Biden and Video Games

In case there is any confusion on the matter, I am not a registered Democrat or Republican nor am I affiliated with any political party.  So what I have to say about Biden has nothing to do with his political party.

I cannot believe that people are blaming violent video games for Sandy Hook.  To begin with, the shooter never played anything that the masses would even necessarily term in any way violent (StarCraft is a strategy game where you never even fire a make-believe gun).  And no one has ever been able to conclusively show that there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior.  Whatever people in the media may say, when you look at the actual research, it simply isn't there.  If you want me to sound off on research that may even show that there conclusively is NO link between violent video games and violent behavior, feel free to ask in the comments.

So, to invite the leaders of the video game industry to a meeting in an open letter in conjunction with working on a proposal to give the President/congress is something that I view as a cowardly, political act.  When he actually held the meeting, he said he was "agnostic" about the link between violent video games and violent behavior and that regardless of the truth that the companies needed to work on improving their image for non-gamers.  Agnostic?  He doubts whether the link exists and is unwilling to commit to a side despite all of the research that exists clearly showing, which side is correct?  To me this just sounds like someone that wants to appease all of the pollsters that blame video games for violence in general by appearing to do something while knowing that there isn't really anything that can be done on that  score.  Then he tells the representatives that they could be part of the solution?  By improving their image?? I'm all for making the gore and language filters more apparent to non-gamer purchasers, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.  This just seems to me like another example of a politician choosing to find something that is easy to blame and appear to be doing something when the truly effective course of action is too long term and/or difficult.

Another example of this would be the way the local police reacted to an accident on our street.  Our street is very narrow and full of lots of blind curves and hill tops.  Recently, there was a collision involving two vehicles where it appeared that at least one vehicle was speeding and at least one vehicle drifted out of its lane.  Now even if both vehicles were speeding, they wouldn't have hit each other if they were both in their lane.  But how have the police reacted to this accident?  By putting up a speed checker on a hill nearby (not even the one involved in the accident).  The real problem is that people have a dangerous habit of drifting  into the other lane on this road.  I have several times had to slam on my brakes or honk  my horn because the only other option when a car is coming down the road towards you is to go off the road into a steep ditch.  Not a good plan. But because this is too difficult to address and fix, they instead choose to address something ineffectively that isn't even the real problem.  Sounds familiar..

I'm looking forward to to the day when politicians and the media pick something else to focus on as a scapegoat besides video games.

DC Comics: Deck-Building Game

My husband and I are DC fanboys.  I need to admit that right now.  So when the DC Comics: Deck-Building Game came out, of course we bought it... and loved it! To support my love of the game, I wrote a review on boardgaming.com and have decided to share it below. Enjoy :)

The theme of this game (obviously DC comics) was very well implemented including lots of New 52 artwork, the most recent run of DC comics.  There are villain, super-villain, hero, super-hero, power, equipment, weakness, vulnerability, and location cards with the super-hero cards being the only ones that aren't added to your deck.  The latter provide you with special abilities that you as an individual can use throughout the game. The only issue with the theme is that you can being playing as Wonder Woman using your heat vision while driving the batmobile in Arkham Asylum with Mr Freeze at your side fighting against the Anti-Monitor. My husband and I took advantage of this situation to add some role-playing in the form of weaving an entertaining story as to why this would  ever happen, which added a huge element of fun to the game.

The mechanics of the game are the basic deck building mechanics with one type of currency used for everything (purchasing cards as well as defeating super villains) so it's a great game to teach the mechanics of deck building.  My only difficulty was remembering when to shuffle my discard pile because of the complexity of the conditions and how it can really impact game play if you do it at the wrong time.

The overall goal of the game is to defeat the chosen number of super-villains before the source deck runs out of cards for everyone to buy.  Players can play as many cards as they have in their hands and buy as many things as their "power" total (the game's currency) allows in any given turn.  This means that you can move through the deck of source cards a lot quicker than you would expect.  However, I have played this game with 2, 4, and 5 players and as well as the maximum number of super-villains without coming close to running out of cards from the source deck before defeating (buying) all of the super-villains.  It seems like there are just so many cards! As such, it seems this other end game condition is just one that the creators of the game included for an "in the unlikely event..." situation.

Overall, a fun game that scales well from 2-5 players including a more interactive experience when it is not your turn (due to the high number of cards with an attack aspect) than a game like Dominion. Fanboys of DC will probably love the theme although people not as familiar with the DCU might not appreciate  many of the cards.

9/10 stars

Di Renjie Review

My husband and I have recently gotten very into funding Kickstarter projects.  In particular, we have enjoyed funding board/card games.  Like most people in the US, we grew up playing the basics like Monopoly (this game still makes me cringe whenever I think of it), Sorry!, and Clue.  We had no idea there was an entire board gaming culture out there filled with wonderful possibilities for fun and thinking.  Our first realization came when my husband stumbled across Pandemic.  We ordered it out of curiosity and have been hooked on awesome board and card games ever since.  Fortunately, there are a lot of them out there.

One way that we have chosen to engage in this community is by supporting start up games on Kickstarter.  It's always awesome to see a game that we helped fund the production of show up in brick and mortar stores (e.g. Flashpoint).  But not all of them do (e.g. Di Renjie).  So I've decided to share my feelings about Di Renjie on my blog.

First, some background.  When I turned 10 or 12, I realized that you could use logic and strategy to almost always win at Clue as long as you didn't share this strategy with everyone.  So even though I got this game for Christmas one year, my family quickly stopped being willing to play this game with me.  Plus it needs at least 3 players to be a reasonable gaming experience.  Cue the appearance of Di Renjie on Kickstarter.  My husband saw the game come up and immediately thought of me always wanting to play Clue but never having the opportunity.

So the game.  Di Renjie is a deduction based card game where you are an inspector trying to determine the target, weapon, and location of an impending assassination.  It is cooperative in the sense that all of the players collectively must guess the correct combination in order to stop the assassination.  Yet it still has an element of competitiveness in that you gain points in a few different ways and can be the most successful inspector in a group of victorious gamers.

What makes this game superior to Clue, other than an more intriguing theme, is the mechanisms of the game. In Di Renjie, the mechanisms of the game make it difficult if not impossible (meaning no one I've played it with yet has managed this) to know the entire solution to the game before everyone is required to do so.  This drastically reduces the possibility that I will come up with a strategy that always wins me the game making it no fun for the other players.  If the outcome is always known and always the same, a lot of the fun is lost.

Another superior mechanism is the ability to deceive within the constraints of the rules.  Sometimes, deception is even mandatory!  So even when you gain information and clues about the targets, weapons, and locations, you don't always know how reliable the information is.  There is a way to investigate the reliability of the clues, but you can't use it very frequently.

And I also love that this game actually works well with 2 players.  Since our son is only 2 1/2 years old, my husband and I are a little short on available gamers.  We are always looking for games that scale well with 2-4 players, and this is a game that clearly accomplishes this.

Of course, this game also has an element of randomness that drives a lot of game play as well.  So this a competitive cooperative game requiring lucky strategies.  Lots of fun and definitely a keeper.  Glad we funded it and can't wait to play it with even more people!