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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.
The problem with Monopoly is that it is not a zero-sum game - every time someone passes Go, another $200 is added to the overall money in play. Sure there are cards and board spaces that take money back into the Bank, such as the Luxury Tax square, but the total probability of hitting these cards/spaces often do not significantly impact one's earnings. This problem is further exacerbated by the occasional practice of putting all that "penalty" money into Free Parking.
I introduced a variant to Monopoly that ensures the game will not take too long: I give everyone six times the normal starting amount in cash. Every time someone passes Go, he has to *pay* $200. This ensures that the total flow of money is negative for everyone.
On another note, did anyone else chuckle at the fact that there is a "Disney Monopoly" boardgame you can buy?
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
"Takes too long" is a cop-out excuse by people who don't like Monopoly. If that's what they say, forget it, they wouldn't be good game partners anyway.
In my experience, if you play Monopoly RIGHT (by the official rules) and focus on the game instead of gabbing about other things the whole time, it can take two hours or less, sometimes as little as one hour.
Monopoly is also a lot more brilliant a game than most people think. Most people who "like Monopoly" don't have a clue what most of the rules are, and they insist on playing with house rules that completely mess up the game's economy and add too much luck (*cough* Free Parking Jackpot *cough*). Another offense is allowing as many houses/hotels as you want. The game has a carefully chosen limit of 32 houses and 12 hotels -- there must NEVER be more than that on the board. Many don't want to play with the auction rule, where all properties landed on that aren't immediately purchased must immediately be auctioned. Not to mention other silliness like trading immunities to paying rent for trades.
Hint: All "house rules" are bad, but the ones that run counter to the game's goal -- bankrupting every player but you ASAP -- will make the game last longer. Play it right and you'll fly through it!
Ugh. No wonder it would take hours.
I wholeheartedly agree that the German board game industry has done woonderful things over the last 15 years. I don't agree with the article that it's the German board games that take long. They usuallly take about an hour. A game is long if it takes 2 hours. It's always been the Anglo-saxon style games that can take an entire day.
This is mostly due to them being more simulationist. Anglosaxon style games invent a new way to model some part of reality (often in a very primitive way) and tweak that into a playable game. German style games invent an interesting and highly playable game mechanism and make up a nice theme around it. The German approach leads to very playable and accessible games. The anglosaxon approach can lead to highly detailed that touch your imagination. Both have their attraction, but if you want speed, German is the way to go. (I personally am more leaning towards anglosaxon games at the moment.)
Note that the designations "German" or "Anglosaxon" don't mean the game actually comes from Germany or the US/UK. Cheapass Games, for example, is a US company that leans much more to the German way of doing things (but with more humour), whereas German companies have also produced games that definitely lean more in the anglosaxon direction.
(This difference in approach can also be seen in the 18xx games hobby. Lots of hobbyists make excellent games in that genre, but Americans tend to start with a region, research the historic background and try to model that, whereas Europeans think of an interesting concept they want to model in the game, and then look for which region is most suitable for a game implementing that idea.)