Guilty by association?

Just me, I would be a little less inclined to submit a design to them. As far as I'm concerned, there are plenty of publishers out there I can submit to without questionable games on their catalog...

Should the question be, "Will publication of this game make consumers and retailers less likely to buy their other games?" If the answer is yes, then maybe you should think twice about having them publish your game because it affects your pocketbook. If the answer is no, then it doesn't matter.

If you have the ability to choose where your game is published, then by all means exercise that choice. Money is most definitely not all that important in the game industry. The monetary rewards are, for the most part, uniformly bad.

Still, I've never thought of the games I've played or produced as part of a larger conversation. I'd be interested to hear more of your thoughts on that since I've always evaluated each game solely against its own canvas. Does it play well? Is it a good simulation? Is it well produced? Etc.

I can see how variants within a system are part of a larger conversation. Or even multiple titles covering the same theme or historical period. But does Suicide Bomber really have a conversation with Age of Steam, so to speak? I can see conversations extending across genres - the way card-driven mechanics have spread to all facets of simulation gaming, for instance - but even if you did a card game using many of the same mechanics as Suicide Bomber, but put a Shrek license on it and called it "Shrek and the Attack of the Gremlins" or something, it wouldn't be a part of the same conversation except in the most esoteric gaming forum way.

I don't know that, from a practical standpoint, there'd be a connection between two very unrelated games published by the same publisher. For instance, Avalon Hill published "Look at the Schmuck on the Camel" and Advanced Squad Leader. One teaches players Yiddish. The other teaches players that no matter how elegant the system, you can overchrome it to the point that you need a law degree and the patience of Job to learn it. :) That's stretching it a bit, but even if you focus on the games that AH came out with around the same time as Look at the Schmuck - Air Baron, London's Burning, Global Survival - there's not much to hang a discussion on.

Which brings me back to my original post. I probably shouldn't have said "pocketbook". It was more of a shorthand for "I don't see that this one game, which might be out of place with the rest of their line up, will affect the designer of another game for the same company in an adverse manner, except through possible lower sales".

Anyways, I'm not trying to dis your idea. It sort of intrigues me. I tend to look at trends or memes or schools of thought, but don't think of them as dialogues so much. Besides, it's rare that I get to do more than nuts and bolts posts on manufacturing! :)

You are technically correct, of course, in that it would be the same game. But the different THEME would change the conversation entirely. Right now, the conversation on Suicide Bomber is that it's a political landmine (pardon the pun). Take the politics out of it, and we have a very different discussion. :)

Sorry, I meant the overall discussion, not the table talk.

If by ludist you mean "frequent posters on gameboardgeek.com" then you are correct and I am not. If by ludist, you mean a more rigorous academic discussion of games and philosophy, then I think we're both correct: me in the day-to-day sense and you in the ludological sense. :)