Tabletop Gaming On XBox Live
Aug. 23rd, 2006 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldI just read on Penny Arcade news of a development which might take yet another aspect of science fiction conventions and cause its attendees to evaporate into some kind of luminiferous ether on the internet. The way eBay did for the Dealers Room. The way artist's WWW storefronts did for the Art Show. The way blogs did for Amateur Press Associations.
This time it's the Game Room. Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Alhambra are coming to XBox Live. As Tycho's editorial on Penny Arcade demonstrates, there are board gamers who normally can't find anyone in their day-to-day lives with whom to play these obscure but gem-like German games. They must leave the mundane world of their home and venture into a wild and wooly convention to find their fellow strangers, in a strange land. Crying like Elijah in the wilderness, "Wood for sheep! Doesn't anyone have wood for sheep?" Except Elijah would not proceed to giggle like a junior higher.
No more. And with the advent of that 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week satiation (you know who you are), perhaps the cardboard and wood physicality will be practiced only by quaint historical reenactors, lingering around the edges of what once had been German-style tabletop gaming, which itself was an obscure fringe market.
Oh, don't get me wrong, you'll still find me in the Game Room at conventions. And none of the conventions I'm involved with would dare think of canceling it. But here's hoping players keep coming in the existing numbers for years to come. Dare we hope, even, that the many new players to whom XBox Live introduces these games will desire to participate in board games offline?
This time it's the Game Room. Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Alhambra are coming to XBox Live. As Tycho's editorial on Penny Arcade demonstrates, there are board gamers who normally can't find anyone in their day-to-day lives with whom to play these obscure but gem-like German games. They must leave the mundane world of their home and venture into a wild and wooly convention to find their fellow strangers, in a strange land. Crying like Elijah in the wilderness, "Wood for sheep! Doesn't anyone have wood for sheep?" Except Elijah would not proceed to giggle like a junior higher.
No more. And with the advent of that 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week satiation (you know who you are), perhaps the cardboard and wood physicality will be practiced only by quaint historical reenactors, lingering around the edges of what once had been German-style tabletop gaming, which itself was an obscure fringe market.
Oh, don't get me wrong, you'll still find me in the Game Room at conventions. And none of the conventions I'm involved with would dare think of canceling it. But here's hoping players keep coming in the existing numbers for years to come. Dare we hope, even, that the many new players to whom XBox Live introduces these games will desire to participate in board games offline?
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 11:07 pm (UTC)They will come.
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Date: 2006-08-23 11:09 pm (UTC)Or even worse, wood in the FORM of SHEEP.
*falls over laughing*
Damn, I miss playing Settlers with you and random fen. And that's something that the online experience can't duplicate.
LAN parties are a good counterexample to the thought of people evaporating into the ether, I think.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-23 11:34 pm (UTC)Admittedly, the Internet Lounge is now the whole hotel, tho. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I'm expecting to walk into the lobby one of these days, and find four people sitting in comfy chairs playing online *with each other*. ;-)