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Cheapass Games On Being Cheap And Good
Thanks to GameGirlAdvance for pointing to an OgreCave.com interview with James Ernest, the founder of noted low-price, high-fun board/card game makers Cheapass Games. As the interview notes, "With a mantra of 'Games: they cost too much, and they are at some level all the same', Cheapass virtually created the cheap games market, selling the boards and cards for their games packaged in white paper bags. Shortly after taking gamers by storm with Kill Doctor Lucky, Spree, and a number of humorous titles, James and Cheapass were being imitated right and left. What did it take to get where Cheapass is now, and how does the company plan to stay on top of the cheap games heap?" The interview also notes Cheapass' diversification into videogame publishing, putting out Digital Eel's titles, including Dr Blob's Organism.
I downloaded the demo of this a while ago enjoyed it for a couple of hours and forgot about it.
I'm sure that if I saw it in a shop for about 7 GBP / 10 USD I would have bought it and would have been happy with it.
Gaming needs a company like cheapass games putting out good or indifferent games by small indy development teams. And getting them in shops, these things should be impulse buys.
There's nothing like having some friends over, having some beer and playing Devil Bunny. And the best part, it costs $2.50.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
This reminds me of when Magic first appeared, before it went through its incredible poplular phase. It was cheap at $7-8 for a start box and maybe $2 for a booster pack. Cheap compared to video games (until rampant speculation made a Black Lotus a $300 card.) It was social as well, whether you were teaching someone to play or a trick you had discovered, discussing the artwork or working out a trade. And it was fun, playing with either one friend or many, or even in a tournament. It nice to see something that does not depend upon microchips being popular.
On that note, I attended one of the many Harry Potter release parties at my local Barnes & Noble on Friday. I just wanted to be able to say I had experiences the phenomenon. I sat with some friends at work and played chess for two and a half hours while everyone waited for 12 o'clock to roll around. It was great to see that many people excited about paper media. And it felt safe. There were young children running all over the place, having fun, and not worrying about being assaulted. It was very nice. Try not to be jaded about this, people. Rowlands was interviewed last week, and reguardless of the money, she truly loves what she is doing.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Many sites have tried to copy the Cheapass business plan, some well and some poorly. One of the other good ones is Alien Menace who have a growing selection of games of above average quality. I particularly like Sucking Vacuum and Election Day, but would suggest against Danger Guy.
The thing is, I don't know if it's a really smart thing to make so cheap games, because then, you will undoubtedly make much less financial profit than if you sell the games at "normal" price, and don't think you will sell less at "normal" price than at cheap price because you can alway add a sticker saying "ultra-cheap" so they (the customer) think the store is selling it at much lower price. The sticker costs many too ofurse but I am 99% sure will make more profit with the sticker and "normal" price than without the sticker and cheap price. Try it out, you will see how the business works and remember and later understand my advice, so good luck!
I own most of the Cheapass titles, and would seriously suggest the following (a * denotes a must have :) ):
Deadwood (with all 4 expansions)
Freeloader
*Kill Doctor Lucky
Spree!
Any X BRAWL decks, X being at least 1 more than the number of gamers in your group
*Change!
*Falling
Any X FightBall deck pairs, X being at least 2
Fight City
*Girl Genius: The Works
Give Me The Brain
Starbase Jeff
*Cube Farm
*Nexus
The Very Clever Pipe Game
Any X Button Men, X being as with BRAWL
*Diceland: Deep White Sea
The other 3 Diceland sets
Assuming X is 3 in all cases, this full list will set you back about $230, plus $25 for the bits pack. If you go for just the *s then for a mere $60 (plus bits) you will have a collection of 7 (or more, Change! is really 3 games) games that will last you through any trip or boring delay, and be more portable than a single Monopoly box.
Including the following choice selection, which I am sure we have all thought of before but never written down rules for:
CEILING FAN BASEBALL
For 2 or more players
Equipment:
One (1) piece of paper
One (1) ceiling fan
Some furniture
A basic understanding of the rules of baseball (without the complicated parts like the ground rule double and when to spit your tobacco)
Setup:
1) Wad up the paper into a ball.
2) Divide the players up into two teams.
3) Turn on the ceiling fan to maximum speed.
4) If you like to make this kind of thing official before starting (i.e., you don't trust your friends), determine exactly which pieces of furniture constitute which kinds of hits. (see below)
The Rules:
The team throwing the "ball" at the fan is on Offense. The specific person throwing is The Batter. A given at-bat goes like this:
The batter throws the ball at, or over and into, the ceiling fan...
* If the ball passes through the fan without being hit by the blades, the attempt is a strike.
* If the ball is nicked by the blades (i.e., you can hear it), but otherwise just drops through, it is a foul.
* If the ball is hit by the fan... it's a hit! The result depends on where the ball lands:
* If it lands on the floor, the batter is out. Pop fly, grounder to the shortstop, something like that.
* If it lands -- and stays on top of -- on a piece of furniture, then the result depends on the height and size of the surface, as per the following section (or whatever works for your players).
Scoring a hit:
Single -- Furniture which is about knee-high or lower with a sizable surface. Coffee table, sofa, easy chair, etc.
Double -- Doubles are scored on taller (waist-high) or smaller surfaces, often places like the top of the sofa's backrest or the top of the TV.
Triple -- High and/or slim surfaces such as the mantle of the fireplace, enclosed areas like one level of a bookshelf, or maybe a large-ish container like the trashcan.
Home Run! -- All those places that make people incredulous that the ball just landed there. Tops of lamps, inside hanging plant pots, the tippy-top of the tallest bookshelf. The kitchen sink. The floor two rooms away. That sort of thing.
The Rest:
Pretty much, it works like standard baseball from here on out. Each team has three outs before the next is up. Someone needs to keep track of where runners are located. Assume that runners advance the same number of bases as the batter when there's a hit (i.e., a runner on second advances home when the batter gets a double). Nine innings may or may not be the proper amount of innings -- I've found that outs tend to be common enough that games are quick and low-scoring, but I also only have one ceiling fan/room configuration worth of playtesting. Hey, what do you expect? It's a dumb game! I should have better things to do with my time!
Chris Floyd
chrisf@vr1.com
There is a series of games available at cheap-ass games that explores something everyone can relate to- the drudgery of food service, where the workers are literally zombies. By far my favorite is Give Me the Brain, in which you have to try to finish all of your tasks so you can go home. However, there's only one brain to go around all of the employees, and some tasks (though hardly all) require it to be completed. I'm sure you can get the gist of it from their product description.
Anyway, if you like shouting "Braiiinnnn" a lot, which I always do, this is a great party game. In addition to being fun and having relatively simple rules, this game is hilarious. If you can't make zombies funny, though, you're obviously not trying.
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
The problem with Cheapass games is that.. well.. they're rather cheapass. They're really just not that good as games.
Most cheapass games are strong on the humour and theme department, but somewhat weak on the actual gameplay. They're typically a fair amount of fun for two or three plays, but after that they get dull and are no longer interesting to play. They often suffer from poor balancing issues and players may not have any chance to win or have much effect on the game. Some of them, despite these flaws, are certainly worth playing, but I cringe at the thought of buying a cheapass game without playing it first, as I'll probably just end up throwing it out or giving it away.
The contention that these games are just as good as full production games like Medina or LÃwenhurz and so on is wrongheaded to say the least.
-josh
I've never played any Cheapass games, but I'm going to have to give them a try soon. The sense of fun radiates like a cheap nuclear reactor, from the titles, to the description, to the wonky interviews James Earnest gives. ("Earnest"? Is that his real name?) It's one thing to duplicate the business plan, but when your competition is having this much fun, I doubt if you can duplicate the business.
Too many game players these days feel that unless they pay 50$ for some over packaged rehash of several other games or have to buy a slew of new material every year like some consumption junkie then its not really a game.
Thats fine, let them spend all thier time and money playing rehases, flailing in revision after revison and devoting months of thier time to the study of an overblown games arcana.
Meanwhile folks like the Cheapass crew put out games that are high in value but low in price.
Of course some folks dont like these gems, they are not "3l3+3" enough for them, if everyone can understand the game then what can they lord over other game geeks?
Games like Diceland, Freeloader, Deadwood, and the fantasticaly kid friendly Zombie Series (Lord of the Fries, Gimme the Brain, the Great Brain Robbery,..) to name just a few are great games.
The Hip Pocket series is an even further evolution (deevolution) for this style game.
If you have not looked into these games before, run do not walk over to www.cheapass.com If you a GameKaiser or a 3l3+3gamer then go scury back to your thousand dollar game collection and sort counters.
-tomwsmf
Yes, I'm serious. Actually, I have been truly impressed by CheapAss games. Ben Hurt is awesome, especially with Gladiator running in the background and a couple of six packs of Corona Extra in the foreground. :)
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
... in the late 1970's and early '80s, there was a company called Metagaming which had a line of "Microgames" with a usual price tag of $2.95. The company is long gone, although a couple of its titles were rescued by their designer, Steve Jackson, when he formed his own game company (modestly named Steve Jackson Games), which caried on that kind of pricing for a while, but not currently. (Those rescued titles were "Ogre" and "G.E.V.", about future tank warfare, with cyber-tanks similar to Keith Laumer's Bolos, and hovercraft and infantry in powered armor and so forth.) Almost all of Metagaming's games were hexagon-maps and counters, and playing time from half an hour to two hours or more, not like Cheapass' cards and quick play, but Cheapass was not the first to push the lower limits on pricing.
Mashed potatoes can be your friends!
A couple of weeks ago, I was a LinCon (RPG/board/cardgame convention) here in Sweden and played Cheapass Games' BRAWL for the first time.
For the uninitiated, this is a card game played in real time. One round lasts for about sixty seconds, and then you're stressed as hell.
So, me and my friend sat down and was introduced to BRAWL. We found it exilarating! The fast-paced, constantly changing gameplay was really neat.
Anyway, we played it for about twenty minutes, and were dead-tired by the time thy yelled "time for the BRAWL Tournament! You two, we need two more contestants!" So, being rookies (to say the least) we entered into a tournament with 30 or so people, some who've been playing it since it came out.
Guess who came third. =)
Though I'm not sure it was worth it, since the tournament took five hours to play!
And I won one set of cards; you need at least two to play.
My friend bought me a second deck, and I've been forcing my friends to learn it ever since.
Highly recommended game (and company)!
"Bartog" is very cool - also known as "Bartok" and "Warthog" (I learned it as Bartok). Very evil game by the time you're playing at 4am and have rules for every suit, number and colour, and massive extra penalties for getting anything wrong. My favourite rule to add is the Librarian rule - when a certain type of card (e.g. Aces, Threes, Clubs) is played, whoever played it can only say "Ook" and "Eek" until someone else plays that type of card.
And for the more rules-lawyerly types, there's a game called "Nomic". It's like Bartok (make up rules turn by turn) without a deck of cards involved. Oddly enough, I've never played it, but I read about it while following links from various Bartok sites (and some people I knew used to play it).
David.
Got to play it last friday with a bunch of friends. The only bad thing about some of the Cheapass Games is that with many of the games there's a strategy that will almost always let you win.
I'm not bashing cheapass, though I generally think the games aren't as good as the old microgames. I'm just pointing out they didn't create the niche.
I'm pretty sure they'll be seeing a lawsuit over this soon. The idea of "only one brain in the whole damn place" is obviously stolen from either SCO or possibly the RIAA...
Ironically, for those who want slightly more structured chaos, try Andy Looney's Fluxx. Great fun, and there's loads of proposed cards.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
including Dr Blob's Organism.
C'mon!! I know I'm not the only one that saw Dr. Blob's Orgasm. Now that's what I'd call entertainment.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A