#Feminism Is A Collection of 34 "Nanogames" From Designers Around The World

Ace · May 11, 2017

Monopoly is still fun to play which is more than enough for any game. Who cares if it was flawed?

Heck OD&D is mechanically dubious but is so much fun many people still play it today and people still make variants and material for it . By any measure its a great success at what its meant to do, be fun.

Now the question is, are these #Feminism nano games fun either to play or to read . I can't answer that as I don't own the game. but knowing my political leanings which are not be discussed here , I won't enjoy the game . I can't say that for others and if they do, its a good game collection .

With RPG's, if everyone is having a good time, you are doing it right.

Ovinomancer · May 11, 2017

Ace said:
Monopoly is still fun to play....

Any fun had while playing Monopoly is, by definition, BadWrong. Please report to the nearest re-education center for adjustment.

Celebrim · May 12, 2017

Ace said:
Monopoly is still fun to play which is more than enough for any game. Who cares if it was flawed?

By 'flawed', I mean, 'It's not very fun." It is in fact the one game that has been banned at my family gatherings because it tends to cause massive arguments.

The fundamental problems are:

1) There is almost no strategic play at all. You roll a dice. Something not of your choosing happens. After the first few minutes of play, there are almost no choices left. But the game will go on for hours more anyway.
2) On average, the first phase completes with no one having a winning position. That is to say, no one manages to collect a full matching set of properties which is necessary to begin improving property. The game is at this point essentially a draw and its likely nothing particularly interesting will ever happen.
3) Because of this, almost all of winning is simply convincing someone to trade you a winning position, which means the game is generally one or lost because someone who doesn't care makes a boneheaded trade.
4) If only one person obtains a winning position, generally speaking the game is already over. It will however take hours and hours to play it out anyway. Most players with any experience in the game will simply resign or offer to give away properties to other players. The player with the winning position generally finds this infuriating.
5) Players can be put out of the game hours before the game will actually finish. If you are the only player put out of the game, this generally is annoying.
6) The rule that if the dice are passed then you don't collect rent is a source of minor frustration, as it pits competitive players against non-competitive players (who are at this point generally bored and could care less about the game), and generally involves a lot of hijinks designed to treat this - the one source of 'skill' in the game - as what the game is about.
7) It's my theory that hardly anyone ever finishes a full game of Monopoly. Most of the time people just give up and declare someone the winner, or in the case of a group of competitive gamers - most games end in explosive arguments because the casual player at the table 'ruined the game' by doing something like agreeing to trade both Tennessee and New York to a player with New Jersey, in exchange for North Carolina even though they aren't holding Pennslyvania just because 'they wanted the game over' or 'it's their spouse' or some such thing.

The game play can generally be completely mimicked by taking a number of tokens, and distributing them randomly and unequally around the group, then allowing players to give tokens to their favorite person, and declaring a winner on the basis of who has the most tokens at the end. Although it will be pointless, it will only take about 3 or 4 minutes, and it will save you 4-6 hours of frustration.

Celebrim · May 12, 2017

arrrgh

Hussar · May 12, 2017

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I wonder if maybe you are setting the bar too high. As I understand your point, you are saying that an issues based game needs to treat that issue in depth before it is worth playing. I'm simplifying your point, I know, but, is that accurate?

I'm not sure if I agree though. These games aren't meant to be the end of the conversation, but the start of one. The issue is raised in play, but, a big part of the "game" is the discussion that is supposed to occur after play. These aren't meant to be sort of one and done activities, but, a means to draw out different points and different points of view.

Ace · May 12, 2017

Celebrim said:
By 'flawed', I mean, 'It's not very fun." It is in fact the one game that has been banned at my family gatherings because it tends to cause massive arguments.

The game play can generally be completely mimicked by taking a number of tokens, and distributing them randomly and unequally around the group, then allowing players to give tokens to their favorite person, and declaring a winner on the basis of who has the most tokens at the end. Although it will be pointless, it will only take about 3 or 4 minutes, and it will save you 4-6 hours of frustration.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Its by no means my game of choice and I've played two or three times and I can certainly see the flaws but its decently fun enough to have been continuously sold for over 80 years .

Now will these nano games be fun? Who knows.

As to Hussars point about it being a conversation starter. I'd find it most unwelcome, I don't need an infusion of politics beyond what we already have in my gaming group . Still , for some groups that might be just the thing and as I said if everyone is having a good time, you are doing it right.

MNblockhead · May 12, 2017

Celebrim said:
By 'flawed', I mean, 'It's not very fun." It is in fact the one game that has been banned at my family gatherings because it tends to cause massive arguments.

The fundamental problems are:

1) There is almost no strategic play at all. You roll a dice. Something not of your choosing happens. After the first few minutes of play, there are almost no choices left. But the game will go on for hours more anyway.
2) On average, the first phase completes with no one having a winning position. That is to say, no one manages to collect a full matching set of properties which is necessary to begin improving property. The game is at this point essentially a draw and its likely nothing particularly interesting will ever happen.
3) Because of this, almost all of winning is simply convincing someone to trade you a winning position, which means the game is generally one or lost because someone who doesn't care makes a boneheaded trade.
4) If only one person obtains a winning position, generally speaking the game is already over. It will however take hours and hours to play it out anyway. Most players with any experience in the game will simply resign or offer to give away properties to other players. The player with the winning position generally finds this infuriating.
5) Players can be put out of the game hours before the game will actually finish. If you are the only player put out of the game, this generally is annoying.
6) The rule that if the dice are passed then you don't collect rent is a source of minor frustration, as it pits competitive players against non-competitive players (who are at this point generally bored and could care less about the game), and generally involves a lot of hijinks designed to treat this - the one source of 'skill' in the game - as what the game is about.
7) It's my theory that hardly anyone ever finishes a full game of Monopoly. Most of the time people just give up and declare someone the winner, or in the case of a group of competitive gamers - most games end in explosive arguments because the casual player at the table 'ruined the game' by doing something like agreeing to trade both Tennessee and New York to a player with New Jersey, in exchange for North Carolina even though they aren't holding Pennslyvania just because 'they wanted the game over' or 'it's their spouse' or some such thing.

The game play can generally be completely mimicked by taking a number of tokens, and distributing them randomly and unequally around the group, then allowing players to give tokens to their favorite person, and declaring a winner on the basis of who has the most tokens at the end. Although it will be pointless, it will only take about 3 or 4 minutes, and it will save you 4-6 hours of frustration.

In short, Monopoly is successful in simulating the experience of creating and losing to a Monopoly‽

Hussar · May 12, 2017

Saying that Monopoly is a bad game is hardly controversial. This is some pretty well trodden ground. Monopoly and, in fact, I'd go on to say the majority of American board games prior to about 1995 are largely forgettable and mostly not very good games. There's a reason that no one outside of young children played board games for a very, very long time.

Celebrim · May 12, 2017

Ace said:
De gustibus non est disputandum.

Well, I am in fact saying 'good design' is not a matter of taste, but that there are objective qualities that are undesirable in a game.

Now will these nano games be fun? Who knows.

Well, 'spin the bottle' reputedly has its attractions but they have nothing to do with the game, which I think largely gets in the way.

But in general, I think we can say these games are poorly designed (to the extent that they are designed at all) and either are not fun or do not provide enough of a framework to be fun for most groups. I mean, 90% of the games are just simple theater games such as might see on 'Whose Line is it Anyway', and while theater games can be fun, people who have the particular talents to make them enjoyable are fairly rare. One thing I note is that I think most groups will run out of play within the first 2-3 minutes and not have an idea for what further to do or say. Some of them seem to think that they are going to prompt 2 hours of role-play off of 5 sentences of framework. That's like a movie length feature, and even if you forced a group to stay in character for 2 hours I think you'd reach 'Blair Witch Project' territory where most of the improvised dialogue is just some equivalent of BWP's endless swearing.

They are also terrible as 'conversation starters'. For one thing, face to face role-playing is one of the most intimate and intense ways of interacting that there is. You are taking subjects that are already explosive, and throwing a match on them. I would hope that I don't have to explain to DMs out there why certain subjects tend to be taboo or banned at gaming tables. It's not that you cant' have a productive discussion about date rape or sexuality or any other subject among very close friends, but a roleplaying session about it is a mine field not likely to provoke a lot of understanding.

Moreover, they are thoughtless. Even the ones that try to be clever have in their construction a certain assumption about what the play and what the answers should be like because the author assumes that they know the rough shape at least of the correct answer. In many cases, even that's generous - these are meant to be little soap boxes to launch sermons from. But, for example, if it we're me, I might challenge the author that one surviving soap opera clip was a Mexican or Bollywood soap, and that they ought to play that soap opera in a stereotypical fashion and then pretend to be anthropologists from the future analyzing the culture. (I mean, how important to modern American culture are soap operas anyway? Haven't most of them ceased to exist? Would most participants under the age of 30 even watched one?) The game would be no more fun that way, and still depends on having the rare group of funny creative hams that could pull it off, but it might slap them in the head regarding the shear and utter stupidity of trying to have a 'debate' or 'conversation' around a controversial subject where the basis of that interaction is inventing what you think someone other than yourself would say or think. None of that justifies the 'game', or even calling it a 'game', and in fact talking about why they'd feel uncomfortable stereotyping a Mexican or Bollywood soap would probably be more productive than actually stereotyping a Mexican or Bollywood soap.

Celebrim · May 12, 2017

MNblockhead said:
In short, Monopoly is successful in simulating the experience of creating and losing to a Monopoly‽

Yes, the whole point of the game was to teach that monopolies were bad. Monopoly was meant to be a didactic political game, much like the games in #feminism.

However, as I discussed in another post, it appears to have failed in that, as apparently people assume that it's meant to teach that greed is good.

But as flawed as it is, it's a better designed game with more thought put in to it than anything in #feminism.

#Feminism Is A Collection of 34 "Nanogames" From Designers Around The World

Ace

Adventurer

Ovinomancer

No flips for you!

Celebrim

Legend

Celebrim

Legend

Hussar

Legend

Ace

Adventurer

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site

Hussar

Legend

Celebrim

Legend

Celebrim

Legend