Different games lend themselves to demonstration in different settings. A
lot depends on the age of the event attendees and amount of time you have to
grab someone's attention. To a lesser extent, the amount of space you have
also matters. A Mensa meeting at your house or "Other Game Night" for your
college Dungeons and Dragons club will indicate different games than when
you have a single 3'x3' card table in the vender area at Origins.
I'm going to pick a scenario and then answer your question. I think you're
going to have unlimited access to Giant stashes and are demoing games in the
middle of a shopping mall. You have two other assistants that already know
the games. This is during some "Hobbies and Pastimes" event put on by the
mall. In this scenario, you want games that...
- Can be explained very quickly.
- Can be played a flexible number of people. 2 - 8 maybe?
- Have no turns or very little downtime between turns. This keeps people
from wandering away.
- Can be played in just a couple minutes.
- Are apropriate for children without too much adult guidance.
IceTowers (perhaps the 3House version) would be good in this situation.
If the scenario you have in mind is different, describe it. That way we can
help identify game properties that best fit the situation.
On a side note...
You say that you're not interested in the name and backstory marketing
issues, but those ARE qualities that can make a game more or less
attractive.
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Zeitlin" <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 5:25 AM
Subject: [Icehouse] Icehouse games: What's the ideal?
Let's suppose, for argument's sake, that I was going to create a
'pseudo-Experiment' or 'pseudo-Mini-Experiment' for games using Icehouse
pieces.
Furthermore, let's suppose that I *don't* have resources like Looney
Labs, the SLICK list or the icehousegames.org wiki available to select
existing games from. All I have is an arbitrary number of complete sets
of Icehouse pieces (in all ten colors). I can mix and match as
necessary, including making both Rainbow and Xeno Treehouse sets.
I now have to design a set of games to play with these things, to
demonstrate them and draw people in.
What makes a game attractive to people? I'm looking for the qualities
of the game itself; things like the name and the "backstory" are purely
marketing issues, and I'm not interested in that part; I want to be able
to get some people together and show off these nifty pyramid thingies
and give them some games that they'll want to play with them.
(If you can't adequately describe a particular quality, but there are
games on the SLICK list or the wiki that you know unquestionably possess
them, you can use them as examples, but bear in mind that I might not
see the same qualities, so do the best you can at describing the quality
before giving the examples, and try to focus on the particular aspect of
an example game that gives it that quality.)
--
Jeff Zeitlin
icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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