Analysis

 WARNING: PRETENTIOUS GAMES WRITING AHEAD

As most of you know, I don’t get out much nowadays so I’m forced to get a lot of my gaming goodness through electronic tools. Play by email is my medium of choice most of the time, but of late I’ve dipped my toe into the world of play by forum. I find the entire concept rather peculiar because playing by forum requires a moderator, and unlike a role-playing game where the games master has an active, exciting job to do in setting the scene for the players, I can’t fathom what motivates people to moderate an online game...

Sorry there's no new material this week: I've been caught out being really busy at work and at home and there's been no time. Plus I'm told today is a holiday in the US so you lot should all have better things to do. However I had a look over at our old blogger site to find some of my old material for a F:AT looks back column. This piece is about social interaction in games where it's not specifically encouraged by the rules, a topic that I don't think I've ever revisited and which remains relevant today, so...

Last fall there was a little dust-up in the gaming world. Stronghold Games announced that they had received the rights from the designer for Merchant of Venus, the classic Avalon Hill title. The reprint was going to be true to the original release, with top-of-the-line components and artwork. Then there was a little wrinkle: Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had received the rights from Hasbro, who now owns Avalon Hill. Essentially, two different companies claimed to have the rights to print the same game.

You might well have seen Jesse Dean’s fantastic article on boardgame reviews and A Few Acres of Snow the other week - it deservedly generated a lot of discussion on the forums. Jesse’s work on this inspired me to have another think about reviewing generally which resulted in a piece on NoHighScores last week about the function of criticism in gaming. That was, deliberately, a generalist piece about game reviewing, its purpose and a comparison to professional criticism in other areas. But I am primarily a board gamer and not a video gamer and whilst I felt that was...