Critique the February 2010 GDS games here!

Wow. I'm stunned. I really thought I wasn't going to take this one, but I guess there are a few curling fans out there after all. Did you all catch that nailbiter of a bronze medal game between the Chinese and Swiss women's teams earlier today?

For other peoples' designs, I'll use the method that we use in my theater company for play development. Moments of heat (stuff that resonated with me), and moments that left me cold (stuff that didn't resonate). This takes the pressure off of "good" and "bad" and makes it more about the critiquer's personal reaction, which is the only thing he's an expert on.

General Note: I didn't give specific votes based on bonus theme, as I figured the 2 free votes would cover that. I think this is a tricky problem with the bonus theme; as a voter, I wasn't sure if I should take it into account or not. As it happens, the top two vote-getters were bonus-thematic anyway. Alright, on to the critiques.

iP Ouija
Hot: quick playing, good use of a distributed iphone network, risk that asking a "reveal question" puts you up on the chopping block
Cold: poor use of a license, felt a bit like 20 Questions meets Werewolf, lots of typing, no central iPad

This game represented a missed opportunity, I thought. With all the fuss over the multitouch found in iPhones and iPads, and a physical game that's all about something moving around a fixed board, it seems like you could make a neat game where each player is using their finger to "nudge" the pointer around somehow, rather than a game of 20 Questions mixed with Werewolf. To put it another way, why label this "Ouija" at all? It got me thinking about something that obviously had little to do with the game, and then feeling a bit disappointed.

Also, typing on the iPhone is no fun, and likely little more fun on an iPad, and this game is all about that. Also there's no way to keep people from lying or asking very specific questions like address, mother's name, whatever.

However, I liked that there is a risk inherent in identity guessing, and the game of chicken it implies. I also appreciated that the game was designed to play quickly and didn't require people to meet in person. This describes how I use my phone to play games anyway. But one requirement of the challenge was a central iPad, which implies a physical presence for everyone playing, so even if I had liked everything else about the game, I couldn't have voted for it.

iTook
Heat: Perfect use of what computers are good at, seems like a lot of fun, cute scenario descriptions
Cold: limited player actions, might feel a bit solitary, players moving guards

Love this one. Even if it feels a bit like The Great Museum Caper, I think that it's a great example of using board game mechanics within the environment of video games, and letting the computers handle what they're good at -- namely, processing full information while presenting limited information -- and otherwise staying out of the way. And I really liked TGMC anyway, growing up, and I think I'd like this one, too.

The main thing I'd be concerned about is the limited variety of player actions. It seems like, generally speaking, there aren't going to be that many things you're going to want to do. Move towards the target, pick the lock, take the target, get out quick. I'd want some more discussion about decoys, fighting, traps... it could use some more "spice." Without some more opportunities for interaction, this game could risk the dreaded "multiplayer solitaire" trap. TGMC avoided this by having everyone work against one person; here, everyone's on their own screen, plotting moves, hoping not to bump into anyone else.

I also think that idle guards should always move according to a set schedule, rather than be under player control, as this strikes me as rather powerful for the given player, and less thematic besides. Also, when do guards go from "alerted" to "idle"?

I appreciated the funny scenario titles and descriptions. Was hoping for some more variety though, in terms of gameplay. The "guards are raptors" is a good example of this; in contrast, the rules for the 1st and 3rd seem identical, although presumably the maps would be different.

All told, I liked this one the most. 3 votes. If it were in the app store, I would buy it.

Manufacturing Investments
Hot: reactive player choices, using one metric (percentage owned) to determine outcome of multiple events, good use of computing power
Cold: Title, some choices seem more powerful than others, no way to stop a runaway leader

I liked this one, too. My favorite part is that your ownership level in a given company determines the weight of your actions, up to and including generating income.

Like iTook, this game felt like it couldn't work nearly as well if it were a non-electronic board game design, because there's so much math involved -- this is a positive for this challenge. For what it's worth, I think the math could be smoothed out and the design made into a board game, if that's what you wanted to do; you'd just need a few tracks for market share and ownership, some action cards for the players, and some cash tokens (or another track!).

I also like that there is a rock-paper-scissors element in play here, where one action is bested by another, but that action is bested by the first. However, I'm not sure that defending is ever as strong as a counter-smear; I'd like defending to actually HURT the smearing company ("oh, there they go again, spreading lies about noble Nanohard").

I'd also be concerned that a runaway leader would be hard to stop. If somebody takes powerful control over a company, and that company is doing well, it's going to be hard to take them down. I suppose this is thematic, though, and experienced players shouldn't let this develop. It's the sort of thing that would be revealed in playtesting.

Lastly, the title left me really cold. It's dry and generic-sounding, and I'm not even sure what it means. On top of this, it doesn't describe the cut-throat nature of gameplay, which I think is the game's main selling point. This is a niggling concern, of course, but I think it's worth noting that the name is a potential customer's first experience with your game, and a bad impression gets it put back on the shelf (or undownloaded, as the case may be), even if the game inside is good. Still, 2 votes from me.

Market Share
Hot: overall game concept, balancing method, ideas for future expansions
Cold: overly technical description that left gameplay undefined

This was another good example of using the computer to figure out the math, yet still producing something that feels like a "board game." I also appreciated the very elegant way that uneven teams are balanced.

Beyond that, though, it's hard to understand what's going on. I think that this is as much an issue with presentation as with design. There was a lot of talk about the GUI and the way that iPads and iPhones connect to each other, but only a paragraph or two of actual game rules. When evaluating designs for a GDS, I don't care about the technical descriptions so much as the design itself; if we say that iPads and iPhones connect to play a single game, then they do; we don't need to walk through the actual process of naming servers and the like. Save those 800 words for rules, examples, and notes. I'd say the same thing to someone who spends words talking about card sizes, or pawn colors, or how a board folds up to fit in a box.

I'm still not sure exactly what a "campaign" is, or how to "start" or "move" one. These terms were all thrown around, but never actually defined. Is a "campaign" the measure of ad dollars specific to the square, or is it a player pawn that moves from the home office across the board? If so, how does that work? Can a campaign be reinforced? What's the effect of a square changing colors?

In the end I couldn't vote for this one, because I didn't really know what it was.

DeathCurl
This was my game. Thanks again for the votes, y'all. I was really surprised by a few things here:

1) That I won at all. My game feels the most like a video game of all of the entries, and I'm not even sure it's workable as one. In particular, I have no idea if the purported accuracy of the throws is even possible on the tiny iPhone screen, or if it's too much to ask players to steer their AI sweepers by tilting their phones, while also yelling and maybe even picking cards to play.

2) Related to this, I did very little actual designing here; mostly, it was proposed implementation of the rules of curling; the Nanotech cards were a way to throw some "design" at the process. It was remarkably easy to come up with both ideas and names for the cards. I'm not sure they would really work (hence the option for the "Olympic" variant), but I think they could be kind of fun if the atmosphere of the game, in general, is more "Wii Sports" anyone-can-play arcade version of curling, and less "Tiger Wods PGA Tour" hard-core simulation. I do know that it would be pretty fun to yell at your phone and get a response in the game.

3) Nobody else used multitouch gestures, accelerometers, and the microphone at all! This was by far the biggest surprise for me. Not to toot my own horn, but these features are the Big Selling Points behind the whole line of iProducts. Maybe I had a leg (finger?) up because I actually have an iPhone with dozens of apps to inspire me, but it seems like there's a whole world of fun here that nobody else explored.

In the end, I had a video game design, based on a post-apocalyptic implementation of curling, submitted to an online forum of board game designers. I even included a Jonathan Coulton quote! If only I could have thrown in a reference to Star Trek, D&D, or Lord of the Rings, I'd have maxed out on nerd points. When I told her about all this, my fiancée just rolled her eyes. That's good, right?

Torrent Pirates
Hot: multi-phase gameplay, interesting opportunities for metagaming, good implementation
Cold: not sure the theme makes sense, initial file-type preference doesn't seem to affect later strategy

Another game that would work without the technology, but uses the tech well to let players focus on strategy instead of math. I like the Settlers-like deal-making implied by the mechanics: helping out another player helps you and him at the expense of everyone else, and you're hoping that this happens enough to give you the leg up. Lots of opportunities for horsetrading, negotiating, and the like here.

The only thing I'd propose would be to reconsider the whole file type preference thing. It wasn't clear that this was an actual strategic choice, because you don't know which file types will be available until the next phase. I'd like to see some actual strategic benefit from picking one kind of file over another -- is one type more likely to come up than another? Is one type more likely to generate attention from rights holders? Is one more lucrative in terms of potential interest from customers? Do you build a reputation over multiple rounds? And so on.

Moving beyond this, the whole idea of file type preferences also seems a bit athematic, as you'd expect that your file-sharing site's goal wouldn't be to favor any particular file type in the first place, but simply to generate as much traffic as possible. I don't know.

This issue aside, the juicy bidding war and metagame possibilities persuaded me to give this 1 vote. Nice job!

Good point, Seth. I acknowledge I didn't work as hard as I could have. :) I'll be more apt to click on the "blue text" in the future.

Ilta, you are very humble. Part of what your game did to capture my votes is related to the popularity of "dexterity" games among BGG'ers. They are not among my favorite, but I acknowledge how much fun my family and students have with Sorry Sliders, and many gamers give a lot of love to crokinole. Also, there's just something about curling that fascinates a lot of people. One could argue that it's the most gamerish of Olympic sports, with strategies that I don't begin to understand. While your game may feel more like a video game than a board game to you, I certainly felt like you captured a dexterity game feel in a digital medium. We all know there's "nothing new under the sun," so it may not feel like you did much designing to put this together. But I applaud your creativity to connect all these dots and suggest what sounds like a very fun game (that also met the design requirements of the GDS challenge.)

Thanks also for helpful comments on all of the games. I like the way you lay out the "hot" and "cold." About my game, you wrote:

I had some thoughts that I wanted to put into the game that might answer some of your questions, but I ran out of words and time to think them through. ;) For the file types, I was thinking that some types, like video files, would take up more space, so they also could score more points, but they might be more rare. The players would have to strategically choose during the first phase if they are going to focus on a few types of files or try to maintain a balance of multiple types. You're probably right about this decision being a little athematic, but these choices seemed interesting to me. I like your other suggestions, and would certainly consider them if/when developing this further.

Peace,
Matt