Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre

http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers

by nadim • 17 years ago

181 82 17 years ago

mkinsella• 17 years ago

Anyone interested in board games should check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com. It's an amazing resource.

misuba10• 17 years ago

Why is there still no usable way for me to add my collection of games to BoardGameGeek? I've got to load the page for each game I own and click "I own this" separately. Even for a modest-sized collection like mine, this is enough to stop me from using what's obviously a tremendously powerful community tool.

blinks4• 17 years ago

They just redesigned the backend; hopefully this'll make changes like that easier. Personally, every so often I want to make my own version, but the user data on BGG is so useful, I think it might keep others out of the market.

nadim• 17 years ago

Here's one thing that stuck out to me, his iteration and testing on real people:

"""Every once in a while, he would bring the new game upstairs to test it out on his family. They would play along, but Teuber could tell that the game wasn't working. Sometimes, in the middle of a match, he would notice his youngest son, Benny, reading a comic under the table. Other times his wife would suddenly remember a load of laundry that needed immediate attention. After each of these sessions, Teuber would haul the game back downstairs for further refinement. He repeated this process over the course of four years."""

misuba10• 17 years ago

Of course! Games are essentially just user interface - imagine if your software product didn't _have_ an underlying set of tasks that had to be accomplished, or even a mental model on the user's part of what was being done. How much more important would UI testing be?

bendotc• 17 years ago

As one of several game makers on HN, I want to take issue with the idea that "games are essentially just user interface." Games almost always present an interface to an underlying system. Many games have an underlying system that is not particularly simple or intuitive and take significant effort to learn. And, because unlike tools, they do not offer to assist the user in doing something that she already knows she wants to do, we often provide many more incentives along the way, as struggling with a system is often not amusing, and amusement is usually the goal.

This is all to say that the UI is very important, but to consider games as chiefly UI is to fundamentally misunderstand what games are and how we interact with them.

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

I was about to cut and paste this very section. that is some serious user testing / design!

dkarl• 17 years ago

What jumped out at me was that his wife and children tolerated it for four years.

eru3• 17 years ago

He was already making money with his other games.

sant0sk1• 17 years ago

I learned how to play this a few weeks ago. I had no idea at the time that I was playing a "perfect" board game!

Seriously, though. It was just okay. The game always ended just when things were getting interesting.

tipjoy2• 17 years ago

You need to play with the 'cities and knights' extension. It makes the game more complex. Also try the board game Puerto Rico, which we're just getting into but seems pretty awesome.

pmjordan2• 17 years ago

Does it reduce the luck element a little? We have the base game and the Seafarers expansion, and we got a little bored with it. The key seems to be picking the right starting positions, the rest is mostly plain luck. (and relentless trading of resources)

I think they redesigned the game recently, so it's possible the new version of the expansions won't work with our original edition anyway.

These days, we're mostly into Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride (various editions), Carcassonne (also somewhat luck-based), Power Grid/Funkenschlag and Agricola.

samueladam3• 17 years ago

Cities and knights is my favorite extension.

You should buy such extensions if you have played the basic game a lot.

Games also last longer with this extension, count on 3 to 4 exciting hours.

Since I'm on hackernews, I've always wondered when this game would pop up and what other board games you would advise. I'll have a look at Puerto Rico asap.

blinks4• 17 years ago

Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Race for the Galaxy >> Settlers of Catan, all the way.

Basically, start at the top and go down: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame

rjprins• 17 years ago

I don't really like it, I guess it's a personal preference, but I need a game where skill is just a little bit more important.

When I play Catan I just feel like I'm following a train track - zero options.

I prefer Warcraft, the board game! :)

mcu2• 17 years ago

Truly one of my favorite board games! That, Twilight Imperium, and A Game of Thrones!

spyrosk• 17 years ago

Twilight Imperium is really great. A couple of others that I really liked is Android and Arkham Horror (different style though).

Has anyone played Diplomacy and/or Long live the King? I love their concept, although I haven't played any of them..

Slightly off-topic: I play a lot of rpg's, but for some reason I don't like their newer versions, ie d&d v3+, vampire: the requiem etc. Are there any others who have gone through the different versions? How do you feel about the most recent ones?

misuba10• 17 years ago

Yes! The original WarCraft board game is way underrated - mostly because you have to download a patch (yes, for a board game) and because it doesn't come with fancy molded plastic pieces.

It's much more for the hardcore tabletop gamer, though. (As is the StarCraft board game, which is quite different but also wonderful.)

thomaspaine• 17 years ago

I used to play this game all the time, but eventually just got tired of it. It became too predictable.

josh_nyc• 17 years ago

I was introduced to Catan during college and we quickly had a weekly game going. The interplay of luck and skill is intrinsically woven into the gameplay, which kept things very dynamic. The "wheeling/dealing" aspect of the bartering keeps things interesting when it isn't your turn.

Just when things would get boring on the skills side (someone was far ahead of everyone else), luck would rush in to make things interesting. Just when things would get boring on the luck side (a series of bad rolls), there would be opportunities to strategize around it.

I haven't played it in years, though (not near that group of people anymore), so it was a pleasure to see this pop up on HN. And it is pretty relevant insofar as the "programming" and game loop is quite clever.

There are some great online versions too (asobrain, jsettlers, etc... would provide links but I don't know what the best online versions are today).

habibur• 17 years ago

You can't figure out, what game the article is talking about until you finish reading a lot of text. So here is the link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlers_of_Catan

It's called Settlers of Catan.

Flemlord• 17 years ago

And it's a great game. There's also a decent version you can download for XBox 360:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/puzzle/catan/index.html

jcromartie• 17 years ago

And Puerto Rico is even better :)

syntactic• 17 years ago

Funny a friend just introduced this game to me a couple weeks ago, it is pretty fun and easy to learn buy in my opinion too short, more like a rush to get 10 points than a thorough strategy game. For the first few games, just when I had my little economy humming along somebody would bust out their ten victory points out of nowhere.

fbailey• 17 years ago

growing up in germany I lost a lot of my youth time to this game

msluyter• 17 years ago

Huge boardgame fan checking in. Settlers makes for a great "gateway game," a way to introduce non-gamers to the world of eurogames, but most hardcore gamers in my crowd find it a little too luck driven. We tend to prefer games like Agricola, Powergrid, Caylus, and El Grande these days. But I still think it's a pretty good game.

If you're new to boardgames and like Settlers, I recommend going to BGG (boardgamegeek.com) and checking out their list of the top 20 or so games and trying some of those.

If you're looking for people to play with, there are a number of active boardgame Meetups. You can also check out http://www.brettspielwelt.de/, which is a German site with a lot of popular boardgames available for online play.

Happy gaming!

misuba10• 17 years ago

I agree with a lot of other commenters here that Catan is luck-driven and essentially over (except for a lot of tedious listening to people tell you _again_ that they don't have the resource cards you want) after you make your initial placements. What deserves more attention, though, are the ways in which "worse is better" applies here - the specific things about Catan that make hardcore gamers dislike it are, in many cases, the things that make it popular.

For instance, lots of people like to feel that when they win, it's because they were skillful, and when they lose, it's only because they were unlucky. On the other hand, if you really _are_ investing your skills in your decisions but still lose due to luck, you'll be really frustrated. Catan does an excellent job of keeping players busy, but essentially on an equal footing of powerlessness. On this basis it really appeals to people who get all kinds of nervous when asked to play any kind of game of skill with friends.

blinks4• 17 years ago

A better game for that group would be Fluxx (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/258) -> lots of fun, interesting decisions, but a massive element of luck. In Fluxx, if you know what you're doing and get lucky, you can win extremely fast. If you don't get lucky, though, you're stuck. I've found that people interested in a light-weight game always end up liking it.

icefox2• 17 years ago

Ugg, seems like everyone has a copy of fluxx and while it might take no time to teach or setup it is really not that good of a game unless you are seriously drunk.

misuba10• 17 years ago

...except that many non-gamers are really flummoxed by the way Fluxx's changing goals keep putting different demands on them. They feel like the rug's been pulled out from under them, when really all that's happening is they're playing a game that's all tactics and no strategy.

jvdh2• 17 years ago

"if you know what you're doing and get lucky, you can win extremely fast."

I would turn that around. The luck factor in Fluxx is staggeringly high. However, what makes Fluxx fun is that it does not make any attempt whatsoever to hide that fact.

My problem with SoC is that it has a very high luck factor, but that the game also tries very hard to hide that fact. The expansion Cities and Knights or using a deck of cards with the dicerolls make SoC bearable.

pchristensen2• 17 years ago

Randomness provides variance, which is essentially the range of opponent skill levels you can compete with. GoFish has high variance so anyone can play against anyone else (but is so random as to not be very fun) while chess has no variance so the better player almost always wins (also not fun, unless you match up well).

While unpopular with skill players, variance is handy in casual games like Catan because it broadens the range of people you can play with. Variance in the form of mana-screw in Magic does the same thing, with the bonus of allowing you to compete with a wider range of skill and money levels.

misuba10• 17 years ago

Variance is a great concept, thanks for bringing it to my attention!

aardvarkious• 17 years ago

I've played Catan with cards instead of dice- you have 36 cards, each with a number that can be attained by rolling two dice. How many times a number appears in the deck is its odds of being rolled. Statistically, you will roll 7 6/36 times, so there are 6 sevens in the deck. There is only one 2 and one 12 because their odds are 1/36. You shuffle the deck, and draw a card instead of rolling (once you go through the deck, you just reshuffle). This means that luck plays into when you will get a resource, but not if you will.

misuba10• 17 years ago

Flattening the bell curve can help a good deal, but the only way to guarantee that you get a resource each turn is to redraw until you hit a match with one of your settlements... unless I'm misunderstanding you.

edit: NM, I misread your last sentence. I've never seen a territory run dry for the whole game, but this would indeed prevent that.

falldowngoboom• 17 years ago

As others have said, I find Settlers to be all about the initial positioning of your pieces. Choose wrong and it's a slow grind to an inevitable defeat.

mapleoin2• 17 years ago

The luck and strategy part is also very nicely done in http://www.wesnoth.org/ which is inspired by Settlers of Catan and other such games. You might be repulsed by the graphics at first, but after a while you actually get to appreciate them and find that they fit in perfectly.

jibiki• 17 years ago

Wesnoth is nothing like Settlers, but it's still a good game, especially considering the price. IIRC, ESR wrote a campaign for it.

mapleoin2• 17 years ago

yup, ESR is an active contributor. You can find him in #wesnoth@irc.freenode.net sometimes.

sanj3• 17 years ago

If you're playing this game without the "Penny Rule", you're missing out.

SoC suffers from a bit of a compound interest effect: a few bad (non-producing) rolls at the beginning can screw you for the entire game.

To make up for this:

Anytime there is a roll on which a given player doesn't get any resources (and not because of the thief), they are given a penny.

During trading, a player can buy a resource from the bank using pennies for the cost of number of victory points showing.

This dramatically reduces run-away-winner syndrome.

time_management4• 17 years ago

That's a great design hack. Did you come up with it?

If only someone could do something similar for mana drought/flood, Magic would be a pretty good game.

sanj3• 17 years ago

I'm not the originator. But I am a convert!

freakball• 17 years ago

Mulligans are built into tournament rules.

That being said, I find that they are quite the leveler; high tempo decks with less lands suffer less than a control deck, but need mulligans more often. It's a trade-off, and evens out the playing field more than people realize.

kaneraz• 17 years ago

We play with this but only on building victory points. Victory chits, largest army and longest road don't count towards the number of victory points. I don't know where this started but it has made for alot better games.

tsuraan• 17 years ago

Is that the cost of the player's victory points, or the sum of all points on the table?

sanj3• 17 years ago

We play with all of the player's showing victory points.

kbrower• 17 years ago

Can someone please make this game into an iphone/ipod touch app already

icefox2• 17 years ago

A lot of the fun of the game is playing with other people, taking and in general hanging out. I get together with a handful of people about once a month to play board games. We try to play one new game every time and then replay the good ones. Puerto Rico, Agricola, Power Grid, Ccitadels, etc. We any of the Boston hackers be interested in joining or starting a startup/hacker board game night?

misuba10• 17 years ago

That said, though, I wonder why there aren't more "hot seat" style mobile games, designed to be played on one handset that gets passed around. Or on many handsets that share game info wirelessly but depend somehow on co-presence in the real world.

time_management4• 17 years ago

Solid game, but not the best of the genre. Tigris and Euphrases FTW.

mcu2• 17 years ago

Tigris is a much deeper game.

albertcardona• 17 years ago

It's one of the best board games I've ever played.

And there is a java version called jsettlers with online ladders and so on, that helped a lot to spread word about Settlers. The java version was created to test artificial intelligence applications for robot players, with some success (although robots never beat a trained human).

Settlers as a game pushes the player to discover different business strategies and to commit to them; in between strategies never win. And always to invest! Cards in the hand lose value very fast (and get taken away en masse with a 7, and by the robber as well). It's fascinating.

Edit: some here mentioned the "Cities and Knights extension". I have never played the game without them -- even back in 2001, the board game you can buy on a shop already had Cities and Knights included. I didn't know it existed without them at all.

Edit 2: the JSettlers applet: http://www.jsettlers.com/

brunoqc• 17 years ago

We can also play for free on the official website : http://www.cms.playcatan.com/content/view/137/59/lang,en_US/

And there's also another open source version, Pioneers : http://pio.sourceforge.net/

euccastro• 17 years ago

There is a nice Java implementation and community at

http://games.asobrain.com

It's called "Xplorers" for copyright reasons.

Tichy• 17 years ago

It certainly has become the new Monopoly in Germany. I prefer Carcassonne, though, or at the very least, Settlers with the Cities and Knights expansion.

Also the settlers of catan card game is very good in my opinion (I like it much better than the board game).

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

Have I entered some sort of time warp? I was introduced to this game at the gaming club at Cornell. In 1997.

When reading this article I had to keep looking up at the dateline to make sure I hadn't accidentally slipped back into graduate school. Talk about existential terror.

The moral of this story is threefold. First: I was a much bigger game geek than I ever thought I was. Second: Your business can take a really long time to reach its full potential. Third: Just because something is old news to you doesn't mean that there aren't lots of people encountering it for the first time.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

I was never a board game geek, but that might have been a side effect of growing up in the 90's. I had friends who I couldn't hang out with every day, because we lived so far apart. So I ended up being killer at early video games and for the most part I still am although I rarely play the first person shooters or the RTS games anymore due to time (and, for the FPS', interest) constraints.

Yet even I knew what Catan is. Even my wife does, I told her about 3 months ago that the next time we waste money on a board game we're actually going to get one I like, so I pointed it out to her.

So even for me that was a sort of bizarre 'deja vu' experience. Then again, I grew up in the UK so I suppose this game probably hit the market much bigger and much sooner than in the US. I guess an addendum to your second moral is that foreign markets can act in unexpected ways.

cos• 17 years ago

No, you're not alone. I've been playing Settlers for years, and it's long been a favorite of a number of friends of mine in different cities who don't all know each other. Perhaps it's been a niche game this whole time and will go "mainstream", but its niche hasn't been that obscure.

ken• 17 years ago

Not that this isn't some sort of time-warp article, but haven't you learned by now that Cornell has little in common with reality? We even put it on a bumper sticker. :-)

chris11• 17 years ago

Here is an unofficial online flash version of Settlers of Cataan. (Registration is required) http://games.asobrain.com/

mynameishere• 17 years ago

Come on. Nothing beats a good 40-hour marathon of Axis & Allies.

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

40 hours, and all that matters is whoever can hold the Caucasus for longer that 2-3 turns.

2bit• 17 years ago

I had no idea they were releasing a new PC version soon, that's great news. I'm hoping they introduce a tutorial mode. I've tried introducing friends to PlayCatan.com but having to explain all the rules in chat they lose interest right away.

joshu• 17 years ago

This is a new thing? I've hated this game for years.

wlievens2• 17 years ago

If you want (as the article claims) a real Monpoly-how-it-should-be game, give Chinatown a try.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/47

It's about free-style trading much like Monopoly should be, except that it doesn't suck.

Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre

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