Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
The last few weeks we've been doing a March Madness voting bracket of classic AT games on the forums. We're down to the Final Four and something jumped out at me...
Two of the final four (Cosmic Encounter and Dune) were designed by the same basic team at Eon in the late 70's. I think it's kind of a sad comment on where the current state of game design is. So is nostalgia really this strong and we're all old or did hobby boardgaming just peak early in terms of truly monumental designs? Or something else?
Even looking at the other top designs from the previous round we have just a couple recent designs, most of which are remixes of ideas and mechanics that have been around for over a decade at least.
Personally I think we've fallen into a similar trap that rock (or punk or countless other "rock combo" sub-genres) has; we're stuck in a paradigm that is hugely stiflingly creatively and the vast majority of "new" ideas are just rehashings of different already established elements. Like you can only go so far with a couple guitars, a bass and drums. You can still create something powerful and incredible, and the conviction and overall packaging with which you deliver this material can be amazing, but at the end of the day it's not really pushing anything forward. In game design we generally have a few established paradigms and then it's mostly just a bunch of remixes. Some of them are totally awesome, yet aren't doing the same kinds of things that a Cosmic Encounter did.
There are some cool new ideas out there like real time play but generally speaking, the last really BIG thing I can think of was Magic the Gathering, and it's real big thing was the integration of sales and content delivery into the game play space, so not even a pure design decision.
Looking at the original Sweet Sixteen games from the first round, the game that excites me most is Space Alert. I sure as fuck didn't vote for it nor do I really LOVE playing it, but it's usage of a soundtrack and timed game elements seem to be pushing game design forward in a very real way that none of the other recent games on the list are. I'd much rather play Mage Knight or Chaos in the Old World, but from a hoity toity critical standpoint, fuck em both. I think this gets at another huge issue facing designers looking to do actually groundbreaking stuff; "games" are supposed to be "fun" and since I have more fun playing CitOW, I'm gonna talk it up over Space Alert and play it a lot more and generally reward the design that's not doing anything new or interesting.
Video games have been suffering through a similar growing up period and are finally really starting to push some of these boundries. Moving beyond just shooting dudes in the dick or jumping around on platforms, we have games like Journey where the concept of what defines a "game" is put into question, but these are still just early baby steps into a new world.
What we need in boardgaming is something like what happened when rap or electronica hit the music scene; I want something that redefines what a "game" can be and how I interact with it and others. I want new ways of looking at conflict and gaming and how that can be expressed. Somebody, get on that!
