From: bakerj@gtephx.UUCP (Jon Baker)
Subject: Re: Small games
Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 18:26:41 GMT

In article <1992Jul20.180348.18894@riacs.edu>, nicholso@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Melvin H. Nicholson YBH) writes:

> With the exception of sex, there's no person-person contact listed at all.

OK, I'll clear the air on the demographics and the person-person contact ...

> TV: Media-person
About 3 nights a week, watch TV with the wife, usually at the same
time as reading a book or magazine.  Yer typical 'quiet nite at home'.

> Rental Movie: Media-person
Pick it out and watch it with the wife.  Yer typical boring
weekend evening.

> Mindless video game: More often that not, one player media-person
Solitaire, passes the time when the wife is busy doing something else.

> Book/Magazine: media-person
Concurrent with TV or while sitting in the jacuzzi.
Sitting in the jacuzzi can also be concurrent with sex.

>  Also, with the age group you're mentioning, there isn't much
> chance that sex is a multiperson event either.
Obviously, with the wife.

What to do beyond activities with the wife?  BBQ and shoot the breeze
with friends.  Go out to dinner/dancing/movies with friends.  Watch
football and guzzle beer on Sunday with a friend.

All of these activities COULD be replaced with boardgames.  So there's
the competition.  Instead of going out with friends, or renting a movie,
you could play a boardgame.  It's got to be price-competitive, 
fun-competitive, and relatively easy to learn.

As for the 'media-person' focus; well, yes, I do keep in touch with
the rest of the world.  So do most people.  Your generic 'media' is
plentiful, easily accessible, and usually free or very cheap.  That's
pretty tough competition.

> One of the best things about boardgames is that they provide
> person-to-person interaction.  There seems to be fewer and fewer venues
> for this I've noticed, and I hate to think what this is doing to our
> society's social structure.

Hogwash!  Boardgames are NOT the only venue for person-to-person
interaction, and I think most people would disagree that reading books
is contributing to the decay of our societal structure.

There are many venues for such interaction, popular and propsering
in our society quite nicely.
Go to a bar or nightclub.  There's lots of people, most of them eager
to interact in a casual social setting, most of them are actually
interesting, even intellectually stimulating.
Or, try just sitting around TALKING to a friend or neighbor, without
the pretense of a boardgame or movie or any other function.  Sip a beer,
talk about work, politics, sports, or the general decay of society brought
about by TV, boardgames, and books.

> I really hate to see that the television
> is becoming the head of the household.

I regret that that happened some time ago ...

> I personally don't want to live in a world where sex is the only
> interperson intercourse, and doubt sex would be all that wonderful in a
> world where it was.  Let's try to encourage our children to be able to
> talk to and play with one another.

Well, the sex-only world may be someone's fantasy, but not mine.

I wouldn't want our proverbial children to become dependent on boardgames
or any other formal activity as a necessity for interaction, either.
And I wouldn't want them to engage in boardgaming, at the complete exclusion
of reading, watching some TV, watching an occasional movie, sports, and
the plethora of other activities out there that contribute to a well-rounded
individual.

I think the goal is to try to reintroduce boardgaming as a viable option 
for an evening's entertainment, be it solitaire, with a friend, or in a group,
regardless of age or any other demographic.

Back to the original point, then - AH should be targeting cheap, easy,
portable games for the younger market to reintroduce gaming as an enjoyable
and economically competitive alternative to Nintendo.  A pocket game would
be a lot cheaper than NES cartridges, and a lot easier to port around than
a NES.

They should also be pushing similarly easy to learn and cost
competitive games to the adult mass market, where the big money really is.
For instance, Acquire is an absolutely wonderful game and quite easy to
learn - so why doesn't every home have it?  Because nobody's heard of it.
Where's the advertising?  New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Sports Il, etc?
I think there's a lot of folks out there who get a little tired of playing
Monotony (current threads in this group notwithstanding), and would 
entertain alternative boardgames if they knew about them, and if they were
widely available.

--------------------
J.Baker
enuucp!gtephx!bakerj