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Busy Lives Prompt Speedier Board Games
BusylikeBum writes "Michelle Hastings admits she's sometimes cheated to get through a game of Candy Land with her 5-year-old daughter, Campbell. The board game can take just too long, she said. Disney Monopoly is another big offender.
'A game like that, it could literally take you days,' said Hastings, of Holliston, Mass. 'A lot of times, you don't play games because they take so long.' Board game makers are heeding pleas of parents like Hastings and introducing games tailored to busy lives and shorter attention spans that take only about 20 minutes to play." This is especially interesting to me, given the US adoption of more serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
You mean such as Sprockets: Touch my monkey!?
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I wish the articles on slashdot were shorter. I only managed to get half way through this one before my busy life distracted me. Wow, is that a nickel?
Simpler games, such as UNO or Mancala, or even more complicated games, such as Rummikub, offer more entertainment for longer periods of time simply because a turn lasts at most 30-45 seconds.
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I would play Fortress Europa if setup alone didn't take a whole day. I doubt I've ever played an entire game, what with having a younger brother and a dog. After a week or so I'd find everything moved around. Oh well, start over again!
Man, you really need that seminar!
It takes too long. Even when I suggest we play the official "short game" rules, they still say it takes too long. Maybe they just hate me.
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"Games are becoming, in a lot of respects, entertainment," Silver said.
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Oh, how generous of board game manufacturers to deign to give us shorter games.
This is all nonsense. If you've got a good game store in your neighborhood, you can walk in and say, "I'm looking for a game that takes less than 30 minutes to play." If they can't show you at least a dozen games, you probably don't have a good game store.
If you want shorter games, look for games specifically designed to be short and quick. Hacking an existing game to be shorter is neat and all, but you'll get a better experience if the game was designed to be short from the start.
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This is especially interesting to me, given the US adoption of more serious, lengthy German board games in the last few years.
Well, first, it is more than the past few years. Settlers of Catan was one of the earliest BIG cross over games. I was playing it since college, means the cross over started about a decade ago.
Secondly, I get the distinct impression that the original audience doesn't take these games nearly as seriously as US players. Settlers says on the packaging that its running time is about 1-2 hours (If I recall correctly, my original packaging has been lost to the sands of time), yet my games regularly run 3 or more hours, as trades and debates and discussions of beat-the-current-leader happens. This ratio of about twice-as-long seems to be consistent with most of the German Board Games my group plays/played.
(On the other hand, it could just be false advertising. Witness the order of the Stick game that takes ages to play, despite the packaging).
And I STILL can't find anyonre to play Kingmaker with me, and very few who play Magic Realm.
Even amongst avid boardgames, there are those with a distaste for Eurogames taking longer than 2-1/2 hours.
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Don't know if they've changed the rules for Disney Monopoly - usually variants just change street names and graphic design - but Monopoly should never take days, unless players are deliberately buying property from each other at inflated prices to prevent anyone going out of the game. Or unless people are refusing to trade cards so that nobody can form a complete colour group and build houses, in which case it's stalemate and you might as well call a draw.
After an hour or two of Monopoly the board should be full of houses. At that point the game ends fast; the ASSESSED FOR STREET REPAIRS and MAKE GENERAL REPAIRS cards are ruinously expensive to a big landlord. As a result, money comes out of the game a good deal faster than it comes into it from people passing GO. All those fees go to the Bank, leaving players with less and less money to pay the ever-larger rents, and the game must end soon.
You could, I suppose, invent a new game in which money did not ever leave the game and return to the Bank - perhaps you could put the money from fines and fees and so forth into some jackpot, and designate a square such that anybody landing there would collect all the wealth accumulated there - but that game would last forever, become incredibly frustrating once everybody had so much money that they didn't care about landing on Mayfair, and would basically not be Monopoly.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Another thing that's more difficult to address is the inordinate amount of setup time that some games take. Witness Axis & Allies. Its a great game, but every time I want to play it, I realize that its going to take at least 30 to 45 minutes to set up, and the thought of that is enough to get me motivated to do something else.
That said, I don't see a way to address the issue without ruining the game. Part of the attraction of the game is the varied unit types, and its the very presence of varied units that makes setup so difficult.
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Everything does take to long to finish in one sitting usually.
That is why I play chess with friends via correspondence.
I can use a program/site or just use IM/Email using chess notation. The site offers a ton of features, but after a while you should be able to play chess games without ever having to see the board physically. Instead you just read it with notation.
Of course, most games cannot be played via notation, but via correspondence, it is surely an option.
Edit: Average game of ~30 moves takes about anywhere from 3 to 30 days for me. Most finish within 3-5 days.
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what's this world coming to when you can't even take an hour or 2 to play a board game but you'll let your kids play video games unsupervised for hour. I understand what's it like to busy and i don't have kids but i have sisters that i'll devote days to them to their enjoyment. Just because i'm a hard core brother that way. I would think parents would do more to spend as much time with kids whether it's boardgames or video games
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
In my day, we'd spend the entire weekend setting up the pieces and arguing over the rules of "Fire in the East". We were lucky to have two turns completed before Sunday afternoon!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Shouldn't we be pushing for longer, more cerebral games--chess, Go, backgammon, etc.--to counteract the attention problems? Seems the priority is not on the kid's mental development but on the parent's schedule.
... Why not try a nice game of Draughts?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Did anyone else misread this as:
more serious, lengthy German board games which last a few years
?
--
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Anybody remember Magic Realm. I think it took us an hour and a half to set it up the first time. Played eight or ten times but never ever finished it. Took a weekend off once to play; still didn't finish.
For the record, there are already some good brief games out there that kids can enjoy. Two games in my closet that come to mind are TransAmerica (for 2-6 players) and Balloon Cup (2 players). Each of these take about 30 minutes to play, even with kids. And both are the types of games that can be played "just for fun" by younger kids (ages ~5-8), or with a little bit of strategy as their minds develop strategic thinking.
Fun for adults too! They're good gateway games to more strategic stuff as the kids get older. Alhambra is another great choice for kids 8+, but it takes more than an hour to play when you play with kids.
I also find that more traditional Hasbro games like Parcheesi and Sorry only take about 30-45 minutes to play, even with 5-year-olds, and are far more entertaining for everyone than mindless Candyland.
Also - IMHO - Kids under 12 should not be playing Monopoly, even if it is a Disney-scented theme. What a bad product idea that is!
If the game isn't well balanced in one way, or if the players' skill levels are mismatched, then one or more players are going to pull ahead while everyone else falls behind with no hope of catching up. This might be fun for the players in the lead, but it can get very frustrating to the others. _Especially_ if they're not as much into board games. This can make convincing non-board game geek friends or SOs to join you for a game very difficult.
If the game isn't balanced in another way then the results become based more on luck than skill, especially if it's possible for one player to jump up from behind suddenly at the end and wind up on top. This can be acceptable if the game is of a more silly nature, one designed to make everyone compete in crazy antics and the enjoyment is more in the journey than the goal, but not so much in a "serious" game. "Apples to Apples" is a good example of a game that manages to have a goal to compete for but which no one really cares a great deal who wins.
An ideal game allows players who are behind to catch up, but in a way that is at least theoretically foreseeable and preventable. Allowing ways for the players who are behind to gang up on the person in charge often helps with this. And often times setting alternate goals for yourself when it seems that victory is out of your grasp can be entertaining if you can maintain the right mindset. If you're already out of the running then sabotaging the person in the lead to give the game to the person who was second can be a fun goal (assuming you're playing with people who won't hold grudges of course =)
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Ugh. No wonder it would take hours.
Why do I never ever hit that preview button??
apparently all my time playing monopoly was diverted from learning html. sorry.
Obviously, your board game customer is not the same customer as your computer game client, willing to put 40 plus hrs/week into playing Warcraft or Second Life?
Gawd, this could be shedding a pathetic light on the level of the American game player - otherwise, uh, maybe that's not because she's too busy, it's because Candyland is BOOOOORRRINGGGG!!!! C'mon, the poster can't compare Candyland in the same league as the German games (Carcassonne comes to mind, as well as games mentioned by other posters here: Settlers, Transamerica, etc) - hence his/her questioning the article. You're darn right.
"Michelle Hastings admits she's sometimes cheated to get through a game of Candy Land with her 5-year-old daughter, Campbell"
there has always been a talk going about how story based video games take too long for working parents to be able to play them, and I can understand that perspective. It's hard to get time away from work and responsibilities of being a parent for that long when you work and have kids, but this seems to be a different issue entirely.
Seriously if your business life is so busy that you can't sit down with your 5 year of daughter long enough to play a game of candy land the problem is not candy land. It's time to rethink your priorities.
Sounds a lot like Quiddler, a card-based game that's like Scrabble for the impatient. My friends and family are hooked on it. (The other Set games, including the eponymous "Set", are also fun, quick, and brain-intensive.)
This article just pisses me off; if people don't have an hour or two to devote to their kids, then there is something seriously wrong with their life and they need to re-evaluate it. This is the problem with parenting in America; it's no longer about the kids and what is best for them, it's about what the parents schedule is. Wake up people, you're not paying enough attention to your kids.
I own a few of the german games.. most of them I got a few years back when I had more time for such things..
I've found most actually take LESS time then many of the Hasbro style board games.. (for instance, when we played "Krieg und Frieden", the 90 minute play time really meant 90 minutes.. unlike Risk where you can go back and forth with the last guy until your luck runs out..
We were also used to playing alot of the Eagle Games series games.. and by the far the longest game I've played.. Mega Supremacy (with all the expansions...).. so we played agressively and hard.. and were used to multi-hour/day games already...
I think the problem with alot of the 'omg these games take to long' is they are open ended games..
Tile based games (like Caracossone) and some others (Junta, where there is a limited bank) have fixed/build-in timers that when they run out.. the game is concluded and you count your points..
Also, when all the players know the rules (or at least one person knows them well and is trusted by the others to give the rules quickly and accurately..) it'll really help speed up the game..
There are already a ton of 'short' games.. most of which are card games (no.. not M:TG.. I was thinking more like Lunch Money or regular 'Hoyle book of games' style..)
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Just thought I'd not that for those that didn't feel like digging through it. I never used the auction rule at first because I didn't know about it. Once I found it in the rules, I have always used it when I remembered to.
Nintendo Monopoly?!?!
*runs to google*
Monopoly was featured prominently in the Young Ones "Boring" episode. I first saw it as a teen, and I was amazed at how universal the close association between Monopoly and boredom is.
I admit that the auction rule would make the game move along. I first came across it last year while teaching the game to my kids. I didn't teach it to them because I had never played with it, and I thought it was some new addition to the game. Plus, it was pretty hard to get the kids to understand why they'd want to buy the deeds in the first place, without trying to run an auction every turn. After about an hour into the game, I was wishing I had followed the rules.
I disliked Monopoly as a kid until I figured out I could make a run on the currency and bring the game to halt by gathering up all of the mid-sized bills.
I even have it (albeit marked up from my youth), I just need time, and people nearby. I never had a chance to play it against anyone.
FTFA:
"Games are becoming, in a lot of respects, entertainment," Silver said.
What were they before? Table decorations?
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"Disney Monopoly is another big offender. 'A game like that, it could literally take you days,' "
Days? Are you brain dead? I ahve a 6 and nine year old, and we play it in an afternoon.
Here is a clue: Figure out a way to get MORE time with your kids.
Maybe adjust your expenses so you can live on one income? Magically you will have more time with your kids.
You might not be able to afford Cable TV, and buy 2 year old cars, but where are these peoples priorities?
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Oops. Try http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/134580 if you're interested.
The house/hotel limit can be used to totally screw people, too. Just keep your four-on-each for your monopolies and you can stop someone from building anything more than two or three houses on each property. The auction rule is incorporated into the on-board electronic version of the game, Monopoly Playmaster. It was produced for one year (1983?) and anyone who loves the game should eBay one of these suckers. It manages to move the game forward without truly compromising the rules. The "buybacks" redistribute properties into monopolies (or attempt to), and the "loan" feature is just fantastic (gives me a reason to own the greens). The bottom line, of course, is that when you have some good players, a LONG game of Monopoly is a pure joy. And I was playing as a kid, so the attention-span argument is silly.