Tag: boardgame

Roleplaying and board games reviews, podcasts, videos and interviews

Agency in scenario driven eLearning

First of all I will make this very clear; I am a game player -a big, big games fan. I have been playing videogames, board games and role playing games since I was a child and they have had a massive impact in developing my imagination, my visualisation skills, my social skills and even my empathy skills. This is important for me to make clear since the start of this article because I want everyone to know that I am biased. Yes, I believe in games as a medium to develop healthy personality traits and interaction skills.

Carcassonne: The River II

Yes, this really is a review of what is, in effect, a starting tile, however the River and the River II, when combined do something really interesting.

Research Review: Article Investigating Factors That Impact Appeal of Board Games

By Jeremiah Dwyer

This is a review of an article published in the Journal of Consumer Marketing (2007). It is entitled, “An inquiry into the factors that impact on consumer appreciation of a board game.” It was authored by Alain d’Astous and Karine Gagnon, both of Montreal, Canada. Normally I review articles that have more direct relevance to psychology, specifically clinical or forensic (which I post on my blog). However, I also have an interest in blogging about other things (when I blog at all!), and that includes games. I figured I’d see what kind of research was out there about board games, rather than the usual things, such as examining whether video games lead to violence. Thus, one literature search later, I was able to identify a few articles addressing various aspects of board games that I thought might be interesting, including this one. However, this article is much more of a business analysis of board games and board game preferences, rather than a straight examination of the psychology of board games, so to the extent my understanding of particular business terms and concepts is lacking, I apologize.

Dominant Species

Once in a while, wargames publisher GMT decides to zig when everyone else zags, and prints a game that doesn’t fit their usual line-up. They did it years ago with titles like Winds of Plunder and Conquest of Paradise, and more recently with the cute Leaping Lemmings. This time around, GMT takes out the big guns: acclaimed wargame designer Chad Jensen (of Combat Commander fame), one of the biggest boxes and boards ever to roll off their assembly line, and a mammoth leap back in time to present us with Dominant Species, an evolutionary battle that’s roughly 90,000 years old. (Talk about a different breed of conflict simulation!)

The Hobbit

The Hobbit is a light “roll and move” game with simple conditional ”success vs. failure” mechanics. There is very little player interaction to speak of, reducing the game to little more than a race to the finish line.