One Good Step of Designing Games

Came up the notion of seriously designing games and committed some efforts in doing so in late 2006. Some prototypes of card games in various genres were developed and some of which were playtested even. One or two of these designs were apparently okay but not yet mature.

This evening Pong and I finally sat down together and solely for the purpose of putting game designs in action. The collaboration today was pretty constructive. We threw away any previous ideas but started it afresh. Pong suggested to make a game by consider two existing speed games. Given with a direction, I could always generate concepts towards it. And it's good that Pong and I possessed quite good exposure and know-how knowledges about various games. An initial idea was proposed and was then explored further with a couple of iterations to reach a potential core. Several important play issues were addressed and resolved one by one, including how to prevent the very unwanted play styles. The evolution of a looking decent design was about to conclude this 2 hours collaboration. The next step would be arranging a situation to playtest with a prototype card deck. Pong made a remark that it would be big progress if we could consolidate a design each time we had a workgroup meeting.

I gave it a working name "Threez" to remind me about this design for the moment. No theme have been added yet.

Ref: JESS: Eight games, six publishers and a title in a newspaper

It's not often you can hear news about the gaming culture outside US and Germany. The captioned link is an article about the JdA 2006, Spanish Game of the Year Award. It's not merely a listing of nominees. It's actually edited with viewpoints and brief analysis about the Spanish market and industrial trend.

Ref: Convention Preview News: Two New Catan Titles for Nuremberg

It's a bit exciting to hear about the coming a dice game from the Catan franchise. Apparently the German game publishers started to think more elaborative use of dice as a core mechanism in their game designs. Apart from Alhmbra: The Dice Game from Queen, there is now a Catan: The Dice Game. Looking forward to seeing more information about how dice build up the very famous mother game.

Ref: Age of Empires III - Back on the Schedule

I have been enjoying miniature boardgames from Eagle Games. However, Eagle Games declared its bankruptcy last year. The possibility about having Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery and Sid Meier's Pirates!: The Boardgame became a mystery in the industry. Glenn Drover, the designer of these two games, recently announced his cooperation with Pro Ludo which will carry out the release of AOE III in March. It's a good news to me and to many fans of American strong-themed boardgames. I enjoyed Glenn's previous games including Age of Mythology: The Boardgame, Railroad Tycoon, and Sid Meier's Civilization - The Boardgame. AOE III will be under my radar and perhaps it will be added to my collection once the production and its gameplay is proven. It's getting rare to have someone like Glenn showing strong enthusiasm for strong themed complex games which I love more in favor than typical contemporary eurogames.

Ref: Pascal's Wager & the Agnostic's Lemma

What happens when a gamer mind meets a philosopher mind? It was an occassion to come across the weblog of Chris Bateman. Chris is a game designer, philosopher and author. Today I found his latest post relating religion with game theory. If you are not the type of easily being offended, you may read it for fun and perhaps some insights. Let's make the world a better place.

The best bet is to live your life with a focus on making the world a better place. If there is no God, you will have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him.

- the Atheist's Wager

The picture above was found from Chris's blog. I suppose it's named God's Dice. I really love it. Please note that I am not the owner of this picture, and I currently have no idea who's its owner. I am fine to take it down if the owner does not like the re-posting here.

Poker - Texas Hold'em

As a James Bond fan in heart, I went to watch latest James Bond movies, Casino Royale 007. I am not going to discuss about the story here. My focus is however about the many scenes about playing poker in the movie. There story is about James Bond attending a poker contest which runs for a couple of days in a private casino. Texas Hold'em is played. Most Hong Kong people do not know Texas Hold'em. Instead, they are mostly misled by the local gambling-themed movies which usually play a card game called Show Hand. I am glad to see Texas Hold'em (or Poker hereafter) in the movie. Not just because I know this game, but actually I like this game which demands a good combination of risk management and betting skills. Imaging yourself to be a patient player and having to play a series of several days, you can easily realize the need of skills instead of card luck. Moreover, the community cards give players good hints and deriving tactics, as well as making more addictive and exciting hands. You might have seen the Two Pairs which got beaten by a straight, which then got beaten by a flush and another full house in the same hand. I have read a few books and some online articles about how to play poker well. I also tried to play it at home with some friends once or twice. The experience was pretty good, and I was usually the winner at the end. Typical Eurogamers usually dislike poker games because of luck element. I incline to treat risk management as a crucial skills in playing games and in competing in the real life society.

To Court the King - In the Pipeline

There were production errors found in dice game To Court the King causing that it had been pulled from distribution in November 2006 by Rio Grande Games. After two months effort in fixing the errors, the game should be in the stores soon. That would be nice to add this game to enlarge my dice game collection.

WizKids Goes Exclusive with Diamond and Alliance Distributors

WizKids announced that it has entered an exclusive distribution agreement with Diamond Comics Distributors and Alliance Game Distributors for its products. As a consumer and prospect gaming industry participant, I viewed it as a bad news which limits distribution to a single-choice source.

Booty from Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair 2007

It was the last day of the games fair today. I paid a visit there again to check out if there would be something which I could get at reasonable price. I first accompanied Pang to get a copy of Tipp-Kick Junior, which was a football kicking game with a special 14-sided-die-shaped ball. I hesitated about it at the first moment, but went to Zoch's booth. Luckily, I saw the last copy of Doktor Schlüsselbart there. I bought it together with a copy of Bamboleo as well, without paying the shipping cost.

Even though I had got some spoils from Zoch, there was a continual struggle about getting Tipp-Kick Junior. A spiritual force drove my legs to move to MIEG booth again. They were busy packing up their goods as the fair was nearly closed. Luck bestowed again. There was still one copy displayed on the shelf. At more delay, I got it to enlarge my collection. The guys there were so nice, and they gave me spare balls for free. They told me that 200,000 copies of Tipp-Kick had been sold worldwide.

Merrily grabbing the games with my pair of hands, I visited SMART booth again before leaving the games fair. Made another nice conversation with Lin Hao. He would visit Nuremberg next month. He told me that this toys fair in Hong Kong was the second largest in the world. The fair in Nuremberg would have a size doubled than Hong Kong's. I would keep communication with him so that I could learn more about the gaming events.

Rating Systems get a 2 out of 5

Frank Branham, a columnist from Boardgamenews, recently wrote to comment about the usefulness of rating systems, particularly aiming at BGG's. I somewhat agreed to him that public ratings especially those with more than 5 rating categories were not very much indicative. On one hand, game popularity usually affected the tendency of ratings from general public. On the other hand, I had been giving ratings for hundred games. It's getting more difficult to differentiate the ratings among individual games in a 10-point scale. Games could not be compared one-to-one, which created difficulties in making consistent ratings. The utmost issue found from BGG rating system was the vague and useless description for the rating values. Anyway, I would keep giving ratings to games I played. Though the ratings from other sources were not indicative to the true value of the games, I would treat these ratings as a reference from the general perceptions.

Renting Games in Claremont, California

Game rental is a nice idea to lower the barrier for the mass to get into hobby games. When a new boardgame comes into market, general gamers may find difficult to judge the value of a game before trying it. You can imagine the situation for a non-gamer to decide before he makes a purchase. I have been working hard to establish my reputation such that my friends could rely on my professional recommendations before seeing a game. For game shops, renting games seems a good way to acquire more potential customers. According to the interview, this shop in California does very well with game renting. Nevertheless, IMHO, it is very difficult to replicate the game renting model to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair 2007

I have been dreaming to attend some world's biggest and recognizable game conventions and toy fairs. It's still a dream, which I am unable to afford it yet. Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair 2007 is a local event. Though its scale is not comparable to the top class ones, it's the biggest in Hong Kong. I attended this games fair with Pang today. There were no good some items coming out like a spark to me. No appealing boardgames like those appeared in Essen or Nuremberg. Nonetheless, there were a few companies whose staffs were so kind and impressed me so much.

Lin Hao from SMART, an educational toys maker based in Belgium, greeted us very kindly. He introduced us the two most famous product lines, SmartGames and Project GIPF. He's very enthusiastic and told me a preview of some coming-soon products. The conversation was good and I shared some of my views on products. I often recommended SmartGames to some parents because some of their games could be found in local department stores and Toys"R"Us.

Zoch is renowned of producing smart games with very visually attractive appearances or bits. This time they had smaller booth located together as Germany Pavillion. At the booth, Christine Lochbrunner from Zoch explained some good games to us. I was particularly attracted by a clever sensory boardgame, called Doctor Key-Bit or Doktor Schlüsselbart. I was curious about this game on the shelf as I had not yet seen the name. Christine was so nice. She opened a copy and demostrated the game to me. I even got a chance to try it with her. The core mechanism of this game was to unseenly search an appropriate wooden key governing the movement of the wizard piece, to help collecting potions within the castle game board. It sounded silly or too simple, but it's not the truth. The sensing was not too difficult to kids, not too easy to adults. It's fun packed. The right game which I had been looking for as to train the intuition and sensory.

I am a fan of Ravensburger which makes lots very cute and playable plastic games but with a low price tag. The booth was a little bit bigger and filled with quite many different games on the shelf. I went into the booth to check out if there was anything new to me. Luckily I did enter the booth, and therefore I met Hermann Bruns, the export manager of Ravensburger. Hermann was an amazingly funny guy, and I was enchantingly impressed by his "Magic Pen". He also gave us a try for the Make 'N Break game. It worked great and I loved it, still waiting for my shipment of this game. After the trial game, he explained in detail the gameplay of Scottland Yard. I liked this game for long, and particularly loved the components of this edition. Before we left the booth, Hermann showed us a 2007 new game, Chuck-it Chicken. After his briefing, my friend Christine and I were all so excited to know about this game. I would definite plan to get one.

Apart from the visits of these three very nice booths, there were no many other items which truly caught my attention, except the following three items. I saw a large version of Loopin' Louis which would be distributed by an Indian toy company. A down-sized Crokinole, which had a diameter of 1 feet long, was found. It's a nice replacement for small house space, but I would still be interested at the regular Crokinole. I also found a puck-pushing game. The pucks were manipulated by a steel ball, such that they could roll along the wooden track. It looked gorgeous, and high price was assumed.

Spent a couple of hours to walk through the fair. Not many noteworthy games were found, but the experience was good and would likely keep me visiting it again next year. I wish I would one day attend Essen or other games fairs at the equivalent scale. Even much more expected to attend them as a game designer than a usual visitor.

Can't Stop - New from Ravensburger

Sid Sackson was the most admirable game master in the 20th century. He created a wide variety of great games. You can find modern games sharing many similarities from the core concepts designed by Sid. Can't Stop was one of his masterpieces some decades ago. It was apparently a very silly simple dice game, but you could find it very addictive because of its subtle strategic decisions. This year several companies are bringing it back to life. Face 2 Face Games will publish a new English edition in March 2007. Ravensburger will release its European version in Feburary at the Nuremberg fair. I anticipate for the Ravensburger edition as it brings a retro look of the game.

Purchased My First Microbadge

Dice! Dice! Dice! When people acquainted me as a gamer, I would tell I am also a dice collector and dinosaur collector. When BGG gave me a chance to own a microbadge for my profile, it came to mind to get a representative one for being a dice lover. Unexpectedly there was no such microbadge for dice fans. Dice are very representative and commonly found accessories used in many classic and mordern games. A request was written to BGG forum and someone did help making one beautiful microbadge for the purpose. I have to thank Herb Petro (mentis) for his kindness. Now I can have a very representative microbadge added to my BGG profile (tonyfung1205).

The Pillars of the Earth - Coming from Mayfair Games

An English edition of Kosmos' Die Säulen der Erde will be released by Mayfair Games. The game has received pretty good reviews. Derek, my friend, is very keen on this game and want to buy a copy. No release date has been announced yet however.

Mesopotamia Expansion Cards

Mayfair Games announced the Mesopotamia Expansion Cards which adds 7 new cards to the base game Mesopotamia: Craddle of Civilization. Mesopotamia: Craddle of Civilization was published in 2005, which is designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, the designer of Carcassonne. It is a action-point boardgame set in the Mesopotamia age. You try to lead your people to build up a clan by collecting valuable resources, and at the same time to bring offerings to the magnificient temple.

Mayfair Games is selling the expansion cards at US$3 from their website. It's a rather small expansion. There is a rumor that it may be given away together with the Games Quarterly Magazine, but I doubt.

Twilight Imperium 3rd - Preset Maps

Twilight Imperium 3rd edition (TI3) is a heavy boardgame set in a galactic world. You can find multiple elements, like politics, diplomacy, economy, technology, military, integrated into a single game. Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), the publisher of TI3, announced a downloadable set of preset maps for setting up TI3. The preset maps offer a balanced but still configurable galaxy. There is also a very interesting way to construct a setup map for a 5-player game. The multi-galaxy maps are creative and produce a different kind of strategic tension.

The news of this extention is so welcome.

Gra Gra Company Needs Another Name

Z-Man Games acquired the rights for publishing the English version of Gra Gra Company which was first brought to the Essen 2006 by a Japan company. Z-Man Games is now looking for a more marketable name for this game which will be published in May 2007. Whoever submits the winning name will receive a copy of the game. You may check out the Z-Man Games website for submission details.

Strategy of Rock Paper Scissors

When I did my regular browse on BGG tonight, I ran into an interesting discussion thread (you may follow the title link). It talked about Rock Paper Scissors (RPS). Some readers were surprised by the claim of existence of strategy at playing RPS. They misbelieved that RPS was a mere random act, and could not admit the use of strategies.

I have studied a bit about this before. From a psychological view, there are well-known techniques to influence a RPS decision. There are also well-perceived patterns of RPS decisions, say a tendency to play Rock more often. These make RPS decisions no longer pure random results. It is particularly true if multiple games are counted than playing just a single game.

Game theory also suggests that a strategy of pure random actions is an inferior one. Randomized decisions generally makes below-average results, because such strategy does not take into account your opponent's model. Most people cannot understand this well. They even believe random is optimal at the situation of uncertainty. There are many researches and studies showing that it is not the fact. There are some good players who are capable of winning RPS more often.

To further support the idea, there is an annaul programming competition about computer RPS algorithms. Random is hence justified by the competition results that it is not an optimal strategy. It may not be the worst one, but never the best one neither.

As a side note, there are often situations in gaming which your opponent is asked to randomly draw a card from your hand. At the very first glance, it sounds like a random pick. However, there usually exists behavior pattern as discussed in social psychology. I sometimes make use of this piece of knowledge to arrange my hand of cards and "direct" him to "randomly" pick the card I intented. It works fine more than 50% of the time.

New Year 2007 Resolutions

Happy New Year 2007 to you all. It has already entered 2007 for 3 hours in Hong Kong. I have some resolutions regarding gaming.

1. Record (not buy) at least 100 more games from my existing game collection onto BGG.
2. Give ratings to at least 50 games on BGG.
3. Give comments to at least 50 games on BGG.
4. Record all games I play on BGG.
5. Try to write game reviews or session reports.
6. Try to be a columist about gaming in a local magazine.
7. Explore the possibility to publish a book on gaming.
8. Work out to publish a game of my design.
9. Acquaint a few more capable and smart gamers with good attitude.
10. Play more games than buying. Particularly play more old and rarely played games and heavier games.
11. Study more about the educational aspects of games.
12. Research more games suitable for a couple.
13. Keep this blog alive and active, and well-organized.
14. Brief the naming of this blog.

Sounds too many items mentioned, but I do wish I can manage them well all this year. Keeping writing this blog is utterly important as I wish to practice more on writing. Some of the resolutions aim to help reinforcing my knowledge on gaming and turning into expertise. Lastly, my dream is to make gaming somewhat at certain extent into (at least part of) my career.

Let see how it go, and let me do an evaluation at the end of 2007.