The Game Before the Game

There are things most of us in the board game...

Read more...

You've just described my life in the acquisition of a game ... ...

I actively dislike the kickstarter process, even though I have sometimes been very happy with the results. My ideal game acquisition experience is to buy a game at a store or convention booth, show it to my friends, skim the rules, and sit down to play within an hour of acquisition. I used to do that every year at GenCon, until finding open table space became a problem in the mid-'90s due to all the CCG players. It was great when GenCon finally established a large dedicated play area (Game Bay Seven or something like that).

Kickstarting a game is the opposite of immediately playing a new game. You spend your money, you wait to see if the minimum goal is reached for the game to even go into production. Then you wait a long, long time to see if they manage to make the game, and then there is the wait to find out if there will a shipping problem. Finally, you (maybe) get the game, and if you are lucky or wise, the game might turn out to be good.