An incredible game review article

[FireLance]

It reminds me of the time I tried teaching a few of my wife's friends how to play Settlers. They refused to do any trades, because they couldn't see how helping someone else would be good for them, even if the trade also helped them.

Emphasis mine. Slightly off topic, but I wonder how well they would function in the real world if they also took the same approach to life.

 

[Agamon]

Ticket To Ride is hard and boring? Oh wow, what in the world is going on? That is a favorite game of my non-board game friends. It's looked down upon as an entry-level game at the board game club. Who did this review, 10-year old girls?

Incan Gold is another good entry level game, and it sucks too? Wow. As for Pandemic...well, I personally don't like it, but not for the reasons stated.

Catan, TtR and Carcassone are the three big entry-level eurogames. To poo-poo any of them, well, they deserve the comments they got.

 

[slwoyach]

Sometimes I'm ashamed to be a gamer. Those comments are akin to two geeks having a slap-fest in the middle of a mall about who's better: Kirk or Picard.

 

[catsclaw227]

I was getting embarrassed to be a geek with some of those comments...

The BGG community is great, but they certainly aren't typical of mainstream people looking for a fun party game. But one of the posters with a BGG-derived alias was making it worse by posting comment after comment. It made BGG look bad, if you ask me.

 

[nightwyrm]

Emphasis mine. Slightly off topic, but I wonder how well they would function in the real world if they also took the same approach to life.

Depends though. If you made a deal that gave you 5 points but gave the other guy 20 points, you might've given the game away right there.

 

[mearls]

Emphasis mine. Slightly off topic, but I wonder how well they would function in the real world if they also took the same approach to life.

I think it was trying to wrap your head around the idea of helping other people *in a boardgame*, after a lifetime of Monopoly and its ilk.

 

[Asmor]

I think the reviewers look fine and the outrage looks absurd.
The reviewers just expressed their opinions from a non-gamer perspective.

If they had tried to push that position here, or boardgamegeek or something, then they would get the response the location prompted. But, in the location they actually posted, they are speaking to the average reader MUCH more than they are to "us geeks". And those average readers see a bunch of nerd-raging losers crawling up from their parents basements to stomp their feet and rend their hair. And the average readers immediately conclude that gamers are losers and most "gamer" games are built by losers for losers. Thus the gamer reputation is once again affirmed and non-gamers just become that much more convinced there is no reason to even consider exploring our hobby.

I love kicking up a fuss here. It is fun. But time and place people.

It's not a case of nerd rage because some MSM hack dared to insult our hallowed eurogames. This is a case of a poorly-researched article, pure and simple.

As one concrete example, the reviewer got through a game of Pandemic, yet complained that Ticket to Ride was too complicated. Ticket To Ride is an incredibly simple game with a very short and concise rulebook and easy to understand rules. Pandemic is a much more complicated game. So it is, frankly, completely unthinkable that someone would be capable of figuring out Pandemic but not capable of figuring out Ticket To Ride. Thus, this serves as (one bit of) evidence to many of us that the reviewer did not even try to play the game. Maybe it was completely disingenuous, maybe it was just a case of Ticket To Ride being the last game after a full day's worth of trying to learn new games, but the fact of the matter is the reviewer clearly didn't put as much research into it as they should have.

 

[FireLance]

I think it was trying to wrap your head around the idea of helping other people *in a boardgame*, after a lifetime of Monopoly and its ilk.

I would think that even in Monopoly, there is some element of ganging up to catch up to the leader. But maybe *I* am the one who's been conditioned after decades of playing co-operative games like D&D.

 

[BryonD]

It's not a case of nerd rage because some MSM hack dared to insult our hallowed eurogames. This is a case of a poorly-researched article, pure and simple.

As one concrete example, the reviewer got through a game of Pandemic, yet complained that Ticket to Ride was too complicated. Ticket To Ride is an incredibly simple game with a very short and concise rulebook and easy to understand rules. Pandemic is a much more complicated game. So it is, frankly, completely unthinkable that someone would be capable of figuring out Pandemic but not capable of figuring out Ticket To Ride. Thus, this serves as (one bit of) evidence to many of us that the reviewer did not even try to play the game. Maybe it was completely disingenuous, maybe it was just a case of Ticket To Ride being the last game after a full day's worth of trying to learn new games, but the fact of the matter is the reviewer clearly didn't put as much research into it as they should have.

A) It is an opinion. It may be an opinion that is alien to you, but it is still an opinion. Your claim of "pure and simple" could not be farther from the truth. It is the way they saw it.

B) Even if you were right, which you are not, the response is still nerd rage. Justified nerd rage is still nerd rage. This is unjustified nerd rage. But even justified nerd rage sends the message that gamer geeks avoid sunlight for a reason.

 

[Nightson]

Opinions are not free from empirical criticism when they touch on things that can be objectively evaluated. Complexity may be a hazy definition, but it is a real thing. I mean we could objectively order card games in order of complexity with something like War < Go Fish < Poker