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Nostalgia: Board Games · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do. I am your
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: dice chuckanist host this side of the Mississippi Abraham.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: And I'm your super competitive If you ain't first, your
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: last host Shane.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: humans and non human animals do and try to understand
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: them a little bit more about those things. And we
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: talk about great things that have happened and bad things
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: that have happened, and silly things that have happened, and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: things that are happening right now and all of that.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we take a pause and we replay one
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of our older episodes and then we expand on what
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: research has happened since that episode came out. We call
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: those nostalgia episodes, which is what we're doing today.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just basically at the point we realized that,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you know, just like science, once you hit the five
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: year mark, it's maybe a little bit outdated. So we
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: want to make sure there's updates, and that's what we're
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: gonna do today. So we're gonna do that with board games,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: one of Abraham's most favorite topics, if not the best
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: topic for him.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And yeah, it's been almost exactly five years since
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: this episode released. This was episode one sixty one. I
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: think it came out on June seventeenth, twenty twenty. So
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: there's quite a bit that's actually happened since then in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: the world of science and research and all of that. Yeah,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and so we're gonna get into that today. But first
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I would like to wish you a Balloons to Heaven.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Happy Balloons to Heaven Day.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, on this August sixth. It is also Corporate Baby
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Named Day, so you know, if you're naming your baby,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: you can go with like Enron or Taco Bell, Taco Bell,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Taco Bell, Spiker did would not fly. We couldn't get
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: that passed.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I mean you could try. It is farm Worker Appreciation Day. Hey,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: farms are very important and we want them to stick
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: around and not be destroyed by thingsley tariffs, Yeah, and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the ending of USAID.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. It is also Hiroshima Day.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It is National Fresh Breath Day.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: It is, which is lovely. It's National Gossip Day, so
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: you can gossip about somebody's not fresh breath if today
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: is the day to do that. Not a great thing
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to celebrate.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Though, maybe just make sure your breath is fresh when
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you gossip so that.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, don't be a hypocrite.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You know, it is National Psychiatric Technician Appreciation Day.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, it is National root Beer Float Day.
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  Speaker 1: Hoorayday, cheers all around. Yes, while you're enjoying that root
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  Speaker 1: beer float, you can also enjoy Wiggle your toes Day.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know if you did this, but I did this.
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  Speaker 2: I wiggled my toes when you said that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: In honor, in honor of the day.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: In honor of the day.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is also Exercise with your Child Week. By
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: wiggling your toes. It is you gallop and International Tribal
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Indian pow wow.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, Yes it is.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of a lot of syllables in that.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: It's International Assistance Dog Week. It is International clown Week.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Unless you have chlorophobia, yes, but if you're ICP you
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: are stoked. Yeah, that's right.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It is International Lace Week.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And maybe if you compete with that lace, then you
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: can participate in Weird Contest Week.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Kind of like that. Actually, they just announced the Florida
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Man Competition here in Florida, which is like one of
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the events is running from cops. So wow, okay, yeah,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: yeh yeah, yeah. It's National dog Month. Love that so much.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Every month should be National dog month.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: National hair Loss Awareness Month.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: It's National Brownies at Brunch Month.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: It is Black Business Month. Very cool, yep.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And it is National Immunization Awareness Month. Oh rip gosh, yeah,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: I know, ridiculous.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Oh downer, Okay, Well, anyway, let's talk about something fun.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: As I said, we released this episode on Board Games
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: five years ago, and my habit has not decreased since then.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: If anything, it has been augmented tremendously. Sure, it is
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  Speaker 1: a very fun topic. We're excited to get back into it.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And if you're joining us for the first time, then welcome.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: We are so happy to have you here, and I
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: hope that you enjoy what you hear in this episode today.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And if you're a returning person, then welcome back. Maybe
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you're familiar with the nostalgia format, maybe this is your
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: first nostalgia I don't know, but we're glad to have
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you listening with us in your ears for this discussion
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: that we're about to have. Definitely on the lighter side,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: coming off the heels of some heavier episodes recently, yes,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: which is definitely fun. And I think appreciated by everyone,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: although I could be wrong for someone.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Board games are very serious. Oh, Monopoly haunts my dreams.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We will actually talk a little bit about that when
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: we get into it. But however, you you are joining us,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: if you have not already taken the plunge in supporting us,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: there are lots of ways you can do that. I'll
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: briefly list them here. You can like ends up, subscribe
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• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a friend. You can pick up some merchant or merchtore,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: or join us on Patreon, and there's all kinds of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: perks and benefits over there. I'll talk more about the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: ways that you can support us at the end of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: this discussion, but I also wanted to mention that with
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: these nostalgias, the way this will work is we're going
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to play the original episode in its entirety, so the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: whole thing, all the way through, and after that we're
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: going to come back and we're going to add in
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: at the end of that the new discussion that we have.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So what research has been done and what things have
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: changed in the last five years since we recorded this.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's my preamble to us getting into this.
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  Speaker 2: I like that. So are we ready to dive into
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the wicked and wonderful world of board games.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I do just want to let people know, like the
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: original one was pretty long, so we're to try and
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  Speaker 1: keep the update at the end fairly quick. Talk about
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: what people have been saying with respect to board games.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And then in the original episode I gave some recommendations.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to update some recommendations somewhat.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Love that. I love that.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: But now we are ready to dive in. Enjoy this
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: past episode, this nostalgic look at our recording history in
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: this episode about board games that we did in twenty.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Twenty see in a bit.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: All right, welcome to Why we do what we do.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: This will be your host Abraham and I'm Shane, and
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: today we get to talk about my absolute favorite thing.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: I think pizza.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Pizza. Yeah, it's up there with my favorite things. So
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to be more sort of discussion format than
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: expositional format, if that makes sense.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're just going to have a nice
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: deep conversation about this because I guess my perspective on
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: when we start talking about why we do what we do.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: One of the big things is having good definitions and
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: an understanding of what a concept is. And so in
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: order to ever do a deep dive on this thing,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: or on leisure activities in general, we must understand the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: depth of this thing. So what is the thing we're
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: talking about today?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, so, this thing that keeps being
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: referred to is board games, more broadly speaking, and technically,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: more accurately speaking, tabletop games, because many of these games
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  Speaker 1: do not include a board and instead have just dice,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: have cards, or have sometimes even just a book, and
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  Speaker 1: it's more like someone guides a discussion where people take
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: on different roles, so it's a role playing game. There
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: are a lot of different ways they could look. And
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  Speaker 1: therefore the nomenclature that has been adopted is tabletop games
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  Speaker 1: to broadly refer to all of those things. And most
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  Speaker 1: people think of them as board games, and I think
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  Speaker 1: that that's perfectly fine. And what's great about this is
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that the definition is also a little bit broad, especially
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  Speaker 1: because board games have been around for so long. Most
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  Speaker 1: of the what we think might be original board games
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  Speaker 1: that date back thousands of years, we don't actually know
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  Speaker 1: how they were played. There weren't really instructions that seem
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  Speaker 1: to survive that and they didn't necessarily get passed from
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  Speaker 1: culture to culture, you know, at some point that stopped.
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  Speaker 2: So as I started thinking about board games, one of
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: the things I started thinking about was the different types
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  Speaker 2: of games that I've played, like tabletop things and even
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: just kind of traveling games and stuff being in vans
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: and touring and bands and stuff, and kind of the
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: different things that we would do as a result, and
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  Speaker 2: kind of going to the idea of that maybe some
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  Speaker 2: of the games aren't transferred over. I wonder how well
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  Speaker 2: games like I Spy will be transferred down culturally, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like We're in the car, or like the Alphabet game
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  Speaker 2: where you're just like naming things, you know. I wonder
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  Speaker 2: how that's going to be. I mean, I know those
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  Speaker 2: don't really fit the description of a board game, but
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  Speaker 2: I just always it's just an interesting thought to think of,
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  Speaker 2: like what might have been lost to history.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, great point. And that does speak to again that
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  Speaker 1: what counts as a game, whether it would be counted
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  Speaker 1: as a board game or a tabletop game or something else.
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  Speaker 1: And it seems to be that it's really anything where
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  Speaker 1: you're seeking some kind of stimulation that doesn't necessarily result
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  Speaker 1: in a specific output, like it's you know, foraging for
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  Speaker 1: food isn't necessarily a game just by virtue of the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: fact that you're doing it. That being said, one interesting
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: thing about this concept of games or playfulness, and there
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: have been some research. I didn't dig into it particularly
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: deep dive for this episode, but I'm peripherally familiar with
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: research that shows that just saying that something is a
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: game can have people interact with it in a different
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: way that is a little more fun and a little
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: more lighthearted and more willingness to engage. But it's interesting
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  Speaker 1: that our species, in particular, we seek out a lot
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  Speaker 1: of this play that the play that we do, again,
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't have a specific output. It seems to be
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: stimulation for the sake of stimulation, just because it's fun,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And there are other species that we've
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  Speaker 1: observed that do this play thing that's not obviously not
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: as complex as board games or anything like that. But
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: it's hard because we always are in the position of
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: trying to superimpose or project our own thoughts about what
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: they're doing onto the behaviors that we observe. But we
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: do see these things that look like their non directed
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: product list activities that look like they're just seeking stimulation.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So you see animals that'll sort of attack each other,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: but they're not growling or hissing or making any kind
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: of noise. That seems like they're just rolling around just
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: to roll around because it's fun to do. You'll see
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: animals in urban settings where what they'll do very interestingly
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: is they'll wait at the edge of a road until
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a car's coming, and then they'll try and they'll dart
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: across the road right before the car's there, and it's
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: like it's almost like they're challenging themselves to like try
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and beat the car, which is a terrible idea. So
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: for any of you squirrels listening.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: That doesn't say any squirrels don't do that. I've seen
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: too many of you fall in folks.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and rabbits too, if you can understand what I'm
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: saying to you.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: For our squirrel demographic out there.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: That's right, lots of podcasts out there among the scugs.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Deep cut on that one. Anyway, This this whole concept
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: of play is really interesting and it's difficult to define
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: because a game isn't necessarily a game just because it
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: has rules, it doesn't even necessarily have to have material objects,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and so it's fairly broad and I just love this
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: whole concept of play playfulness and games. Now, part of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: what I like about games is, in fact the sort
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: of structure of rules, and part of it is because
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that creates a challenge. And that seems to be one
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of the core elements of a game is that there's
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: some aspect of challenge. And there are plenty of examples
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: where there really isn't an aspect of challenge. It's just
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: like just do something. But it seems to be that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: for most games or something that we would call a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: game or playfulness around this concept of games, there's a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: challenge to overcome in some capacity. That's sort of a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: common theme throughout Now.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Something that I've noticed in a lot of games is,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I guess maybe there's a certain type of game that
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I tend to think about more, but games that require
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: you to strategize and outsmart somebody, but to the degree
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: that like there might be a what we call signs
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: of damage to it, you know, Like I think about
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the game Sorry, where it's like, like it's more fun
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: to get somebody out and go sorry than it is
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: to actually play the game or like Uno, right, Like
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: everybody loves that draw four card, not because it gives
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: you a one up on the game, but because you
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: get to make somebody else go, oh, come on to me,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Like that's I think maybe that just sticks out. Maybe
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: that's just why some games are fun for me, because
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it's like a harmless like gotcha. But we started thinking
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: about this topic, I was just like, there's so many
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: different ways that we could go about this, right, And
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: I love that it is so broad and so vast,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: and that probably most everybody that is listening here has
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: probably had some experience with something like this.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've thought a good deal about what you see
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: in games, and I think you could broadly categorize them
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: on a spectrum between luck and strategy. And there is
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: sort of a third axis here that's neither of those
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: two things that we'll speak to in terms of sort
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: of categories of games. But for the most part, you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: have games that sit along that spectrum of either being
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: primarily luck based, like Shoots and Ladders. There's no strategy
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: in that game. You don't do anything. You just roll.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Like if two robots sat down and played that game
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and their only rule was roll dice, follow what dice do.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: The outcome would be exactly the same as two humans.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Like the game, there's nothing to do, like you don't
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: choose anything, you don't do anything. It's completely luck. And
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, you can have something that's one
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: hundred percent strategy, like chess, and in that one there
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is no luck whatsoever. It's just very very heavy. You
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: are trying to strategize the best move to make, which
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: is very dynamic. And the advantage to luck based games
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: is that they're easy. They're so easy, so you know
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: when you tend towards that you don't have to you
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: don't have to work very hard to do them, And
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: to me that that negates a lot of the challenge,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: which for me makes it a little less fun. But
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the problem when you get too heavy on strategy sometimes
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is that as soon as somebody has a way to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: expel blight the rules, find loopholes or get so so
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: good at it that it becomes really one sided, and
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: then the challenge becomes impossible, and it's not fun to
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: do something where you know you can't be successful. You know,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: it's fun because there's the opportunity to potentially be successful,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: although for me, I don't really care about winning all
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: that much. I really like the idea of just playing
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the game. I really like working through the strategy and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: figuring out the rules and that sort of thing. So
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I think there is an element of it that doesn't
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: necessarily matter for many people. I'm just not very competitive,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and so I just I just like to play. Will
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: we keep you with us in the next part of
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: this discussion, Let's roll the dice and find out.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And we're back with that being said, then, because there
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: are so many different types of games, like, can you
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: give us like a like a kind of a broad
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: overview of the different categories of games that do exist,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: because you kind of mentioned luck, we talked about strategy
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: in all these different things, but I think we can
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: probably get more specific than that, right.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want to answer your question directly, and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I do want to come back to one thing that
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I've struggled with is how to actually figure out why
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I like games so much, and to try and dissect
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: what is going on psychologically, Why do people like games,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Why do I like games? Why do we want to
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: play games? And anyway, But let me answer your question first,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: which is the categories of games, and so some that
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I just made these up, but I play a lot,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and so this is how I tend to see most
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: games fall into this category. And I went through a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: list of about three hundred random games to compare them
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to the categories I came up with to make sure
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that they fit, and I didn't find any non examples.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And so what I'm talking about categories has to do
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: with the objective of the game. Yeah, so it's like
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: how do you win or how does the game end? Okay, right,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: because the objective informs the strategy or I guess the gameplay,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and that's why I came up with these categories. So
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: race to the end is essential. The first person to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: accomplish a certain goal wins. So anyway, that's one of
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the categories. Does that make sense? Is that clear?
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah? That makes sense. Yeah, it's like candy Land.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's exactly it. It's a race to the end game.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Another one is a last person standing game, which is
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: that people for various conditions get eliminated as players until
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: there's only one player left. There's a very similar theme
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: on this, which is sometimes the game ends when one
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: person goes out and so it's like the first person
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: out loses, but then everyone else sort of compares their
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: points or their position in the game, and then they
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: determine a winner based on that.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like battleship.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. So, yeah, the last person standing
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Battleship is an example of that. Thank you for throwing
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: your examples here.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I'm just going back to when I was a kid,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, I get that one.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: That's great. Another common one that you'll see is where
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: there's a set number of rounds. So basically people take
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: turns for a a number of rounds, and then once
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: those rounds are done, then you compare points and see
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: who won.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: That would be like scrabble.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: No, like Yazi Yatzi, and well there's not a I
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: guess there are a set number of rounds and Yasti
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: for the most part, it's a little bit flexible, so
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it's not like there's always going to be ten or
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: twelve turns, but it's going to probably hover arounds that number.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I'm forgetting the exact Yati scorecard, but yeah, so yeah,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you're right, that's pretty close. There are other games too,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: where it's like there's going to be exactly six rounds
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and everybody gets one turn every round, and once those
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: six rounds are over, the game is done. You count
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: up your points and see who won. Okay, And that's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: a common but yes, Yati, I think is a good
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: example of that. For the most part. There's another theme
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of game that I have a couple of names for,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and the most diplomatic name I came up for was
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: an exhaustion And essentially what I mean by that is
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you basically play until you don't want to play anymore.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: These are games that I also uncharitably call them pointless games.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: These are games where you just play until you're done playing,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and then you could compare points if you want to,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't that's not really the reason that you
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: played for most people, and examples of this include things
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: like catchphrase taboo, cards against Humanity, Yeah, apples to apples.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So those are games where the point of the game
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: is to be engaged with your group. And sure, some
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: people get competitive and they'll count on how many cards
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: they got or or whatever it is they got in
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the end of the game, and they'll try and determine
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: a winner. But for the most part, the point is
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: just to play, and there is no actual objective.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like in Cards Against Humanity there is a point,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: but like that's kind of like a secondary or tertiary
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: like objective. It is definitely more to like make everybody
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: laugh and just have fun exactly right.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Loaded Questions is another example of this. Yeah, and I'm
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: not actually bagging on them by calling them pointless. A
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: lot of these I really like. Actually, Taboo is one
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of my favorite games. I think Taboo is amazing. It's
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: just a category where there's not necessarily a clear objective.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: For the most part. You kind of just play until
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: you are exhausted and don't want to play anymore.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: You could maybe even put Risk and Monopoly in those categories,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: although they do technically have an end. It just feels
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: like you play until you don't want to play anymore,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: because I feel like that's how most of those games go.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Listen, you can only buy them so much property before
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: you're just done well, and like.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: How many times are you like borrowing money and mortgaging
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: your stuff And it's like it gets super one sided
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: really fast, and then it just goes downhill for twelve
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: or thirteen hours if you make it that long. You
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: don't actually know that I've ever finished a game of Monopoly.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I think I've played for eight to ten hours over
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the course of a few days. And finally we're just
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: like moving on to other things in life because this
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: game doesn't have an end.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Right, and also late age capitalism isn't fun.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Unbridled. There can be only one.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: I would play, a Highlylander board game.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: I bet you anything that one exists. I don't know
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: of one explicitly, but I'm sure it does.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Listeners if you're out there, If you find a high
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Lander board game, let us know.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And then the final one. And I'm curious if you've
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: heard of these. Have you heard of cooperative or co
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: op board games?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I'm sure that I probably
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: have once you describe them, but I'm not quite sure
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: off the top of my head.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. I also think of these as sort of survival games,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and the point is that everybody who's playing is trying
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to beat the game itself, and the game is set
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: up to try and put in enough conditions that the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: game ends before you can beat it, and so everybody
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: is working together to try and beat the game. And
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: one of the most popular games that exist in this
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: category ironically enough, is called Pandemic, and the whole idea
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I know, right, good timing, yep, the whole idea of
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: this game. Have you heard of this one before?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, I've played it.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: It's great, Okay. Yeah. So that's an example of a
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: cooperative game where the idea is everybody are these various
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: scientists who have special roles, and every turn you try
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and take some action to stop diseases from spreading. By
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the end of the turn, you have to draw from
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: a deck that causes the disease to spread, and so
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you're sort of fighting the game the whole time to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: meet an endgame condition before the game itself meets one
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of the m game conditions that causes you to lose.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: And so in this one, in Pandemic, all the players
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: are trying to find a cure for the various diseases
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and eradicate them as much as possible.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: It's been a long time since I've played Clue, but
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: I feel like that's one of the things too, is
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: like you've got a group of people that are trying
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: to find the murderer. Like there's like a cooperative like
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: even though everybody's kind of playing against each other. The
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: same goal is like they're all still like gathering clues
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: together and gathering information together to figure out who the
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: murderer is.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I actually never thought of Clue that way. You're right
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: that it does definitely have that element. I think of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Clue more of as a race to the end game
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: because you're trying to be the first one to get
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the information, and you're right that everyone is sort of
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: they'll have a common goal if you will. There are
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: also games that fall into this cooperative category called semi
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: co op, which usually means that although for the most part,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: people are working together, there are conditions under which one
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: or multiple players will turn against the group. A common
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: example of this, for those people who are familiar with it,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: is a game called Betrayal House on the Hill, and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the game starts out cooperative where everyone's working together, but
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: at some point they'll trigger an event. You're basically pulling
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: tiles from a stack of shuffled tiles to create the board,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and you place down a tile next to an existing tile,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and every time you place one down something will happen.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Almost every single tile and a lot of them, will
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: trigger these events, and once you've triggered enough events, depending
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: on a dice roll. Then it will result in somebody
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: having to turn against the group, and then they get
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: like a separate set of instructions for what their new
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: objective is, and then it's that person or a couple
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: of people versus the group. And so it's a good game.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I'd recommend it. And another example of this is Dead
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: of Winter, if you've heard of that one. This is
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: a zombie survival game where for the most part, everybody's
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: working together against the zombies, and at the beginning of
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the game, everybody is de secret objectives and those do
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: contain some betrayal conditions where you technically only win if
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: you meet this other criteria that involves sort of screwing
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: over the other players. So in that one, you don't
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: even necessarily know who, if at all, someone's going to
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: betray the group.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: It's like if Aliens were a game, like there's somebody
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: in the group that's definitely going to betray everybody.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Fair I also think that that is a game that exists,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: but I could be.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: It's got to be. It's gotta be.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was looking at before we recorded the number
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: of games that have been published, and because the timeline
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: on this is really interesting, and so there were somewhere
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: between I want to say, like twenty and thirty new
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: games being published every year for the bulk of the century.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: And then in the nineties something happened which was well
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: as actually in the seventies they started really increasing and
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: a bunch of new board games were invented and that
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. But for the most part, you sort
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: of had your classics. You had Pictionary, Chess, Checkers, backgam
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and those existed. Monopoly Life has been around for a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: long time, and there were new games sort of coming
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: on the scene and they'd maybe get a little traction
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. And then in the nineties
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a game called Settlers of Katan was published. Have you
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: heard of this one? Well, I'm not, okay. Settlers of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Katan was published, and this game spawned a huge growth
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: in the game industry. I want to say it was
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: published in nineteen ninety five. The essential theme of the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: game is that it's a board game where you create
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the board before you start out of a bunch of
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: X tiles and sort of creates this sort of hive
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: looking map that's an island, and you set up a
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: couple of places on the island where you control these
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: hexes or well, you can share control of the hexes,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: but the hexes produced resources. You use those resources to
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: build more things or to try and buy things that
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: equate to points, and then the first person to get
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: ten points wins. Is essentially the theme of the game. Okay,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and it's a really fun game. I really like it,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: and it's one of the more well known ones. Because
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: that game was published and that spawned a new generation
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: of publishers developing games, it's hard to say that there
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: was a cause effect relationship. What we do know is
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: that Settlers of Catan happened, and the rate of games
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: being published about tripled.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: That's wild.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: So we were getting hundreds of new games being published
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: per year.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Do not pass ads, do not collect two hundred dollars,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: and we're back. You know what's really interesting about that
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: is because in the nineties you saw this really big
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: video game boom, Like you saw these huge advances in
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: video games. So you would I mean by just like
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: a gut reaction. There's no science behind this. I would
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: assume that as video games increased, and as those became
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: more popular, board games would become less popular. But it
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: sounds like both of those things happened at the same time.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: So maybe leisure play like leisure activities, just became more
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: popular than the nineties for some reason.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks to the Clinton administration. Probably just kidding, totally kidding,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Hot Diggs. Settlers of Catan was a European game that
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: made its way over here. But also in the late
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: nineties is when the first edition of Pandemic was published,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: and following that publication, we saw the rate about quadruple
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: from its new rate. So now we were getting upwards
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: of one thousand new games a year, and that trend
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: has just continued. We are getting thousands of new board
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: games a year or tabletop games. I should say, that's wild.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I know, it's hard to imagine because it's like, how
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: how many different ideas could there be for games? And
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: that's actually how you start to see as I came
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: up with these categories, is like you are starting to
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: see variations on similar themes. But I mean they just
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: keep coming out with these creative, awesome, new inventive ideas,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and some of these co op games they've actually really
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: started to integrate heavily with other things like apps, and
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: so one of my favorite games I'll speak to a
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: little bit later uses a physical board and physical pieces,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: but you also have an app set up. You can
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: use it on a laptop or a computer or an
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: iPad or some other tablet device whatever, and the app
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: will tell you how to arrange the board, game pieces
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and the boards itself, and then you make decisions, and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: then you tell the app what decision you made, and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: it'll tell you what to do next. And it sort
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of functions for anybody who's played Dungeons and Dragons, the
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: app itself functions as like a dungeon master so or
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a game master. It sort of directs the game of play,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: but you still make all the choices. You still roll
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the dice for luck, physical dice that you hold, you know.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: But it's a really cool way to integrate these so
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: that you get more variety of play. It makes it
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a little easier for several components of the game, and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: that they just be increasingly more creative with how to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: develop these new ideas for games. It's awesome.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I guess this is just a really great area to
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: start looking at human innovation and creativity. Like it's a
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: really great space to start kind of taking taking a
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: moment to analyze storytelling and planning and all in this
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: problem solving people. There's so much that goes into board
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: games that or tabletop games. I should say, there's so
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: much that goes into it's just really an interesting study
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: on human and human behavior.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and once you have played enough of them, you
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: start to notice common themes in terms of how they
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: try and structure things like acquiring points and stuff, and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that to me in no way takes away from the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: quality of the game. If you think about like popular music,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: for instance, or even songs that are maybe not popular
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: by the things that you like, you also will probably
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: once you've listened to enough of them, be able to
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: identify things about them that you like. That when you
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: hear a new song that has that component, you're like, oh,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I like this. This is a thing that appeals to me. Right,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And so you know, I think major chords and basic
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: simple harmonies are something not to sound offensive or anything,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: but most people would hear that in their music and think, oh,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I like this. This is this is familiar and therefore
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: if it's different from what you know, but it has
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: those familiar elements, you're more likely to enjoy it right away, right,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: And that's I think something similar here, although I do
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: think that there's still a lot of room for creativity
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: in these games. So actually, I'm curious Shane to hear
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: I want to come back to this conversation we were having
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: because I still don't fully understand what's going on psychologically
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: with why this is for me and other people such
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: a huge like why do we do this?
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: And I think that is such a tough question to
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: unpack here. I mean, like, you know, my gut reaction
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: to all this would be, you know, maybe the first
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: thing would be, you know, people like the challenge, right,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: there's something reinforcing about the child challenge and kind of
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: overcoming a problem. You know, I would think there's probably
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: there's got to be some genetic links somewhere to some
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: kind of survival thing, right, and survival would probably have
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: to do with overcoming some major problem. So maybe there's
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: something there. I don't know. I you know, I think
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: maybe it's just something that's a distraction, you know, when
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: you start looking at like maybe people like to play
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: because there's other stuff going on in the world. Maybe
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: people like the problem solve. I mean, there's just there's
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: to me, I don't know that I have a good
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: answer because I think that there are so many different elements,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: especially because you just kind of gave it an example,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: like there are so many exemplars of board games and
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: tabletop games that I don't know that you would be
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: able to pin down a singular thing.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. I think there's probably what's difficult about
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: it is that it's different for a lot of people
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: in a lot of different contexts. And you raised a
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: good point, which is something that I've heard talked about
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: in the acceptance and commitment training and acceptance and commitment therapy, literatureilosophy,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing that we historically as a species
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: have had to be problem solving machines like that is
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: part of what has made us so successful, is that
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: we are constantly faced with and overcome challenges. And so
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I think that there is something about being able to
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: complete or escape or otherwise solve some kind of challenge
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: that carries with it some relatively inherent rewarding properties. And
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: that what a game does, any kind of playfulness really
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: is it takes the challenge and it makes the stakes
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: really low. So like if you're fighting for survival, that's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: not really fun for most people. I suppose that certainly
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: could be, but at least in the.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Long grills is bear grills loves that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, maybe an example like hang gliding
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: might maybe is something that's sort of like this, or
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: skydiving or doing anything that's particularly dangerous, but you know,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: when you're those are situations where you go and expecting safety.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: If you find yourself in a situation where it was
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: unexpected and you were actually you know, might die, that's
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: probably not something that feels like a lot of fun
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: in the moment at least, right. But with a game,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: it's super low stakes for most people, Like unless you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: have a ton of money writing on it, you're in
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a tournament or something, most of the time you sit
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: down and play games and it's just you get to
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: do the challenge overcoming part of it without having anything
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: really important at stake, and that's fun. So I think
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: that that's part of what's going on.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was reading something not too long ago
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: too about like pro social behavior and just kind of
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: the social behavior of humans in general and storytelling related
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: to that, and how there might be some kind of
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: like artifact of that within tabletop games. You think about
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: like people gathering around the common thing, something that is leisurely,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: you know. Like I was reading a story about how
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: some people would believe that early humans would gather around
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: camp buyers at night and tell stories. During the day,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: they would gather on campfires to discuss strategy for the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: day and planning for the day and survival things. But
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: at night, as everything was winding down and the needs
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: of the day were met and the goals of the
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: day we're met, the nighttime campfire would be spent more
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: discussing stories and kind of sharing language and sharing those
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: tales down the you know, as part of like a
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: cultural selection piece. Cool. So I'm wondering if there might
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: be something like that within within this kind of space too,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Like there is an element of storytelling in a lot
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: of these games, Like a lot of the more complex games,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: there is like this cool storytelling, not like Battleship, which
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: is they tried to tell the story using Rihanna it
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: did not work, But like more complex games have a
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: really deep, rich story. I mean, I liken it to
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: comic books, like people will kind of make fun of
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: people for reading comic books, or they kind of write
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: it off as like this, like goofy thing. But the
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: truth is that some of the best stories I've ever
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: read were in comic book form and they could not
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: have been portrayed any other way. And so maybe there's
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: something that has to do with storytelling and pro social
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: behavior within that table top game element that maybe we're
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: not accounting for. Well.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I think you have to be right, at least in
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: some capacity, because almost every single game that exists has
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: some kind of theme in some way, even if it's
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: just a little gimmick or a little piece of art.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: You don't just get a bunch of blank pieces with
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: some straightforward rules and then play. They usually have some
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: art done on them, and most of them have some
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: kind of story or theme, or you might call even
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: fluff where it's not in any way critical to the game,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: but it makes it way more engaging, right because you
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: have a story, because you have characters, because there's like
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a background in which it's set. And I'll speak to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: some examples of that when we talk about some of
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the games them and I recommend coming up where you
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: one of the big selling points is the theme. And
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I think that sometimes the theme is actually the biggest
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: selling point of some of the games that exists.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and I think when people talk about games,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: they don't talk about like, oh, I loved Guess Who
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: because of the way that the boards worked. There was
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: like I loved playing this game because it had this element,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: this discussion, Like this part of it was funny. This
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: artwork was really interesting. Like, you know, nobody talks about
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Clue because they're like, I really like the way the
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: board is set up. It's like, I like Clue because
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: there is a fun story to tell, there's a murder
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: to solve, like, and there may be people that just
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: that's like they are just like art fanatics for games,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: and I'm certainly not trying to dismiss that. But for
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: the most part, there's a reason why we like books,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: and there's a reason why we like movies or like
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: songs with a story. I mean, like, there's just so
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: much storytelling in our experience as human beings that tabletop
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: games are just another layer of that.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: To me, our corporate overlords insist we put in ads
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: here and we must obey. So here's some meds.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't has Bro, it was not.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: It was Mattel. We are back. And another thing that
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: you said that I definitely want to speak to. For
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: myself is board games are highly social. To me, this
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: is one of the best ways that I have for
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: really interacting with people, especially new people, where I get
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: to be social with them, because I've never been overly
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: fond of these super abstract gatherings where you're expected to
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: make small talk and sort of introduce yourself to someone
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: new and have a very perfunctory conversation about the weather
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and your job and the current news and that sort
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: of thing. And that's fine, like I get it, and
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I can do it. But when you just show up
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: to a gathering of people and that's all you do
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: for like four hours, to me, I'm just like, oh God,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I can't wait till this is over. Yeah. But when
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: you have a directed activity where it's like you guys,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: like I don't know who you are, but we are
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: in this together. Like we're gonna take on the role.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be the sheriff person, You're gonna be a zombie.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: You're over there, gonna be a I don't know, pilot
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: or something, yeah, and like we're going to fight, Like
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that's what's happening right now, and we know exactly what
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: we're doing and why we're here, and that to me
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: is way more fun and to the point where I
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: can do it just endlessly.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: It's like a social lubricant.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, one that does not involve you having to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: get super stupid with inebriation.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or even touch anybody really if you really plan
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: it true, and that makes sense, Like you know, now
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: you're turning like a situation that is abstract into like
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: there's an objective within an objective, right, Like we're here
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: to play this game, but now there's this other objective
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: where like now I can network, Now I can connect
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: with people, Now I can make these social interactions more
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: meaningful based on this shared experience and this shared objective.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Now we're tying everybody together. Now we're bringing the tribe together,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: and we're making it happen, right.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I did want to solicit as much as
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: possible some ideas from people for recommendations they had for
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: some of their favorite games, and so just speaking to
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the the why we do what we do crewe I had,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Alan suggested. He said he likes a lot of the classics.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: He said, Monopoly and Clue. Amber pitched in. She said
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that some of her favorites included boo and catchphrase. Justin.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Our audio engineer said that his favorites included Pictionary and
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Cards against Humanity and Shane, what were your picks?
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: So? I actually picked Mousetrap and ker Plunk because I
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: mean those were ones that I remember really loving when
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: I was a kid. But man, Mousetrap, I love Rube
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Goldberg machines. I think that stuff is so interesting.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fair. There's one that I just remembered as
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: you were talking about that I think called Don't Break
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the Ice and it's almost like Jenga but horizontally. Used
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: to play that one.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Uh huh yeah, yeah, so like so that one was
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: a blast. I mean that there's like a series of
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: games around that, like at that time that came out
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: from that company that were a lot of fun.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: There's another one I never played, but I was aware
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: of where it's like you have to get your piece
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: up to this bridge and then cross the bridge, but
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a mechanical button you hit that shakes
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the bridge and if your piece falls off, you have
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to go wherever it lands. You have to start back
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: over there.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you carry a jewel. You're carrying a jewel.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like in a backpack or something.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that game is great.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: I can remember what it's called now. But we did
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: have a couple of listeners chime in Miranda and was
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: that our Miranda? Was it someone else?
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah?
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Oh sweet. She said that one of her favorites was Wingspan,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: which is awesome, great recommendation there. A friend of mine
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I worked with Courtney, said that her three favorite games
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: are Cuthulhu Wars, Mystic Veil, and The Classic of Cribbage. Awesome,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: some cool ones there.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Anything Cthulhu related I am. I am fully in for.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: There are so many Cthulhu related games. Actually, one of
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the ones I mentioned earlier and I'll be talking about
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: as my one of my favorites is a Cthulhu based HB.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Lovecraft themed game.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Is it one of those weird ones where he's like,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: not just a product of his times, but super racist. No.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: They actually did a really good job of just cutting
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: all that stuff out of it for the most part.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, yeah, good.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a little bit of it in sort of
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: subtext that's uncomfortable, but they actually did a pretty good
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: job extracting the characters and story from his personal views,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, what for him would have been contemporary
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: positions on race that were just wildly inappropriate in a
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: modern setting.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yep, oh HP, what were you doing?
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's unfortunate because I like a lot of the ideas,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: but the execution can be rough.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I hear that, all right. So the bulk of.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: This episode is like a giant recommendation section, I think,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So I would just like to pitch some ideas for games.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: And part of my thought on this was that I
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: would make recommendations for people who are looking at games
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: but coming for maybe different reasons. Yeah, looking at games,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: And I just think we are in this amazing board
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: games renaissance right now. And I mean it's been going
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: on for quite some time, but jeez, the last like
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years has just been incredible boom in innovation,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: in creativity, in not applications of old rules, Like it
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: has just been phenomenal, and like there is no better
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: time to start getting involved in this and like find
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: find a game that works for you, right, and more
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: coming out all the time. As I said, one of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: my go tos is Kickstarter, and I'm sure that there
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: are other sources and sites like that that help people
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: set up games, but Kickstarter I have backed I think
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: thirty two games.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I'm Kickstarter awesome, awesome.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Like so many and it's just like they they're so cool.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: And the idea what they do on Kickstarter that I
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: love so much is if you back at a certain level,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: then you often get this like exclusive Kickstarter content and
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: there's like bonus deluxe stuff that they'll throw in, right,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: that's so cool that it's like you can only get
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: at this one place, and I'm like, ah, I already
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: want to have this game, and like having a game
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: with the little extra whipped cream on top is is
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: even better, so delightful exactly, like y'all pay a few
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: extra dollars for that. Well, then oftentimes they actually will
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: specifically a market on Kickstarter to be below the MSRP
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I think, to entice people to help them invest. And
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: so it's basically sort of a crowdsourced investment in building
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: board games and you can sort of decide if you
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: want to be involved in that game, and they'll like
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: send you updates. They'll pull the backers a lot of times.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: So for example, there's a game I've backed that's going
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: on right now where they're saying, hey, we want to
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: create this one character for the game that because we
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: met all these funding goals that we weren't even expecting
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: we'd be able to hit, we want any of our
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: backers to chime in with suggestions for what they think
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: they would like this character to be. And so they're,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: you know, like, that's a cool thing to participate in.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's nice to kind of, you know,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: within a circle where there are some social skills going
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: on and there are the social interactions that you had
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: the space to be creative too. Like that's a really
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: nice community to be able to build.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's It's just one of the coolest things and
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: I just love it. So, Okay, my first set of
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: recommens is for what I would call the casual gamer,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: someone who doesn't necessarily want to be really involved in
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: board games and they don't want to learn a set
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: of super complex rules of games. And I was specifically
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: was trying to think of games that a lot of
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: people maybe haven't tried or maybe even haven't heard of,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: but are really easy to pick up and play and
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: oftentimes work for kind of most demographics in terms of
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: age and ability and that sort of thing, and it
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: seems like most of the people on this team sort
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: of fall into that category. You know, it seems like
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: you yourself much more as a casual gamer than an
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: expert gamer. Is that correct?
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, yeah I am. If you saw my list
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: of board games, you would be like, oh, honey.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Shane, what are you doing? Man?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: You'd be like, oh, bless your buttons.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, next time, just drop a little coin on something different.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: And these are no particular order. I didn't rank them.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I just was thinking of and I try to come
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: up with about ten for each. And I'm curious. So
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: if you've heard of these, have you heard of Ticket
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: to Ride? I've not, Okay, Ticket to Ride is very
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: easy game to sit down and pick up. The idea
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: essentially sounds super boring, but it's amazingly fun. And what
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: it is is you're creating these railroad tracks across various countries.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I believe the original one was a map of the US,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: but there I think most major countries there's I know
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: India there's one. I believe that Europe has one. I
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: believe that China there's one. I'm not one hundred percent sure.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: But essentially you draw these objective cards for maps that
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: you or for train routes that you could create, and
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the longer it is, the more points it's worth. But
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: the problem is there's limited route space, so you are
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: competing with your teammates essentially place trains to connect these
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: different cities and stuff like that. And again it sounds boring,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: it's actually really really fun, and that one would fall
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: into the race to the end category. It's basically the
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: first person to get of all their trains. But at
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: that point then you still total up all your points,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and whoever's the most points wins, so being first does
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: not mean that you win, right, That's awesome. Next one
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: is code Names? Have you heard of that one?
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: I have not. I'm going to give you a heads up.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: I am looking at this list. I have heard of
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: literally one game on this Which one?
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Have you heard of?
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Banana grams?
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Okay? And pandemic and pandemic so too. Okay, well that's
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: on a different set of the list, but okay, code
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: names is I like to take responsibility for this making
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: it to Reno, although that's probably not in any way accurate,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: but I definitely introduced it to a lot of people
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: who loved it and immediately picked it up. This game
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: is very easy and it is so fun, and the
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: idea is essentially that you have teams and each team
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: has a person who knows the correct answer, and you
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: have a bunch of tiles on the board that have
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: names on it, and you can give your team one
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: word to guess as many tiles as they can that
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: are the correct tiles. And all the tiles have words
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: on them, well for most of them, a lot of
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: them have pictures now, and so you have to be
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: really create and know your team. You don't necessarily have
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: to know your team, and actually a really fun way
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of playing this is that you don't know your team
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and that's a way to get to know them. So
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you if you know them, you can sort of capitalize
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: on you what you know about what they know. But
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't, then you might have to sort of
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: make some inferences or do your best. But like you
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: can't say anything else. You just say something like clouds
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: three and that I mean there's three cards related to that, right,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: and then they try and guess all the cards that
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: would be related, and if they guess an incorrect card,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: there could be different consequences like you either gave the
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: other team a point or you just can't guess any
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: more for that turn, or you lose the game entirely, right,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: So it's it's really you have to be really creative.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But the game is also fast, like you can play
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: it in just twenty minutes if your team doesn't take
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: a thousand hours to make up their mind about what
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: they think you met. But that's the game actually comes
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: at the timer, so you can make them hurry up.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Oh good.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Another game on here is called Suspicion is kind of
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: like Clue, but it actually requires a little more deduction
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: than that. And essentially it's because you get this board
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: that is a map of like a house, and what
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: you do is in a single room, you can ask
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: based on where people are in this You don't know
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: who are are what players on the board. You just
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of pieces and then you basically try
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, there's some information that you know
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: and some information that other people know, and you can
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: ask the question can this piece observe these things that
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: are in the room around it? And you get like
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: yes or no answers from the people they're like, I
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: think they hand you cards if I'm remembering correctly, and
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: so you have to deduce who is which character, and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I think there's maybe an object that they're associated with.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've played, but that's the
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: idea is you like have to deduce that by getting
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: you by asking questions for which you get yes or
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: no answers to based on like where things are out
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: on the board, what they should be able to see, right,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and so really interesting, super deduction based game. That's kind
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of fun. That sounds fun. That's I mean, actually sounds
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: really cool. So yeah, and that's like that. It's easy,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: it's available at targets, you can get anywhere. Okay, we
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: need to go faster than we're going, So I'm just
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: gonna sort of list them off and they'll try and
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I'll speak to something I think are particularly good. Telestrations
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: is a group for about four people. I think. Banana
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Grams is a word game. Point Salad is a set
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: collecting game with just a card game. Felicity is a
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: card game that involves bets and bluffing someone's fun. Anomia
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of people describe as a point and Yale game.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: It's very loud, but also a word association. Five Minute
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Dungeon is a co op game and every round of
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the game last five minutes.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: That sounds awesome.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fun. It's a match to sample. You're
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: going really fast. It's like you're just throwing cards as
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: fast as you can. Good game. Okay, if you are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: interested in breaking into some games that are a little
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: more complex, and they are not necessarily expert level, but
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: they're not super simple. They're not super simple, they're not
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: super difficult. But it's sort of like, this is a
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: good gateway to start looking at and exploring other games
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: that are out there. Here's a list of games that
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: I came up with. Flux is a card game. Reef
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: is this really fun game where you are building choral
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: reefs out of plastic pieces.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: That sounds amazing.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: It's super fun. You have like this little reef pad
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and you just stack them up. It's really cool. Dice
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Forge amazing. It has modular dice, so you get to
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: pop the sides off of your dice and they're like
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: little lego pieces almost, and you put on new sides
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: to make your dice even better. Awesome game. That's Wild
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Forbidden Desert is a co op game that's really cool.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Mystic Veil is called a deck building game. It's a
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: card game and the cards are transparent except for a
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: little piece of art, and so you can layer them
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: on top of each other to make them better and
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: so it's cool game. Segrata is a dice drafting game,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: super mellow. If you were like into if you wanted
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to get into a game where it's just really chill, slow,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: you just sort of work at your own pace, Segrada
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: is a good game for them. Castle Panic is another
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: co op game. It's so fun because essentially what happens
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: is there's a whole theme of these panic games like
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Dead Panic and other, but Castle Panic is the one
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I'm the most familiar with. Essentially, there are orcs that
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: are invading a castle and you're trying to play cards
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to stop them from doing that, and it's really difficult
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: because there's lots of them.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I was gonna say, it sounds like my house.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: There you go, Castle Castle. It's basically oh for video gamers,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: this is this is a tower defense game but in
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: like a board game format, so nice.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: You know what the worst card to draw is and Uno,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: I don't ads and we're back.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: A Zool is sort of a tile set collecting game.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun, it's super easy. Really it's
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: high strategy, but the game is also relatively quick. Supports
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I think four players. Sushigo Party is a set collecting
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: card drafting game. So basically, you get a hand of cards,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: you get to choose one and then pass it, and
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: you do that until the cards are gone.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: That also sounds like my House.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Sushigo is one of the that's one of the ones
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I use most frequently to help people break into games. Okay,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: I also think it supports about ten people, so pretty
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: good for larger groups. And the last one on this
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: list is Pandemic. As I mentioned, that's that co op
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: card game where you are trying to defeat COVID nineteen.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: So all right for expert gamers. These are people at
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: whatever level you're at, you want to dive into some
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: super high strategy, expert level, complex but amazingly fun games.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: My recommendations are Dinosaur Island. This is exactly Jurassic Park.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: They just didn't want to I think pay for copyright
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: on that. I mean, also bad idea like down to
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the letter. The game takes up like an entire dining
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: room table and it is so much fun. I absolutely
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: love it. Mansions of Madness I usually puts my favorite
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: game ever that is the Kathulhu based game, where it's
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: a co op game where you use the app. Game
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: is gigantic. It has a bunch of different scenarios. They
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: come out with regular expansions all the time, just amazing.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Reavers of Midguard is a dice game essentially, and what
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: it is you're all sort of playing in a way
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: sort of Viking ships and you just go around a
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: board taking actions to get the most points.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: So my favorite thing so far about these three in
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the icepert gamers is that it sounds like you're reading
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: chapter titles out of Lord of the Rings.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: It does maybe not Mansions of Madness, but it still
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: feels good though.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Castle still feels like it's like, yeah, Castle Panic, Reavers
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: of mid.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Guard, Yeah, that's fair. The next one is kind of
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: a cheat, and there's a whole series of games called
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Tiny Epic. There's Tiny Epic Zombies, Tiny Epic Tactics, Tiny
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Epic Mechs Machs, Tiny Epic Western and the game play
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: is actually very unique for each of them, and they're
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: tiny the portable so they they're almost small enough to
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: fit in your pocket. Maybe too fat for that though,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: but they're these games that spread out to be really large,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: but they're in super compact boxes. Love them. A game
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: called Vindication, a very large board game. Essentially you're exploring
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: an island, but it's really high strategy in terms of
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the different ways that you can win. One called Endogenesis.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: This one's difficult because it only exists on Kickstarter right
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: now and I don't think it ever made it to
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: widescale publication, but it is a really awesome game that
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: you are essentially playing as gods is the theme.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: I remember telling me about that one. Yeah, that one
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: sounded really really cool. Actually it's neat.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it. Another one that's kind of a cheat.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: There's a publisher I really like called Genius Games, and
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: these are all super super sciencey themed games, and it's
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: like they do a really good job of making accessible
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: topics like the periodic table of elements and how cells
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: and a body work and things like that, and how
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: to create middle alloys is another one of the games.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: My favorite on that one would be Periodic specifically but
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: there's probably twelve or fifteen games at least sithe. This
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: is an alternate history cyberpunk nineteen twenties game where you're
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: playing these factions trying to collect the most resources and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: get the most point. It's basically really cool game and
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: just amazingly well designed, like really really well designed in
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: terms of overall game flow and everything. Yeah, Terraforming Mars
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: is kind of exactly what it sounds like. The board
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: itself is Mars, and then you not the whole planet,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: but you know it looks like Mars.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: And Elon Muskett loves that game.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And essentially you're trying to just make Mars habitable
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: by playing certain things that create, like trees and water
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: and that sort of thing.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: That also sounds like Aliens.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Fair yes, Prometheus, Prometheus, Oh please do not go to
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: terraform a planet.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: It's bad news for all of us.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: And the last one is galactic contract. This one essentially
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: is you're just a cargo ship going around trying to
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: complete as many contracts as you can to get points,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and so Futurama. Yes, actually this is very much like Futurama.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: Fewer jokes, but super.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: Fun, awesome. I love it.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: I thought i'd recommend some two player only games. A
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: lot of people are in that category. Lost Cities is
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: a card game. Jaipur is also a card game. Morel's
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: is a card game based on collecting mushrooms. Fox in
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: the Forest is a trick ticking card game. It sort
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: of plays in some similar things to other card games
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: like Hearts and Spades, because it's a trick ticking game,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: but it has these cool sort of cards have special
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: abilities in them that make the strategy elevated Onitoma is
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: a board game that looks like chess, but the way
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the pieces move changes game to game based on cards
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that you draw. Oh yeah, and it's super fun. It
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: also plays in like fifteen minutes actually fast. Patchwork is
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: kind of a set collecting game. In Between. In Between
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: is like if Stranger Things was a board game. Essentially,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: one person plays as the like the regular world, and
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: the other person plays is the upside down sort of yeah,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and you're essentially trying to drag as many people into
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: your different realms, so half of them start in the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: upside down and half of them start in the real world,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and then you're competing to bring in people.
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: Tiered Thing so that sounds very biblical too.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: It's really cool and the art on that is pretty neat,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: little cartoony, but but really good. Rose King is a
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: game that is sort of Othello in a way. You
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: know what that one is?
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know what that means. Okay, Oh with Othello,
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: I think you said it's kind of like a fellow.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: And I was like just a random fellow on the street.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: A Rose King does sound like a fellow.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Othello, I'll say that. Yeah. Essentially you are placing
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: pieces Mastermind. This is a game that's it's been around
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: for a long time, but essentially you have it feels
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: like a cooperative game in a way, although you are
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: competing with the other person and that you're trying to
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: guess a code that they've selected and they are telling
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: you whether you got any of it right. It's just
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: a really cool game. So there's some guessing involved, but
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of deduction involved in that one. And
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: then the last one I'll recommend is micro Brew. This
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: one can actually go up to four players if you
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: have enough, if you have multiple copies of the game.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: The idea here is that you're brewing beer and you're
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: competing with the other people to brew the best beer
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: and to like attract customers.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I feel like either Austin, Texas or Denver, Colorado will
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: really love that game.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: And the other thing. It comes in a tin about
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: the size of an altoid tin, so that the game
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: itself is really really small, and the idea is that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: it's portable. Nice, you need a decent amount of space
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: to play it on, but it's it's small, so it's
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: not you know, it is a little bit complex, but
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a cool theme and the is well executed.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, all right, the final set of games
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I was going to recommend here are for large groups,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and so this is where you're trying to have a
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: large gathering. I get people all the time asking me like, oh,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: we have forty five people coming, what's the game for that.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what is one activity at all that you
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: can think of that caters to that? Like? Let alone
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: the games? Yeah, I'm like, there aren't things that people
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: do in that large of a group, really, not even orgy.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: So are that large so that I'm aware of anyway,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: not speaking from speriens anyway, most of these games you
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: get up to ten or more players. There is one
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: that goes up to about twenty five, but the first
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: one is Spyfall. It takes eight minutes to play. You
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: have to set a timer when you start, and you're
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: trying to deduce who's the spy. The spy is trying
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: to deduce what the location is. Bang is a card
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: game where you are trying to kill everybody. This is
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: the last person standing. Deception is a cool, deductive semi
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: co op game where one person is the murderer and
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: everyone else is trying to figure out who it is
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: and one person knows but they can't. They can't give
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: it away. Oh so really cool that way, Happy Salmon.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: This game is insane. It takes about one minute to
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: play maybe, and it is loud and fast, and you
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: need a lot of space to stand and throw cards
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: because it is just madness. Like you don't want a
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: table for this, Actually you want an open room. Nice. Yeah,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: you're just gonna be throwing cards. And actually they make
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the cards like out of plastic basically so that because
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: they're going to be stomped on and thrown and all
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: kinds of stuff.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: It is a crazy game. It's basically there's like four
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: actions that you do, and you have to find someone
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: else's the same action as you, and then you do
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: the action together, and then you throw your card on
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the ground and go on to the next one. And
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: you're just trying to get throw all your cards and
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the first one done wins and it goes really fast
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and it's just loud and crazy. Mafia is a hidden
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: ident game, so you don't know who There's some couple
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: of people who are on the bad guys and you're
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out who it is. There are really
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: no pieces, honestly, it's just someone leads they know what's
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: My daughter said that she played that in school.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they actually do Mafia and one night Wear Wolf
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: or just wear Wolf are games that people often play
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: in settings like schools and groups. Team building exercises is
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: another one. Yeah, and it's because the game is really
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: interesting and the social dynamics that it plays on, and
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of variations on it. It's been
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: around for a while and I think it actually started
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: maybe as an internet game. Some people have claimed that
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: they started it for a classroom actually, like a college professor.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Interesting idea for a game, So yeah, there's a lot
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: of bluffing involved in that one and deduction as well.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: What else anomia I mentioned earlier, that's the one where
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: you just it's word association game. But it works for
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: a large group, so I wouldn't recommend more than ten people,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: just because it starts to get real obnoxious. Allowed Also,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: it's hard to see when you get that many people
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: because everyone has their cards in front of them. Exploding
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Kittens if you that with the expansion, and it's a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: funny name. This is the last person's standing game. Essentially
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: you're trying not to blow up because the kittens explode.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: So my favorite thing about this is that on the
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: notes it just says exploding kittens with expansion.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if we mentioned this earlier,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: but a lot of games have what they're called expansions,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: and I mean it is extentially what it applies, which
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: is just it is an add on to the game
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: to add new rules, new pieces, more players, different themes,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff that you can do with expansions
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: that usually just keep the game fresh or increase the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: number of options that you have in the game. The
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: expansion I'm talking about adds an adult only version, although
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: you can just buy multiple copies of the game and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: combine them.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: One called Martian Dice. I think the limit on this
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: is about twenty ish people. Maybe it's like fifteen. Honestly,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: there's no real reason to have a limit. The problem
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: is that it's everyone takes turns, so if you have
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: like twenty people, it's going to be a while before
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: it's your turn again. But this is just trying to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: collect the most number of points. The first person reach
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: I want to say, twenty one points or something wins
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: and then ion It goes up to seven players. But
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: this is one of those genius games games, and essentially
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: you're just collecting sets of metals to make different alloys
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. And the last one is Zombie Dice, and
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: this is a push your luck dice game where you're
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: just trying to get as many points as you can
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: on your turn unless you roll certain things that would
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: cause you to lose your points for that turn. All right,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: So you sort of roll until you either can't or
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: you don't want to anymore.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: This is brought to you by an obscure little board
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: game called ads. All right, back from the AD Break
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: let's get back into it, all right. So I just
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: listed like, what, sixty games.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of games, which is awesome
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: because these are all games that maybe people haven't been
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: exposed to, or maybe it's giving people ideas or even
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: just giving people to like maybe a spark to start
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: researching some stuff. Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna put all of these in the
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: show notes. If you want to learn more about them,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I'll put links to them as well, and various range
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of prices, various range of timelinks, depending on what you're
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: looking for. I hear people all the time tell me
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: to like, I just want like a simple game that is,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: it doesn't take very long, and like, to me, that's
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: like saying I would like food with the least amount
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: of flavor you can put in it. Its bland and texture
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: list as you can make it. That's that's the kind
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: of food I'm looking for. I'm like, Okay, weirdo, No
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: to me, I love complex rule based games that have
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of thought strategy put into them and there's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: you know, a big theme and all that. I could
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: talk about this for so long. I'm one thing I
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: pride myself on my ability to teach people how to
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: play games, I will sit down and read the rules
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: dozens of times and watch videos on the games and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: make sure I understand it. I'll play it by myself
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: as different people so that I feel like I understand it,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: so that when I sit down to teach it to people,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: I know it so well that I can easily communicate
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the rules and get them playing right away, and then
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: can answer any questions that they have, And that allows
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: me to be more successful because a lot of people
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: some of the rule books for these are twenty five
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: pages long or more. There is one Cthula Wars. The
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: rule book I believe, is like eighty pages. It's a book.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: You actually pull out a full book.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: You have to read a book.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, about sixty of those pages are like fluff and
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: expansions and like rule clarification. But still twenty pages is
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: a lot. But it's it's also fairly intimidating. I can
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: imagine as a casual game, you're like, oh, look, Cthulia.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: That looks cool, and then you pull out those box
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: that's the size of a television and a rule book
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: that looks like a dictionary, and you're like, never mind.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what did I get myself into.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And honestly, they don't usually have to be that complicated,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: and so I can sort of I pride myself on
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the ability to sit down and dissemine it rules in
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: a way that get people playing and understanding and having fun,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: because most of the games just aren't that hard. They
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: look hard and it like there are a lot of rules,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: but they aren't. They aren't that complex, right, you know,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: once you've got the gist of it, you can sort
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: of sit down and understand how to navigate most of
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: the scenarios in a game pretty easily.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: For somebody who is a casual gamer. Like, it's really
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: great to hear that there is kind of this really
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: cool culture and social network and just ultimately this tribe, right,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: Like it's like, you know, we always talk about finding
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: your tribe and getting in with your people, and like
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: this is one of those things where it's like maybe
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: now you have maybe you didn't have one before, but
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: maybe now you have a group of people that you
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: can connect with and really bond over over this new
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: thing that is really an entire culture in itself.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And I think I've only met a couple
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: of people who even when they got exposed to games,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: they got to play a few of them, they got
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: to be successful and felt like they understood. They still
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: were just like, nah, not really. In my scene, most
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: people can find at least a couple of games that
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: they really like and latch onto and that sort of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: becomes their go to for how they'll spend the time.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: And you just don't have to be stuck playing games
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: like Monopoly, right, and sorry for those people who like
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: that game, I don't. You don't have to be like
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: resigned to like, oh, those are the options for games.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: There are some amazing games out there. It'd be like
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: if someone was like, oh, I don't really watch TV
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: because I'm not really a fan of the car Dashians.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: I'm like, there are better television shows out there, you guys, Yeah,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: like yeah, all of them, basically most.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Of them exactly. Well yeah, I would say literally all
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's like, you don't have to get stuck
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: just watching the Kardashians. There's like so many good shows
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: out there. And that's true of games that people are like, well, yeah,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I'm not really into it. I'm like, believe me, there's something.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Let's find something that's sort of your speed and you'll
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: find at least a game or two that you want
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: to play.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: You're like that really great bartender that like really works
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: with you on finding the beer that you like. That absolutely,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: and that's what it's like if you can't relate to
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: like tabletop games. If you've ever gotten to a bar
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: and somebody it's like, well, what do you like to
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: drink and they're and you're like, I don't know, I
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: kind of like this, and that bartender works with you
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: and creates these drinks and kind of gives you sample
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: and like does all that. That's that's what Abraham does.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: So if you're interested in board games, he's your go to.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Board game bartender. It's actually it's funny you say that
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: because you're people. That's how a lot of my friends
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: are with me is they'll say, hey, I'm looking for
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a game that has these elements for those number of people,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: and I say, oh, how about these five games?
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Thanks?
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: You know, And so that's I've become a lot of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: people's go to because that's that's the thing that I do,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and I like doing it, Like I just this is
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a world I want to spend all of my time
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: in and I just am so passionate about it. I
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: love it. It's great. I don't use any illicit substances.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't do anything.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: So my way of having fun is by learning and strategizing.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: I love it so all right.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: I would love to talk about this more, but we
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: should probably let everyone go. If you even made it
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: this far awesome, I'll probably just keep recommending some of
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: these games and explaining them a little more as part
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: of the recommendation sections of upcoming episodes. But you know,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: it is what it is.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that sounds great. I mean, I'm
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: sure that I you know, I can't speak for everybody,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: but I appreciate you exposing us to this thing.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks man. Yeah, do you have any themes in particular
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: that stand out for you?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: I think the thing is is just it's one of
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: those things where it's low stakes for the most part,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: high reward in terms of of social interactions. And I
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: think if you're one of those people that just has
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: a hard time with social interactions, I think this is
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: a good place to start. It give you a place
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: to kind of facilitate and really work in a space
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: where there's an objective and you don't really have to
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: focus on anything more than the objective and kind of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: interacting with people within that space.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I think that's absolutely that's great. I kind
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: of wanted to recommend one for you, but I wasn't sure.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Are you competitive or not so much?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Oh I'm so competitive. It's so dumb. I used to play.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: I played like competitive, like state level sports when I
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: was in school. So I'm like, yeah, I'm like super competitive.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: It's scary.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, do you like direct combat with other players, like
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: if you're playing a game where like, I'm sorry that
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: sort of thing.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think Bang is really your speed. I would
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: check out BANG if I were you.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna add Bang to my list.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, Bang is cool. Like the whole thing is you
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: are just like you're shooting at people, You're trying to
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: block their shots at you. There's a hidden ide any elements,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: so there's a been of deduction in it. And it's
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: a super competitive Last person Standing style game. So I'm
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: gonna recommend that it is three or more players, just
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: so you know, you can't do a two player game with.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: It all right, I could do that. I can make
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: that work cool.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: That was a fun discussion. Thank you for listening. I
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: hope that you enjoyed that. And we've got some updated
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: things to talk about. So the first thing I want
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: to get into is there's actually been quite a bit
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: of research exploring possible psychological benefits as as you might
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: think of them, related to playing board games, and psychologists
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: have been noting these and research has actually been capturing
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: some data on these. So one of the first things
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: here is that board games are a social activity, and
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: so this can be a way for people to find
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: reasons to come together. And I think we are in
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: an increasingly secular world, and maybe more importantly to that,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: the thing that is driving us all apart is that
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: we are in a social media based environment, and so
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: anything that helps us find ways to bring people together,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: I think is increasingly important and is very beneficial. So
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: board games can serve that purpose. Just help get people
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: in a room where they're interacting with one another and
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: having some kind of relationship either built or continue to
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: develop in that space.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also board games offer us a kind of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: a unique opportunity for skill building, a building strategy as
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: well and mastery, so they can provide an opportunity to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: benefit us from a feeling of like, you know, different
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: things like senses of achievement, a sense of failure and
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: loss where the stakes are very low. There's also you know,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: there's lots of like cooperation inside of that. There are
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: clear rules and objectives that allow people to work towards
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: a specific outcome, either together or independently. Right, And there's
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe some specific specific outcomes or points along
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: the way to measure their progress unambiguously. And people also
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: just kind of like to do things that are not
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: related to their day to day lives.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: There's a little bit of escapism there where they can
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: kind of like immerse themselves in an activity where they
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: don't have to think about their current problems or the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: state of the world and stuff like that. So there's
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of kind of unique opportunities inside of board
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: game specifically.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we'll dig into the research right now
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: that shows like what the objective benefits are. But those
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: are some aspects of games that psychologists have just noticed
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: that makes sense in how they would foster like a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: sense of community, a sense of accomplishment, and having ways
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: to orient and organize your behavior around those types of things,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: and like the aspect of that includes like just as
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: clear rules and objectives and that sort of thing. So
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of what we're going to focus on
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: or talk about comes from a few different sources where
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I found articles reviewing other articles, and so that's always
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: a really efficient way to get information, is that they
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: can summarize research that's been done. So twenty twenty one
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: paper by bar and Otter bring in the Journal of
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Retailing and Consumer Services, which what a frightening thing that
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: must be, yes and anyway, in this paper are they
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: reported that board games provide a safe, low stakes environment
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: to practice social behaviors such as competition, teamwork, negotiation, and
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: winning and losing gracefully. Like it's so low stakes, and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: it's so like when you're in the throes of like
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: a big sporting event, which can have lots of benefits too.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: There's lots of great things about sports as they relate
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: to things like playing in games and teamwork. But you
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: are working physically really hard, and like you are kind
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: of sometimes tired and exhausted. You've got a lot of
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: endorphins running through your body that have you maybe react
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: more strongly to sports going well or going poorly, and
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: in the board game setting, it's it's just such a
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: dialed down version of the physical and density of that.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: Then it's easier to experience a loss having tried really
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: hard and be able to be okay with.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: That right absolutely now. Further, board games create opportunities to
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: practice ways to gently tease and trash talk in a
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: way that can be shaped by the social group. I've
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: actually worked on programs for this specific thing with clients
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: that I've worked with. That's great because you know, like
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: I would work with a child who love to trash
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: talk but would be kind of mean and like hurt
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: friends feelings, and so we had to kind of teach like, hell,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: here's how you do this, Like you don't comment on
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: the way somebody looks. You, maybe comment on the way
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: they're playing, and like, you know, like and also realize
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: that they may not take this very well, so like,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe it's not a partner that you play
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: games with. But we had to kind of work on
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: a different a bunch of different kind of aspects of it,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: which is a lot of fun. Yeah, but if we
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: teach really well we can help build relationships with understandable
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: boundaries somebody saying like, hey, you know, I don't like
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: the way that you're talking to me like this or
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: that's not fun or something like that. And this also
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: allows people to build comfort and trust when they both
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: understand where the other and it's coming from. Like so
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: there's a particular context in which this occurs. There's gentle
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: ribbing that goes along, and you know, and it can
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: actually strengthen relationships quite quite a bit.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly it. It might be difficult to feel
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: like you know how to tease someone without it sounding
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: mean spirited, and when in a game, you have lots
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: of repeated opportunities for that and you get to give
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: it back, so you get some modeling, you can get
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: some feedback where it's like if it's being mean, then
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: your group is going to hopefully have an opportunity to
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: respond to that and be like, dude, that's not cool.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: Like it's like when someone when you when you take
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: something away from someone and you beat them in something
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: and be like, aha, got you good, and like you
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: learn a way that does it in such a way
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: that it's not cruel. And so I think it can
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: create that that opportunity which they had highlighted in here.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Barn otter Bring also discussed that repeated engagement with social
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: decision making can help shape and develop such things as
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: moral reasoning, as well as other important skills like and cooperation.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: There are actually quite a few games that involve teamwork
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: where you might be on a team with someone and
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: so you're working together with them. And there are also
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: games that are fully cooperative where everyone who's playing is
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: working together, usually to accomplish some objective or to beat
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: the game itself. And I mentioned last time Pandemic is
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: a really good example of that. That's the one that
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: people know a lot. Mansions of Madness is one. There
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: are a lot of cooperative games now.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Basically the way the game works, if you're not familiar is,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: like I said, you're all working together to accomplish some objective.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: And usually it's like just you might be trying to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: get as many points as possible as a group, and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: they are like certain thresholds that the game outlines, is
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: like how successful you were based on how many points
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: you got, yeah, or you might be trying to if
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: there is an end game condition where I would end
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: the game. You're trying to accomplish an objective before the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: end game condition hits. So right in the game The Grizzled,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: for example, you're playing a bunch of soldiers and there's
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: all of the sort of wartime threats coming out, and
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: you're working together, but you can't tell each other what
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: cards you have to overcome those, and so you are
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: doing your best to help each other out when you
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: can't necessarily communicate, and you're just trying to get all
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: the way through all of the threat cards. And if
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: you get to the very bottom of the deck by
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: having worked together to overcome all of those threats, then
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: you all win.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there are there there are lots of versions
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: of that that are out. So anyway, thinking about this
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: idea of like building moral reasoning, empathy and cooperation, I
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: think we desperately need to start making politicians just play
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of board games, see if we can
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: turn them human.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, one day, one day. That should
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: be a barrier to entry. Like if you can't play
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: cooperative board games, then you shouldn't be a politician.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Oh I like that. This is a nice objective. Criteria
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: for like whether or not you can get can get
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: elected to the things?
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, before you can even get on a ballot. Okay,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: can you even can you play nicely with others?
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, well then you can't. You can't do this, yeah
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: like ads.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: Oh all right, let's come back pick up where we're
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: talking about these board game things.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So board games have been found to be very
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: helpful for general brain development, including in children and stroke patients,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: which I think is really valuable. So some studies actually
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: showed improved cognitive functioning, social development, problem solving vocabulary, improved mood,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: and reduced anxiety in children playing games, which is actually
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: really fascinating.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm gonna tell a quick sort of I
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: got to be a part of a little case study
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: where we were playing games with a kid who was
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: struggling with spatial tasks, and so we played that. We
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: had many specific like curriculum sort of things that we
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: were working on, but we had one of the crickhum
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: things as was set aside time for spatial games where
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: they were all sort of puzzles where they had to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: organize their pieces. Is in sort of two D and
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: three D space. If you will. So if you can
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: think of like Tetris is kind of a spatial game
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: in a way, right, and so there are some games
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: that have that. One game that we played with the
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: student was called Patchwork. Essentially you're building a little quilt,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: but all the pieces of the quilt a look almost
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: like Tetris pieces like tetrono polyanomos, and you want to
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: arrange them in patterns based on what's available for you
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: to choose from and your little quilt, and so being
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: able to see how they like mentally, see how they
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: fit together, how you would rotate them to fit certain spaces,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: was one thing we did. Another one is a game
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: called Boop, and that's a two player game, so it's patchwork.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: And then that one you're playing cats jumping on a bed,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: but every time a cat lands on the bed, it boops,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: which means knocks aside other cats that are nearby, but
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: you want to strategically knock them so you can line
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: up three in a row. So again there's a spatial
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: component of thinking about where you place them and where
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: they go as an outcome before you place them. So
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: those are just a couple of examples of things that
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: we did. To work on.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: I love that. And you know D and D for
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: those of you who are on initiate, Dungeons of Dragons
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: is a really great opportunity for social skills because you
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: have to either collaborate or sabotage each other and these
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: and it's completely narrative based, so you have this opportunity
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: to kind of like make up your story as you go.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: And if you're in with a really great group or
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: you get along with everybody, then it's much more fun.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: If you are contentious and fight with everybody, it is
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: not fun and it's very difficult to build skills in
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: those spaces. So like a lot of D and D
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: campaigns require you to collaborate with your party to make
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: it so that you can achieve that goal or that
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: next step. My brother not at all the collaborative type.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: He is completely I mean he is in general he
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: is like sarcastically collaborative, if that makes sense. But he's
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: just chaos walking. So he's always kind of like the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: like they say, it's always done in the wild card
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: in these games. And so like our social skill, our
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: social group is really good and we're usually pretty good
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: because we unify against my brother's mechanations in these games.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, and it's opportunities to like again,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: how to talk to one another, how to ask for
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: things from one another. On the Behavioral Observations podcast, they
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: had a guest on at some point in the last
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: few years who talked about how he specifically teaches social
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: skills by having them play D and D and there's
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: all these aspects of communication, teamwork, perspective taking involved in
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: that that helps develop those skills for people who had
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: not developed them up to that point and who benefit
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: from doing so.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: There was another sort of case report here, although this
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: one was more clearly documented. There was a fifty three
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: year old multiple stroke patient who had, as part of
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: his recovery, was playing some board games and recreit. He
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: credited a lot of his improvements to playing board games.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: And you might hear that and be like, Okay, so
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: this is just a guy who wanted to justify playing
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: board games, and so he said that, you know, that's
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: what helped, And that could be the case, but there
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: was some somewhat empirical data that supported this, that showed that
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: his recovery actually slowed down when he played fewer or
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: no games, but his recovery increased and sped up when
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: he was playing multiple games per day, and so there
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: is then some reason to believe that if you can
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: increase and decrease the progress he's making, that there is
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: some independent variable that seems to be important there. There
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: was also a study in the New England Journal of
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: Medicine that found by that playing daily crosswords was associated
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: with sharper memories and people seventy one and older who
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: had mild cognitive impairments. And so although that's not a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: board game, the whole idea of basically playing some kind
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: of game, in this case a word game, was helpful
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: for over their cognitive functioning and people who were basically
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: in the category of and at risk of cognitive decline.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's important stuff. Now. A French study aggregated twenty
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: years of data and showed that people who played board
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: games had a fifteen percent lower risk of developing dementia.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: There's also less depression and less cognitive decline among participants,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: which I think is pretty valuable information.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all of that, I mean that if you're someone
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: who would be in that category, if you have a
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: fifteen percent chance, even though it's not a huge chance,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: like that'd probably be a chance you would want to take.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's like no harm at all.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: Now, all this being said, while we're extolling the virtues
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: of board games, sources noted it's important how you play,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: and one article cited examples in which hyper competitive people
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: really did not get the same benefit out of playing
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: board games. And I want to stress that like being
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: competitive is fine, and even developing competitiveness and people who
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: sort of demonstrate otherwise low competitives may be beneficial. It's
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: when competitiveness becomes aggressive and they're they're showing anger and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: they're like not really having fun. It's becoming like socially
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: toxic situation that really diminishes the benefits both for the
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: person who's experiencing the anger, the player, as well as
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: the people they're playing with. And so that hyper competitiveness
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: can start to tick down what benefits there are. So
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: it's possible, like it's this is not a panacea. This
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: is not going to work for everything. It's not going
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: to cure all diseases. And one one thing that if
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: you have someone who can't play games without getting upset,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: probably not the way to go for them, right, And
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I definitely like to urge when I teach people games
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: and when I'm sharing about games, like the important thing
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: to remember is it's just a game. Like be competitive
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: if it calls for it, but like the point is
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: to have fun. Like the point is that you're doing
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: something with a group of people and that you're doing
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: it socially. So like remember, like we're here to like
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: have fun.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And speaking of fun, since we recorded last,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: there have been roughly thirty six thousand new games developed
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: at this time. So like, and I was reading this
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: bullet point the Abraham I putt, and I wasn't sure
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: if this was new games that were developed or new
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: games that Abraham has played, which also could be the same.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: Like the Venn diagram of those is just a complete circle,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: I think. So.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: So we're talking about like seven thousand board games a year, roughly, yeah,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: have come out since we recorded last, which would be
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: me having to play what is that several at least,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: let's see ten twenty board games a day, every day,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: every day without break between now and then. That's basically
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: how many have come out. It's about twenty board games
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: a day since we recorded last have come out. That
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: is a lot. So a lot of people ask, so, like,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of board games. I've talked about
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: this and they're like, how do you not have every
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: board game ever made? I'm like, I have like less
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: than one percent of every board game ever made.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, close, close.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: There are thousands and thousands that come out every year.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: They are new ones, and I do think that there
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: are some drawbacks to that that are definitely important, but
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: just a lot has happened since then. I think there's
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: kind of been There's an ever evolving sort of shift
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: in how games are written and developed, and I will say, like,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: of those thirty six thousand, there is a not insignificant
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: chunk that are like remakes of existing games, and so
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: they basically take a concept and repackage it and they
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: deliver that same concept but in a different skin, if
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: you will. Was in the video game Linggo. So anyway,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there's more to say about that,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: but just that there have been a lot of games
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: since we talked last. Yeah, new games.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: That covers it, yeah new Yeah, new games. So just
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: so everybody's aware, all that means is that you have
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: to play twenty board games a day and you'll be
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: caught up.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: That's right. Board game publishers will be so happy, Yes,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: of course, all right, I do want to update some
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: of the things that we talked about last time as well.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: Last time I had a discussion where I classified games
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: in terms of their ending criteria in our original discussion,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, like, when I'm
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: teaching people games, one of the first things I want
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: to tell them is how the game ends, so that
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: they're well aware of that. Honestly, it's one of the
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: first things people want to know anyway. Yeah, it's not
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: because they're looking forward to the game being over they
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: sat down to play. It's because you want to figure out,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: like when, what is the condition under which I get
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: to stop playing? All right, I'm going to have to
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: stop playing. I'm gonna stop making choices because the decisions
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: you make might change based on that. And so, like
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: I had games where I call them race to the
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: end games where it's like you want to be the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: first one to accomplish some goal that triggers the end
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: of the game, you win, right. There are games that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: go a fixed number of rounds, so everyone has a
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: set number of turns, they take those turns, and then
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: when the last round has ended, the game is over.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: And like in games where there is like a set
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: ending thing that happens once you're getting to that point,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of times like don't worry about this
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: strategy or that strategy. Just get as many points as
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: you can toward the end of the game. Like that,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: that's a common experience and sort of the arc of
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: the experience of the game. And so that is a
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: way to categorize them is to think about like this
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: of how does this game end? But potentially a more
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: useful way to think of them, and that a lot
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: of people think of when asked about like types of
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: games is instead their theme and their rule types. And
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: by rule types, you might also call mechanics, and that
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: is like ways that the game is played essentially. Does
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: that make sense?
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, yeah, absolutely so, I'm just.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Gonna list through, We'll take turns listening through a few
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: of the different mechanic types that exist. I might have
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: to explain a little bit of all of these. Let's
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: have you start and then ask me about any that
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: you feel like you're unclear. Since I know that you
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: play fewer games than I do.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, so these are the mechanics, right, These are type
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: of mechanics that you're talking about. Yeah, all right, so
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: some of them are worker placement, tableau building, drafting, engine building,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: deck building, and card shedding, to name a few. I
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: feel like deck building is very similar to like magic
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: the gathering, like you have to build a deck and
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: then play. There's like maybe a second mechanic to that,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: but you have to build a deck to compete you.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: You might call it a deck building game. A lot
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: of deck building games when people are talking about that,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: you throughout the course of a game will be building
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: your deck rather than building the deck and then playing.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: And so commonly the way this will work is you'll
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: start with a certain deck of cards, and then as
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: the game plays, you'll acquire better cards to your deck,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: and then you'll also potentially be discarding weaker cards out
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: of your deck, so that every time you get to play,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: you're getting better and better cards. Sure, so that's a
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: really common way that that one's set up. Okay, what
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: others of those? Do you feel like you would not
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: know what they meant?
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about maybe worker placement.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, A lot of people hear this, and they hear
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: work replacement. It's worker space placement. Yeah, yeah, this is
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: actually one of my favorite mechanics. If there's a workerplacement game,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna enjoy it. The way that this works
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: is there are action spaces on usually in some kind
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: of board, and you have these little characters they'll call meeples.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they can look at any number of ways, but
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: you've got some piece that belongs to you that you'll
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: put it on an action space, and that's how you
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: get to choose what thing you're going to do on
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: your turn. Sure, and sometimes those spaces are competitive, meaning
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: only one or a limited number of people can be there.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they are cooperative, meaning any number of people can
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: be there. It's just sort of a way to organize
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: your options for choices that you can make. Sometimes one
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: person going there knocks out another person who was there,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: So there are different ways that that works. But work
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: replacement is absolutely one of my favorite mechanics in a
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: board game.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Nice, all right, I like that. So continuing down this list,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: there is also bidding, social deduction, trick taking, area control,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: tile placement, and resource management. I would assume that area
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: control would be for because I just want to be clear.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: I'm a novice at this stuff, right, So I would
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: assume area control would be something like Risk basically.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Yep, Risk is a good example of this.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: Look at that.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: There are yeah, see good job claps.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: I understand, I understand words. Yeah.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: There are lots of games that essentially they'll use some
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: aspect of a map and in there you you want
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: to either hold an area or gain more area, or
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: push someone out of their area. But yeah, that's exactly
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: it is. Risk is an example of area control.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool? What is uh? Trick taking?
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: Trick ticking is like the game of Hearts, So essentially
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: that is you place cards and then somebody will take
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: those cards based on whether or not they win or
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: lose the trick. And sometimes you want to take cards,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: sometimes you don't. As a fantastic two player game that
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: I would say is among the top five best two
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: player games called The Fox in the Forest. Okay, there's
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: a trick taking game. There's a beautiful cooperative trick taking
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: game called The Crew. There's two versions of that. One
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: is like Deep Space nine and ones in Ocean theme.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know whatever the point of that one is.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: You have have specific objectives you're trying to accomplish. You
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: can't communicate with your team, but you want the right
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: people to take the right tricks. But that's essentially it is.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: You're gonna play down cards and then some criteria will
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: have somebody take those cards, and that's called a trick
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: taking game.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: Ah okay, cool, I like that. Okay. And then to
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: wrap up this list, there's also set collecting, abstract, rpg
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: push your Luck, tile ling, dungeon crawling, tower defense, and
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: dice rolling. So I do know dungeon crawling and tower defense.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: I feel good about those in RPGs, Like I feel
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: like as somebody who's played Dungeons and Dragons and Morkborg
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that, where like, you know, you're doing
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: a dungeon crawl. Tower defense is like plants versus zombies. Yeah,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: really is a clear one's that's a tower defense game.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: And then RPGs like I think a video games specifically,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: so I think of like Paper Mario or you know,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: like Final Fantasy vin and stuff like that. So I
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: guess a question like maybe people would have is like
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: you're talking about board games with rules, So what does
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: abstract mean? Because that makes it feel like there's not rules, right.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, there are the Yeah, there are rules. It's like
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: how you go about scoring is not necessarily tied to
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: a particular theme, but they're usually these are very puzzly
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: typed games. It's like you want to arrange pieces in
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: a particular way that will score you more points than
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: other people. Yeah, sometimes pieces come from a limited pool.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: So a common example, I think of an abstract puzzle game.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: It's called a zool And in this there are these
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: patterned tiles and then you're essentially trying to just arrange
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: them according to the best you can in a little
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: area that you have where you would put those those
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: patterned tiles. And so there is a theme to this game,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: like you're essentially trying to make these patterns, but the
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: idea is essentially an abstract one where you're just trying
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: to arrange the pattern that will score you the most points. Okay,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and those are both individual goals as well as public goals,
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: Like you you're if you're the person who has the
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: most of a particular pattern, you get a thing a
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: certain amount of points. Sure, Unable to complete the pattern
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: means you lose points. So yeah, there's quite a few
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: really great abstract puzzle games. Those are actually the ones
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people can sit down
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: and just play and enjoy because you're it's not super immersive,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: it's just very strategic, right, so you're just really trying
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: to do your best to create a high point scoring thing.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Sure that makes sense. Cool?
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: All right? Another one of the ones you mentioned before,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: but I forgot to mention deck building was one of
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: my other favorite mechanisms in there.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's always fun.
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not a huge fan though, of like ad games.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, those are ye Jet. Thanks John Watson.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, and I know we're already deep
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: into this in terms of time, so I'm gonna try
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: and go quick. So last time I recommended a bunch
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: of games. I recommended some like Gateway Games, which I
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: might revise that list, but I'm not gonna worry about
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: that today, some two player games instead. I'm gonna do
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: this two ways here. Basically, I'm going to call these
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: short slash easy games. And these are games that are
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: like pretty easy to teach, and they don't take very
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: long to learn or play. Like, these are games you
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: could sit down and get through in around an hour
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: or less depending on the game. And then the other
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: ones I'm gonna do are heavy games, and heavy games
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: are both physically heavy as well as they tend to
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: have a lot of rules and depth and strategy to them.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: And so those are the sort of two lists that
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: will go through a little bit. Okay, so I'm going
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: to list about half of this list. I'm gonna let
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: you do the other half, and then I want you
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: to ask me about one of those games that, just
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: based on the name alone, you're curious about.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: So we have Mountain Goats, Dandy Lyons, finn Span, Splendor,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: and king Domino are five games that you could pick
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: up and play. Of those, finn Span might be the longest,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: but you can do that. I've done that like on
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: a lunch break, so particularly once you know it, you
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: can do it pretty quickly.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool. And there's also Cascadia, Sunset over Water,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: stamp Swap and Innovation. You've talked about Finncepan and Mountain
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: Goats on here, Okay, and I think Cascadia too. So
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: tell us about Dandelions.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Ah, Okay. Dandellions is a very cute little game. It
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: comes in a small box. It's pretty portable and essentially
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: you have cards that are like dandelion pedals, okay, and
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: you are kind of playing like one of those floaty
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: dandelion like when a dandy lion turns white and little
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: floating parts. Yea, you're kind of playing you have like
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: a huge pile of dice and you're sort of floating
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: around these little pedals, just depositing dice almost man calla style,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: but not quite. But in doing so you might kick
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: people off of their pedals. And so at the end
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: of the game, you want to be the person who
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: has the most on the highest scoring pedals, and you
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: want to have also like a pretty good distribution of
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: your dice as much as possible so that you can
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: have like just a lot of scoring opportunities.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a very cute game. A little mathy,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: so like if it's gonna be a good game to practice,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: like a lot of sort of just counting and planning,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: but it's really really like it.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: That's fun. I love that.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Cool all Right. Some heavy games that I very much
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: enjoy and love. I checked and I did not mention
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: these last time, as far as I know. Tapestry, Wing Span,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Endless Winter, Paleo Americans, which when people ask me what
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: my favorite game is anymore, that's the one I say
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: is Endless Wintery, Arborea and Earth are five big heavy games.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: I'll do it one more time. Tapestry Zone Game, Wingspan,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: Endless Winter, Arborea, and Earth.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: Nice. There's also the Fox Experiment, Expeditions, Apiary, Terminus, Vita Culture, Viticulture, Viticulture, Viticulture,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: Gold West, and Castles of Burgundy.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, some of these are yeah, some of these are older.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: They've been around for a long time. Some of these
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: are newer. But all right, let's do one or two
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: of those that stood out to you.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: I think Castles of Burgundy stands out because I think
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: of Ron Burgundy.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: So that's actually one of the probably the oldest game
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: on this list. It's a fantastic This is a dice game.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: You are collecting different tile types that you're gonna put
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: in what they call your duchy, which has three castles,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: and then you've got some pastures and some lake slash
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: river things, and you're using dice to collect tiles to
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: put them in there. You're usually not going to be
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: able to fill in your entire duchy, and then all
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: the tiles have different abilities or scoring that they do,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: and it's just it's a I really really enjoy that one.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: It's a classic, really nice game. Yeah, okay, yeah, one
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: more for fun. Let's do Earth Earth Okay, beautiful game.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: This is what is called an engine building game, also
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: a tableau building game. A lot of those mechanics overlap.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: By the way that I mentioned. You can have games
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: that like Endless Winter is a deck building worker placement game,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: which also has some area control as well. Anyway, Earth
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: is an engine building game. Unlike most games where all
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the sort of eikonog graphy and pictures are art done
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: for the game, Earth is like a lot of I'm
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: pretty sure real pictures, Like almost all of them are
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: real pictures of like locations around the Earth. And in
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: this one, you're essentially collecting plants. They are ranging into
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: a four by four grid and they have all these
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: different abilities. What's cool about this game is this has
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: an aspect to it that is very rare, not very rare,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: but there are only handful of games that do this
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: relatively speaking. And it's called simultaneous play, and that means
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: when it's any player's turn, all other players are also
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: doing something okay. And so in this game, like you
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: choose from one of four actions and then everybody else
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: gets to do a lesser version of that action while
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: you're doing that okay, and it still can affect other players,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: like I might do a thing that affects all these
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: other players and all that, but most of it happens.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: We'll get to your turn, You're like, I'm doing this,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: and then everybody starts doing the lesser version of that
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: thing and working on it. And so it can be
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: like there's just a lot going on every turn that's
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: happening because everybody's doing stuff like oh you do you
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: do this thing, and I'm doing this thing and that,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: and there's a little it's not shouting necessarily, but it's
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: just like because you don't really need to shout, but
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: you're just sort of announcing to people what are happening
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: or pointing people out and saying like, this is the
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: thing that's that's going to affect you. Earth is really
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: really good. I really enjoy that one.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: That's fun. That sounds like a lot of fun.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna quickly mention Apiary because the theme of that
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: one is bees in space and so this is a
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: bees going around colonizing other planets, and that's essentially the game.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: I love that. I love that.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's so much about board games, probably
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: way more than you were hoping to hear. But I
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: hope that you enjoyed what you heard today and maybe
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: have some new games to go check out. I strongly
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: think that there's a board game out there for you,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: no matter who you are, Like, you can find something.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: There are games that are designed for a single player. Yeah,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: like they're just one player solitaire games. There are lots
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: of them, Go check those out. There are great two
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: player games. There are great social games. A new one
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: I picked up is called so Clover. It's actually not new,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: it's been around for you and years, but it's a
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: great word game that accommodates I want to say, six
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: or eight people. Yeah, and it's as very cute, very
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: short as another one you can play in like twenty minutes,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: but really really well done games. So anyway, go check
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: them out. Sort Of I've said like I'm like the
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: bartender of board games. People say like, well I like this,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: I like this. Now I'll try and help narrow down something. Yeah,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: I got you, baby, that's right. Yeah, even though my
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: repertoire is limited because there are tens of thousands of
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: games that I haven't played, but I do my best
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: with the ones i'm familiar with.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: Nice. I love that. I Yeah, it's one of those
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: things that you always recommend games and I try to
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: get into some and I have, I just haven't been
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: able to so I have to like find the ones.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: So I always love these recommendations because I can be like, oh,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna take this one. I'm gonna try this one.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: Nice. You would probably like French Toast and so clover
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: and probably just one as well.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: Love that I'm picking those up now.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: Although all of those are cooperative, and I know that
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: you do like competitive games.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: I like cooperative too.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, anyway, let's go ahead and wrap up this conversation. Then,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: I hope that you everyone here enjoyed what I heard today.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: We've got a couple more things to get to, which
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: is our recommendations, and we have a very fun listener
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: mail that I'd like to read, and so I know
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: that we're going very long on this episode, So thank
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: you for sticking with us. As I said, if you
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: enjoy what you hear and you like to support us,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: you can leave us a rating, a review, like and
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: subscribe and like. Whatever way you found us, try and
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: replicate that for someone else. Like if you got a review,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: then like maybe leave a review, or if you read
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: one or something. If this just showed up in your
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: feed as a recommendation, that's because somebody else left a rating,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: So go leave a rating or something. If someone told
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: you about it, then go tell someone else about it.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: Those are all things that you can do, and we
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: appreciate all of those. You can also, if you're really interested,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: take the plunge and you can join us on Patreon
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: and there you get ad free content, early episodes, bonus content,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. And importantly, I think the
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: reason they're all really here is that at the end
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: of each discussion, I'm going to read out the names
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: of people who have joined us on Patreon as paid
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: members to help support what we do, and that is Mike,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: m Megan, Mike t Just and Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: Kiara and Charlie. Thank you all so much for being here.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: You're the best. You're the best ever.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, And then I did want to always shout
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: out my team, without whom I could not make this
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: podcast happen. Writing in fact checking from Shane and myself.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: engineer who does the sounds and makes them good is Justin.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, justin ah the best. All right? So is
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: there anything that I forgot her that you would like
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: to add before we drove to our listener mail?
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: No, I think we're I think we're good, all right.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: All right. This comes from a listener who I believe
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: has written in before I forgot to go back and check.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: I hope that she's cool with us using her name.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I asked if we could read her listener mail and
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: she said yes, I'll just give her first name is Letitia. Anyways,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: she writes in Aloha, I'm reading Michael Maloney's nineteen ninety
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: eight book Teach Your Children Well, and I came across
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: to section that reminded me of your replacement theory episode,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: taking it a bit further and relating it to literacy
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: or illiteracy. I just wanted to share. Thank you guys
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: so much for doing an amazing job at disseminating our science.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Keep up the spectacular work. Thank you so much. That
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: was a very kind email, and I wrote back, I mentioned, like,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I have read this book and completely forgot about this
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: when we were doing our episode on replacement theory, which
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: is unfortunate. And so I'm going to read a couple
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: of excerpts really quick from this book that I think
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: really highlight this point. This is from as she said,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: Michael Maloney. So I'm going to pull out a couple
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: of specific passages I liked. He says, quote the existing
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: paranoia that such an eventuality could occur. This is relating
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: to like replacement theory is undoubtedly a factor in the
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: rise of the white supremacy movement in the eighties and
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: nineties and of its recent anti government activities. The vast
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: majority of the membership of the supremacist groups are not
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: known for their extensive reading of the classics, except perhaps
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Mindkomf in the simplified abridged version on audio tape. They
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: are themselves the residue of a school system which failed
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: to teach them critical thinking skills. Much of their fear
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: is that they can no longer compete economically in a
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: country which is ever so slowly expanding opportunity for its
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: visible mind noughties, thereby threatening their current jobs and their
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: future prospects. The resulting siege mentality is expressed in organizations
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: like the Michigan Militia with its automatic weapons, battle fatigues,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: and fertilizer based bombs. He goes on separate paragraph here,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I know right, heavy, heavy, and also written in the nineties,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: basically predicting now. He goes on, every politician clearly understands
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: the information is power. Exclusion from readily available information due
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: to illiteracy creates a class of followers with the capacity
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: to directly impact the health of any democracy skip ahead
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: of it. Their grasp of serious societal problems in the
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: formulation of policies to address them is limited by the
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: lack of information available to them. Such paucity opens the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: door to simplistic, jingoistic political solutions favored by demagogues and
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: other practitioners of the big Lie. If a dynamic, persuasive
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: leader organized the political power of these ill informed individuals
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: got them registered and into the voting booth, democracy as
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: we know it could be seriously compromised. End quote wow wow,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: devastatingly prescient.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: That was yeah wow, So such.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: A great share. Thank you so much for writing in.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm glad. I wish that I
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: had thought about that when we were recording, but I'm
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: glad that it made it into a listener mail segment.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, agreed.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: If you would like to write into us, as Letitia
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: did and tell us your thoughts on board games or
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: of a past episode and give us information that we miss,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: we love that sort of thing and we enjoy hearing
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: from you. You can reach us directly by emailing us
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com, or on the
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: various social media platforms. Our last listener mail was from
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: a social media post several of them in fact that
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: we got, which was also great. So please let us
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: know what you're thinking, and we may just share that
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: with others if we feel like it's a contribution, And
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: if you don't want us to share, that's fine too.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: We just like talking to people, so happy to have
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: you reach out that way. I think that's all I
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: have about that. Are we're ready to recommend some things?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: I think we are all right.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: We'll try and go fast, but let's transition to ads
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: and then recom mandas oh, no, all right, we're back,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: So cue the recommendation music, beautiful.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: Recommendations. All right, So I'm gonna recommend a new movie
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: that just came out on Netflix. It is Happy Gilmore Too.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: I'm not even going to try to like lead up
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: It is a sequel to Happy Gilmore Adam Sandler. It's
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: a Happy Madison production, and it was surprisingly heartfelt and
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: very funny. Like it was actually done really well, and
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: I think done with respect, and you know, it's very
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: careful to honor the original movie and not just be
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: like a cash grab sequel. Love that it tackles some
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: pretty heavy the themes like grief and alcoholism and you know,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: like aging and what that looks like. But it does
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: it in a way that I think is like lighthearted
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: enough that you can kind of like understand the themes
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: and continue to move through the movie without it being
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: too heavy.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: So nice.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun, a lot of great character
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: acting in it. I think they did a really good job.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: I think that this is the way that you do
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: a legacy sequel.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. Yeah, crazy that it's been thirty years since
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: the original, Yeah yeah, yeah, And this is available on Netflix.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: So I believe this is a Netflix and I think
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: I think Adam Sandler's got some like lifetime sweetheart deal
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: in Netflix from now until forever.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something that will keep his kids rich forever.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: That's exactly it. But yeah, that's where you'll find it.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: And I'm really looking forward to it. As soon as
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: I saw that was out, I was like, Ooh, let's
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: watch that.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The cast is great, a lot of oldies, a
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: lot of new folks like it's it's really great, fantastic.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, someone born in the movie came out would be
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: almost thirty years old.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there are people that are in the
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: movie that were not born when the first movie came out.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah that tracks, that tracks.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: I'm recommending a brand new, brand new, brand spank, a
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: new movie that just came out. It is the newest
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: of the Marvel Cinematic universe. This is fantastic four First Steps. Now,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I recommended a lot of these movies on here over
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: the years, and I feel like I can stand by
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: those recommendations and feel good about this. But this this
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: one really does it. It really does Man. It was
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: so great to see the fantastic four really realized in
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: a way that feels like it honors those characters in
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: that story and it's just a good movie. Like they
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: figured it out, they finally got the formula. The world
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: they built is fantastic. The decisions they made about how
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: to introduce them and where they're at already in their
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: story was fantastic. Yeah, the villain as the antagonist, who
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: is in most of these movies, it results of just
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: like punch them in the face. Whoever punches in the
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: face the most wins. This instead is more like that's
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: not gonna work with your villain here, right, and so
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: they have to figure out sort of ways to outsmart
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: and have it work. And so anyway, I really enjoyed it.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: I thought it was great. I would honestly go see
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: it again in theaters. I liked it so much. But
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: it's definitely worth checking out if you haven't already. It's
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: nice to feel like Marvel's sort of finding their footing
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: again after a few sort of wobbly steps in there
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: over the last few years. This feels like a really
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: solid entry and a very solid superhero movie. And I
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: will say, for those of you who are concerned basically
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: know of reference to any other Marvel properties in this, Like,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: if this is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie you
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: ever saw, you would not be missing anything from the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: past to understand the story and get the references that
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: are in it. And if you're a comic book nerd,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: I think you'll find a millionaiset eggs that you'll enjoy.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, Well, this nostalgia is going to
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: be like two episodes long, so we should leave it there.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you everyone for listening. I think we'll head out.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you wanted to add before we wrap up?
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: Nothing other than play well? Yes, play well, play games,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: and be excellent to each other when you play games.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: Absolutely yes, all right, thank you for listening to this.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: See ye you've been listening to Why We Do what
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: We Do. You can learn more about this and other
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: episodes by going to WWD w w D podcast dot com.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.