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  • That Final Dice Roll

            Ladies and Gentlemen, you’ve been playing for three hours, and the entire game comes down to just one die roll.  180 minutes of painstaking planning, careful negotiation and tactical response, and everyone is looking at the guy on your left, waiting for one throw of a couple of cubes to pick the winner and the loser.

             And that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.

            To some extent I’ve withdrawn from the “what a game should be” debates that rage unabatedly on the Internet, mostly because I’ve found they’re just piles of negative energy, something that doesn’t nourish my soul.  I’m approaching fifty and I’ve decided that one simple question, “is what I’m doing lifting me up, or bringing me down?” is the one true arbiter of what I should be doing with my free time.  More often than not debates on the Internet are dependable downers.  But  I have to get the blood flowing into the brain every now and then, and like all of you I have moments of weakness, moments when I allow myself to read all the way to the end of a sentence like this one:

            “There is nothing worse than spending three hours playing a game only to have everything come down to one dice roll.”

            Wow, nothing worse?  That’s pretty inclusive.  Kidney Stones, divorce attorneys . . . ok, let’s figure he’s talking about nothing worse within gaming.  Regardless, I’m not only going to disagree with the statement, but I’m going to explain why, when a game is good, one final die roll isn’t a bad thing, not even merely a good thing, but almost a necessary outcome of good game design.  Everything coming down to one pivotal moment of resolution is about as dramatic ending to just about anything you’re ever going to get.

             First of all there are a couple of preliminaries that have to be taken care of before I go for the big finish.  If the game is coming down to “one final dice roll” we need to leap to the conclusion that dice come in the box.  I’ve expressed my opinions on luck on more than one occasion, particularly in The L Word (http://fortressat.com/analysis-toc/1470-the-l-word) on a more formal basis but also in smaller, more succinct cheap shots on several gaming web pages.  I’ve also expressed how well suited dice of different shapes as sizes to generating the kind of unpredictability that keeps games fresh play after play.  But for the sake of this article I’m willing to let “one final roll” be a metaphor for any luck-based event, card draw, tile pull, at-bat, you name it.  As far as I’m concerned the smart money is on a good solid set of fair dice, but feel free to declare your outrage from whatever luck generator you choose.

    Freshly patented, the fairest dice on Earth

            Preliminary #2 is that the game is “well designed” and I’ll be honest, most of what I consider a well-designed game aligns with the Great Internet Focus Group that modern publishers use for guidance.  Games should be enjoyable, immersive for all, provide a straightforward path to understanding, not need catch-up mechanisms and keep everyone in the game for the entirety of the play.  There’s no point having this discussion if we’re not sitting down to a good game, so this thing better have what it takes to prove my point.

            But that last one in the list – keep everyone in the game for the entirety of the play – is perhaps the most problematic in a culture where your phone runs your life.  As short as our attention spans are these days any game that rules you out of the win even fifteen minutes before the end of the play is deemed flawed, a “waste of my time when I have no chance at the win.”  Well, you’re right.  Continuing to play when you’re toast is indeed almost as bad as kidney stones and divorce attorneys.  Our well-designed game simply can’t have so glaring an error, and let’s admit it – the “secret scoring” bullshit in Puerto Rico and Small World is a crap idea, band-aids over an obvious flaw in both games.  We need a mechanism of some sort that allows you to stay in the game even when things go south, something that lifts you, keeps you excited, keeps your eyes focused on the finish line even as your chances of victory dwindle into the thinnest of broth.  There needs to be something, some way to land a win in spite of being all but completely out of the picture.  Good game design requires it.

            And that brings us to it, the one dice roll at the end of the game that calls the winners and losers.  From an Internet Meme perspective this is a horrible, disempowering moment, one that robs you of your duly earned gains from truly superior play.  But it doesn’t have to be, and since we’ve set  “well designed game” as a prerequisite it can’t be -- disempowerment is bad after all.    So this pivotal moment of resolution, this game ending die roll for all the marbles needs to be heavily influenced by all that came before.  That’s the part the idiots on the Internet don’t talk about.  That final die roll will be different in every play of the game, and for damned good reason.  It has to be to bring enjoyment to all at the table, to give each their due based upon how they’ve played.

            The Internet debates have built an ever-shrinking box that we want designers and publishers to work within.  In the 1990s there was still room to breathe, luck was deemed a viable design decision (dice or otherwise) and the concept of getting a couple of bad breaks in any particular play wasn’t a deal breaker, as long as multiple plays produced reasonably even breaks over time.  This is fully sufficient in a game that gets a dozen or more plays, as each person can point to the moment things went against them, but also the moment things fell their way.  In the 2000s games became disposable objects costing twenty or thirty dollars we could afford to play once (if at all) and then set aside.  Today’s games suffer from prior expectations and rising prices simultaneously.  They’re double pressured to produce exciting endings in just one play.  The box designers have to work in now has been shrinking for years -- less downtime, less bits, less luck, less playtime.  But we’re still expecting the same level of entertainment.   The list of game mechanics acceptable to the Great Internet Focus Group grows shorter each year.

            I’m not going to pretend that reality isn’t what it is – games need to stand on their own in one play now, and if there’s going to be an exciting ending there has to be some level of anything-can-happen in them, and there have to be enough rolls of the dice to give everyone their share knocks and lifts.  But as any particular play progresses (i.e., as luck evens out) superior play is going to produce a leader.  Those following behind need options to chase them.  Remember – this is our “well designed game” – no kingmaking, no artificial catch-up mechanisms allowed.  The players doing the chasing need a way to gain ground, but our very-fair game needs to extract payment for it.

             That’s where the dice come in.  The fundamental concept of exchanging additional risk for a chance at additional reward is so endemic to gaming that its name has transcended its origin – the Hail Mary.  The term’s origin is from American Football, not the Catholic prayer.  When a team is down by a significant margin late in the game they begin making riskier plays, throwing the ball long distances in spite of the high risk of the opposing team intercepting it.  But if you need to score quickly this is how it’s done.  The other team is well aware of the concept of course, and the game changes as both teams adapt to the continually growing pressure on one to catch the other.  Hardly unique to Football, Hockey teams pull their goaltenders, soccer teams press an extra man forward . . . the concept appears in every sport because it’s a fundamental cog in the machinery of life, endemic to human endeavors.  So excluding it from a board game because it’s not “fair” almost appears absurd.  The fundamental exchange of added risk for additional opportunity plays out in finance, war, even romance.

             “There is nothing worse than spending three hours playing a game only to have everything come down to one dice roll.”

            That die roll is different each time you play.  In a close game the roll might go fifty-fifty, and everyone at the table understands that they’re in the hunt, as deserving as any other.  It’s just close a game.  Alternatively, in a blowout the guy rolling the bones is way out on the limb.  He’s throwing his Hail Mary, taking his one in a million shot to stay relevant.  The player in the lead wisely spent the endgame keeping the pressure on, solidifying his position and increasing the odds, but the win isn’t in the bank until the game ends.  Most of the time the roll is between the two extremes, where everyone has played well, but one has played better and the odds are naturally (and appropriately) in their favor.  This is the nature of the world.  Reducing it to a trite phrase on the Internet may make you feel good about yourself, but it’s not reality, and it’s not good gaming.

     

                                               S.

     

     

  • The "Ever Increasingly Misnamed" Weekly Snapshot: 09/21/07

  • The "Great" Debate

    The excellent Michael Barnes recently conducted an excellent interview with game designer Reiner Knizia. He's widely regarded as one of the best game designers ever, but his stock has gone up and down around these parts. Currently, it's up: something I didn't realise when I waded in to offer a contrary opinion.

    The response begs an interesting question: what do we mean when we say "best" in this context? What qualifies a designer for an epithet of "great"?

    I'm in a poor position to judge, having designed one godawful game in my entire life, which has never seen the light of day. But as a critic, I'm supposed to offer opinion on such things. So here we go.

    What's always impressed me most about new designs is creativity. Board gaming is inherently limited by the things you can do with card and wood, metal and plastic.  It's straitjacketed by thousands of years of human tradition which leads us to expect games to look and play a certain way. Breaking away from these strictures as the massive weight of cultural expectation bears down on you must be unbelievably hard.

    Genre-shattering designs are correspondingly rare. Genre-shattering designers, who manage the feat regularly, are even more so. And by that measure, Knizia doesn't measure up.

    One of the moments when conventions got splintered to pieces was the mid-nineties when early German-style games hit the UK and America. These games are great games: great then, and still great now. Titles like Settlers of Catan and El Grande were like nothing we'd ever seen before. Their designers were rightly celebrated for that achievement, although they've not hit such heights again.

     

    Knizia was not quite a part of that moment. He rode on its coat tails, with his best games appearing in the late nineties. That shows in his designs. Lost Cities and Battle Line are clear Rummy variants. Samurai and Through the Desert trace obvious lines of descent to classic abstracts. Modern Art and Medici are just fancy auctions. 

    This trend, of taking tried and tested mechanics and twisting them into interesting new shapes, is almost a hallmark. It takes a lot of skill, and Knizia has more skill than most. What it doesn't take is a lot of creativity.

    You could also argue that he's almost earned himself black marks against innovation by using his immense talents to churn out cookie-cutter games. His output is prodigious, focused on the German family market with titles few of us will have heard of, let alone played. But far too many look a lot like re-skinned or tweaked versions of his existing games. That's surely the opposite of creativity. 

    His cleverest inventions, to my mind, are his Egyptian games Ra and Amun-Re. They contain the seeds of genius. But I'm not sure two clever titles qualifies a designer for the innovation hall of fame. 

    His most celebrated title is Tigris and Euphrates. It's not a design I'd say was particularly creative, owing a huge debt to common abstracts. It's also not a game I enjoy particularly, although I can see why people do. It's a strong, lean and deep design one could play many times and still not master.

    Which leads us on to another consideration. What if you don't measure a designer by their creativity, but by a simpler measure: how much people enjoy their games?

    Here, the good doctor is on much firmer ground. He's got eight games in the boardgamegeek top 200, a spectacular feat considering that they're older titles in a list which favours newness and celebrity. Some of those games, particuarly Battle Line and Ra, belong to that rare category of games that offer joy to almost everyone.

    So I'm guessing that fun is the criteria people are using when they talk about Knizia being a great designer. One could argue, again, that his vast output of mediocre titles should be set against this highlights, but perhaps that's a churlish attitude. 

    What's more troubling is that some of his more popular games are amongst his most tedious. Samurai and Through the Desert strike me as humorless, boring games that would be better played against a machine than a fellow human being. The fact that these are celebrated would once have seemed to some as evidence of everything that was wrong with gaming. It still does to me, but it seems I'm now in a minority.

    I'd argue, though, that creativity is simply a better measure of greatness. It's rarer, for starters. Since that mid-nineties explosion of German brilliance I'd say there are perhaps three people who've shown it regularly. They are Martin Wallace, Rob Daviau and the incomparable Vlaada Chvatil.

    On the other side, of that triumvirate, it's only Chvatil who's regularly put out games that are both creative and fun. Daviau's designs are often packed with fresh imaginative ideas, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Wallace perfected the art of bringing balance to highly interactive and non-random games, but his titles can be dry and heavy beyond endurance.

    And this is where Dr. Knizia earns his stripes. Not as the most creative designer ever, nor as the most fun, but as someone who's struck a beautiful balance of the two with so many of his games. When you step back there are remarkably few designers whose work is almost always worth your time in some way or other. I still think Vlaada is top of that heap. But Knizia wins a deserved second.

    Matt Thrower (He/Him)
    Head Writer

    Matt has been writing about tabletop games professional since 2012, blogging since 2006 and playing them since he could talk.

    image

     

    Matt Thrower
    Head Writer
     

     

  • The 2007 Cracked LCD Awards


     Yes, it's time. Over at Gameshark.com I've posted my year-end awards list. For my part, I will say that this is probably the only list you won't see AGRICOLA, RACE FOR THE GALAXY, or AGE OF EMPIRES III on when all is said and done. But hey, go look and come back here to argue. But Mike, say you, what about the 2007 Trashies? That's next week, and they're a F:AT exclusive. Gotta protect Bill Abner and co. from any litigation.
  • The 2008 Trashie Awards- Special Announcement!

    goldentrash.jpg
  • The 2009 Review

    2009Thanks almost entirely to the existence of Fortress:Ameritrash and my ongoing need to fill column inches therein, 2009 has been the first year of my entire life during which I've played enough of the new releases for the year to actually do an annual review. It is unfortunate therefore that in terms of new releases 2009 has been a pretty poor year all round. Indeed if it wasn't for the last three months it'd be pretty much a write off. Maybe it was the hangover of so many great releases at the end of 2008, or perhaps a combination of GW's and Martin Wallace's lawyers scared everyone into submission, or maybe we have finally reached "The Ceiling" but whatever the reason I've found it hard to get immensely excited about any more than a tiny handful of games this year. Which makes writing this piece all the easier.

  • The Advantages of Lifestyle Games

    There was a time when I could give an educated opinion on almost every new board game release. I made a point of playing them all, and ultimately writing a review. But last week I watched from afar as my friends attended BGG.Con, and I realized that I didn’t recognize most of the games. It wasn’t that I hadn’t played them. I wasn’t even aware of their existence. At no point in my “gamer” years have I ever felt so distant from the hobby that once meant so much to me. 

  • The Age of Reprints

    Last fall there was a little dust-up in the gaming world. Stronghold Games announced that they had received the rights from the designer for Merchant of Venus, the classic Avalon Hill title. The reprint was going to be true to the original release, with top-of-the-line components and artwork. Then there was a little wrinkle: Fantasy Flight Games announced that they had received the rights from Hasbro, who now owns Avalon Hill. Essentially, two different companies claimed to have the rights to print the same game.

  • The Age of Steam Legal Dispute Explained

    With the new Age of Steam Kickstarter, the old Age of Steam Legal dispute has resurfaced. As some people may be unfamiliar with the dispute we are reprinting this article originall published here in 2009 with an added up date from March 14, 2019,

  • The Agonies of Choice

    agony.jpgA couple of weeks ago I got the chance to play Ghost Stories for the first time. It was okay. I certainly enjoyed the few games I played although I'd say it has some question marks over its long term appeal. But for some obscure reason it triggered off a chain of thought in my head as regards the process of choosing, buying and playing new games. I'm not yet entirely convinced that all the steps in this particular chain are actually as directly connected as they look, squatting as they are right now in my head like stars in the firmament: hopefully by writing them down we'll see whether or not the dots join up. But in the meantime, be prepared for a possibly confusing ride.

  • The Art and Science of Game Design

    I’m not a game designer. I have some ideas, but I doubt that I’d ever have the patience and perseverance required to see a design through from inception to endless rounds of play testing to a final finished product. This clearly limits what useful commentary I can make on the design process, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from trying - I’ve become very fond of repeating a certain mantra about what constitutes a workable design goal and what doesn’t, the idea being that “must tie in strongly with ancient Roman theme” is a goal likely to lead to a good game, whereas “must play within 90 minutes” will likely lead to something shallow and forgettable. But this is a pretty negative way of approaching the subject so I thought for once that I’d turn the tables and suggest a process which might help designers to focus on the positive goals and bypass the negative ones. Apologies if the following sounds like I’m trying to teach people to suck eggs on a subject in which I have limited knowledge. That’s not my intention. Rather I’m throwing out this rather abstract piece in the hope that some of the ideas herein might encourage debate and some better suggestions.

  • The Ascendancy of Culture

    Star Trek as a phenomenon. How its peoples and the way they changed can be viewed through the best game ever made for it.

  • The AT Weekly Snapshot--October 5th, 2007

     

    Setting: 15th Century. The principality of Wallachia employs unique processes that serve the dual function of deterring outside invaders as well as entertaining the royalty.

    The prince has personally contracted the players to maximize process efficiency, through acquisition and utilization of resources. Among these resources are food, peasants, pikes and Turks. The prince will hold unexpected feasts at random processing sites - the players who can quickly lay out food and the proper atmosphere will receive the prince's utmost admiration. Players who fail will instead feel his piercing disappointment.

     

    Today's snapshot and write-up comes courtesy of Mark Wrynn. Thanks, Mark!

    _______________________________

    If you've got a great image that just screams Ameritrash, email us the image or a URL.

    It can be an image you created or an image you found on the web. We don't care! If it meets our strict quality standards, we'll publish it in The Weekly AT Snapshot, instantly making you an undeniable global celebrity.

    We'll even pimp your website if you send us the URL for that.

    This is a copy of an article originally published on the old F:AT blog. Read original comments. 

  • The Auteur Theory

    Pictured is Stanley Kubrick, the greatest director of all time. He wasn't just an auteur, he was the living embodiment of the term. He doesn't really have anything to do with gaming, but the auteur theory does.

    Pop quiz. Name the author of the last game you played. Was it EON? Corey Koniesczka? Jim Bailey? Rudiger Dorn? No matter who you name, you're wrong. The designer is undoubtedly an authorial impetus in the creation of game, but ultimately we are the authors of the games we play. Give yourself some credit.

    That's what this week's Cracked LCD is about, and you have due warning that it's one of those smarty pants "I been to kolledge" articles about games that may not interest you if you are more into objective reviews or component lists. I haven't done one of these in a while, and I thought it'd be nice to break up the Summer of Reviews with some highfalutin academic talk.

  • The Ballad of Sir Roland

    DQ-roland.jpgWith nary a backward glance, Sir Roland stepped out of the dawn light and into the cold gloom of the castle tower. Lighting his lantern, he checked that his healing ring was in place underneath his armour, although the knowledge gave him scant comfort considering the terrors reputed to lurk in the dungeons of Dragonfire Castle. He made a quick scan of his other equipment: sword, shield, a magical compass, and a candle in the lantern marked to approximate the progress of hours until sunset, by which time he would need to be out of the castle. Swallowing, he walked down the steps, northward into the musty darkness.

  • The Battle of Meta-Gamma

    warbattlemetagammaCommissar Gerhart flicked a clod of earth from his black leather trenchcoat and stared out over no-man’s land. The percussive rumbling of the artillery ten miles back had finally subsided, and an eerie silence descended. If he strained, he could just about hear the grumbling and snarling of the Greenskins in the far distance. Thirty fething days on this Emperor forsaken planet, and all they had to show for it was a lot of spent ammo casings, crap stuck to his coat and a bit of a cough.

    Sgt. Hoyt stepped alongside him, peering up over the edge of the trench. “Sons of bitches are dug in like Armageddon ticks. This will require careful planning.”
  • The Beauty of Favored Ground.

    There wasn’t much time left this past week so we sat down to a game of No Thanks.  This is a quick game by any standard (even by the standard of the two prior games of Biblios, a quick game all its own.)  But in spite of that No Thanks presents a bit of magic in the play that I usually just refer to as “favored ground”.  As far as I’m concerned favored ground is a seriously cool thing to have in a game, but it will take a bit of explaining to describe how No Thanks manages to have it in spite of not having a map, or even a board for that matter.

  • The Best Games of 2012


    trophyIt is the sworn duty of every board game writer to come up with a “best of” article at the end of every year. This is carved in stone, from the beginning of the internet. I’m curious sometimes what would happen if someone were to NOT give their year-in-review article. I suspect that the internet would proceed as it always has, but I worry there’s a slim chance it sends us plummeting to a fiery death. I think it might be better not to risk it.

  • The Best Games of 2013

    too much paper champagneEvery end-of-the-year board game article I read makes a general assessment over the entire year, something I’ve never felt qualified to do. For starters, there are a lot of big releases that I still haven’t played. If I don’t get a review copy of something, I have to catch the wave of popularity every new release gets before my gaming friends have moved on. When that doesn’t happen, it becomes less likely that I’ll get around to something without trading for it. That’s why a couple of major releases like Pathfinder and Kemet passed by without comment from me. They haven’t made a lot of impact in my immediate circles, though they have been very well-regarded online. Besides that, the end of the year is when Essen releases are just beginning to trickle to the US. Some promising games are about to be inserted into my rotation (like Tash-Kalar and Steam Park) that would normally be considered 2013 releases. Let’s just assume those will be eligible for the 2014 list, especially a couple of games below are in that shadowy realm between 2012 and 2013.

    All that said, it does feel like 2013 was a generally strong year for new releases, at least from my own experience. The five games listed below are all very strong entries, and the separation between 2-4 in particular was razor-thin. Just a couple of other games bear mentioning, even if they weren’t on the list. First of all, I enjoyed the board-based deck-building of Trains, perhaps the first deck-builder that didn’t inspire instant ambivalence from me since at least 2011. Terra Mystica is a game that I admired more than I enjoyed, but the brain-burning Euro player will love it, and I wouldn’t say no to an occasional game either. Bioshock Infiniter: The Siege of Columbia didn’t really use its lucrative license as well as it might have, but the game beneath the hood was a lot of fun. Finally, Scoundrels of Skullport, the expansion for Lords of Waterdeep, was one of my favorite releases of the whole year. It did everything an expansion should do, without weighing down the game. But those were all a far cut from the five games listed below.

    Star Wars LCG5. Star Wars: The Card Game
    Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars Living Card Game dominated the first half of the year for me, until I fell behind on the Force Packs and it succumbed to the same drought of plays that befalls all two-player games for me. So I don’t play it like I did when I first got it, and we’ll see if it stays out of the trade pile. But that fading is really more a result of my lifestyle than any fault in the game itself, which was generally excellent. Quick-playing with surprisingly intuitive rules, Star Wars is exactly the kind of game that Fantasy Flight should be pursuing with the LCG format. Of special note is the deck-building method, which removes the card-by-card decision-making and makes deck-building a much quicker and accessible prospect. It’s a brilliant innovation, and something that wouldn’t work nearly as well in a standard CCG release. Add to that terrific illustrations and just enough classic Star Wars flavor, and it’s good enough to be one of my 2013 highlights, even if it came out in the waning days of 2012.

    City of Remnants4. City of Remnants
    Many terrific games get enough plays to review, and then they need to be slotted to the back of the line to make way for newer titles. City of Remnants refused to stay there, and my friends kept on asking to try it out, and then they would ask to play it again. It pilfers design ideas from all over the place and puts them together into something that runs like a muscle car when it should be the Homer. There’s a little deck-building, a little auctioning, a little economics, and a lot of cutthroat conflict. The combat in particular is high-stakes and tense. It also handles faction powers in a refreshing way, using deck-building to give each faction flexibility based on their circumstances. The first play was interesting, the second one grew on me, and each one after that has reinforced how much I like it.

    Robinson Crusoe3. Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
    When we think of thematic games, we tend to think of “Ameritrash,” that vague category of games with lots of dice rolls and wild swings of luck. Well, Robinson Crusoe is one of the best “thematic” experiences of the year, and there’s nothing trashy about it. It’s a Euro through and through, with worker-placement and efficiency that serves its theme almost perfectly. It’s not really an interpretation of Defoe’s original novel, but rather a scenario-based game about surviving on a deserted island. You and the other survivors will need to gather wood, hunt for food, build shelter, weather storms, and explore more of the island. There are a lot of rules to take in, but the payoff is a richly detailed game that I think  about in narrative beats rather than mechanical ones. It’s also an outstanding cooperative game. That’s as it should be, because you don’t survive on a jungle island without coming together.

    Coup2. Coup
    Fifteen cards and a pile of coin tokens. That’s all that’s in the box, but it’s enough to make one of the best games of the year, whether you’re playing the 2012 version or the new Kickstarter one set in the universe of The Resistance. It’s the best bluffing game I’ve ever played, one that hides a striking amount of depth in fifteen minutes. Do you use your character’s power? Do you lie about what characters you have to use a different action? And how do you know when someone else is lying? These kinds of questions are in any bluffing game, but the small rulespace of Coup forces you to swim the murky waters between lies and the truth. Coup is good enough that it no longer exists as a single game. It needs to be played with my group at least two or three times in a row. And maybe just one more after that…

    Duel of Ages1. Duel of Ages II
    There is something in Duel of Ages II that must be depriving oxygen to my brain, because playing it makes me just a little giddy. A lot of games are silly, but Duel of Ages is silly in an intense way. The enormous variety of characters, the endless items, the do-what-you-feel-like gameplay, they all are ridiculous in a way that feels expertly designed. Not the sort of design that is an end to itself, but one that establishes itself as the basis and lets you take it from there. There are plenty of funny stories in any given session, a feature that gets mentioned in almost every review. But I am more impressed with how strongly it embraces player agency, imagination, and interaction. It’s not afraid of players who want to park on a cliff and pick off enemies. If you want to storm the enemy base, that’s fine. If you want to dive into a dogpile of tokens and see how you do, go nuts. That’s why it’s best with more people, because it allows each player to both identify closer with who they have, and to be a part of a bigger unit while they take on the other team. It’s been my mountaintop gaming experience of 2013, and I suspect it will be one for a good long time.

  • The Big Boss Man: End Bosses and Narrative

    Big Boss ManBarnes mentioned something recently in the forums about either not liking or being tired of the "big boss" syndrome in games. It really struck home with me as it dawned on me that this is something I really, really like--and the notion of having a "boss" to fight often makes a game more enjoyable to me. It's exciting, and conducive to an emerging narrative. It gives players a goal, something to ramp up for, something to accomplish. Sure, it can be a tired, cliched device as well, as so many action movies feature a lead villain, a nefarious end boss that the hero has to overcome and save the day.