"Joe and Bob"

Extra, extra: Elitist Eurogamer, Despite Best Attempts, Can't Stop Friends From Enjoying Games; Garners Praise for Trying:
www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...m_rosen_joe_and_bob/

This article is like a treasure cache of Eurogamer cliches: the paragraph where he talks about tiring quickly of games and wanting something new and shiny, the part where he looks down on people who want to get deeply involved in a game...yow.

I'm shaken by Larry Levy's correct response - I'm glad someone said it. Another thing that Tom doesn't bother thinking - hell it probably never even crossed his mind - maybe he was shoving the wrong shit at them. Here's a big fucking hint: one of them kinda likes Risk. Why shove some some boring abstract piece of shit his way instead? He wants to conquer the world! Give him the new Risk - oh wait. That's one of the games Tom thinks Americans shouldn't have in their cupboard. Dolt.

Now THAT is professor Euro.

Wow, yet another long-winded article on how mainstream 'gamers' don't want to learn new games. Some of the reasons are obviously spurious (e.g. lawyers claiming learning rules are too hard), so they're (a) set in their ways, and (b) yanking his chain somewhat. So what? It's hardly uncommon.

Surely this belongs in the wanker thread.

That guy is really full of shit. Lawyers think the rules are too hard? Give me a break. I bet your accountant friends don't like Lost Cities because there is too much math in the scoring too.

He never even considers that maybe he isn't giving chess, risk, and scrabble their due? That perhaps the reason they are so popular is that they are better, deeper, meatier games than TTR, Carc, and SoCatan?

I bet "Joe and Bob" play Axis and Allies and other games but don't invite Tom Rosen because they know he would just try to convince them how much better Alhambra is.

Make sure you read the comments all the way to the end. Clearclaw shows up in full form.

Motheragod, Dragonstout! Don't link me to infernal madness like that! And Clearclaw himself chimed in with his usual who-gives-a-fuck bullshit. Some claptrap about how he's going to get into more "combinatoric" games. Madre del dios, does anybody take that twat seriously? I'm sorry, I have to post his response here just so we can drag it out and beat it to death in public-

Marginal returns and (d)evolutionary sequences.

Back when I knew few games I focused on learning new games to the exclusion of almost all other gaming. If it was new I learned it. When I knew only 4 games, learning that 5th game was a 25% increase in my gaming horizons. When I new 20 games, the 21st was only a 5% increase. It is an asymptotic curve and pretty soon the percentage gain for each new game is proximal to zero. After a while I pulled back on playing new games, on playing a wide variety of games and instead focussed on repeat plays of games I’d learned and liked. The CultOfTheNew’s marginal return was too small to continue with.

Unsurprisingly the RepeatPlaySchool is going through the same progression. The more I focus on repeat plays, the more the core value generation of those repeat plays distils to an ever-decreasing set of games. Again, the ever decreasing marginal returns are generating an asymptotic series. There’s an increasing litany of great games, games I really like, but also games that somehow offer just that little bit less than some other great familiar game and thus don’t get played. The circle narrows progressively and focus is visibly tightening; it is (d)evolution in practice.

Some months back I realised with some surprise that the 18xx are comfort games for me. They are the gaming equivalent of creamed hamburger and mashed potatoes, of Sloppy Joes, of Kielbasa and spiced red cabbage, of salty Dutch licorice: the games that feel like coming home. Increasingly the other game types are falling out. Oh, they’re clever and neat and...just not very interesting. They certainly don’t afford the opportunity for the sort of deliberative brutality and graceful social atmosphere that collects around a good 18xx game and that’s what I’m increasingly looking for. While I’m not there yet, I can see where the road is heading, where the other non-18xx gaming increasingly becomes a sort of canned set of ExcuseGaming when I can’t get an 18xx on the table.

What’s the next evolution after this? I don’t know. I suspect that it will be a move to combinatoric games, in particular Go & Shogi. I could well be wrong though as there’s quite a long road to travel before I get there.

There's just so much to attack there, so little time. He's like the guy who, instead of saying "I woke up, felt like shit, and put my socks on" says "I arose ere dawn, contemplated Sartre whilst sloughing off the vestiges of sleep, and then donned a pair of foot-sheathes." Just to sound "smart". The problem is that when you try to sound smart you just sound like a fucking idiot. He is everything that is bad about this whole "board games indicate to others how smart I am" way of thinking.

Michael Barnes wrote:

He's like the guy who, instead of saying "I woke up, felt like shit, and put my socks on" says "I arose ere dawn, contemplated Sartre whilst sloughing off the vestiges of sleep, and then donned a pair of foot-sheathes." Just to sound "smart".

But it's all about context. If I'm reading a book, I'd much rather read the latter sentence than the former for all sorts of reasons, regardless of whether it's because the author only wrote it that way because it sounded smart.

I'll grant you that he's dressed up that little speech is a ridiculously convoluted ways. Which is unfortunate because what he's actually saying is accurate and rather interesting. And in truth he's not the only one fond of over-dressing argument: I do it all the time.

Jesus, look at this mess, Barnes. Now you've got me defending Clearclaw. JUST LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!

I totally lured you into it. Because what he's saying underneath all the folderol is true. It also really demonstrates all that is Clearclaw in that he dressed it up in a graduation gown and mortar board to impress somebody. I don't know who.

Michael Barnes wrote:

I totally lured you into it. Because what he's saying underneath all the folderol is true. It also really demonstrates all that is Clearclaw in that he dressed it up in a graduation gown and mortar board to impress somebody. I don't know who.

You're both too generous to Clearclaw. He's clearly mentally ill.

Sorry for being so on-the-nose, but I kind of feel badly for him.

The author is so full of shit that I don't even know where to begin. Its like reading a Borg who doesn't understand why everyone wouldn't want to be Borg too. And then trying everything he possibly can to assimilate those innocent people into the collective.

dragonstout wrote:

Extra, extra: Elitist Eurogamer, Despite Best Attempts, Can't Stop Friends From Enjoying Games; Garners Praise for Trying:
www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...m_rosen_joe_and_bob/

*facepalm*

Mad Dog wrote:

The author is so full of shit that I don't even know where to begin. Its like reading a Borg who doesn't understand why everyone wouldn't want to be Borg too. And then trying everything he possibly can to assimilate those innocent people into the collective.

I think that this goes back to the Founding Myths of the Eurogame movement. Years ago, when it was difficult to buy European boardgames in English-speaking countries, there was envy of the German market. Fans of the German games sought to understand why these games were unavailable in (for example) US shops. The reasoning was that the US market for boardgames had been distorted by Hasbro's near monopoly over it, while the German retail market -- which was not dominated by Hasbro -- had not been subject to that distorting effect. As a result -- the theory goes -- boardgames gradually improved in Germany, while US gamers were still playing with pre-WWII game designs like MONOPOLY.

In a way, it's actually a classical Marxist argument. Marx talked about how the wealthy and powerful distorted a society's values and its perception of history to justify their continued hegemony. The Eurogamers were saying that, by preventing English speakers from learning about the German games, Hasbro was promoting "false" values about boardgames, like the idea that games have to have dice and paper money, or whatever. This is one of the reasons that MONOPOLY is so reviled. It's the instrument by which the boardgame proletariat have supposedly been enslaved.

Like any true believer, these Eurogamers think that the rightness of their cause is obvious, and that all they need to do to convert a newbie to Eurogames is to expose him to the right "gateway." The scales will fall from the newbie's eyes, and a Eurogamer will be born. When this doesn't actually happen, the true believer is so astounded that he is moved to write about it on BGN. The Eurogamer party line is deeply ingrained. Other apparatchiks then step forward and opine that the newbie who refused to play ALHAMBRA, or whatever, is not truly a gamer, in spite of the fact that he is a Scrabble and Chess enthusiast.

Bullwinkle wrote:

Make sure you read the comments all the way to the end. Clearclaw shows up in full form.

What the hell was that "creamed hamburger" that Clearclaw mentioned? Is that what they serve on the Borg ship these days?