Board game UX

I don't know if the game Star Wars: Outer Rim is enjoyable, but the game's physical design is amazing. Which reminds me I have What the Tech World Can Learn from Video Game UX lined up to watch.

Update: The video was about using gamification to enhance learning to use a handheld ultrasound scanner. Nothing new.

Gaming with Alexa

I am an armchair tabletop wargame and broadgame geek. I say armchair as I mostly seem to read and speculate about games far more than I play them. In part this is due to available opponents and in part to simply not making the time. Nevertheless, I persist. 

When my children were very young I noticed that they would spend long periods of time studying the details of intricate pictures. This was their "dinosaur period" and so it was mostly illustrations of Jurassic flora and fauna. I had the notion of a game set on a large rug sized illustration they could scamper around on. The rug was pressure sensitive so the children's location was known. The rug would speak and listen. The children would respond to its directions either alone or in small groups. They could be the hunters, the hunted, the treasure seekers, the jungle veterinarians, etc.

The game remained speculative, but the ideas of location aware game boards, audio interaction, and physical game pieces has continued to interest me. I explored using old school pen digitizers, old school touch screens that used infrared interference for locating, magnets and mechanical switches, RFID, image pattern recognition with and without QR-codes or colored dot markers, etc. 

Gaming in wild came under scrutiny. How would LARPing or scavenger hunts change with augmented reality? What about audio only games? What would a naval or starship strategy game require from a driver stuck in commuter traffic? How much of the map or simple orientation could the player keep in their head? Clearly, these would not be realtime games or there would be high likelihood of distracting the driver into actual vehicular combat.

When Amazon's Alexa was introduced I read the SDK documentation with excitement. Amazon had done the hard work of creating a conversational model for audio interaction. I think a small, jet fighter combat oriented over the driver's car roof is a game well within the skills of even a moderately skill programmer. Now to make the time.

Packing up my wargaming stuff

I have decided to pack up my wargaming stuff for the foreseeable future. I had high expectations when I started. I really needed a hobby where I would be making stuff and then playing with it. Wargaming has this in spades. I did make and I did play, but in 3 years of time, effort, and lots of money I have made very little and played very little. Too little to warrant continuing when there are other draws on me.

The best aspect of this period was meeting the Wednesday Gamers. I am very grateful for Al's, Leo's, Kim's, and Maurice's fellowship, encouragement, information, insights, and, of course, the games we played. Leo and Maurice always have prepared or are in the process of preparing scenarios in the worlds of Lord of the Rings, The Lost Regiments, dark ages, American Civil War river conflicts, and WWII. All I had to do was show up and play. When we played Saga, however, I would bring my Welsh and Viking miniatures.

Al has hosted the Wednesday Gamers during this time. He and his wife are retiring now and by the end of June they will have moved to Tennessee. Now seems like a good time to make a break. I will play an occasional game with the Wednesday Gamers in Maurice's basement -- if they will have me.

Back to packing up my work table.

Update 1: The work table's paints, tools, and junk are packed up. Owen and I are using the big table to play the Firefly board game. (We can't play these long duration board games in the house as the the cats want to play too and, well, they don't follow the rules nor turn order.)

Update 2: Owen and I finished our first game of Firefly. We really enjoyed the game. And if, like us, you enjoyed the TV series then there is real joy when you get Kaylee or Wash to join your crew!