RANDOM MUSINGS
on the
fin-de-millénaire games scene . . .
12 September 2006
. . .
Themes, or rather the lack of novel ones, was the
lament of my recent comments on
Robber Knights (Raubritter)
,
the title of yet another in a long string of medieval settings that didn't
have to be. But there's no need for surprise at this. The existence of
so many games about the middle ages, pirates and ancient Egypt points
to only one reality: people will try to make a lot of money.
Ultimately the publisher decides the theme rather than the inventor, so
the responsibility tends to lie more there. In fact, at this point
I understand that inventors have become so dubious about the possibility
of their themes surviving publication that most have become apathetic
about theme in general.
But why does theme make such a difference? Isn't there an audience for
everything? Maybe not. And for one very big reason called the Spiel des
Jahres. Follow the money with me now.
It might be interesting to have a look in fact at the
Spiel des Jahres winners,
from a thematic basis and. A tally by theme came up with
Interestingly, the transport theme has picked up a bit lately and may be
growing.
We can see what the aberrations have been: art and archaeology
(too esoteric?); restaurants (too bland and too narrow) and spies
(too violent?).
Violence too has probably exluded the pirate game thus far; it must be
that its success comes from some other source.
Egypt has also somehow
failed to appear so far, perhaps also being too esoteric.
Abstracts made a good start, but have not really held up.
The same goes for fantasy.
But maybe there's hope, science fiction fans. When your generation becomes
grandparents, maybe then there will be sufficient openness to the topic
that such games can get made. Let's watch and see, shall we?
For the curious, here's how I classified them:
So the gaming fanatic shouldn't be surprised by a system creating
products catering to a proven audience.
More significantly, the medieval theme has really come up big in more
recent years when the award has really gained its importance.
