ccrrick@ucdavis.UUCP (Rick Heli) (09/04/85)
> > 2) How does one go about getting other people interested in "war > games?" (using the term in its generic sense.) A lot of people are using the term "adventure game" these days. At a Pacificon panel discussion on the future of the gaming hobby, some of the designers suggested this as an appropriate generic term. Interesting other people is a large problem. Usually they are put off by the seeming complexity and perceived violence of the subjects. Many people are really turned off by the very ideas of Nuclear War (the game), but few fail to love it once they've played once. The best idea, I think, is to start out simple. Some other good games for this are Civilization (though a little long), Cosmic Encounters, Quirks, Wizards, Kingmaker, Diplomacy, Junta, War of the Ring, and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Note that most hard core gamers don't consider these "wargames" at all. But once people are started on such games, it becomes much easier to coax them to try your typical SPI, Yaquinto or AH (whoops, that's The Avalon Hill Game Company) offering. > 3) Not really a question at all: > > I have great difficulty understanding the current computer game > craze. I don't just play games for the strategic challenge, but > for the human interaction, as well. Some my gaming friends have > been my best friends, on and off the board. I sometimes worry > about a society that is so willing to abandon human society to > interact with a computer. Anybody else feel this way? Anybody > think I'm all wet? Who says your friends can't play the game too? The computer works best, in my view, as a bookkeeper (freeing your mind from tedious details) and as an information hider. There are so many games out there that are unrealistic simply because the players have a "satellite view" of all the terrain and enemy forces. The computer changes all that, much to the better. -- --rick heli (... ucbvax!ucdavis!groucho!ccrrick)
vishniac@wanginst.UUCP (Ephraim Vishniac) (09/04/85)
> > I have great difficulty understanding the current computer game > > craze. I don't just play games for the strategic challenge, but > > for the human interaction, as well. Some my gaming friends have > > been my best friends, on and off the board. I sometimes worry > > about a society that is so willing to abandon human society to > > interact with a computer. Anybody else feel this way? Anybody > > think I'm all wet? > > Who says your friends can't play the game too? The computer works > best, in my view, as a bookkeeper ... On my VIC-20 (among other machines), I implemented a game called "Nuclear." It's a two-player strategy game, loosely based on the idea of nuclear chain reactions. For purposes of this discussion, the point is that the game involved so much computation to find the consequences of moves that the computer, which acted *only* as scorekeeper, was indispensable. A friend to whom I demonstrated the game commented that it was the only (worthwhile) strategy game he knew of which required a computer to keep score. Surely there must be others. How about it, board game fans? -- Ephraim Vishniac [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay