Comments on: Board Games vs. Video Games

By: Board Games

Board Games — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:14:18 +0000

Thanks for the post. I’m glad this is out there. Video games can be fun but board games bring something that video games cannot provide. Hopefully the younger generations can learn to appreciate that.

By: gene cloud

gene cloud — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:49:23 +0000

Board games create reasons for the social interaction between the players. Video games in the main, are twitch games which create a 1-1 relationship with the screen – look away and you die.

Great social games should encourage talking, co-operation, competition and provide a framework for players to engage with each other.

By: LunarDuality

LunarDuality — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:12:34 +0000

Oh, and I forgot to say…adding camera support in the game along with the voice chat can really boost the value in digital board games on XBLA. Brings back that face to face feel if done correctly. (I think I saw some screenshots of Chess with a nice camera implementation.)

LunarDuality @ XBLArcade.com

By: LunarDuality

LunarDuality — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:10:15 +0000

First, I love Blokus. Brilliant game. And I’d love to see a digital version on XBLA so I could play with my friends and relatives across the country. (Which is one major advantage of digital board games.)

I understand that having the focus of the game placed on the TV *may* create more shallow interaction. However, I don’t think that is always the case. Games like Scene It, and You Don’t Know Jack (where is the XBLA version of that BTW?) work very well as a monitor focused game that still spurs interesting interaction and conversation. And the medium (watching/interacting with images on the screen) actually makes the game more fun. But these games also understand the need to add the requist time between turns or activities to allow the participants to talk, joke, interact, and generally enjoy their time with the game.

And not being able to lose the pieces of a digital game is highly under-rated!

LunarDuality @ XBLArcade.com

By: David J Edery

David J Edery — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:35:45 +0000

Yup, Guitar Hero is a good party game. Everyone can get into the music and everyone wants to encourage, tease, or compete against the current player(s). Guitar Hero makes you want to look at the person who is playing…

By: Rob Gruhl

Rob Gruhl — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:35:20 +0000

While playing Guitar Hero with a group at a friends house, I definitely noticed that the two people playing guitar were glued to the set but everyone else was chatting, looking at them, cracking jokes, encouraging, and just caryying on while waiting for their turns…

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:42:26 +0000

Interesting take on board games vs video games. I enjoy playing board games, especially more complicated ones like Risk, Axis & Allies, etc. However, my wife and young children aren\’t as interested in them. Yet with Mario Party and the soon to be released Carcassonne, we\’re able to play board games on our TV together. Digital board games are also much easier to learn to play, setup, and are faster to play through. Mario Party is a huge favorite in our house with everyone gathering around the TV competing, laughing, and talking trash =)

The advent of Xbox Live enables me to play with my friends in games like Catan that require more than two warm bodies to play. I’m even enjoyed playing Catan in ranked matches with rando m folks, something I rarely do in retail games.

I’d love to see more XBLA board games that translate to local play and online play well. Monopoly, Risk, and Axis & Allies to name a few. Keep the great games coming, looking forward to Carcassonne and Bomberman Live at the moment :)

By: David J Edery

David J Edery — Wed, 30 May 2007 20:35:34 +0000

I feel uneasy with the assumption that “an important audience is currently being under-served,” because it presumes that a large audience would really rather be playing digital games instead of board games

Fair point. I didn’t actually mean to imply that the audience for board games has an inherent preference for digital, if available to them. Let me recast as “a large audience may be interested in playing local, communication-friendly, ‘party’ digital games, and not necessarily instead of board games. But they don’t have many options right now.”

By: Philip Tan

Philip Tan — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:37:55 +0000

I feel uneasy with the assumption that “an important audience is currently being under-served,” because it presumes that a large audience would really rather be playing digital games instead of board games, if the appropriate digital games were made. Within the entire space of a person’s entertainment and social needs, such games would really just occupy the intersection of two different sets, not the union. While you’ve got some good ideas about how a game in that intersection might play, I don’t feel anyone’s being “under-served” by not having digital games designed to fulfill the role of board games when there are already so many great board games available.

Perhaps I’m too idealistic in hoping that people would play more board games :)