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."

Comments

Re:Best selling

[RDPIII]

Is he just trying to come up with an impressive looking formula...?

It's a linear combination of weighted attributes. How unimpressive is that? At least they should show us a list of games together with their attributes and sales rank. Given that information, we could do a least-squares fit (linear or nonlinear) ourselves, and, more importantly, evaluate the goodness of fit.

Re:Play cards, play sci-fi

[Angry Toad]

Actually it looks like the result of a pretty standard multiple linear regression (link). Somebody sat down and gave each game a 1-10 rating for "Fun", "Engagement", and similar nonsense and then fed the resulting "data" through a linear regression algorithm.

Algorithms always give an answer. That doesn't mean the answer makes any sense.

Re:Sigh. When will we learn?

[at_18]

And if you read the series, you discover that the Second Foundation is there exactly for this reason - to costantly nudge the chaos back in the right place.
OK, that's enough of a spoiler...

Kill Doctor Lucky

[LauraW]

it teaches you the best household objects you can use to kill people

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.

Board Stiff

[Obiwan Kenobi]

Personally, I think this "formula" is just silly. But interesting, I suppose.

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."

Re:Board Stiff

[iapetus]

Freeloader is indeed exceptionally cool. I also recommend Huzzah! from the same company. Finally got round to playing Light Speed, and it's even more fun than it looks - very hectic. Helps if everyone playing the game has at least some idea what's going on, though - first time we played it one player ended up destroying half of his own fleet while failing to interact with the other players or the asteroid at all...

Other highlights in the same general vein:

Lord of the Fries Deluxe Edition - deceptively complex, and the different menus make for almost entirely different strategies. Put together meals at Frydays, the fast food restaurant of the damned.

The Big Idea - requires a bit of creativity, but it's outstanding fun if you've got the right group of people. Pitch bizarre products based on the cards in your hand, and try to invest heavily in the big successes. Anyone fancy investing in Unholy Cat?

Fluxx - about as simple as they come: you draw one card, you play one card, and there's no way to win the game - at first. But manipulating the rules can be great fun.

Aquarius - From the makers of Fluxx, a mind-numbingly simple looking card game that can end up being really rather deep as you try to mislead the other players and build towards a quick victory. Can get a little arbitrary and infuriating at times as players trade hands or goals, but that's part of the fun.

On a slightly larger/more expensive scale, Settlers of Catan is every bit as great as people have been saying, and the various expansion packs (Knights & Cities, Seafarers of Catan) add a lot of variety.

Crimson Skies is another big favourite - it's a truly outstanding game of aerial combat, with an inspired damage system that allows you to damage the individual components of the plane - a truly skilled gunner can eat away the armour and then send an incendiary round straight into the fuel tank. Can you say 'BOOM'? No longer being published, unfortunately - but if you see it, snap it up.

Warhammer Quest destroys lives. A dungeon-crawling boardgame which appeals to the munchkin in every gamer, this is as much about shopping and powering up to ridiculous levels as it is about exploring the dungeons. With the additional characters and dungeon expansion packs it becomes even more addictive.

Family Games

[MikeyNg]

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!

"german" board games are the way to go!

[porter235]

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.

Re:PFG != f(game), I did RTFA

[G4from128k]

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.