Well it's that time of year again when I have to spend like 6 hours doing battle with the printer to get the Spawn's graphs and crap to print out, and then call Francie Pants and beg to borrow some glue or tape or anything that will stick stuff to the damn board. She always has stuff like that. I have tape and glue too, but I can never find it when I need it. When I call, Francie asks if I want to play something when I come over to get the glue, but I have to say no because of Fucking Science Fair.

I used to spend some time over Thanksgiving weekend editing my game wish list. The list used be long, filled with games about which I knew only a little bit, but which sounded interesting. 

Games give me new and interesting ways to interact with other people. This is the difference between e-games and board games. While the increased sophistication of e-games seduces and immerses players into their increasingly elaborate worlds, they are all worlds inhabited by one. Even multiplayer games provide only a hint of the human interaction that occurs when people can meet each other's eye over a table and read each others facial expressions, tone of voice and body language. 

We had a couple of  hours to kill while the Spawn was at a school function, so we went to a nearby Barnes and Nobel to hang and drink over-priced coffee. I was sitting near the games, listening to people as they shopped, because I'm nosey like that, and discovered something interesting about why people buy games and how they make their choices.

The Spawn related the following story to me today.