Feedback Loop Games

YouTube video by Sarah Z Everyone's Cheating At Chess (Allegedly)

A history of cheating in chess, from the Mechanical Turk in the 18th century, to psychic battles in the audience during the Cold War, to the monetization of cheating drama in the era of social media

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtN-...

Today's board games—which are not about money—depend on fragile social norms. At the table, we're at once competitors and comrades. Even mundane games ask for a trust that is not universally held, like teaching or therapy.

This has not always been possible, and it may not always be possible.

I did Liberation Day tariffs in Victoria 3, and it all went well until the famine in Colorado, the 2 lost wars with Canada, and the president beating a man to death with a stick But apart from that, would recommend.

"I did Liberation Day tariffs in Victoria 3, and it all went well until the famine in Colorado, the 2 lost wars with Canada, and the president beating a man to death with a stick"

An ironic simulationist take on tariff policy By Joshua Wolens, benevolent dictator and warden of virtual Colorado

A search for a missing game designer and a meditation on the inaccessibility of history. Who shows up in the archive, and why? And what does it cost to uncover our past?

Amabel Holland encourages us all to participate in the stewardship of shared history in this wonderful video essay

What Makes a Great Reality Star? And what happens when one is the American President?

Penetrating analysis of who wins on reality TV from @leighalexander.bsky.social

Reality TV depends on being seen as both game and not-game, with stars both playing and not-playing. Does this internal contradiction help explain our reality TV president?

xleighalexanderx.substack.com/p/what-makes...

🎲✂️

Another interesting hypothesis!

Fair comparison of games with and without feedback loops may require a "feedback aware teach." A challenge, as teaching "rules as written" will usually not reveal feedback loops and other emergent properties of games

bsky.app/profile/jcw....

If the alternative hypothesis is correct (and we hope it is!) then a gateway game with feedback would need to be simpler in other respects to catch on in the current environment

An alternative hypothesis might be: 1) players have a limited cognitive budget; 2) unfamiliar ways of thinking are more expensive; 3) "one way" commerce is familiar and 4) feedback loops are not

I.e., "no feedback loops" could be a cultural niche, not a basic cognitive limitation

@gengelstein.bsky.social's theory here is, implicitly, a theory of cognition. There must be something about feedback loops—predicting them, planning around them—that runs against the cognitive grain, making games with feedback loops less appealing in some way, for a big chunk of the gateway audience

A theory of gateway games by @gengelstein.bsky.social.

Gateway games have "one way flow." You get something, you spend it on something else, you buy victory points. Each step is an interesting choice, and some games add a "twist"—but as a rule, gateway games avoid feedback loops.

Sad for us!

Still here, still thinking about games

YouTube video by Super Bunnyhop Kriegsspiel! How Napoleon Accidentally Invented Strategy Games

A thoroughly researched history of wargaming, from ancient Rome through Prussian kriegspiel to Starcraft, by Super Bunnyhop

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Am...

March 28, 2025

Wood feels like a better thematic fit, but I wonder if there are ways to test how the pieces will look (and whether they'll be legible) with lots of wear. (The wear might be beautiful!)

Murder Party: elaborate LARPing, Soirées-Enquête, Jubensha, and Neysa McMein | Ordinary recreations which we have in Winter, and in most solitary times

From the depths of BGG:

An historical account of an elaborate Victorian murder party, where the host started preparations weeks in advance by "planting cryptic personal messages in London newspapers as clues"

They did not have to go so hard.

boardgamegeek.com/blog/13034/b...

Posted Nov 28, 2024

A game can look like one thing while it does another thing entirely

Patrick Klepek on Balatro, a video game rated 18+ by PEGI that *looks* like poker but contains no gambling.

patrickklepek.substack.com/p/is-balatro...

Posted Dec 17, 2024

I think many folks have moved to Discord servers for podcasts, publishers, and topic interests.

Maybe fleeing the stress of social media?

Bummer that many deep discussions are less accessible, but it’s hard to begrudge people building a niche for themselves.

Game of Life At our Airbnb, they have the board game LIFE, which I haven’t played since I was 10. It’s been updated, but the core principles remain the same. You spin the dial and arrive at a series of life junctures: career, marriage, kids, real estate, investments, retirement, and have to make a series of choices about your future. Marriage costs you $50k up front, but your spouse is worth $50k at the game’s end. Kids cost $50k a pop, but pets, mysteriously, cost nothing. A scientist makes a salary of $80k, but a chef, $70k. A cottage costs $120k, but an eco lodge runs you $200K. At the marriage juncture, Ada has already purchased a beach bungalow ($120k) and a ski chalet ($150k), so she doesn’t have much money left, as she considers the cost of a spouse. She looks at me and Jacob as she weighs the decision: “Soooo,” she says, “would you say there is anything actually good about being married?” We tell her this is a decision she needs to make on her own. In the end, after much deliberation, she opts for a spouse because she would “like the company” and “he’ll be worth $50,000 at the end.”

"He'll be worth $50,000 in the end"

A poignant vignette on parenting, marriage, and The Game of Life by Youngna Park

youngna.substack.com/p/eight-vign...

Posted Dec 2, 2024

Oops, forgot the source and date. Published in the Washington Post, July 15 2001.

A promotional photo of John Scarne with two other people, possibly his family, featuring the games Teeko and Scarney, along with many books and other products.

"Cards and gambling authority John Scarne claimed to have invented one of the greatest board games of all time. Was he bluffing?"

Blake Eskin on the strange history of Teeko, an abstract game—and also a fantasy of intellectual achievement and community.

www.blakeeskin.com/articles/a-w...

A case study on the fonts of Pentiment, a video game about books and writing and how words carry the awkward heft of history.

lettermatic.com/custom/penti...

By @rileycran.bsky.social, posted Nov. 15 2024

Confused about this game's approach to Marxism | Potato Man I own the Zoch Verlag edition of Potato Man, and, as befits the product of a German publisher, it's clearly intended as an introductory primer to the concept of class struggle: as is obvious from the ...

Lighthearted fun from the depths of BGG:

A Marxist critique of the Zoch Verlag edition of Potato Man.

"Can anyone recommend a more recent version of Potato Man which shows a deeper engagement with the principles of Marxism?"

boardgamegeek.com/thread/34081...

By Frederic Heath-Renn, Nov. 19 2024

People always say "Kill your darlings," but why?

Kory Heath tells us why: "Darlings" can be "monkey traps;" fantasies about our work that aren't realistic. Design is the process of escaping these traps.

www.koryheath.com/monkey-traps/

Posted June 2, 2014

Thanks so much for the kind words.

Photo posted to BGG by Andrew Petrarca: boardgamegeek.com/image/107655...

Sad to hear that Kory Heath has passed.

Here are the rules to Heath's game Zendo, which (truly!) teaches the players how to become scientists. It is a masterpiece.

(The rules call for Looney Pyramids, but you can play Zendo with anything you have around.)

www.koryheath.com/zendo/

Learn How To Play Schnapsen In 10,000 Words, A Marcus Ludicrus Essay About Games, Cards, The Meaning of Life, And Many Things In Between If you don’t know who Marcus Ludicrus is don’t worry because no one does, not even the man himself. But you can get a feeling for what Marcus Ludicrus stands for from his previous essay here. In that...

From the depths of BGG: A sweeping treatise on the value of traditional games as a bulwark against the cultural ravages of modernity. Also a Schnapsen tutorial.

By the pseudonymous Marcus Ludicrus, posted November 17 2024.

boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/346...

Tim Clare on how playing games to promote brain health is like having sex to burn calories: it’s missing the point

Oct 2024 Games Game Directory

Just visited Game Market West, bringing the scrappy, DIY, low print run culture of Japanese Game Markets to the US

www.gamemarketwest.com/oct-2024-games

Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, tuve en la palma de la mano un pequeño disco de los trescientos sesenta y uno que se requieren para el juego astrológico del go, ese otro ajedrez del Oriente. Es más antiguo que la más antigua escritura y el tablero es un mapa del universo. Sus variaciones negras y blancas agotarán el tiempo. En él pueden perderse los hombres como en el amor y en el día. Hoy, 9 de septiembre de 1978, yo, que soy ignorante de tantas cosas, sé que ignoro una más, y agradezco a mis númenes esta revelación de un laberinto que nunca será mío.

Go Today, September ninth of seventy-eight, I held a small disc in my hand, a fraction of the three hundred sixty-one that make that other chess, the cosmic game of Go. It's older than the oldest written word and the board holds a mirror to the stars. Its endless permutations, light and dark, exhaust the thread of our custodian time, and men can lose themselves in its extension like others in the day or love's demand. Today, September ninth of seventy-eight, I, ignorant of most, ignore once more, and owe my numina this revelation of a grave labyrinth that won't be mine.

A poem about the game of go by Jorge Luis Borges.

The original Spanish, 1978: borgestodoelanio.blogspot.com/2014/06/jorg...

Translation into English by abstract game designer Luis Bolaños Mures, 2024: boardgamegeek.com/thread/33196...