As all the faithful readers of my weblog will know (all two of you), I am a big fan of german or german style strategy board games - the ones with the designer's name on the cover. I recently bought Carcassonne at Brettspill.no. It's a great game that is a new favourite of my wife (I still think I must place Puerto Rico first, but it's apples and oranges anyway).
I then discovered that the new fancy computer game store in town, EB games, actually stocks it in their tiny selection of german-style games. Doh! I wasted some shipping money there. Ah well, I suppose Nils Håkon is happy. (Perhaps that's why he suggested I buy Tigris & Euphrates next time? A good suggestion it is anyway)
I found this article in an online game magazine. It's really sensible. I'm glad to see I'm not the only gamer that gets irked by "closed holdings", semi-secret game information that can be tracked if you're really rabid about winning. In my opinion, the semi-secret victory points is the only weakness in Puerto Rico (of we keep them open anyway). Not that tracking information in this way isn't an interesting challenge, but if it's there, it should be a main part of the game. Adding it on as an afterthought to a game that already has 99% public information is a design fault in my eyes.
When googling for a link I found out that there are other strategy gamers in Langevåg. They're even computer scientists as well! :-)
I'll almost have to contact them somehow.
This is pretty unrelated, but I loved this idea for a strategy game where the goal is to keep the peace - not to wage war.
Some games already to this to some extent (like civ), but they never go far enough.
I want more games for pacifists XD.
Waah, Movable Type ate my link.
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2005/01/27/peacecraft.html
It seems to me that the vast majority of german board games are not very warlike, apparently this is because germans play a lot with their children. They certainly manage to create tension and competition without violence in the board game industry, something which can not be said of computer games... As to actively keeping the peace... perhaps it would be possible but I think people accept ridiculous simplifications of how to wage war easier than they accept ridiculous simplifications of how to make peace.
Which may be part of the big issue, really.
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at February 3, 2005 05:50 PM