Before moving to France I remember discussions we had amongst my board gaming friends in Bergen on “Could it be possible, and more importantly practical and enjoyable, to continue playing board games over the internet?” Sure one can play games online here and there, in real time, like Puerto Rico or Go, or even at slower pace, like Through the Desert, but the experience remains entirely virtual. The mouse and keyboard can hardly replace the wooden pieces found in a real game… What if we could use webcams and multiple copies of the real game in question? (Technically this has been done for ages with correspondence chess.) What kind of games could one play? Would the the game need to be a game like Caylus or Puerto Rico, or even Go, where all the information is open to all the players, or could one devise a system to transmit hidden information - like cards drawn and such to players afar by for example having someone at the “main game” showing them to a webcam? This has so far remained an experiment of thought, and we’ve continued to play virtual games when needed. Until now…
Continue reading ‘Board Gaming 2.0′
Archive for the 'Board games' Category
Being a big fan of games on both boards and consoles, I’ve been following closely the latest joint venture of Sony, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast; The Eye of Judgment. This is basically a tactical card game that can be played using the PlayStation3 to help out with the book-keeping and spicing up the game with battle animations. The result looks very much like the chess-like game seen in Star Wars - parodied so brilliantly somewhere in Season 2 of Fururama. Anyway, here’s some initial impressions of the game.
Continue reading ‘Horsie to pointy guy six’
Spring, or rather pre-spring (not really winter here in Lyon this year), has made me want to focus on two video games that I have been neglecting lately; good old Photoshop and Cubase!
Continue reading ‘Spring’
“Inspired” by where the debate in the keelwater of my “I’m beginning to see the lite…”-post has gone, I feel the need to define some concepts once and for all (,pompous as it may seem) - or at least give it a healthy try.
Continue reading ‘“Open or closed gamers?”, that is the question…’
Three weeks ago I finally took the step beyond “knowing the rules” of Go and started the long journey towards understanding the game. This had been my wish for quite a long while, but I needed a little help from a friend to show me how it plays on a real goban and give me insight into some of it’s intricacies. Now I’m reading books and articles on Go, watching an animé on Go, playing Go against the computer as well as real persons online and live. I also see traces of Go while walking around in the world or playing other board games. Scary!
Continue reading ‘Go’
Gamasutra has just published an in depth look on the relationship between style and substance in games. The author of the article defines substance, in short, as the “rules of the game” - the gameplay and style as the rest - theme, sound, graphics etc. He makes a point of that style can be used to facilitate the learning of the rules of the games. We touched this here in gglob earlier, when discussing Storytelling and games based on Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun…”.
Continue reading ‘Substance and style in games’
Since I didn’t get to post anything yesterday, I’ll take an easy way out today so that I’m sure I get at least one post. Here’s a collection of interresting links I’ve gotten from friends the last day or so. Enjoy.
D’accord… I’m following the soap opera of the launch of the seventh generation game consoles for the home. The three big ones are competing for consumers attention by all means. This weekend Nintendo’s CEO is going to talk at the Tokyo Game Show for the first time ever. So people speculate: Is he going to reveal more about their mysterious Revolution? Maybe he will show the audience the mythical controller for this new machine? Maybe there’s a tilt sensing gyro in it? Exciting!
Continue reading ‘Game idea: Console-launch game’
One of the games I really hoped would come to my Nintendo DS seems to be arriving just in time for Christmas this year; Go!
Continue reading ‘Drool: Ultimate Brain Games DS’
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