Opener: Take Time

Closer: AI as a boardgame hobbyist, not designer or publisher or artist

If you've listened to this podcast at all, you've heard me talk about online boardgaming. That's probably true of most boardgame podcasts, these days. The rise of Boardgame Arena has made it fairly ubiquitous among hobbyists, though not universal. However, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you'll recall that I've been talking about online gaming for two decades. Before it was cool. :-)

In fact, as I thought about it and did some research, I've been playing games online even longer than I've been doing this podcast. I can find old references in my blog, on usenet...I even did some really old-school postal Play By Mail (PBM) gaming in the 1980s and play-by-Email Settlers of Catan in the 1990s.


By 2005 and the start of this podcast, online boardgaming had already come a long way from those days. We had Brettspielwelt (BSW), Yucata.de, SpielByWeb.com, Mabiweb, Ludagora, YouPlayIt, Boîte a Jeux, and more. Some of those sites are still around, updated to the present-day or else unchanged for 20 years. Some others are just gone, unfortunately.

In their place, new sites have popped up. Everyone knows about Boardgame Arena, and I'm a heavy user, premium subscriber, to that awesome service. It's where I do the bulk of my online gaming. However, there are some other sites worth knowing about. I find it incredibly encouraging that BGA's success has not stifled other programmers who still set up new sites with bunches of games we can't play elsewhere. Then add something like a semi digital prototyping tool at virtualtabletop.io and the landscape is vast!



Look me up for a game, or post a suggest on our Discord channel. I always love playing more games online. I even enjoy learning the interface to new sites, since it opens up more & more possibilities.

-Mark

In the old days of this podcast, I often offered an "Essen Anticipation" episode. That's where I would browse the various previews and other scraps of info about the many games being shown at Essen each October. Besides the enjoyable "window shopping" or wishlist-ing of it all, sometimes I even tried to analyze how accurate or useful my anticipation was, judging which games proved to be keepers (or at least fun to play someone's copy), and whether my excitement could be traced to a game's designer, mechanisms, publisher & production, or—heaven help me…—its theme.

Then it all got to be too much, and I stopped doing that. To be honest, it's still too much, but I made an exception this year. There are just too many games to think about and anticipate. Plus, I'm now that many more years along in the hobby, meaning I've really settled in to a smaller-sized collection, focusing on my favorites, and it's very hard for a new game to squeeze its way into that limited space. And yet…my gaming throughout the year isn't limited by my collection size or even the need to acquire the game. I have friends who buy other things, and I go to a lot of gaming events, from local games days to national conventions. It's pretty easy for me to end up trying games that interest me, as well as politely playing others that don't!

I knew I'd be away on vacation during the time I'd normally record & post this episode, so I decided this was a good topic for me to tackle in advance. Though going out on October 1st per my monthly publication schedule, it was recorded halfway through September. I waded through a lot of previews and lists, easily finding ten games that I wanted to say something about. What are you looking for from Essen?



Very few games are anything like an insta-buy, sight-unseen for me nowadays. Once upon a time, we'd place a group order to Germany just as soon as the show ended, hoping the titles we were excited about would arrive before Christmas so we could play them by New Year's parties. These days I can just plan to try almost whatever I want at BGGcon a month later. And I do. What do I want to try? Mostly games I feel less sure about, but still intrigued. My friends or I will acquire the more sure things and get to them eventually.

The ten games above are a mix of games I want to talk about because I want to own them, want to just see about them…or have something to say even though I'm not particularly interested.


-Mark