What? You haven't played that?

I want to gently disagree with the subject of this post. I think there's an all-too-common sensibility in gaming of "having to play everything". One frequently sees posts on the game groups that read like "In this month, I played 6530 games, of which 2304 were unique games, etc", as if playing every game that comes out is a requisite to be a "serious" gamer. I don't buy it. I think there's nothing wrong with that sensibility, but I think equally valid is the idea of choosing a couple of games that you really like, and playing them many times over several years to really explore and appreciate their richness. In fact, I think that most games demand that level of exploration to really be appreciated. I find there's the common sentiment that a game must reveal its quality on the very first play, or else it goes in the discard pile, on the grounds that "well, with so many great games to play, why waste time trying to see if this is a good game or not?" A valid sentiment, I guess, but again, this isn't a race or a contest or anything, and it seems to me to reveal, in a lot of cases, an overestimation of one's ability to understand a game from one playing...

Anyway, some people no doubt have the time to both play every game, and to play them a lot of times, and that's probably the ideal. Speaking only for myself, I don't commit as much time to gaming, but even if I did, I doubt my buying patterns would change: with every new crop of games, I read the rules and descriptions and check out the one or two that sound most appealing to me. That means I'll probably never play a lot of games that come out. But I don't see some obligation of "coolness" or "gamerness" that requires me to do that anyway.

That being said, I do think it's really worth trying to play at least Puerto Rico at some point, because it is such a classic. But with the others, if you want to play them, play them! If not (or if you don't have time), don't! I think the only "prize" that gaming awards is some time enjoyably spent. Your best bet for achieving that is playing games you like, or games that sound, from their description, like games that you'd like. There's no real reason to try to play every game that some other people think is great, unless is sounds like it would appeal to you as well.

Just my thoughts,

Jeff

I call this egocentric.

I call this egocentric.

Out of context, it sounds egocentric.

I don't know the guy, so might could be right. I just stated this from the discussion above. Knizia could be a good guy after all. :)

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying playing a variety of games is in any way undesirable or unadvisable. Indeed, I spend a lot of time reading the rules of a lot of games to get a better sense for "what's out there." What I'm objecting to is specifically a sensibility that seems to suggest that how many different games you've played in some way determines your "credibility" or is some trophy to be proud of. I'm not saying you, or anyone else in this discussion has that mindset; however, I have found it to be fairly prevalent at the spielfrieks discussion group. In that sense, yes, by all means, play a lot of games and enjoy the ones you play. But enjoyment is the thing; don't play a lot of games just to keep up with the Joneses. There are a lot of highly regarded games that I'll probably never play, but I don't consider myself to necessarily be missing anything, so long as I enjoy my gaming time.

Just my thoughts...

-Jeff

I not only have not played most of the games on the original list, but have not heard of most of the games on that list. This doesn't bother me, because between my family and friends we seem to find at least 10-15 new games a year to try. Some of them are worth the effort, others don't seem to be. Even though, we try in what my opinion seems like a lot of games, we can't even afford half the games that look somewhat enticing. Besides that I'm happy anymore just to get a chance to play a game I got 4 years ago, let alon buying and trying new ones.

Let me save you some time...

Play it on BSW but don't bother playing it irl. Certainly don't buy it irl. It's a good, quick game on BSW and it's interesting enough for that. Saint Petersburg is about the same thing only better- also on BSW.

Only play this if you're in the mood to be joking around (and you have a lot of time to kill). Or if your group likes to argue about rules. The game itself is basically all about arguing rules (hence the name, Munchkin). As such Halfass games has done a superb job of putting the player into the theme by simply not writing down all the rules in the rulebook, thereby forcing the players to argue about the ambiguities.

This game takes a long time to play. A lot of people like that about it. I for one look at the ratio of fun to time invested, and for me that ratio for this game is too low.

You thought I'd hate all of these games? I fooled you! I like Mystery of the Abby a lot. I do recommend a house rule that a specific mark is made on the sheets so that all players can definitely differentiate between "Have you seen so-and-so" and "have you eliminated so-and-so as a suspect..." or whatever. The game is a little more user friendly if players aren't able to forget if they've actually seen a particular card or not.

That's all the ones I've played from your list.

- Seth