Who is winning board games or electronic games

[Sukunai]

Really, this is electronic vs non electronic.

So it's not about the name of the game, it's about the mode of the
game.

Chess is a board game, so is Poker, so is a role game of the paper n
pencil sort.

A Nintendo DS is electronic, so is a PS3 game, and so is something
played on a PC.

ASL is big, even if only big in its own niche.
Chess is also not mainstream any more than ASL is.
And sadly 4th edition D&D might have nice sales, but, its still not
mainstream.

But as popular as World of Warcraft is, and seems, it's still not like
the entire planet plays it. It's only big in it's own category that
being MMOs. I know my son plays it. But guess what, for every WoW
player, I can find you hundreds that wouldn't know what it was.

Pokemon is big on the DS, but really, that's a kid thing. Kids don't
make up all of the market believe it or not.

And there simply is no reason to think ANY console game 360 or PS3 is
doing as well as they are often made to sound.

Thing is, all of gaming can experience ups and downs.

The question thus is, who do you think is doing better, considering
their past performance over the last 10 years.

I'll let you guys answer first, and then add my thoughts after.

[Patrick]

You managed to quickly rattle off some things I've never stopped to
ponder on.

Chess is not mainstream? Hmm, I guess not--but I never would've
thought that. I mean, the world chess championship can still make
news headlines, and the whole world knows the name Bobby Fischer.
Yet, most people don't play chess; only a small minority do--even if
we count xiangqi, shogi, and the many other variations of chess.
Millions of people, but still just a fraction of people in the world.

Kids and their video games don't overwhelmingly dominate the market?
They sure seem to sometimes.

Truth is, I'd have to plead "insufficient data." I really don't know
how many people are doing what. All I have to go by are my personal
observations and impressions.

One thing I've noticed is that when I Google "game" or even "classic
game," electronic games are what show up. To get anything else, I
have to try "board game" or "traditional game" or something. And
when, in day-to-day conversations with people under forty, I mention
games, right away they think of electronic games (or maybe sports,
depending on how clear the context is). I have to specify "board and
card games" if I'm talking about the non-electronic kind. (But if I'm
talking to someone over fifty, like me, they tend to think of non-
electronic games first, and I have to say "computer games" or "video
games" if that's what I mean.)

In my mind, traditional board games like chess, go, backgammon,
mancala, checkers, etc. are timeless. Same with dominoes and many
traditional card games. It seems like they've been around forever and
always will be, no matter what. I don't like to face the truth about
them--that they were all invented at some point in history, all
changed over time, and all have experienced ups and downs in
popularity, some practically dying out altogether.

The reason I don't like to face that truth, I guess, is that games, to
me, are a sort of refuge from the constant change of day-to-day life.
When I've had all I can take of the hustle and bustle or daily grind,
and when I'm weary of all the changing borders and political
turnovers, and when I despair of keeping up with the latest trends in
movies, fashion, music, and so forth--then it's soothing to sit down
to a game of dominoes, which is the same game I played when I was a
little kid and the same game my parents and grandparents played when
they were kids.

So, I tend not to seek innovation or novelty as much as many people
do.

But I think most people do crave a never-ending stream of novelty,
especially when it comes to the field of entertainment. And most
people perceive games as primarily a form of entertainment. Very few
are interested in working to master a game--e.g., to study books on
chess or bridge, participate in tournaments, and work their way up
through the ranks. For the vast majority of gamers, a game is just a
pleasant means of killing time. A leisure-time filler.

Yet, the "vast majority of gamers" is probably just a drop in the
bucket compared to the whole world population. Most people play games
seldom, if at all, I would think. Only a tiny fraction probably
acknowledge gaming as a hobby or call themselves gamers. That's
something I rarely bother to think much about, since I'm usually only
interested in discussing games with gamers, and it doesn't matter how
many people are *not* gaming.

I do notice that most people consider interaction with others to be an
essential part of gaming. Lots of people, at some time or other, will
play solitaire (patience) on the computer or otherwise, but very few
of them will consider that anything more than an occasional time
filler. Even while they're playing solitaire, most of them would
rather be playing a game with other people.

These days, more and more, people are connecting with each other
electronically. It's not just the Internet, but cell phones too.
Family board-game night has, it seems, been largely replaced by
individual family members playing games with friends via some
electronic connection.

I suppose it comes down to human nature: we all want to find like-
minded people to befriend. We're stuck with the family we grow up in,
for better or worse--and often it's a mixed bag. Getting married and
raising families of our own doesn't necessarily correct things in our
favor either; we're still stuck with those people, and they may be our
opposites in some ways. So, people are reaching out across the
Internet in hopes of finding others like themselves--people they have
a lot in common with.

With game players being in such a minority and scattered all over the
place, I guess it makes sense that they'd connect long-distance,
especially when electronic communication makes that possible in real-
time. Even in past decades, many chess players resorted to postal
games for lack of nearby opponents. Wargamers too.

So, unless gaming takes off and becomes a majority pastime, where
finding a face-to-face opponent is at least as easy as finding someone
to share a meal with, I guess electronic gaming should win out.
Except in cities, perhaps, where electronic "meetup groups" can lead
to the formation of face-to-face gaming clubs. Many gamers do seem to
favor that; but how many are willing to regularly take time out in
this busy world to get dressed and drive to the rendezvous to play
games, when they could be just playing instantly via computer
connection?

I don't know which kind of gaming wins out. I'm terrible at
predicting the course of future events. More often than not, I'm
surprised by each trend that comes along.

I have a better sense of what I personally prefer. Ideally, I'd like
to be regularly playing board and card games face-to-face with family
and friends, and occasionally with acquaintances or strangers. The
only reason most of my actual game playing is electronic is that I
don't know anyone who likes to play games nearly as often as I do, and
I'm unwilling to go out of my way to find such people. Rather than
make the effort to start or join a club, I'll just pick up my Nintendo
DS or turn on the PC and play a game by myself. I can live without
the social interaction, or just imagine it, and the experience of
playing the game is otherwise about the same.

[Shade_Jon]

A great question. It depends on what you mean by the word "winning". I
don't have many firm facts, but a few facts and guesses.

I believe the number of video gamers numbers in the hundreds of
millions, while the number of analog gamers in still in the billions,
i.e. around ten times the amount. By analog games, I include mancala,
xiang-qi, chess, shogi, poker, backgammon, dominoes, and so on. I
would even venture to include selection games such as RPS and odds and
evens, lotteries, and guessing games. Anything that would not be
considered sport or screen based. There's a question as to where to
put games such as online chess, which are both board game and
electronic game.

Industry statistics tend to call the US video game industry a $10
billion dollar industry (a tad shy of that) and the US tabletop game
industry as $1 billion (actually around $890 million), which would
make the video game industry ten times the amount of analog. I asked
one of the sources of the analog research if that included generic
items such as playing cards and plastic chess sets, and they said yes.
I don't know if I believe them. In any case, I can't imagine that the
international version of this includes all the xiang-qi and chess sets
made by locals in China, or backgammon sets in the Jerusalem old-city
market, or hand made Chaupad (Pachisi) games in Goa. I doubt these can
be tracked, and many of these continue to have deep traditional and
even religious daily usage.

Another problem is that most people associate the markets only with
the proprietary sellers, such as Hasbro or Electronic Arts. There's
certainly more money in the proprietary video game world because
there's more press coverage, and vice versa (it feeds on itself). Most
people just don't think about kids playing a game of Spit or dice in
this category.

Another problem is that the traditional game players - coffee shop
backgammon, checkers, and chess played around the world by adults and
elderly may be generational, and ours the last generation doing so. So
even if analog gamers and game play outnumber video gaming ten to one
today, tomorrow's demographics may look very different.

Another problem: the explosion of cheap electronic goods and hardware
may turn every tabletop of phone into an electronic gaming table that
can play anything. Two people sitting at a coffee shop will be able to
play backgammon by tapping the tabletop. Naturally, a great many will
continue to prefer analog pieces and boards in to the future (as some
people like vinyl records today), but that will be a minority. So we
come back to the problem: is backgammon on an electronic tabletop a
board game or an electronic game? And does it matter?

Your question may not be the right question: what is unique about
board gaming and what is unique about electronic gaming? Board gaming
implies: physical elements, face to face, strategy and luck versus
other humans, tradition. Video gaming implies - in some cases - single
play, play against faceless opps, too many variables and hidden info
to be handled in an analog game, violent gameplay. But not in all, or
even most cases.

Board game "technology" is affecting video games, and video game
technology is affecting board games. There is not necessarily a winner
or loser here.

Yehuda
http://purplepawn.com
Game news across the board

[Patrick]

On Jun 18, 4:43 am, Shade_Jon <Shade...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Your question may not be the right question: what is unique about
> board gaming and what is unique about electronic gaming? Board gaming
> implies: physical elements, face to face, strategy and luck versus
> other humans, tradition. Video gaming implies - in some cases - single
> play, play against faceless opps, too many variables and hidden info
> to be handled in an analog game, violent gameplay. But not in all, or
> even most cases.

OK, so what do you think are the best and worst aspects of each kind
of gaming? Which features are worth keeping, and which could you do
without?

Of the things listed above, here are my personal views, FWIW:

1. Physical elements. I'm not really a tactile person or anything,
but I have low-tech leanings and therefore very much appreciate a game
that frees me from the need for any electronic gadget.

2. Face to face. Meh. I like people, but I'm pretty thin-skinned and
self-conscious; to me, playing a game with someone is often like
fighting. There are other things I'd rather be doing when face to
face with someone.

3. Strategy and luck. There's what I like in games! Usually a nice
mix of the two. I like that a game makes me think, but I don't want
to have to think too hard. I enjoy the surprises (especially the
pleasant ones) of random events too.

4. Tradition. Though I know it sounds boring to many people, I have
to admit this is appealing to me. The more newfangled games I see,
the more I appreciate traditional, time-honored games.

5. Single (solo) play. Definitely a huge plus for me, though I have
mixed feelings about it. Given a free choice with no gotchas, I guess
I'd rather play games with other people. But in real life, the way I
live it, it's darned near impossible to get a game going more than
once every couple months, if even that often. And I like to play
games every day. So, the vast majority of my gaming is single-player
computer gaming. Most of the time, though, I pick traditional two-
player games like backgammon, dominoes, or rummy--games I could play
with other people, and without a computer, if a human opponent were
available.

6. Faceless opponents. That's OK with me. I'm very happy
communicating with people from a distance (e.g., via e-mail or
online). I can take or leave the artificial faces some computer games
put on their AI opponents.

7. Variables and hidden info. That annoys me more often than not. I
generally like to know just how a game works so that, with study and
practice, I might be able to think everything through and eventually
optimize my play and thus master the game. If the workings of the
game are too complex for that, and most of the under-the-hood stuff is
undocumented, I feel I'm stuck with a perpetual mystery, and that
irritates me. Hidden info in games is OK with me if it's like a deck
of shuffled cards, where you know what's there even if the exact order
of things is concealed and needs to be deduced. But I don't like out-
of-the-blue surprises in games--events I could never have expected.

8. Violent game play. As an old wargamer from way back, violence
seems pretty natural in games to me. But I generally prefer to see it
presented somewhat indirectly or abstractly, not in graphic detail. I
used to love the combat flight sim "Red Baron," where I'd fly around
shooting down balloons and biplanes. But I was at first shocked by
"Wolfenstein 3D," where shots fired into enemy soldiers (or guard
dogs) would result in spurting blood and cries of agony. Even though
it was cartoonish, I cringed a bit and felt uneasy about the game.
Anything more graphic than that is out of the question as far as I'm
concerned.

Violence aside, I generally prefer abstraction to explicit graphic
detail. An abstract game like chess or go can represent all wars and
battles of all times and places; there's not enough detail to pin the
game down to any particular setting or theme, so the player is free to
imagine what he likes. The more realism there is in a game, the more
restrictions there are on a player's imagination: you get to see
more, but you're stuck with what's presented to you; you don't get to
fill in as much with your own creative mind.

So, for me, I guess a game like dominoes or cribbage is ideal. I can
play it with real physical components, solitaire or with others. Or I
can play on the PC or on my Palm PDA. Or, if I like, get into an
online game with other people. There are also books on these games,
so I can spend time studying when I'm not playing. All told, either
of these games can make for a pretty good hobby all by itself.