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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.
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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"Games are becoming, in a lot of respects, entertainment," Silver said.
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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.
I thought I had a good game store here. The outside certainly looked all glittery and fun. When I walked in, it was very dark, and there was a sort of stage with these poles on it, and some scantily-clad females doing an interesting dance. "Oooh! Role-playing!" I thought, looking around for a dwarf wench with the grog.
Then I announced loudly that I wanted to find a game that would take less than 30 minutes. One of the girls looked at me and said, "Honey, you want one that will take less than 30 seconds," and then they all went "Mmm-hmmm!" in unison and did a head-bob.
I want to know where the hell you guys get your games.
"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!
No, they mean games in the German-style board game genre. Germany currently has one of the most vibrant board game design cultures in the world. This is largely fueled by the Spiel des Jahres, the most prestigious prize in the board game industry. Some popular recent winners are Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Call My Bluff, and Scotland Yard. If you see "Spiel des Jahres" winner on a game box, you can buy it without second thought—winners are fantastic games.