The world of designing

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Comment by Kim Kanger on February 24, 2013 at 12:42pm

And electronic games miss out the social interactive part of having an opponent across the table, and not across the nation.

Comment by Lincoln Graves on February 14, 2013 at 1:59am

Very good points.  Not to mention that the business model for electronic games pretty much requires an AI to make the game sell enough copies.  And having an AI pretty much dumbs down most games even if you PBEM them instead.

Comment by Joseph A. Angiolillo Jr. on February 13, 2013 at 10:47pm

I just listened to the rationale from Moritz Eggert that boardgames and electronic games will soon merge. As a computer game designer for Coleco and board game designer for SPI, Gameshop, Nova, GTD and others, as well as an American game historian, I think Moritz ignored the most important difference between boardgames and electronic games: electronic games evolve so fast, each new game is passe in less than three months. American boardgames since the first one in 1822 have been collected and replayed as part of a person's life. Not only do electronic games change so fast, the platforms and software needed for each game is gone in less than two years. I thought my game design of WarGames (based on the movie of the same name) would provide a lot of play for a long time, especially since the game won the award at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas in 1984 for the best video cartridge of the year. It also sold 110,000 copies in the week of Christmas alone. But now I may be one of the only people on the planet that has a working copy of the game: you need a working Colecovision or Adam Computer as well as a working cartridge. Back in 1984 the chips were made by vapor depositing gold to approximately 20 atoms thick. Now the chips are vapor deposited to 3 atoms thick. Just like videotapes decayed in 30 years because they use magnetism and our planet has a magnetic field, chips today will disintigrate because of misalignment of gold threads in the computer chips by overuse or being kept anywhere close to working electrical or electronic equipment. Boardgames were built to last. Electronics are not only built to make money, they are built to disintigrate.

 

So, until you can show me an electronic game that is still widely played for thirty years and is played by a large number of gamers against one another, I will remain sceptical. We must first invent an electronic system than will not be disposed of yearly and will not disintegrate in two to ten years.

Comment by Kim Kanger on February 13, 2013 at 4:09am

Comment by Mark on September 19, 2010 at 2:21am

Im a hobby Programer, ive made a generic wargame for PC & MacOSX, it has its own Computer opponant. my knowledge only goes so far, so Im trying to get a freeware module designed to help give it something special.
http://www.thewargamer.com/grognard/godofwars.zip it probably wont be updated untill tonight all being well.

Mark

Comment by Kim Kanger on December 19, 2009 at 10:41am

There is a podcast made now about Ici, c'est la France! and which is made by Moritz Eggert (the shows of Westpark Gamers and Dicetower). He says Ici resembles something of a wargame revolution. Listen here.

Comment by Kim Kanger on September 18, 2009 at 4:47am

Now that Ici is out, I will turn my attention to Tonkin again. I have some problems with the scale but that will be sorted out in due time.

Comment by Kim Kanger on October 8, 2008 at 3:35am

A game of "Ici, c'est la France!" is being played online between me, being FLN, and Randy Lein (Khyber Pass Games) who plays France:

http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?50@603.ZJyRcVs8N9d.7@.ee6da12

You can see the current map-situation here:

http://www.kangerproject.com/algerie/

Comment by Kim Kanger on March 24, 2008 at 1:28pm

What exactly do you do during the action phase?

Comment by Alfredo M. Battaglia on March 23, 2008 at 10:47am

I have a few wargames that I've been working on for the past few years. The current one that I have been spending the most time on is a US Civil War game entitled, "Manassas To Bull Run."

It uses a system similar to We The People/Hannibal: Rome v. Carthage, but it is not a card-driven game.

14 pages of rules,Brigade units, 600 yard hexes, Leader/Unit activations, etc.

Tentative Game Phases:
Reinforcement Phase
Leader Movement Phase
Rally Phase
Action Phase
Victory Determination Phase

Would be nice to get some help in furthering the design, at least for testing.