in reality, the kind of people that play heavier games are quite diverse, at least from my experience. In the end I just wanna see people be able to experience all sort of games: eventually their tastes will crystalise and refine and they'll know what they like and won't like, but people that scare off others from trying something, both interally (from gatekeeping) and externally (from scaremongering) can annoy me sometimes, although I hate much more the gatekeepers from the scaremongers.
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Nov 7, 2022 00:03
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Countblanc posted:I don't really share your optimism here. People don't just write about Chess, Monopoly, and Poker because theyre old, they write about it because they have an absolutely ludicrous amount of social capital behind them. Eh, the internet has made the world a smaller place. Discussion is easier than ever before so I figure that'll speed things up a little
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Nov 7, 2022 00:13
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SiKboy posted:A videogame can have bad graphics, run like rear end, have literally no story and still be a great game. I agree, they’re a broad enough medium that they can be pure mechanics or no mechanics, something board games aneb’t able to do, even heavily app driven or narrative ones. And yes, video games do require you to play them, but the mechanics on generally require you to enforce anything to make the game work. That’s exactly why so many people don’t see the point of the Slay the Spire board game adaptation, it adds a lot of overhead and time bloat to the experience that is so streamlined in video game form. The funniest 18XX dig will forever be Efka having a tantrum on twitter about the graphic design and claiming he was being harassed by train gamers and blocking anyone that said otherwise.
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Nov 7, 2022 00:34
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In terms of what I look for in reviews, there are two key things that make them useful to me: 1) Evaluation of the less subjective elements of the game - are the components cheap/shoddy, is the text on cards legible, does it take up a lot of space on the table, typical playtime, how well the game supports scaling of player count etc. (There are obviously subjective elements of this stuff, but what I mean are the things most relatively experienced people who play a lot of games would agree on) 2) Then on the more subjective side: for the kind of experience this game aims to provide, how does it stand relative to other games attempting to provide a similar experience. If its a 20 minute filler card game based around auctions is it better then For Sale/High Society? (More/less interactive, faster/slower for new players to pick up, more/less random, more/less interesting decisions, etc). If its a 2 player political CDG is it better, worse or different enough to/from Twilight Struggle? If its a DoAM how does it stand up to Kemet, Cthulu Wars etc? I find that existing biases, preferences and so forth aren't generally that big a deal if those two things are in there. I don't see much point often in the idea of game criticism in a vacuum - what makes me buy something is because i think it's one of the best games in that given niche, and that's how I recommend games too. For example, this is why I think Wingspan is not a great game - not necessarily because of any major fault (even its relative lack of interactivity could be a matter of personal preference), but because whatever experience you're looking from out of it there's probably a game that does that thing better, cheaper or faster. There is so much choice in a massive and expensive market that I think the best function of game reviews is help deal with the discovery/purchase decision problem of what to get, when almost any genre/game type is covered by numerous products in print for pretty much any number of players or playtime. For new releases I'm mostly interested in how does it stack up against everything else in the market? If I want a space 4x game, which of the six notable ones in print should I go for? Or if a 7th comes out, how does it compare with the other six? Shut up and Sit Down and So Very Wrong About Games are both fairly good about this, they both tend to note alternatives to a given game and make a case for how and why it compares. SUSD I find does tend to be a bit scattershot though re: other popular/bigger games in the market. The best recommendations for me on new games are the ones that say "Yep, this is like X but plays in half the time and is easier to learn" or "This is like X but has this mechanic from Y, which makes it more interactive than X" or "this is genuinely new and there's nothing like it on the market, but it takes 4 hours to play and has a manual the length of the Bible", or "If you like this kind of game, check out X, Y and Z all of which do this better in different ways" or "If you have exactly 6 players and like cut throat negotiation games this is right up your alley, but if you have less than 6 go play Z instead" - etc. In terms of what makes for good criticism, the comparisons to video games, films and novels etc I don't think are super useful for the most part because they are all solo activities (obviously with the exception of multiplayer video games, but even for those we tend not to think about them through the lens of what's good for a particular group dynamic or group need). It seems as useful a comparison as recommending a sport for a group of people - would they prefer to play tennis, basketball, soccer or golf? Here's the rules, equipment etc. I think considering criticism of board games as analogous to film criticism seems as useful to comparing it to sport, and one is a form of art and one is not. Games obviously have elements of both those things and maybe more narrative based games could benefit from being looked at through an art lens - how Journeys in Middle Earth holds up as a work of art could be an interesting question for an article or something. But I'm not sure it should be the core of game criticism, which to me should really surround how fun is it for a given group with a given group of preferences, relative to everything else out there. And fun includes things like matching expectations, e.g. if it looks like a game which supports a lot of strategy and in-depth decisino making but is actually totally random or unbalanced, people will find it Not Fun if that's what they were looking for out of the experience.
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Nov 7, 2022 03:14
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Magnetic North posted:Not to be contrary, but is that not one of its merits or demerits? Not being contrary, as I don’t know either way. It’s helpful for consumers to know those kinds of meta considerations, but considering that for rating a game or whatever seems like a slippery slope of rating games differently for different circumstances. Should scores be for the game under ideal circumstances? I lean towards yes. Like, Sidcon is a 10/10 game by many peoples estimations, but that comes with a lot of caveats and requirements that most people can very rarely pull together.
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Nov 7, 2022 05:10
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Bottom Liner posted:I agree, they’re a broad enough medium that they can be pure mechanics or no mechanics, something board games aneb’t able to do, even heavily app driven or narrative ones. Train gamer = ticket to ride fan?
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Nov 7, 2022 05:16
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Bottom Liner posted:Not being contrary, as I don’t know either way. It’s helpful for consumers to know those kinds of meta considerations, but considering that for rating a game or whatever seems like a slippery slope of rating games differently for different circumstances. Should scores be for the game under ideal circumstances? I lean towards yes. The majority of board games are not "good games" by any absolute metric, they're situationally good. You can have fun playing a game with your kids that you'd never take off the shelf with your wargaming crew. Meta considerations are a HUGE part of whether or not a game is going to work for any particular gamer, largely because they probably play games with a particular group of people in a particular setting. "Ideal circumstances" vary wildly from game to game, so even if you rate them under ideal circumstances you still need to discuss what those ideal circumstances are in order for that rating to have any use to anyone.
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Nov 7, 2022 05:43
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Train gamer = ticket to ride fan? Worse. 
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Nov 7, 2022 07:39
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Bottom Liner posted:Not being contrary, as I don’t know either way. It’s helpful for consumers to know those kinds of meta considerations, but considering that for rating a game or whatever seems like a slippery slope of rating games differently for different circumstances. Should scores be for the game under ideal circumstances? I lean towards yes. This is why imho 'objective' reviews culminating in a numerical rating are not the best way to do reviews, particularly for games even more so than film!
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Nov 7, 2022 11:14
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I've got a Spirit Island question. If I just want to add a 5th player to the base game, assuming I have the Jagger Earth expansion, do I just need to add the extra board and another color of player tokens?
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Nov 7, 2022 15:28
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Funzo posted:I've got a Spirit Island question. If I just want to add a 5th player to the base game, assuming I have the Jagger Earth expansion, do I just need to add the extra board and another color of player tokens? Yup, no extra changes or rules needed.
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Nov 7, 2022 15:41
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The spirits have been too timid, it's time to start the Jaeger Earth program. *enormous mechs made of earth and tree sprout from the island*
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Nov 7, 2022 16:26
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Giving every single spirit a giant mech aspect would vastly improve the game imo
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Nov 7, 2022 16:57
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I'm already getting my kid Villainous and Spirit Island for Hanukah and Christmas, because he always asks for board games where he can be a villain. (I'm aware the spirits of SI aren't the villains.) Wondering if I need one more game. Me: "Hey [kid], what do you want for the holidays?" Kid: "Board games." Me: "Yup, so you said. Any kind of board game you want?" Kid: "Can you find a game where we're villains?" Me: "You already asked for that. Anything else?" Kid: "Specifically, can we be, like, earth elementals that eat people?" Me: "... Ooh, that's a tough one. I'll see if I can find one, but that's probably pretty hard to find." gently caress, night 8 of Hanukah is going to loving rock.
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Nov 7, 2022 17:33
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