Re: [piecepack] Piecepack anyone?

[Jorge Arroyo Gonzalez <trozo@...>]

Hi,

>   In the last year or so the discussion on this forum has dropped  
> off. One reason is almost certainly the demise of the design  
> contests, which is a great loss to the gaming community.

Maybe a new kind of contest could be created by the community, one  
that uses some kind of voting system (in the wiki?) to decide the  
winner. This way the workload is more evenly distributed... I don't  
see prizes as being very important to stimulate participation, but if  
someone wants to contribute something it could be possible too...


>   Regarding the idea of a fundamental basic "conflict" in the  
> piecepack concept, I don't disagree with the general concept but I  
> think I may disagree somewhat with the characterization of the  
> issue. People who are REALLY into games on multiple levels are  
> likely to embrace piecepack in goodly numbers but the MUCH larger  
> general public has, for many years now, been moving away from  
> symbolic representation in their entertainment and has begun  
> insisting on exacting accuracy. People are less willing to use  
> their imaginations and this is unfortunate and disturbing,  
> especially among children.

I hadn't thought about that. I see it clearly in other mediums,  
specially video games (graphics are the top priority over  gameplay),  
and books (which are declining). But I'm not so sure it's the case  
for boardgames... People that play any kind of board game are already  
using their imagination even if the components are more "realistic"  
because there's always a level of abstraction. The popularity of the  
german kind of board games seems to agree with this...

Cards are still very popular, and while not everyone who likes  
playing cards would have to like piecepack, a lot will... I think  
it's all about getting people exposed...

I was thinking, maybe big companies don't like the concept of the  
piecepack system because it means 1 sell for 150 games instead of 150  
sells for 150 games... they'd probably rather release each piecepack  
game on it's own with specially themed components :D

-Jorge