Phillips Create New 30" LCD Gameboard!!

now this is amazing! but im pretty sure most gamers have wished this before- i know i have; we once used a friends 19" LCD flat screen laid down to play some dungeoncrawlers, but wasn't touchscreen. only problem is that it could put an end to conventional board games, well i think so anyway.

Those look neat although I bet it costs a lot of money both to produce and buy. I could see it introducing new concepts to the board gaming world, but it will be awhile before anybody does anything great with it because it probably takes some programming skills to actually create a board.

Justin

I think the best role for electronics to play is as a truly impartial referee, keeping certain information hidden from players, but still allowing that information to impact the rest of the game.

Stop Thief! is a great example of this. The players have to deduce the movements of an invisible thief across the board. A gadget knows where the thief is, and the players have to track his movements across the city in order to make their guesses. It's Scotland Yard with a computer player, but a well-implemented use of electronics in a board game, IMHO.

As far as killing off conventional board games, I don't think that'll happen until LCD screens cost only a tiny amount more than regular boards to produce. Until then, our hobby has relatively little to worry about. :)

You can easily hide information using polarizing filters on the glass. I know a salesperson who worked for a company that did just this.

At the major Casino/gaming show two years ago, this company (3M maybe, or maybe they just did the touch screen part) was showing off their large LCD touchscreen by putting it on a table top of a nice wood cabinet and playing Texas Hold'em. Each of the four player seats were at a corner of the table, and the corners had polarizing filters, which allowed only the player at the corner to see their hold cards. Pretty ingenious, and a cheap solution to a tough problem.

It drew a crowd, with a lot of people wondering when it would be in casinos, at which point the sales guy would tell them "It's not a for sale game, it's just showing off our technology." And then everyone said "oh" and walked away. (You have to remember that the casino show is filled with many companies showing off touch screen/ flat screen technology).

So, the bigger question is, instead of knocking it, if some company DID come to you and gave you a proposal to create a suite of new games using this technology for $75,000. How would you use it? I can think of a few really interesting applications aside from the typical "oh it'll just keep score for me."

It seems to me this would be a boon for board game manufacturers, if it ever becomes widespread. The board is a significant part of the cost to produce a board game; if you could just download a board into your LCD table, manufacturers could just sell the rest of the bits (pawns, markers, cards, etc.) at lower prices (or with better margins).

It could also expand the range of possibilities for board games. It would be ideal for a game like RoboRally or Fomula De, where having a large number of different boards is part of the appeal. Beyond that, you could have boards that change dynamically based on events in the game. Railroad-type games leap to mind here, but also imagine the following:
- A wargame where weather conditions, supply lines, and controlled territory can be shown right on the board
- A tactical-scale game (military, superheroes, monsters) where buildings or other large board features can be demolished, altered, or created
- A game where players explore a randomly-generated board, seeded with appropriate inhabitants/items. Of course, you can do this with cards or tiles, but they have to be pretty generic in order to match up, and seeding it is tough.

But unless this finds a mass market application (casino games?), I think it's unlikely to catch on.

This is super cool. If it were (quite a bit) larger, and could be made durably enough, this kind of thing could revolutionize board gaming.

Clark

This is a very cool concept! I do agree with Gogolski that the most likely implementation of such an idea will be souped-up Monopoly variants, which is a shame, because there's a lot of potential for "our" games as well.

One clear benefit would be state-tracking. Picture a conquest game in which players gain control of regions and mark them with ownership markers. With this technology, the entire territory could change color to the color of the owner, giving a nice overview of who owns what. Obviously, the possibilities here are tremendous!

Another real benefit could be a board whose scale can change during the game. I'm working on an archaeology-themed game right now, and it would be fantastic if the game could start at the macro-level where you're hopping around the globe but the board could also "zoom in" to show the actual archaeological site. There's just no way to do this currently.

Another cool technology that may be even more promising is E-ink. That technology is different in that the pixels retain their state after the device is turned off; the device only requires power for changing state. I bet it's probably also cheaper than a game-board size LCD display, but I'm not sure about that one.

Either way, very cool technology!

-Jeff

The E-ink thing (and its competitors) is finally coming to market in a big way, icnluding an ebook reader from Sony at the CES this week. I'm very excited about its possibilities for boardgames.

I had some comments on how it could be used, but now I might want to keep them close to my chest. The video on the site shows all kinds of interaction with the players and pawns. My mind is racing...

Since we are talking about electronics and computer software here, there is the question of marketing here. Are hey going to put this device open for everybody.

If Phillips release a generic board that can be used by game companies for classic game like monopoly and life, they might force these companies to actually pay for a development kit for their device. Then they can place a patent on their device, so that nobody could make an open source version of that device.

Which mean that we, independent programmers, could not make software for this device. We will have to use hackers or people to reverse engeneer the device to know how to use the device. And even then, I am not sure that making a commercial game this way would be legal.

Almost any board game that is available online could be played in person, and pretty conveniently, using an ad-hoc cluster of wireless laptops, but I'm pretty sure that's only happening among a very small group of ultrageeks.

This thing should be thought of as an Xbox with four joysticks, or as a next generation of those bar machines you pump quarters into, not as a serious platform for board games

Even if you assume everyone already has the hardware, it costs a lot of money to develop game software as a commercial venture. Popular titles with proven track records might be commercially viable, but if you're working on a new title, cardboard is a lot cheaper than software.

Now, I'm no luddite, but if this were truely the next evolutionary step of boardgames, then the 1970's would have shown the way. Stop Thief, Dark Tower, Dungeons and Dragons, and many more all utilized the admittedly weak processing power of the day to "automate" certain elements of the boardgame experience. Given that these were just flashes in the proverbial pan, I don't see this gaming table taking off. There's just too many factors against it for it to become standard. And, without that, there'll be no developer support and the price will remain prohibitively high. Board games are printed and cut because it's still the best compromise solution.

That being said, I personally think that electronic boards would clash unpleasantly with other, non-electronic componants. Cards? Dice? Okay, you could automate the dice, but a video solution for the cards would be clumsy at best, and hardly cheaper than printing cardstock.

Also, with all of the competition for attention video media pump into modern society, I think the silent, unlit boardgame is a welcome relief. LCDs are not the answer to every display need.

And, functionality aside, there's the aesthetic element of a boardgame. Now, I'm picturing abstract games here, but the sentiment applies to all board games. Though abstract boards would be perfectly suitable to display on such a unit, sooner or later the thought will occur to someone: since were displaying the board, why not the pieces as well? And then we're basically playing a table-unit video game, the same as bars and restarants had in the 70's.

Is this progress? I think the past few decades have shown that this is not the way to go. New technology isn't always a step forward.

Sweet!