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One doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. I'm with on_and_off - modern tabletop games have too much u

One doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. I'm with on_and_off - modern tabletop games have too much upfront rule-memorization required before one can even start playing. They're actually worse than videogames in that respect, because with a videogame, at least the UI typically implicitly provides some indication of the ways that the player can interact with the game world. i.e. if I click on a unit or building in _StarCraft_, I get a panel of options for what it's capable of doing. I'm happy that so many people seem to like them, but the amount of effort that needs to be expended before the actual fun starts (and potentially throughout the game) is generally too much for me. I'd probably like them a lot if they were played on some sort of shared table display, where each player would get an interactive list of allowed actions at each turn, instead of having to constantly refer back to the manual.

vanderZwan 9y ago
> One doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. That is fair, for this I tend to rely on the same thing that I rely on for films and music: a group of friends with varying tastes in "game aesthetics", through which I can get a decent picture of a game by asking different people's opinions. It's easy to forget that this is a luxury not everyone has, though. RE: comparison to StarCraft: you're underestimating your pre-existing familiarity, forgetting that at one point you had to learn how RTSes work, and that the interface for them has not significantly changed in the last twenty years. Similarly, if you play a lot of board games, you'll notice a lot of mechanics are repeated between different games, and rules are a lot quicker to pick up than twenty minutes (it's kind of comparable to how learning programming languages becomes a lot easier after the first few). Yes, there obviously is more feedback in computer games, but on the other hand: the only reason you know how to use those units, is because they were introduced one at a time in a campaign. It is difficult to introduce a slow learning curve to boardgames, unless you start with simple rules and have an "advanced rules for experienced players" section that you can try out after a few games. That only works for a few types of games. Perhaps this is one of those things where mobile phone apps could help out?
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Yeah, this is a good point. Imagine immediately playing a game of Starcraft with no knowledge of the units and how they interact with each other and not even any real good idea of what you're supposed to do with an RTS game in the first place. You'd spend 20 minutes floundering about and get murdered by an opponent that knows what they're doing. You have to learn what each unit does and how they work together and how to get resources etc etc somewhere. Usually it's in a campaign that drip feeds the tutorial at once. A board game that's designed to be an isolated game session that plays in about an hour simply can't afford to drip feed rules to you over the session, because by the time it finished drip feeding you the rules, the game would have been finished already.
cableshaft 9y ago
I tend to watch game review videos to help me decide if a game is worth my time ahead of time. I can play a 10 minute overview while I'm doing dishes or something of that nature. Then if it seems interesting I can spend the time checking out the actual game.

vanderZwan 9y ago

> One doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. That is fair, for this I tend to rely on the same thing that I rely on for films and music: a group of friends with varying tastes in "game aesthetics", through which I can get a decent picture of a game by asking different people's opinions. It's easy to forget that this is a luxury not everyone has, though. RE: comparison to StarCraft: you're underestimating your pre-existing familiarity, forgetting that at one point you had to learn how RTSes work, and that the interface for them has not significantly changed in the last twenty years. Similarly, if you play a lot of board games, you'll notice a lot of mechanics are repeated between different games, and rules are a lot quicker to pick up than twenty minutes (it's kind of comparable to how learning programming languages becomes a lot easier after the first few). Yes, there obviously is more feedback in computer games, but on the other hand: the only reason you know how to use those units, is because they were introduced one at a time in a campaign. It is difficult to introduce a slow learning curve to boardgames, unless you start with simple rules and have an "advanced rules for experienced players" section that you can try out after a few games. That only works for a few types of games. Perhaps this is one of those things where mobile phone apps could help out?

cableshaft 9y ago
Yeah, this is a good point. Imagine immediately playing a game of Starcraft with no knowledge of the units and how they interact with each other and not even any real good idea of what you're supposed to do with an RTS game in the first place. You'd spend 20 minutes floundering about and get murdered by an opponent that knows what they're doing. You have to learn what each unit does and how they work together and how to get resources etc etc somewhere. Usually it's in a campaign that drip feeds the tutorial at once. A board game that's designed to be an isolated game session that plays in about an hour simply can't afford to drip feed rules to you over the session, because by the time it finished drip feeding you the rules, the game would have been finished already.

cableshaft 9y ago

I tend to watch game review videos to help me decide if a game is worth my time ahead of time. I can play a 10 minute overview while I'm doing dishes or something of that nature. Then if it seems interesting I can spend the time checking out the actual game.