Archive for Damon Asher
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Damon Asher
United States
Jefferson
MA
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I, like many of you, am taking a hard look at my collection these days. Also, like many of you, while I have a sizable collection, I am not a game collector. These games are here to be PLAYED, and each and every one of them needs to be one that I want to play.
I do love to look at these shelves though, because each game that my eyes fall upon excites something in me. When I look at a game I have decided to make part of my collection, it stirs something in me that makes me glad to have it. A game that I don’t enjoy, or has something glaring that I dislike about it, has to go, as it stands out like a rotting banana peel in the middle of my otherwise delicious dinner plate. Moreover, I am at the point where a game that is just "meh" is just as bad. When I have so many games that I LOVE competing for my time, anything just okay is unacceptable.
As I consider the games in my collection, I realize that for each one, the element that makes me like that game immediately springs to mind. The many common elements shared across games fade into the background, and that unique element is what pops out at me. I call this the SPARK. Each and every game that I keep has to have a spark to it. The stronger that spark, the higher I tend to rate the game.
These sparks tend to be game mechanisms that I find particularly, fun, interesting, or unique. When I think about the sparks, I realize that theme is not that important to me as a spark; it is generally the mechanisms that get me excited; the things you DO in the game and the ways you interact with your fellow players. If a game has multiple strong sparks, well, now we are talking 9-10 rating. Thinking about playing these games gives me a feeling in my gut like when I am about to watch a favorite scene from a favorite movie, or my wife is about to come out of the shower. Well, maybe not as good as that last thing. It is these sparks that give me a passion for these games and fuel my desire to share this experience with others.
On the other side of the coin, we have the things that turn me off from a game. I call these the DEAL-BREAKERS. I have found that deal-breakers generally supersede sparks for me. With so many games that do not have these distasteful blemishes, it is hard to justify putting up with a game element that annoys me.
I am experiencing more deal-breakers now than I used to thanks to my recent involvement with some excellent gaming groups. I used to play mainly with friends and family, meaning I always brought the games, and I tend to like the games I buy because I research them before purchase. Being in a group with other gamers has given me a chance to try some of their games that I was not initially inspired to buy myself. I have found a lot of games that I unexpectedly love by this route, but I have also found some that I unexpected don’t care for. Sometimes I am the only one who doesn’t like the game, and that has given me occasion to consider why that is. These games obviously have good to great things about them, which even I can recognize, but there’s just something that turns me off so much that it overrides the good. These are the deal-breakers.
Like the sparks, I have found that when I think about games that I don’t enjoy, usually the deal-breaker is what jumps out, kinda like an anti-spark. Sometimes the fact that a game is just "meh" is the deal-breaker, but often there is some specific element. Unlike sparks, I have found that the deal-breakers are less likely to be game mechanisms. While I said above that theme is rarely a spark for me, it is more often a deal-breaker. If the theme of a game just sucks or is utterly bleh then that can pull me right out of the experience. Component, design, or artistic issues can be deal-breakers. Fiddliness of rules or overly complex scoring systems are also common deal-breakers.
Just writing this now, I realize that the deal-breakers are things that pull me out of the game experience. It’s like seeing a mike boom in the middle of an intense movie scene. If I become acutely aware that "I am going through the process of playing game now" that kills the experience for me. A good game experience is like a massage for your brain, but these deal-breakers are like a stick in the ear and ruin me getting into that groove. The game needs to get out of the way so we can PLAY it rather than work through it. This isn’t an Ameritrash vs. Euro issue. Even the most procedural Euro can be immersive if it is well constructed, and I find that my favorites are entirely engrossing.
As my personal sonnet to this hobby, I am beginning a process of going through my ratings comments and putting into words the spark or deal-breaker. I think this will be useful as I periodically re-evaluate my collection in the face of new games and decide if that spark is still there or if it outshines the new hotness that tempts me. I also expect that I will fail to find the spark for some, and those will be brutally culled!
Over the next series of blog entries, I am going to list some of these sparks and deal-breakers and see what you all think. I look forward to some good discussions!
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Damon Asher
United States
Jefferson
MA
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OK, I recently realized that I have a geek pet peeve: thin cardboard counters in otherwise good production value games from publishers that should know better. Thin counters or tiles bug me far more than unmounted boards; you don't have to pick up and handle the boards as you play. On the list of thin-counter shame:
Hollywood Blockbuster (RIP Uberplay)
Notre Dame
Macao (come on Alea! This is the freakin' Big Box line, step it up!)
These are the ones that come immediately to mind, but I'm sure I'll add more as I come across them again.
Peeve number 2: unpainted miniatures. I am no painter, and I have a hard time distinguishing gray minis from one another on the board. What I usually do is color the base of each mini with a different colored Sharpie so I can tell them apart easily. I would much rather have a cardboard stand-up with nice art than an unpainted miniature. I'm not talking about dudes-on-a-map style wargames. There minis of different colors for each army are fine (unless there are factions within that army that should be different colors, WAR OF THE RING!). I mean games like Runebound where you have a single pawn that you need to pick out from all the other gray pawns on the board.
Fantasy Flight is a big offender here. Come on, can't we at least make each player pawn a different color? At least dip the bases? On the other hand, FFG also demonstrates the model I like the best with Arkham Horror: stand-ups in the game with the option to purchase painted minis separately. That's the way to do it! I'll invest in those bad boys if I love the game. So bravo FFG! And also BOOOO!
On a related note, if you're going to go with stand-ups, provide one stand for each stand-up. Do not make me destroy the stand-up bottoms by squeezing different ones into too few bases each game. Also, make sure that the bases actually hold the cardboard. I am surprised that Z-Man Games gave us those utterly useless bases with Magical Athlete. I can't remember right now if they did the right thing and at least provide one base per character, because I had to swap in some other stands I had. In any case, so close, yet so far!
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