Tom Lehmann answers my BGN piece

Hi,

Tom Lehmann has put together an article on BGN as a counterpoint to my own piece about multi-player conflict games and negotiation. Malloc and I have already joined the party - check it out and see what you think:

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...d_conflict_in_games/

As a player who enjoys both conflict and economic games, I find the polarized arguments among some game enthusiasts as to which type of game is “better” dismaying.

HA! I love it! What Tom is really saying is I wish you guys would tone it down because your arguments are just TOO EFFECTIVE!!!

Great job Matt! You haven't seen the end of this!

MattDP wrote:

Hi,

Tom Lehmann has put together an article on BGN as a counterpoint to my own piece about multi-player conflict games and negotiation. Malloc and I have already joined the party - check it out and see what you think:

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...d_conflict_in_games/

STOP SHILLING YOUR OFFSITE TRIPE HERE YOU QUISLING TART.

Note how I broke out the "quisling" there--that's totally British for "Benedict Arnold". And "tart" is "whore" or something.

Yesiree, I'm going to stay right here where everyone agrees with me and no one ever says anything contrary to establish AT tropes and memes. Home sweet home.

MattDP wrote:

Hi,

Tom Lehmann has put together an article on BGN as a counterpoint to my own piece about multi-player conflict games and negotiation. Malloc and I have already joined the party - check it out and see what you think:

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...d_conflict_in_games/

Anything you can do about the mutual masturbation going on here?


www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...putman_am_i_a_shill/

Christ, what a farce.

Oh, and Valerie? Yes. Yes, you are. You're a columnist at a site that accepts advertising from a number of different companies. Writing about just one game that you happen to have a huge stake in brings your credibility to levels below zero.

Sorry, I'm going off-topic. I just can't believe that place sometimes.

Ahem. Where were we? Oh, yes, your article. Top shelf!

Tom Lehmann is full of shit- not because of his opinions which are well-reasoned and sensible given his position, but because at the end he has to throw in his completely unrelated-to-the-topic take on the AT idea- he's "dismayed" about how some people prefer and openly criticize the Eurogame passive/aggressive noninteractive style. Apparently the Right and Proper position is to like all games. Except those that "concern" you of course.

The problem is that he's not able to design a game that can handle players actually playing the game outside of a prescribed system. He's like most other designers working in the Eurogame genre these days- he doesn't trust players to interact or actually _play_ without breaking or disrupting his fine-tuned, mathematically sound system.

Valerie Putnam is a huge shill. I'm sorry, but months and months of GAME Z'ing everybody in every column she has an opportunity to and for a game she has stake in makes her every bit as much a shill as Jeff Widderich. Then her defenders, all of whom she likely knows personally and has played games with extensively, pop up and refer to everyone by their first names simply reinforcing the strength of the clique and their "insider" status. If I did the exact same thing over there there'd be "concern" over my involvement with the game's development and if I was giving an "objective" opinion since that's what those people want to see over actual opinions and positions. If she just came out and said "Look, I love this game and I want to see it succeed and I want people to get excited about it and I'm going to do whatever I can to support it" it'd be one thing...but to suggest that she's not shilling and then have her friends come on to back her up is just typical BGN back-patting bullshit

I'd love to post all this over there, but what's the point? The whole conversation would become about Michael Barnes, and that is a very boring topic.

I'd love to post all this over there, but what's the point? The whole conversation would become about Michael Barnes, and that is a very boring topic.

I agree. Let's get on with more exciting topics , like this one!

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/218567

BGN actually makes me a little bit sad. It used to be a must-read for me, but it's really just turned into a mutual-admiration society between six or eight "writers" whose skills are shaky at best. I check once a week now ... if I remember. Sad.

That article is full of shit. Ubarose is totally right. It is a torturous, almost pointless piece of prose. He doesn't seem to believe that negotiation and persuasion skills are a game skill. Great.

And god damn it, now I'm going to shill F:AT. Content on this site is 10x better about all genre of boardgames than a site that's supposed to be about news and intellectual content on games (boardgamenews, also probably BGG). And what's ironic is that it's not just AT games, as one might expect. The euro coverage on this site is far better as well--I was not joking when I was saying that I'd love to see an Agricola week here if we could get enough editor and user articles who have played it--because then, if the content is like it has been in the past here, it would be the *best* Agricola critical commentary on the net. Which is fucking hilarious since this site is supposed to be defined by its immature commentary about games and is supposed to completely hate eurogames. Since popular conception seems to be that all the site is is a place for Barnes to make poop jokes or something.

PS Yes lady, you are a complete and utter fucking shill. And you should be ashamed. And no, you asking about in a cute way does not make you any less of a huge shill.

Couldn't help another post. Talk about different strokes for different folks, from the comments to the OP article:

"To be honest, I like this aspect of “calm” games. This kind of interaction (empathy) can bring you closer to your friends than much louder games."

I think calling euros "calm" games gives a lot of insight into the mentality of the average euro player. I may use that term from now on instead of euro.

Have I ever made a poop joke? I hope not...I don't usually do toilet humour...

Once again, the BGN denizens really show how what THEY do and what WE do in the hobby are two different things...from actually playing games right on down to shooting the shit about them on the internet. The hobby that they're involved in is _NOT_ the same hobby I'm involved in at all, really. Their version of the hobby is actually a very small corner of the larger board gaming world and it's a remnant of that time when everybody kind of knew each other and there wasn't this globalization and divergence that we've seen happen over the last several years.

This whole circle of people- Valerie Putnam, Schloesser, Larry Levy, Tom Lehmann, all those folks- I think they really think that they're the thought leaders and pacesetters for the entire hobby. It's like they still can't deal with the fact that not everybody wants to get online and cuddle with each other over "delightful" games.

Tom Lehmann's article, I at least gave the benefit of a doubt. I respect his opinions but I think he's totally filtering everything he's saying through his affiliations with that crowd. He used to design fairly interesting and pretty Ameritrashy games. Now he just copies whatever the Europeans are doing, and he's feted for it. He's an old timer, but he's one of those old timers that suddenly turned on older games, calling them "broken" or "flawed" in some way because he played PUERTO RICO and decided it was perfect.

This line really grabs me-

I disagree with Matt’s contention that the diplomacy metagame is just another aspect of conflict games.

I wonder if Mr. Lehmann also disagrees with "opinions" like "Rolling a die generates a random number" or "conflict games are competitive". I think the man literally can't think of games in terms of anything but structure. I feel sorry for him.

The whole thing he wrote just reinforces that Eurogaming is all about THE GAME and not about playing, having fun, or interacting with other people. It's about THE GAME and THE GAME functioning like a greased wheel without any quirks, interference, or surprise. Metagaming is bad an evil. When player personalities and styles of play are allowed to actually interact and engage through a game, it's a terrible disaster. God help us when people are able to talk and negotiate, it could screw up the fucking equations Mr. Lehmann labored over while he was carbon-copying the rules to SAN JUAN.

Whatever. I saw the writing on the wall over at that place during the 3-4 days I was posting and engaging with the people there. I really do like some of Eric Martin's pieces and I think his heart is definitely in the right place...it's just that the site is overrun with EXACTLY the kinds of ideas, thinking, and biases that caused the Great and Glorious Ameritrash War of Rebellion nearly three years ago.

Reading feel-good crap like that just makes me want to play a complete go-for-the-throat, up-yours, screw-the-leader, bend-the-rules, stop-your-crying game of Cosmic Encounter or something similar.

Christsakes, do they all bring their crystals and incense to game night, too?

TheDukester wrote:

but it's really just turned into a mutual-admiration society between six or eight "writers" whose skills are shaky at best.

Other than the "shaky" comment, can't that same criticism be lodged at this site? I love the writers here dearly (save perhaps the "quisling tart" noted above*), but it's the same folks largely week after week. I'm not complaining--I'm just noting that any hoby as niched as this one, and then taken another step to a subniche of that THAT is going to have a pretty small pool of folks enthusiastic and tech savvy enough to get their thoughts jotted down online.



*I keed, I keed.

I'll let someone else handle that one ...

But I'd like to quickly add that a large part of my criticism revolves around the fact that BGN is allegedly supposed to have something to do with posting news about boardgames. It's right there in the title: Boardgame NEWS. But take a look at a month's worth of posts and all you'll see is the same six people talking about themselves. That's not news.

I'm open to criticism about F:AT (I lodged a complaint just yesterday, in fact), but, to be fair, this site has never advertised itself as having news as its primary function. That, specifically, is where BGN has just become a huge disappointment to me over the past year or 18 months. It's morphed into a club of "discerning gamers" who think others are fascinated by the minutiae of their lives.