Hacker News Reader

Comment by JunkDNA | Hacker News Reader

Ever since my daughter was born two years ago I basically stopped watching movies and only watch a small amount of TV. This has made me realize that the products being put out by Hollywood are inconvenient and not a good value for the money. The few times I've sat down to rent something I did want to see, I found it wasn't available on onDemand, iTunes, etc... Instead of watching a movie, my wife and I end up goofing around on Facebook or something. I have plenty of entertainment options. Making it hard to see a movie just means I will do something else. I suspect I'm not alone in this regard.

View on HN

Boardgames have replaced movies and TV in our house. There are some great games out there. Good ones can run anywhere from $20-80 (though usually around $40-50) but the value for your money is far greater. We get some quality time together as a family and the kid gets some strategic and problem-solving skills.

Of course... they take up a lot more space. :)

Try Bananagrams. Takes up as much space as a pair of socks.

We have it, along with many others. Our newest addition is Cutthroat Caverns, which we played tonight, for the first time. If you like tile-based word games, we picked up Lexigo a while back and it's pretty fun.

Race for the Galaxy! It's so much fun, though I found the rules to be difficult to understand at first. http://www.amazon.com/Rio-Grande-Games-RGG301-Galaxy/dp/B000...

Got that, too! :D Here.... let me just make a list of what's in the cabinet: http://pastie.org/3502486 There's not anything there that we don't like, but I'd say family favorites would be Qwirkle, Ticket to Ride, Robo Rally, Carcassonne, and Pandemic. Caverns was a lot of fun and may make the favorites list, too, but that could just be the newness... too soon to tell. :)

Our daughter's almost 10, and with the exception of Twilight Imperium (this game is massive, especially when you add both expansions) plays them all with us. In addition to spending more time together as a family, I'd say it's helped a with her math, reading, and critical thinking.

Dixit is well worth a try if haven't already,

Cosmic Encounter is a space game that has _lots_ of optional rules. The basic game is pretty easy to learn but it can get very deep.

My son's almost four and I can't wait for him to want to play all these games.

It's weird, something like that happened to me. I didn't plan this. There was just nothing on TV that I wanted to watch, so I stopped and never really started again.

I do sometimes watch a little TV, but it's pretty rare at this point.

Heh, 4 years since my son was born, and while at the begining HBO was ON, later as he grew up and was bothered by the TV noise, we switched to Netflix, but watch only movies with captions - and these are... well non-english ones :) So here ya go!

Oh, And I have to watch with him Yo-gabba-gabba, Franklin and the Upside down show (which is great btw)

I'm more excited than my kids are for the upside down show.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com