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× A place for boardgame traitors.

Puzzle Strike Missionaries

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15 Feb 2013 15:43 #144309 by dysjunct
I am a big fan of Yomi and Puzzle Strike, but I'm down the general consensus here. My Yomi review is still the #1 review of the game at BGG, and I had a stupid email exchange with Sirlin over it as well. One of the things he took exception to was my joke about him displaying the Dunning-Kreuger effect (where incompetent people vastly overestimate their competence, but more competent people are more accurate in their self-assessments).

Yet I think this has just been proven more accurate over the intervening years. Sirlin is at best a mediocre marketer, a mediocre publisher, and a nightmarishly awful PR guy. But he thinks he's amazing at all those things, and refuses to get better people than him to do it. The best thing he could have done was to have FFG or some other big player to do all the logistics so that he could concentrate on what he's good at, development. And to contractually obligate him to shut up in public.

I have zero doubt that Yomi would be much bigger than it is if it had been sold much more like Blue Moon (starter set, expansion decks) than its current structure. And if Sirlin had gone with standard card stock, realizing that hardcore players would sleeve anyway, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel on nerd game card quality. And if he'd skipped over the stupid laser-etched wood phase of his design, perhaps realizing that there's a reason why that isn't a popular format in the industry. And, and, and....

As far as ripoffs go, I do think Sirlin has a case for incremental improvement of existing designs. There's plenty of repurposing of others' ideas in the hobby, although he is especially crass in his attitudes towards Knizia and Vaccarino. The worst offense of his, I think, is in his shameless stealing of the Dominion chip graphic design:

boardgamegeek.com/image/395648/dominion

The other major issue is that by focusing so much on the mythical tournament scene (mythical for Sirlin's games anyway, because there's been few or no tournaments for his games outside of his core group of fans holding online tournaments between themselves), he neglects to make his games accessible to the casual player, which in turn prevents a large enough user base to ever develop into a tournament scene. Yes, some games that are fun in a casual setting break down when played at very high levels. But no games that are not fun in a casual setting get played in significant numbers at very high levels. The only Sirlin game that qualifies for this is Flash Duel. Yomi has opaque and needlessly complicated rules around jokers, and feels random until you get about 20+ games under your belt. Puzzle Strike is a nightmare to teach because of all the little symbols and the several layers of complication laid on top of Dominion's clean turn structure.

Anyway, I'll still continue to play his games, but I won't actually buy them until their development cycle seems stable. If they go a year or two without a new edition, then that seems pretty safe. Until then I'll play other games; it's not like there's a shortage in the hobby. Or on my shelves, for that matter.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Almalik, Gary Sax, OldHippy, wadenels

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15 Feb 2013 15:54 - 15 Feb 2013 15:56 #144310 by SuperflyPete
I now wish I had written a review so he could irritate me with his blathering complaints, at which point I would verbally buffet him and publicly humiliate him. Maybe that's not possible, though, because it sounds like he has no shame.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirlin

Wonder who wrote that Wiki page.
Last edit: 15 Feb 2013 15:56 by SuperflyPete.

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15 Feb 2013 16:13 #144317 by dysjunct

SuperflyTNT wrote: I now wish I had written a review so he could irritate me with his blathering complaints, at which point I would verbally buffet him and publicly humiliate him. Maybe that's not possible, though, because it sounds like he has no shame.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirlin

Wonder who wrote that Wiki page.


That's just begging for an edit describing Flash Duel and Puzzle Strike as unlicensed bootleg versions.

According to that wiki page, Sirlin is a pretty accomplished guy. Two degrees from MIT, and was a major contributor to several famous video game franchises. Yet he apparently can't take criticism very well, judging by his need to privately email anyone over a perceived slight.

Like Stan Lee said, with great ego comes great fragility.

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15 Feb 2013 16:17 #144319 by OldHippy
His horrible PR skills and giant ego kind of make me like him more than I should. I could care less about his games, they're good games but I don't love them or anything. But this obsession with negative press is hilarious and his ability to believe in himself is borderline admirable.

He's a real character and that's worth something, plenty of designers are boring nobodies that we never hear from, his honesty (or unfiltered opinions) are refreshing.

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15 Feb 2013 16:26 #144323 by Michael Barnes
Yeah, I love all this fuss about the "tournament scene"...there is no scene. It's bullshit. Very, very few people are playing any of these games in any kind of tournament setting and if there are any occuring offline, I've yet to hear about them.

Some of that comes out of fighting games, since that's such a big deal there...so it's really sort of a marketing thing "hey look, you can play this game in a tournament like Evo"

99.9999% of board gamers couldn't care less about any kind of "tournament scene", and most CCG players that are into that are locked down into Magic and nothing else.

I would love to hear the actual sales figures for Yomi and Puzzle Strike.

JJ is kind of right, it's rare that we see this kind of bullshit rockstar attitude in game designers....it's kind of amusing.

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15 Feb 2013 18:43 #144347 by Space Ghost

Michael Barnes wrote:
JJ is kind of right, it's rare that we see this kind of bullshit rockstar attitude in game designers....it's kind of amusing.


I am amused by it when it comes from someone with a resume to back it up; otherwise, it is off-putting (I deal with enough of this shit in academia, where everyone is a self-proclaimed genius). Anyone want a copy of Puzzle Strike for anything? I off-loaded Yomi for Dragon Pass - so that is one down and one to go.

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15 Feb 2013 18:53 #144349 by iguanaDitty
Maybe he is actually marketing to video game fighter players who know him from that scene. I wonder if he has a hardcore following in that sub-sub-sub genre.

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15 Feb 2013 19:14 #144352 by sornars

iguanaDitty wrote: Maybe he is actually marketing to video game fighter players who know him from that scene. I wonder if he has a hardcore following in that sub-sub-sub genre.


He does have a rabidly loyal fan base in the world of fighting games.

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16 Feb 2013 08:28 #144429 by ThirstyMan
Latest Yomi online tournament starts today.

There are 12 entrants to date (10 hours until the start)

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17 Feb 2013 11:22 #144463 by Erik Twice
I have defended him a bit on the past but nowadays it's clear he fell into the Kricfalusi trap, a place he's never getting out of.

You guys have probably heard of John Kicfalusi, the Canadian animator responsible for Ren and Stimpy. He's good at his job, very good. Amazing. Yet he's surrounded by unskilled people who insist on contradicting basic principles of animation. "Oh, you can't do that stretch and sqautch, that's too Tex Avery-like!", "Why does your character look so weird in this inbetween?", "What's up with the funky colors?". And he gets fed, very fed up and starts thinking he shouldn't listen to anyone.

So he got increasingly stingy and increasingly self-centered in his arguments. He tried to explain, but he was a poor communicator, you can't write good articles if you presume the reader is wrong and even a moron. You start developing feminist bingos or chastize people as scrubs. When you take your rightness as granted instead of something you have to earn everyday, bad things happen.

And it doesn't even matter how good you are. Nietszche was one of the most important philosophers of all time yet he still found time to complain about how moronic his collegues were and who he couldn't get laid. Talk about pathethic!


It's what's happening to Sirlin. He's so fed up with League of Legends, forced grinding and unlockable characters that his mind seems to outright refuse criticism. Why listen when you are already right? So you end up being right and completely unreasonable. By the time you are wrong you won't even see it coming.

It goes without saying it's also terrible marketing. If you treat your costumers as morons, you are probably one. He thinks people raise a fuss because he's talking about sensitive issues. I think people raise a fuss because he explains himself poorly. He's not saying anything controversial. At all.


One of the things I envy about you guys and specially Barnes is how you avoid falling into this trap. Part of it is a matter of eloquency, sure, but I feel a very concious decision to be reasonable at all times, no matter how silly the opposition is.

TL;DR: As my editor puts it "Nobody likes an Angry Kirby".
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