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Comment by failwhaleshark | Hacker News Reader

What does "old" matter to whether a game is good or not? And regardless, are you sure you're not expressing ubiquitous consumerism or ageism?

~50 BP - Othello

~50 BP - DnD

~60 BP - Risk

~60 BP - Diplomacy

~70 BP - Stratego

~100 BP - Contract bridge

~200 BP - Mahjong

~200 BP - Double twelve dominoes

~600 BP - Playing cards

~1300 BP - Chess

~2500 BP - 围棋 (Go)

~5000 BP - Checkers / draughts

~5000 BP - Backgammon

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There's a lot of obsession with 'new games are better' amongst modern board gamers that they overlook what's good about the classics and why they are still here today.

I admit I was kind of the same way at first, plowing through hundreds of modern games and mostly ignoring older games, but if you take another look at the classics there's some real gems there. A few other excellent games you don't mention are Shogi (500 BP), Cribbage (420 BP), Fanorona (340 BP), Crokinole (150 BP), and Acquire (60 BP).

Although IMO, Double 6 dominoes is where it's at, not double 12. "All Fives" Dominoes and Partnership Dominoes are highly underrated amongst modern gamers, imo.

I love domino games. I used to play a lot of two-hand sniff (or muggins -- lots of variants). For me there's something aesthetically pleasing about games that use generic gaming equipment -- dominoes, cards, pawns, etc.

One of my favorite games of social deduction is Skull. I got the $10 version but it's based on a very old Skull & Roses game. The simplicity is deceiving, which you quickly realize as you have to make meaningful, difficult choices about your bluffs and bets.

Skull has more going on for it than it seems like it should for its super simple components, but at the same time I only ever seem to play it with 6 players, and the game feels to me like it outstays its welcome after about 20-30 minutes and those 6 player games always seem to take 45 minutes to an hour to play out, at least with the various groups I've played it with. I'm usually pretty bored by the end of it.

Coup, while more complicated, is a similar game that never seems to last that long, even with 6 players (usually closer to 10-15 minutes for that).

Skull, unlike modern European-influenced games, doesn't keep everyone in it until the end. But I think I prefer 4-5 players.

What is "BP"? I tried searching the Inernet but couldn't find it.

It normally refers to a timescale called "Before Present" where Present is defined as = Jan 1, 1950. You see it a lot in radio- dating. GP has invented their own dating system with the same name based around ~2021.

Fun fact, there's no corresponding After Present system for dates after 1950. Instead you subtract negative years. E.g. 1957 AD = -7 BP.

That's interesting. The creation date for Dungeons and Dragons (1974) would be -24 BP then.

Talking about abbreviations:

https://blog.mitchjlee.com/2020/your-writing-style-is-costly

Before Present? (Just guessing)

My guess is "before present", not sure why you wouldn't use BCE/CE though.

BP (when properly explained) emphasizes that the important aspect of the timeline is its relativity to the current time.

I can see why it makes sense in archaeology, but using it here without any explanation just led to confusion. Everybody knows BC/AD (or BCE/CE if you're wanting to be cross cultural) so using it is just poor communication in this case.

It's trivial to Google and then we are part of today's 10,000.

Yes we can easily Google "BP".

BP conventionally being relative to an epoch date of 1 Jan 1950, which is at an ever increasing distance from the actual present, is something of an issue (and while “before actual present” is useful, using BP for it, given the conventional use, is problematic.)

"ya" (years ago) as a suffix is better, in that it doesn't have a conventional use with a particular epoch date.

So it saves 2 characters compared to ###y ago but requires an explanation.

    2500 BP
    2500y ago

"ya" is an equally short abbreviation for "years ago".

I've never see that before so I'd have to look it up just like BP.

Agreed, I was explaining a contrast to using BC/BCE.

Newer games are made with the knowledge of older games, so theoretically they should be better. I'd argue they are on average, but there's also the survivorship bias in play with very old games that only the good ones are still commonly known and played.

> theoretically they should be better

Lol anything newer is theoretically better?

New things are made with the knowledge of old things, and old things aren't. Unless more knowledge about what you're making could lead to a worse product, then newer things will on average be better than older things.

Does this theory hold in practice when you look around you in the real world?

Was the best work of all fields - cinema, art, music, architecture, literature, all from the last year?

I find the production of bad movies to be such an interesting issue. Lot of money, lots of highly skilled people, long time, it still some how you get really bad results fairly often. It is a lesson in humility for any ambitious endeavor I think.

Yes it does, but not from "last year" because art has to age. The best art from 11700 is leagues better than the best art from 10700, or 5000 (we're in 12021 BTW). Obvious caveat that dark and golden ages interrupt this trend.

Yea I did a double take at that one. The software industry laughs uncontrollably at that statement.

What does BP mean in this context?

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