Preferred this game over Monopoly when I was a kid because you earned more money. (Great reason, right?) Now it's one of the only games I WILL NOT play with my kids.
Wow, that's amazing! Thank you so much for sharing. I started signing to my daughter maybe 9 months ago and it was just last week when she signalled back to me "MILK". It was so thrilling I almost fell down.
I have a wonderful 3 year old daughter that has Down Syndrome. She is our 10th child. She is such a blessing. She currently knows about 150 signs. We have been teaching her signs since she was about 6 months old. She is a most wonderful part of our life and has opened up a whole new world. She has perfect hearing but has yet to say any words, so the signing was a very good decision that we made to be able to communicate to her.
In our part of the U.S we have a walk in September of every year.
So enjoy your daughter every single minute of every single day!!
Played this game often as a kid, and am hanging on to it so I can play it with my family. The low salary after getting all those loans for college is a little more painful now that it's not just a game, but Life is still awesome.
I'm working on it! But I'm also working 12 hour shifts without play time. I also tend to pick a somewhat more obscure one than a hit when I have a choice.
Older versions did as well. I played in the early 1990s and that was an option then. (The set was probably years old already by that point, it had Uranium miner as a possible occupation.)
Yes I know I could get shot for mentioning this game in a list that has things as heavy as Napoleon and We The People on it-- but in the old/orig. version of this game-- you could always bet on what the wheel was going to land on during anyone's turn.
ASL ... yes, this is my Desert Island Game. If I have to give up all my 3000+ games and only allowed to keep one, this would be it. This bloody game stood the test of time. Around for more than 25 years - simply the best.
Devote follower of the most holy church of the Evil Bob. Possessed and down the road to become chaotic, evil & naughty. All hail the Evil Bob and his stargate.
(I never thought that I will add this to a Geeklist - Busen Memo, ok, but game of life???)
Ok, this game is highly popular (for whatever reasons) and therefore will be recognized everywhere. And the baby has its whole life in front of him - I hope he rolls well
in 10 years time, perhaps by then Joseph will be old enough to be interested in and play serious games, so we may play more at home.. and he may come to game groups with us.
Perhaps I might have burnt out on playing New Games, preferring to play the 'classics' that I love. Guess it depends what happens in the industry.
But overall at the moment I'm kinda comfortable with how things are... I play some excellent games, usually have the chance to try at least 1 or 2 new ones in any month.. so I wouldn't mind if things hadn't changed much by then.
And as with everyone else, I hope to be gaming with my kids. I really only need 1 more player, so right now I just need 1 for 2 to be gamers. I won't be too disappointed if it doesn't work out, as long as they like to read. I'm reading my ass off to them right now and it better not be for naught.
And as with everyone else, I hope to be gaming with my kids. I really only need 1 more player, so right now I just need 1 for 2 to be gamers. I won't be too disappointed if it doesn't work out, as long as they like to read. I'm reading my ass off to them right now and it better not be for naught.
And yet, I know I can't control that. Sigh.
I'm hoping to have kids someday. I've got lots of music and games to share with them. They don't have to like my music. I know i enjoyed some of my parents records
My wife and I frustrate our kids with music as between us we have most types of music you can get. The kids say 'how can we rebel and have music you hate, when between you, you have it all'
   The trick with getting the kids reading is to find text that has material they want to get to. My daughter reads just about any story book but for two of my three boys that just didn't wash. We drop codices for Pokemon and 40k in their laps and the reading went into high gear. They needed the information in the books, so they read to get it.
   Unfortunately for one of them the material is being deemed "too violent" so it can't be used for any school work. We're scrambling to find a replacement that will keep his nose in a book. So we have a teacher telling us he has to read more in one sentence and then vetoing material he enjoys reading in the next. A much tougher walk for this one.
Seriously, though: the strangest, most bizarre, unlikliest coincidence that has ever happened to me is that I'm alive in the first place. The odds of my parents meeting and deciding to have a kid, and my grand-parents before them, and my grand-parents still before, and so on back to the dawn of time, are billions and billions and billions to one, so small as to be almost impossible. And yet it happened.
Every once in a while, particularly when I'm feeling unlucky (like losing that games for geekgold lottery where my odds were 92%), I think about that and realize that, gee, I'm really an unbelievably lucky guy.
It's a pretty good defence for a criminal lawyer to use, really.
"The odds of a red headed, five foot nine gym teacher from Nebraska named Ted robbing the bank at exactly 10:02 am owhile wearing a blue ski mask are so astronomically small ..."
"The odds of a red headed, five foot nine gym teacher from Nebraska named Ted robbing the bank at exactly 10:02 am owhile wearing a blue ski mask are so astronomically small ..."
Not forgetting the fact that the odds of a red headed, five foot nine gym teacher from Nebraska named Ted arriving to rob that self same bank at exactly 10.12 am that day while wearing a blue ski mask are pretty much exactly the same.
The probability of the first event occurring having no influece on the odds of the second independent event occurrring...
It's a pretty good defence for a criminal lawyer to use, really.
"The odds of a red headed, five foot nine gym teacher from Nebraska named Ted robbing the bank at exactly 10:02 am owhile wearing a blue ski mask are so astronomically small ..."
My only 1. I go by BGG categories in my rankings, and 1 thus is "not a game at all" - and most other games at least involve some choice, or then they are honest about their lack of choices (like Snakes and Ladders). Not this one, it says "hey, I simulate an entire life, you can do this or that yadda yadda" and then it's all roll and move and watch the game play itself, for (what seems like) hours and hours (and definitely is way too long).
I loathe this box. It's an abomination that should never have seen the light of day, and a disgrace to boardgamehood.
Games take time. Even games that have no interesting decisions do, sometimes particularly so, and some appear to be made for that very purpose in the first place.
Do you play games just for passing time? Or is that sometimes a side effect of playing games for you?
Gaming is an enjoyable passtime for me, that's why I avoid games I don't enjoy. It may be selfish, but I wouldn't expect others to play games they don't enjoy either.
If a game ever becomes merely a way to pass the time, I start liking it less and less by the minute. Like this game of Zombie Dice, recently, where we were just laughing about the pure randomness and unpredictability of the dice and the fact that there is no player interactino at all, towards the end. Which was fun in itself, but nothing that will make me suggest that game ever again.
I'll play a filler if that's what appeals to my audience. But, I'll usually be thinking about a better, deeper game, and wishing I was playing that.
Unfortunately, my family has begun thinking that a game can't be played unless I'm there. This may sound like a good thing because they call me all the time to come and play games--that's the good part. The bad part to it is that whenever I'm with all my family, the kids are all hounding me to play a game. What I would like to do is get them playing a good kids game, then start a deeper game with the adults. The few times I've suggested this, they all get sad faces and say, "But it's no fun unless you're playing with us." It's a strange place to be. I'm not saying I hate it, but sometimes I wish they were a little more independent in their gaming motivations.
So long answer made short: I play plenty of games that are just time-passers. But I wish I didn't so much.
We often bring fillers while we wait for our server or food when we are at conventions. It's a good way to extend the gaming experience outside the con. Toss Up! is a great example of a game for this.
In any other case gaming for me is for togetherness, friendship, and bonding. It's the reason that I have only ever played any board game competitively once.
Not really anymore (life is too short), but this was frequently the case when I was an RA or dormitory director in college. Long nights on duty, and cards were our only respite!
I'll play a game to pass time if Jane isn't up for a heavier game. Bohnanza, say.
I don't have nearly enough time to want to just pass it. I can't conceive of ever not having something I dearly want to do with my time, no matter how much time I had.
Time flies for me when I'm gaming. I'm always up for another. Gaming is one of the few things that can make my worries actually go away, even when they're hanging over me otherwise.
One of my fiancee's favorite games. Paid $1.50 for it at a Goodwill. Everything was scattered in the box and I didn't bother to count anything to see if everything was there. I figured if there was something missing, I could go into pretty much any thrift store and get another copy.
I played LOTS of monopoly at a young age. A friend insisted that I try life, and I hated it right away. Make one decision the whole time and just do what the (poorly functioning) spinner tells you to.
It would cement in my early years the idea of decision making and strategy in gaming, and plant the seeds of nerdom that I now find myself in.
Agreed that this one needs to come earlier in life. I played the original old-school one all the time when i was really young, and so my parents got the new 2000's version for our family vacation house and we played it for old times sake. Still the same boring chance spins, but it is interesting how the chance of being bankrupt was real in the 60s version, while in the 2000's version everyone ended with literally $500,000,000+. I dont think thats actually how life is...
I loved this as a kid. There is a bit more strategy than one decision. There are at least three branches in the track. Seriously, though, the gambling on any spin was a wonderful rule for kids who saw the gain. And the share the wealth cards could be strategically played to lessen the blow. Sure, where you land is random and what career you get is random, but it was a lot of fun, especially when you were shoving more than 4 kids into the station wagon.
Get it right...there is ONE decision in the game. And in some versions of this, particularly for children, the decision is obvious because the "college" path or whatever is all positive and there is no reward for finishing first.
Spin, move piece, handle shitty paper money back and forth. Spin, move, handle shitty paper money back and forth. Spin, move, handle shitty paper money back and forth. Hoooooooo boy.
You're supposed to spin the spinner so hard that it flies off the board and hits your little sister. Then you throw at her the little family pieces and tell her they're her babies.
Technically there are about five decisions because when you pass a blue space you get to decide whether or not to buy what is offered there (stocks, life insurance, fire insurance, car insurance). These aren't very interesting decisions (it has been a long time since I have played but I remember being pretty confident that the answer to "should I buy?" was always "yes, you undoubtedly should") but there is more than one decision in this game.
The best thing about Life is obviously the plastic spinner. But the second best thing about Life is the career path right at the beginning. Whenever we'd play, we would never, ever just launch out into the world as a low-income blue-collar worker. Why do that when you can go to university and become a Uranium Prospector? Or a Doctor?
Of course, the career track was not without risk. Who wants to waste the time going to school and ending up with a crappy job anyways? Not all university graduates were created equal, that's for sure. Which is why it was such a thrill to spin the wheel, listen to that familiar "whizzzzzz clack clack clack clack" and then move your little plastic car onto one of the premium spaces. Oh, too bad for you, having to make it in life on a teacher's salary. I'm a doctor pulling in $100k a year!
