The New Campaigners

by Moss Scheurkogel

*THE GAME SHOPPER HAS MOVED!*
The new link for this article is:  http://gameshop.com.au/blog/thegameshopper/2012/08/09/the-new-campaigners/

Thanks for your patience.
~Moss

I like serial games, by which I mean games that have a connected arc across several playthroughs and not the games that come on the back of a corn flakes box (that joke works better when you say it aloud.)
Alas, consistency between playthroughs is not something that board games are set up for. It’s simply not part of the established industry. By the end of Settlers of Catan, you may control a burgeoning industrial nation undergoing a cultural renaissance, but the next time you sit down to play you’ll once again just be a silly little man in a lean-to rubbing two sheep together to stay warm. And this is how it needs to be. If one tyrant continued to rule over the other players solely on the strength of past victories, it wouldn’t be much better than the Olympics, now would it? (Ahah!) For the sake of preserving balance, most games need to reset.

Android, and the horrors and joys of thematic games

by Moss Scheurkogel

*THE GAME SHOPPER HAS MOVED!*
The new link for this article is:  http://gameshop.com.au/blog/thegameshopper/2012/06/01/android-and-the-horrors-and-joys-of-thematic-games/

Thanks for your patience.
~Moss

When people ask about guilty pleasures, they tend to expect answers that involve trashy reality television or secret crushes on fictional characters. For me, my guilty pleasure is a game; and no, it’s not a game about raising ponies or about seeing the world as an impetuous young elf (although I do like that game, too.)

It’s Android. And at a surface glance, Android might not seem that embarrassing. It’s just a strategy game about solving mysteries. In the future. While portraying a conflicted archetype of a hard-boiled detective or a crooked cop. Or a robot. Who will either sink into despair or rise above their demons. A game in which you attempt to solve a crime not by determining who did it, but by pinning evidence on the patsy you want to go down. While you’re dealing with your estranged ex-wife. Or your daddy issues. Or racial tensions surrounding artificial intelligence and the nature of the soul.

You can see the slippery slope here. Android is a game that revels so much in its theme and pulls so few punches that it has spiralled into depths that would terrify a casual gamer. The game demands so much character development that if you play while wearing a pair of sunglasses, you’re practically LARPing.