business / economic games

why is business such a popular subject for euro games? there are members of my games group who are obsessed with this kind of thing. when they want to play a long game, they opt for a 3 hour spreadsheet manipulation exercise. from power grid to age of steam, they love this shit! i don't get it! i play them when pushed (i really have nothing better to do at the moment due to miserable reasons i won't go into here, this is not livejournal), but man alive.

last week we played indonesia, a fairly standard business game that humourously rates a 4 on BGGs "weight scale". this game is pretty simple as far as i can tell, the only complicated bit is that sometimes it forces you to bid in increments of 7 or 13 or something. the rest of the group is aware that i find this type of game pretty depressing, but i enjoy their company as despite their frequent dire taste in game, there is generally a lot of good talk at the table, mostly because this kind of game features a lot of waiting around between turns. anyways, we played for 3 hours, and it came to totting up the scores. i normally come last in this type of game, so they all announced their points and one of them said "wow, 20 points between first and third!", naturally assuming that i had come last. i hadn't announced my score as i was a bit worried i had miscounted. their top score was 800. i believed i had 920. one of them then counted my score. i was wrong. i had 970.

i mocked their boring economic game, BY CRUSHING THEM BRUTALLY!

Well, the thing is, a business game doesn't have to be one of these fucking lame ass spreadsheet exercises in squeezing maximum VPs out of minimum investments amortized over X number of turns...it's just that Euro designers have had their way with the theme and really there hasn't been an AT style business game. Imagine a business game that was really true to its theme- cutthroat, nasty, brutal, and full of alliances of convenience, betrayal, and intrigue. That could be really awesome. I'm talking about a business game that's more Gordon Gecko ruthlessness than this trading oregano for VPs shit. Something with real competition, not this bizarro world where enterprises operate together in peace and harmony and never try to bury each other.

The only economic games that I really like are strangely pretty abstract...ACQUIRE is probably the best one ever because it's ruthless, competitive, and nasty but it's also extremely abstract. MCMULTI is the same way. I actually really like INDUSTRIAL WASTE but if it were longer than 45 minutes I'd take fucking sleeping pills rather than play through it.

Actually, the 18xx games are really brutal and they're purely economic games...I've only played 1830 and I'm inclined to think that it's likely the only one anybody ever really needs to play, but there are some really dirty tactics and serious competition in it.

AGE OF STEAM is _the_ classic example of the overdesigned, propped-up-by-mechanics game. It may as well be an excel spreadsheet. POWER GRID is much better, but I think I've already hit the threshold where I'll likely never play it again.

FANTASY BUSINESS, that's one nobody ever talks about but should...it's designed by the dude that went on to do DUNGEON TWISTER. It's kind of stupid, but the theme is fun- you're vendors of various adventure party supplies and you try to agree with your fellow competitors on a fair market value for your goods...everybody writes it down secretly and you can be an honest businessman and write down the agreed price, or you can be a total bastard and go lower, thus undercutting your peers and taking all the money. It's got a little more game than INTRIGE, but it's a good simple business game overall that avoids this god damned spreadsheet shit.

When I talk about hating Euros, I'm really talking about Business games.
A pile of absolute boring shit, th lot of them. Only exception is power grid.

What could you possibly find in power grid that makes it the exception? It's a decent game, I own it, but...?

I'm the Boss is the most awesome business game I've played. It is also totally Ameritrash in its gameplay: roll and move, randomly playing cards to cut people out of deals, plenty of spite and bad feelings.

I have only had a chance to play once but I think Imperial may be right up the ATers alley. It is kind of Diplomacy like combat with Acquire like stock speculation. Got to agree that Acquire is another classic.

The trouble with a lot of Euro business games is that really the money is just VPs and you are playing an efficieny game where you convert money to resources then back to money. There may be some specualtion but often it is controllable and predictable, which turns it back into an efficiency excercise.

I enjoy games like Age of Steam but I can see why some people wouldn't. There is fun to be had from micromanagement. It is like playing the computer games Civilisation or SimCity - to like those games you have got to enjoy doing minor tweaks to improve things.

I'm on Citadel's train in that I like AoS and PG 'cos I like the design, shipping and management side of it - I used to be an electrical engineer dude earlier on in life (plus was bought up with machines in my country background). Air Baron is another one I like as well as some of the lighter 18xx (mainly 'cos I can't get anyone to play the bigger ones - had 1830 for 6 yrs and it's nvere been close to coming out), and then there's Silverton .... ahhhh - which has trains, mining, and a changing commodities market.

Some of us warlike barbarians have differing alter-egos.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

When I talk about hating Euros, I'm really talking about Business games.

yes! plus area control games that take more than 30 minutes. and impressing the king.

moss_icon wrote:

Mr Skeletor wrote:

When I talk about hating Euros, I'm really talking about Business games.

yes! plus area control games that take more than 30 minutes. and impressing the king.

I like area control/majority games because they use the board for more than just point tracking or organizing pieces. Plus they usually have more direct interaction between players than the average Euro. For me its like the difference between "I'm taking that area away from you and keeping it so bite me" and "I'm taking this building a half turn before you take your copy of the same one."


Michael Barnes wrote:

Imagine a business game that was really true to its theme- cutthroat, nasty, brutal, and full of alliances of convenience, betrayal, and intrigue. That could be really awesome. I'm talking about a business game that's more Gordon Gecko ruthlessness than this trading oregano for VPs shit. Something with real competition, not this bizarro world where enterprises operate together in peace and harmony and never try to bury each other.

If I designed an economics game you can bet it'd be like this.

There you go Mad Dog...YOU HAVE YOUR MANDATE.

If I did a business game, it'd be set in the 1980s...DeLoreans, slicked back hair and navy blue pinstriped suits, buckets full of cocaine, statuesque women in white high heels and shoulderpads, insider trading, the Pet Shop Boys...

Mad Dog wrote:

I like area control/majority games because they use the board for more than just point tracking or organizing pieces. Plus they usually have more direct interaction between players than the average Euro. For me its like the difference between "I'm taking that area away from you and keeping it so bite me" and "I'm taking this building a half turn before you take your copy of the same one."

now in writing that sounds pretty good. but having played El Grande at the weekend, i have been pushed over the edge. i just can't get that worked up about a bunch of cubes that mean nothing. OH NO, HE PUT 4 CUBES IN SOME OLD PART OF SPAIN AND I HAVE 3! i just sit there thinking "so what?", and it's 15 more minutes until i can put 2 more cubes in some old part of spain, on the off chance that i might have the most cubes there by the time someone plays a card that scores that area or a scoring turn comes round. in a war game, i know how i am doing at any given moment. in this kind of nonsensical scoring system, i am continually guessing, to the point where the shit i gave has long since been processed at the sewage plant.

in writing, what i wrote sounds a lot more boring that "i'm taking that area away from you and keeping it", because in practice that's exactly what it is.

are there good area control games? too right there are, but invariably they are two player, where it feels like a proper contest. i really enjoy taluva. aton is good too. beyond that though, i am struggling.

moss_icon wrote:

i just can't get that worked up about a bunch of cubes that mean nothing. OH NO, HE PUT 4 CUBES IN SOME OLD PART OF SPAIN AND I HAVE 3!

This is where I differ from the usual AT crowd. I don't care if a game uses wooden cubes, cardboard chits, plastic pieces, pewter sculpts, or candy corn as pieces.

i just sit there thinking "so what?", and it's 15 more minutes until i can put 2 more cubes in some old part of spain, on the off chance that i might have the most cubes there by the time someone plays a card that scores that area or a scoring turn comes round. in a war game, i know how i am doing at any given moment. in this kind of nonsensical scoring system, i am continually guessing, to the point where the shit i gave has long since been processed at the sewage plant.

I wasn't comparing area control to wargames, but rather area control to other Euro games. However, I also don't feel the same lack of control you do during El Grande and have never waited 15 minutes for my turn either. Different strokes for different folks I guess. We should both be playing Roborally instead anyways.

Michael Barnes wrote:

There you go Mad Dog...YOU HAVE YOUR MANDATE.

Hostile takeover equals player elimination. Eliminated player takes a loan for a startup company. Gets taken over and eliminated again. I love it.

It'll be called Economix (the x makes it cool). Look for it soon at a store near you.

Of the Euro games I've played, I think I like Power Grid the best. There is enough going on there for it to be interesting. You can track your progress fairly easy by the number of cities you have. The auction for plants is an interesting mechanic along with the scarcity of resources. That scarity and the way things are bought gives it some degree of screwage. Maybe not quite the level of cuttthroat that some other games have, but enough to set it apart from other Euros.

Mad Dog wrote:

We should both be playing Roborally instead anyways.

right on.

I do dig Age of Steam, Power Grid, Indonesia, Acquire, and 18XX (that I have tried) as far as Euro-economic games because the game play seems to make some sense, plus there's a good deal of interaction and screw you potential. Traders of Genoa is an exception, I really don't get the tower (how far you can walk on your journey?) but the game itself is pretty cool and is interactive.