The Use of Apps for Board Games

n815e wrote: Will a functioning app still be available twenty years from now? How about two?

Dude, I just played a 1993 game--that's 26 years back. If it's good enough, some people will go out of their way to make it work.

Sevej wrote:

n815e wrote: Will a functioning app still be available twenty years from now? How about two?

Dude, I just played a 1993 game--that's 26 years back. If it's good enough, some people will go out of their way to make it work.

You just played an app-run game from 1993? Wow!

Any game that requires the use of technology that isn’t self-contained within the game is on a timer.
Unless the game develops a dedicated following where someone will develop a new companion application to maintain the life of that game, most of these games are going to die very quickly.
Sales dropping? License lost? Publisher loses interest? Then zero money and resources will be invested in maintaining it or keeping up with technology changes.

That 1993 game you played was all paper and/or plastic, right?
That technology never becomes outdated.

I'm currently playing an MS-DOS game from 1986.

Okay, enough from me.

Let’s meetup in about ten years and we’ll sit down to play all of your app-required games from this time period.
We can have a great time and laugh at my expense. I don’t mind being laughed at.

All it takes is for one fan with the know-how to make it work with an emulator. Emulators for apps already exist.

That’s not saying I like app integration with games, I’m its saying the compatibility argument is an invalid one.

Josh Look wrote: All it takes is for one fan with the know-how to make it work with an emulator. Emulators for apps already exist.

That’s not saying I like app integration with games, I’m its saying the compatibility argument is an invalid one.

This entirely. Count me in the "not interested" camp, but I have an entire emulated arcade with real controls in my basement. Arcades have been dead for decades in the USA.

The REAL miracle would be for one of these games to be so good that anyone would care to preserve it.

“Man, remember how we played Journeys in Middle-Earth that one Saturday? I’d give anything to recapture the feeling of those two hours we spent on it!”

Now we're getting closer to the issue with app-driven games. The issue is not the long term viability or any kind of inherent fragility. It's that there hasn't been a good one thus far.

I could definitely see an app driven game working in theory, but generally speaking I've found video games succeed where app integrated games fumble. They can only do so much admin work for you before you're just playing a video game with a big cardboard box for a controller. And I don't mean Nintendo Labo.

hotseatgames wrote:
The REAL miracle would be for one of these games to be so good that anyone would care to preserve it.

This is of course the real issue. If the game is worth the trouble, people will go through it. I don’t think we’ve quite see one that is worth the effort.

But what do we know, people both play terrible emulated games and terrible tabletop games.

Ok, so first things first. n815e, don't sweat the rebuttals. This is tradition here, we bring opinions and occasionally call each other rude names. But we're family, and you're holding your own and making a good case, so stay in the game. It's good to hear a new voice bringing it, everyone's happy you're here.


Here's the thing. There's a really good app-enhanced game called Mechs & Minions. Maybe not app-enhanced, might be web-page enhanced. I don't recall which, but what your phone is bringing to the game can be summed up in two words -- narrative, and simplicity. I think those are two things that are key to any programmatic enhancement to a game. In Mechs & Minions you're getting a voice narrative providing the setting for the next scenario in the game and they're fun. They add to the enjoyment. You go to the page and press a button and you get a little bit of extra flavor that adds to the game.

That's app enhancement done right. Now, you can add other features, like the one I mentioned earlier about submarines, the management of hidden information where both players need to be in the dark. The key is to make the app part dead simple and intuitive so that it has a whisper-thin learning curve and brings something to the game that you can't get via other means. Management of hidden information on both sides of the table is the obvious use for this, and opens up design space to game developers.

Eight years ago leaping to the conclusion that you might lose customers because they didn't have a way to access the electronic material was reasonable. But now, especially if your enhancement is web-based, accessibility is a pretty safe assumption for anyone dropping $80 on your game.

I have a Keyforge app that manages the scoring and manna (or whatever it's called) with big fat colored buttons. You lay it on the table between the players and both tap buttons on their side of the screen to increase or decrease their values. Big numbers display the publicly available information on the screen. Dead simple, big and easy to read, useful. It provides significant enhancement to the game (and is free by the way.) That's a successful integration.

n815e wrote:

Sevej wrote:

n815e wrote: Will a functioning app still be available twenty years from now? How about two?

Dude, I just played a 1993 game--that's 26 years back. If it's good enough, some people will go out of their way to make it work.

You just played an app-run game from 1993? Wow!

Any game that requires the use of technology that isn’t self-contained within the game is on a timer.
Unless the game develops a dedicated following where someone will develop a new companion application to maintain the life of that game, most of these games are going to die very quickly.
Sales dropping? License lost? Publisher loses interest? Then zero money and resources will be invested in maintaining it or keeping up with technology changes.

That 1993 game you played was all paper and/or plastic, right?
That technology never becomes outdated.

Wow dude, I don't know how unsavvy you are at technology. Please stop making a fool of yourself.

The game was Desert Strike for SNES. I played it on my Windows 7 laptop.

ubarose wrote: Is this Lord of the Ring game a licensed game? I would be concerned if it is. If a license goes bye-bye the app goes bye-bye. So in addition to concerns about the app needing to be upgraded whenever the OS of devices upgrades, you now have to also be concerned that if for some reason you need to re-download the app, you are forked.

And even id it isn't licensed, personally, if I am shelling out money for a board game I don't want to be dependent on fan service to be able to play the game a few years down the road.

Yep. It’s not the tech, it’s the market. Any market that depends on renting out moribund old IPs “but with a twist” is inherently janky and untrustworthy. Unless a major shift happens, I predict that in 10 years FFG itself won’t exist, being that their inherent market strategy has been reduced to solely renting out larger companies’ IP.

GorillaGrody wrote: Unless a major shift happens, I predict that in 10 years FFG itself won’t exist, being that their inherent market strategy has been reduced to solely renting out larger companies’ IP.

That's been a concern of mine over the past couple years, too. I check their webpage every couple days to see what they're focusing on and yesterday was the first time in a couple years (I think) that they haven't had anything Star Wars on the front page. You can't blame them, since that's been their cash cow for a number of years now, but their devotion to that and a couple other licenses is why I haven't bothered with anything FFG in a while.

I'm not moderating anything, but stop taking shitty tones with each other.