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Comment by IAmAtWork | Hacker News Reader

I know what you mean. I have same issue with card games now and rts craze before. It is insanely hard to properly balance a game and when I see people going crazy over one man made card game I already know what reviews will be. This is not to diss any indie developers. I am one of them. But can we actually talk about game design theory and how games are designed. Can journalist check Gamasutra nad gdc vault before writing blog post on genre

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Is this the vault you are referring to: https://www.gdcvault.com/ ?

> But can we actually talk about game design theory and how games are designed.

That is antithetical to how I view art.

Let the people playing the games sort the wheat from the chaff. There's a reason why "Settlers of Catan" and "Ticket to Ride" are on big box store shelves now.

It's because they aim at normies, not boardgamers (normies are the risk/monopoly crowd). Also they were on the market 'first' with a mass appeal. They are, however, not good games.

A million flies eating shit doesn't make shit good.

Nah, Catan is an EXCELLENT game, especially in the context of what was available when it was created in the 90's. I don't play it anymore because I've played enough for three lifetimes, as of ten years ago. But it's good enough that I have played it that much!

Ticket to Ride is entirely forgettable, though... It feels like Candyland, but without the meta-commentary on the illusion of free will.

Catan breaks when I have all the wood and you need wood to win but I refuse to trade with anyone. It's a very aged and crummy design. Many people just don't know better.

That's hilarious. The Root discussion forums are an endless mess of issues like this, for which the answer is uniformly 'pay attention to the other players and don't let that happen!' (With the added problem of being Root, so that knowing what other players are up to takes about two dozen games if experience.) And yet root is still a pretty high rated game...

You say that like Candyland is a bad game.

;-)

>Can journalist check Gamasutra nad gdc vault before writing blog post on genre

No because if they take time to do research they'll miss the views they could have gotten if they just slam out a piece and (basically) nobody is going to pay extra for a journalist who's also an expert on board game design.

It's the biggest problem with journalism today.

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