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Finding the Perfect Family Game
kowalski1971 writes "Some poor soul with far too much time on his hands has decided - in an attempt to increase sales at his toyshop - to calculate the formula for the perfect family game. Apparently it is, 0.22a + 0.17f + 0.153n + (0.12c - 0.1g) + 0.1s + 0.09e + 0.06d + 0.054l + 0.05m + 0.011c = pfg ...and which game came out top? Cards. So much for the increased sales then."
This is interesting to me because there are a bazillion board games out there, and most of them are overpriced and have limited playability. Card games and their variants are countless.
Go cards!
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
Some poor soul with far too much time on his hands has posted this article?
Is it a boat?
I notice that most of those factors are vaguely defined at best... "Fun factor?" Get real! As long as we're pulling qualitative numbers out of the air, why not design a simpler system? Perfect Family Game = 1.0g, where "g" is the "goodness level." Practical, huh?
"Cards" is not a game
a game is poker, bridge, blackjack etc.
which card game are they talking about?
Thankfully, his calculations are much LESS complicated than the formulae used to compute the bowl championship series rankings.
Oddly enough, they are also more accurate, and I would be willing to bet that his formula could easily be converted over verbatim, applied to college football, and STILL come out with a better ranking system for college teams than the BCS.
Given that his factors include:
N = number of people
S = stimulation
E = engagement
D = duration
L = longevity
I think we may at last have found the source of all those dastardly penis enlargement spams and viagra...
Best selling game != best game. Admittedly, the point of this exercise was probably to increase sales, so on that front, it's failed... Also note that his formula reuses symbols ("C" is both competitive factor, and complexity), and he parenthesizes items for no apparently good reason when the operators are commutative. Is he just trying to come up with an impressive looking formula to get a newsworthy story and bring his store some publicity? On that front, he's succeeded...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
which card game are they talking about?
Clearly, strip poker.
Marge: Why don't you kids play one of your old board games? When was the last time you played "Citizenship"?
Bart: [looking through games] "Energy Shortage"?
Lisa: "Hippo in the House"?
Marge: Ooh, "The Game of Lent"!
Bart: Ohh, can't we just go to bed?
Marge: It's only five-thirty.
Lisa: Fine, we'll play "Hippo in the House".
Marge: Oh, the hippo's missing.
Ep: Wild Barts Can't Be Broken
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Good for everybody and therefore probably good for nobody. And if anybody hopes complicated equations will help him pick the best Christmas gift for his nephew he's mistaken. It will be easier to ask.
0.22a + 0.17f + 0.153n + (0.12c - 0.1g) + 0.1s + 0.09e + 0.06d + 0.054l + 0.05m + 0.011c = Daikatana
Yes, I am stressed and I can't let it go.
While I was growing up, my parents thought playing cards were poisonous. We were forbidden to play (or even learn) any card games because they thought it was the first step towards becoming a gambling addict. This was extremely embarassing for me later on in school because in math class, concepts in probability and combinatorics were very often taught using ordinary playing cards. Of course, I had no idea what was going on at first, which bewildered my classmates who had gotten the idea that I was pretty sharp in math. Not a big deal, but it is a minor iritation I hold my parents responsible for.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/sbo0313l.jpg
Human factors cannot be reduced to mathematical equations.
(Sit down Hari Seldon)
Attempting to do so only results in making you look stupid (like this guy)
Silly bugger's gone and used 'C' twice - first for competitiveness, the second for complexity. And what's with the superfluous brackets anyway? Load of cobblers.
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
a good game of "Twister" will enable you to start your *own* family!
C|N>K
with all my respect to the grandpa picture on the right column of the article, what kind of crap is this ?
Two questions :
- No explanation of the mathematical formula : I assume that the 0.22 coefficient for the age accessibility comes from the fact that the average life expectancy multiplied by 0.22 results in a relevant Human Development Indicator, explained somewhere else on the net.
- I'd like the scientific staff out there to explain me how they link the Monopoly Simpson Edition to their *elusive* mathematical formula. Really I'd like to know, in other words than the political scheme "family like to have some fun", what ties Homer with decimal multiplicators.
Is this really 'News for nerds' ? I'm not a nerd, but this doesn't sound even like news....Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
... is because they forgot the ever popular "Cardboard and plastic pieces" game.
My family always played a lot of games while we were growing up, and they were almost exclusively card games. The rules tend to be simple, which is a big plus if you're trying to hold the interest of people covering a big age range (60 year old granny along with 8 year old younger bro'). We burned a lot of hours with Uno, Spades, Pit!, and others.
Board games had a narrower appeal. If it was just "us kids" we'd play those, since it seemed the adults weren't interested in the same ones we were. Once we'd grown into teenagers we did find a few everyone enjoyed - Pictionary immediately comes to mind.
Ah, memories...
#DeleteChrome
"Cards" is not a game
But it is game equipment. Toy stores do not deal in "games" as such but rather game equipment. A pair of decks of 52 cards can be used for 100 plus well-known games, which may figure into the decision that cards are nearly optimal game equipment.
Well, at least don't do the same thing to your kids.
I would disagree. Human factors are counted in equations when looking at many multiple linear regression situations using dummy variables.
From here
Dummy Variable (in regression)
In regression analysis we sometimes need to modify the form of non-numeric variables, for example sex, or marital status, to allow their effects to be included in the regression model. This can be done through the creation of dummy variables whose role it is to identify each level of the original variables separately.
So you could include human factors, but I didn't RTFA, so I can't really relate it to this situation.
-s
Actually, the correct formula for the perfect game is:
1 Swedish Bikini Team, sans bikinis + Me = The Perfect Game.
Forget funny, that comment was damn insightful.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
EQ is the obvious winner. With:
A = age range
F = fun factor
N = number of people
C = competitive factor
G - argumentative factor
S = stimulation
E = engagement
D = duration
L = longevity
M = mobility
C = complexity
While age range is fairly narrow and stimulation, engagement, and mobility are, well, zero, I think N and D make up for it.
N = several thousand
D = in hours? - sigh - several thousand
sig
Cards and monopoly are great. The have no noise making annoyances, involve lots of manipulative that occupy the child, and rounds proceed quickly while occupying all players attention. More importantly, these games do minimum damage when the playing pieces enter the inevitable tantrum driven projectile phase.
But Bop It? It is noisy, and hurts like hell when used as a club. Jenga? The point is to frustrate your opponents. This game is great at developing necessary skills, but when the pieces fall, the loser has a great desire to test the aerodynamics of the blocks.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Clue has to be the best game, since it teaches you the best household objects you can use to kill people, as well as helping young children to realize that you should never ask the police for help when solving a murder.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Yet another win for religious upbringing.
The owls are not what they seem
I find to be 'Colonists of Catan' : It's easy to get into from all ages, and is heavily based on social skills amongst the other players.
"For best results, do not begin game with original family"
**Posted as AC to cleanse myself of that 'icky' feeling**
This is just a puff of smoke intended to stimulate Christmas toy sales. The formula is ridiculously over-complex and loaded with unexplained constants. How on earth did this make Slashdot when perfectly good stories (like the one about SCO violations being found on the Moon) get refused?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Sure beats the old-time family classic... "come sit on grandpa's lap"!
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
"Quality means user satisfaction, and in a multicomponent system it is not the average of the quality of the individual components. The overall quality is pretty much associated with the quality of the worst component."
Linear formulas tend not to capture that. A geometric mean could, and it is also simple.
"
Jesus Christ, what IS a worthwhile activity to you clowns? Seriously."
Mentally masturbating that we are the coolest geeks on Slashdot. Why do you ask? Are you having geek-inadequacy issues? Do you feel that your friends are pointing at you and secretly laughing at your small geekhood? If so, we have herbal remidies that can help you maximize your geek potential.
The writer gives a nifty little formula and all, with the constants included. But, what values did he plug in to said formula to get .98 for cards? What are the acceptable ranges of the coefficients? How do you decide which coeffients have more weight than others?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
WE'RE ATHIESTS YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!!!
Seriously, our family isn't religious at all. No spirituality whatsoever. My folks just don't like certain things. I'm old and wise enough now to know better. It really comes down to personal choice. Unfortunately, you can't choose who you're related to.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The card game Predator? Now this was fun, it had violence (the bear could eat the fish, or something like that), education (simple teaching about what animals eat), and entertainment (Nothing like slamming somebody's high level predator with good ol ' DEATH and DECAY).
At least they should show us a list of games together with their attributes and sales rank.
I'm guessing that the information you speak of is proprietary information held by toy store chain W and not released to the public for fear that toy store chain X would use the information to increase X's market share at W's expense.
Although I love Whist and Hearts, one of my favoriate card games is Mu, a trick-taking game (like Whist or Bridge) which uses a modified deck:
It looks like a kitchen sink game, but in reality every aspect of it is wonderfully balanced and there's room for devious bidding and strategy.
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
Pictionary Taboo Scattergories
harmonious design
... its Lorentz. Sigh.
Besides, Human Factors (whatever that might be) can of course be reduced in any way one likes. Even in real life. Politicians usually give good examples of scaled down models.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Oh, you mean the next sovereign country that GWB's going to invade to boost his ratings?
"Shut up"? Like you GWB fanbois would like the thinking population to do? You think that "people who are attacking the president for attacking terrorists" should just shut up? Do you think that should apply next year when we're having elections, too? Oh, but I forgot that liberals and intellectuals are all traitors who should be shot - just like Ann Coulter says.
Since when has it been patriotic to shut the fuck up and do what the "great leader" tells us to do? Fucking neo-con nazis.
I'm telling you: we're going to vote the moron out in 2004. I don't care which one of the limp-wristed democrats wins. It can't get any worse than with this present drooling moron-in-command.
That certainly doesn't look like the Drake Equation to me...
I have to say that my favorite game is monopoly, and this is why (the following story is not for the faint of heart):
At summer camp when I was 12 we were playing monopoly in our cabin. This one kid, Jeff, was being a totally bad sport (accusing everybody of cheating, etc.) and just generally making the game less fun. About half-way through the game he says "I have to go to the bathroom" and gets up, grumbling about how people will probably steal his money or otherwise conspire against him. When he gets up everybody starts to smell what smells like the worst fart ever. Somebody makes a crack about this, "hawhaw, he probably said he has to go to the bathroom because he shit his pants". Then the kid lifts his leg to tie his shoe and out of the leg of his shorts, a mid-size turd plops on the ground. The rest of us all run out of the cabin yelling and screaming like 12 year olds do. After they cleaned it up there was a small circular space on the floor of the cabin that had been bleached so it was a little bit lighter than the rest of the floor.
So yeah, Monopoly's my favorite game because it reminds me funniness of the worst and most humiliating moment in somebody else's life.
My in-laws, who are 'cracked' (i.e. no longer ranting or practicing) Pentecostals, are obsessed with Euchre. I sometimes mumble 'sinful: drinking, dancing, playing cards' under my breath. It's not considered humorous.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I'm telling you: we're going to vote the moron out in 2004.
Hahahah not if Diebold has anything to say about it. t|-|3 d3|\|\5 r 0\|\|n3d
My favorite along these lines is Kill Doctor Lucky from CheapAss Games. The goal is to, um, kill Doctor Lucky (and all the other players) on a clue-like board where there are various implements lying about.
FWIW, my wife teaches college math and uses playing card explanations for a number of concepts. I was surprised and she was astonished (her family is obsessed with games) at how many students were unfamiliar with playing cards. It's a heavily international group of students, but still...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How about a game graph?
Place excitement on the horizontal axis and skill on the vertical.
S
k
i
l
l
-------------------
Excitement
Forget it, I got nothing.
Man - where do you start with such a bogus thing as this?
Take a large number of vaguely defined terms - with no units or ranges associated with them - and which are "measured" by the scientific method of asking some guy to rate them.
Then multiply each by a suspiciously exact number - accurate to one part in a hundred - and just add them up! What are the odds that none of these terms need to be squared or something?
Even if you ignore the actual equation - and take this as some kind of list of the things you should think about when buying a game - it doesn't make sense.
Just look at the first term:
"Age range"
The importance of the age range of the game depends crucially on the range of ages of the people playing. If everyone is aged 12 years - then a game that's rated "Ages 12 to 14" is likely to be more fun than something rated "Ages 2 to adult" because it's targetted at the precise ages of the people playing it. Then, if the people playing include a 2 year old and an adult - then a wide age range is indeed important. But if this equation is to be believed, then a game with a 12 to 14 year age range is doomed compared to a game that's simple enough for a 2 year old to play. That's ridiculous.
But in any case, this is a circular argument - age ranges are set such that the people within that range will have fun playing the game - so using that number to calculate how much fun the game is to play is just silly.
Argh!
This is the kind of thing that dramatically reduces the public's perception of the value of the scientific method.
www.sjbaker.org
As for me, I love board games. I love the different aspects of the games, the way they keep things interesting yet simple, how much damn fun they are. Board games get a lot more favor around the holidays in my family get-together's than cards do.
I found the Top 100 Board Games of the year. Awesome stuff here.
I'm The Boss! looks the most promising. Freeloader is cool, and Light Speed looks like something me and a friend might wittle away time with. However, I keep drifitn back to Mystery of the Abbey, a "thinking man's Clue."
If you folks want a list of some good board games out there, I'd suggest funagain.com. Some of the ones I'd figure would warrant a look-see would include Carcassone, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, or Pitchcar. Go look them up!
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
The provided formula purports to compute the quality of family games, but fails to include variables related to the specific family. Al the vairables are properties of the game. The perfect family game for a young family is different from the perfect game for a family with old children. Some very enjoyable games might be totally unsuitable if they require 4 players and the family has a single child.
PFG = f(Game, Family) so that different games would have different ranking for different families.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I can't really take this seriously
really... even the kids that buy in this guy's store must know that
a+(b-c)=(a+b)-c
Same here, so instead we had "Rook" cards (again, 4 suits or colors, rook cards instead of jokers, and no J/Q/K/A cards but instead I think the cards were simply numbered 1 to 13).
Grandparents had pinocchle(?) sets which were considered to be okay because you can't play poker with them.
Personally, I've only ever played poker once, and instead of cash we dug out a box of baseball cards and handed them around to use for chips. That was nice because no money changed hands.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Dance Dance Revolution for PS2 is a great game. We take it over to my cousins for holidays all the time. Eveyone like to play, from my 7 yr old brother to my 60 yr old aunts. Not only is it fun, but when you are done and tired, there is more room for food - and you don't feel so bad cause you just burned off a weeks worth of Calories.
No attempts for age vs duration.
Number of players? shouldn't it just be the number of people available?
You can't just go and add 0.22 years to 0.17 fun units and 0.153 persons, etc.
The units should, of course, be normalized first. Perhaps some nondimensional quantities should be used. Both age and duration have units of time, so there could be some correlation there. Also, stimulation and fun factor are clearly not orthogonal quantities.
At the minimum the equation should be presented as: a(0.22 pfg/yr) + f(0.17 pfg/fun) + n(0.153 pfg/person) +...
governmental bailout Lloyd's of London, the LARGEST insurer on the planet would have indeed gone BANKRUPT following the NY tradecenter disaster. They insured indirectly all but 1 of the planes, and the one tower that was insured.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
this guy has NO clue. if you are REALLY looking for great family games... check out a great community game review site and purchase some really great family games like Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne which are both "German" games.
Holy completely arbitrary Batman!
Edna Krabappoly
The Property of Ones:
The ONEitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the ONE.
Seems to make anything family more tolerable.
... rate (A)D&D as a [posible] family game?
errera hunamum ets
If you have a family already, then I'm sure that cards is great. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a game that will help you build a family of your own to later play cards with, I think that the game of choice would be 'Hide the Salami'
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
best... card game... ever...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
too much time on his hands
People always say this as though it's a BAD thing.
qntm.org
I have to agree with the Bop it game. A couple of years ago I had the guys over to drink beer, eat wings and watch football. During the 2nd games, I picked up my son's "Bop it" game. We started playing and were laughing for hours. Granted this was after about 5 hours of drinking, but.....
Apples to Apples.
:P
unless there's small children present...then i'm not really sure...get them doing math or something while you play
but yes, apples to apples, hands down.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
My grandfather was a compulsive gambler, but despite that my parents had no problem with my playing cards. It was my going to casinos that worried them.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
Site says: FUN FACTORS: A = age range F = fun factor ...
One of the fun factors is the fun factor itself? Isn't that a self-refferential variable, then? OMG ITS A PARADOX OF A MATHEMATICS PROBLEM!
Eh, that's about it.
... and to *determine* how high he is, we have a formula!
.403a + 20,000f + 1.0d - 93h = gal
A is Alf. Just Alf.
F is, of course, the fuzziness of the sound he heard while writing this equation.
D stand for the 'dankness quality' in the taste of his meal that day.
H is the hardness factor of yesterday.
This all computes to the GAL, or GET A LIFE factor.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
In high school I played Magic: The Gathering and the principals of the high school considered it gambling although my friends and I never played that way. So we quit eating in the same place as everyone else so we would go into a separate part of the building to eat lunch and play the games. The building was situated far enough from the main facility that we could see the asst. principals walking toward us and had time to put everything away before they caught us. When they ask if we were playing "cards" we would of course say no, then whip them out again after they left (but not until they hung around for 5 or 10 min).
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
You FAIL IT, you steaming pile of fecal matter!
A ball, a flag, a mask...never the same game twice.
:)
Nothing beats CalvinBall
It might be the perfect game if you have to pick ONE game to give to a million families. It is not the perfect game for a specific familiy, just the perfect game when the familiy is not known.
By the same logic, you can find out that the perfect food is a Big mac, since nobody really hates it (You can't hate something which tastes nothing).
Whenever you create something with the ultimate all-encompassing demographic, you end up with something which is infinitely bland and infinitely inoffensive.
In beauty contests, you typically have several rounds with different jurys, a mechanism which is sure to filter out someones ideals and move towards the average, which is why you'll find that Miss Universe can be less attractive than the girl next door.
Of course, there are objective parameters you can measure, but if you get all or most of them right, you just end up with something that doesn't totally suck. To create something brilliant you have to narrow your appeal, to match the individual preferences of a spesific group.
A witty
I guess you didnt RTFA did you. Go look at the f***ing equation he came up with *******. It accounts for famliy size and age range.
Actually, I did RTFA and read it more closely than the AC did. The article clearly states that the variable "Age range" refers to the accessibility of the game, not the ages of the members of a potential customer family. There is no "Family size" variable, only a "number of people" variable that refers to the number of players the game supports.
The most telling statements that prove that the formula is family-independent is the fact that they come up with a single simple score for cards of exactly 0.98 and assert a specific ranking for a set of games. Because these statements are unconditionalized, we know that the scores are independent of family composition. If they had said, cards get a score of X if the family is of this size and age composition or cards have a score range of X to Y depending on family, then we would know that the formula was a function of properties of individual families.
It's too bad that their formula didn't make use of family-specific variables because then Mr. Eldridge would give people a reason to come to his shops. If he had a little calculator/self-test/application that let a family answer a few questions and then provide a personalized set of game recommendations, he would encourage people to come to his shop. Instead, he is looking for the "perfect family game" This quixotic quest assumes that all families are alike so that one game can be #1 for everyone.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
wouldn't be a linear model
bye bye
My brother knows a game just like that called Maui -- a card game played with multiple poker decks. He apparently picked it up in New Zealand. I never did get the hang of it...
I went to Catholic High School, and never even had a problem with the "administrative staff," anyway, Magic was a great game until WotC diluted it with too many expansion sets, and the reprinting of cards which were on the out-of-print list (although sometimes they at least changed the names of the cards)....
Yeah... I know that reaction. My in-laws have things they abhor for seemingly arbitrary religious reasons, but cards aren't among them. When they are coercing people into a game of canasta, though, I usu absent myself by looking disappointed and saying, "ah... the Devil's calling cards again."
There is nothing remotely offensive in this game - it is easy to play and flat out fun. Most importantly, you support the indie game dev community when you buy it at Garage Games Nuff said!