Kids' Games

On Tuesdays and Thursdays my wife works and my younger children are at the babysitter's so in the afternoon it's just me and my 7 year old, Gabriel. After homework (boring) we play (fun). He beat me in checkers and we tied in Hey That's My Fish!, but I did get a win in NHL 08.






Maybe I can get him to try Battlelore again next week. This time I'm going to set the game up before I even ask him. Last time he was all set to play but by the time I was done setting up the game he'd lost interest.

And he has pajamas on because it was wear pajama day at school.

Too Many Eurogames?

I was checking my blog to see if there were any new comments (there werent') and I noticed my boardgamegeek game tracking thingy was filled with what I would call "Eurogames." And, the answer to the question in this post's title is yes.

The Great Board Game Crash of..?

On recommendation from my buddy Marshall, I checked out the Fortress Ameritrash site today.

Read the article about how the hobby game industry may crash like the video game one did long ago. I found this fascinating. For starters, the "video game crash" reminds me of the Reagan presidency. When Reagan was elected I was 9 years old and when he finished his second term I was 17, so I did a lot of growing up during that time. What I remember of those times was people making fun of him because he was an actor/old/Republican/etc... There were scandals like the Iran-Contra thing. But he talked a good game, had buckets of charisma, and everyone loved him.

Fast forward to the beginning of this century, and airports are being named after him. All of a sudden he's remembered as being one of the greatest presidents ever. Not how I remembered it at all.

Now, I'm not saying Reagan wasn't a great president, that's not my point. What I'm trying to say is that how history has looked back on those times is very different from what I remember experiencing during those times.

Just like the video game crash. People talk about that now and I'm like, "What video game crash?" I remember having the Atari 2600 and loving it. I remember really wanting a computer to play games on but my parents wouldn't buy one ("Them computers are a fad!"). I remember playing the Nintendo Entertainment System when I was in 11th or 12th grade. Somewhere in between the Atari and the NES was the fabled video game crash. I didn't notice.

Granted, if the hobby board game industry goes belly-up, I'll probably notice since I'm a lot older than I was back in the early 80's. But it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'll just watch tv and play Dungeons and Dragons like I did back in those dark days between 1983 and 1987.