This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Robert: It is possible to estimate how complex various games are, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity
. Go does turn out to be more complex than Chess, which in turn is more complex than draughts, and the gap between chess and go is significantly larger than that between between chess and draughts. There's more to difficulty than these numbers alone, of course, people are inherently better at solving some problems than others, but Go is undoubtedly more complex than Chess.
However, I suspect very few of the show writers who depict it as such know this. More likely, they're working from assumptions about oriental cultures.
Burai: Yeah, that was sort of my point: that the decisions are made in the absence of the numbers. The article you link, for instance, notes that checkers is actually more complex than backgammon — but backgammon will be presented in fiction as a suitable game for adults, while checkers is a game for kids and young-at-heart senior citizens.
By the same token, I suspect that Go would retain a sense of Zen sophistication vs. western games even if one manipulated the board sizes to bring them closer in complexity.
Burai: ... and on further thinking, Robert, I decided you were being if anything too forgiving of my original wording. We are pens of action — sugarcoating does not become us. ;-)
Robert: The above words written even as I was further editing the entry — partly to cut down on the number of parenthesis but mostly to stress the practical situation. People don't play either chess or go perfectly; they do the best the human brain can manage, when pushed to the limits of its performance. The intellectual challenge of playing top-level chess or go is the same, namely out-thinking a fellow genius. The extra technical complexity of go is irrelevant; it doesn't matter whether the theoretical ceiling is 100ft high or 100ft when you can only jump 10ft, so long as we're all human. Super-intelligent aliens might well find chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe, yet still be challenged by go, but there aren't any such around yet.
Of course, that last paragraph would be far too much of a digression for the page, so I just added enough to indicate how loosely the trope is related to the facts.
Blink Dawg: No mention of Settlers Of Catan ?
Sniffnoy: Right now, if you'll notice, this page is not actually about conventions and categories of boardgames, but rather about how boardgames are portrayed in other media. Settlers of Catan... isn't. While it could certainly now be considered a "mainstream" boardgame, well, consider how slowly media picks up on popular videogames...
As for whether the page should actually be redone into actual boardgame tropes is another thing entirely. I'd support at least keeping this page if we do that. I'm just not sure how interesting such a thing would get. Genres or other categories - trading games, wargames (and the many subgenres thereof), economic games, diplomatic games, area majority games, push your luck games, auction games, abstracts, party games, trick-taking games, the disputed "train games"...? Mechanics (which many of the above really are, and can be mixed and matched) - simultaneous action selection, opportunity fire, modular boards, pick-up-and-deliver, set collection, etc? European games vs. American games? There's a lot that could be written but somehow this doesn't seem the place for it.
Sci Vo: I agree with everything but that last clause of that last sentence. Once you move beyond things like checkers, chess, and go, board games are definitely a medium of creative works, many of which even have some kind of narrative. I find it very strange that the Board Games page is being camped by an article on how board games are represented in other media. This should really be called something like Board Game Depictions.
Ununnilium: Agreed. This should be moved to something like Board Games In Media, and this page should become a page for actual board game entries and board game tropes.
...actually, looking at it again, I changed my mind. The way the games could be depicted could be moved onto the pages for the games themselves; we don't need a Board Games In Media page.
Robert: Yes and no. It's useful to have the depictions of the best known games in one place, for easy comparison and consistency of style - say Stock Board Games. We can also have pages on Chess or Go that go into much more detail about how they are depicted, listing all the TV series/films/books in which they play a significant role, but if you shove everything down to the individual board game pages it's harder to show the pattern in how the different board games are depicted relative to each other. E.g, the way this page currently compares and contrasts the depictions of Chess and Go.
Thus, I'd say create individual pages for board games by all means, with this page as the index, but also move the current contents of this page to a Stock Board Games page, for a succinct overview of the standard games.
Noaqiyeum: I think we're missing a major stock board game here... Risk, anyone?
And I think we could try to fit this link in around here somewhere...
forthur: The games mentioned on the page as it is now are certainly only Stock Board Games; they're well-known, classic and have clubs and tournaments. However, as already mentioned by Sniffnoy, there are tons of games out there, with lots (boardgamegeek.com lists about 45) of different mechanics. Since the 90s, a number of new game developers (like 999 Games) have appeared pumping out great new games, like Settlers of Catan, Agricola, Blokus, Arkham Horror, Power Grid, etc. These are rapidly becoming more popular than the classics in family play, even though the classics will never be completely replaced, of course.
I also agree with Sci Vo that a lot of board games are a different medium of (interactive) fiction. A lot of them could certainly be added to the example lists of a number of existing tropes (Killer Bunnies and Munchkin are existing games and prime examples for their eponymous tropes, for example). tvtropes.org would be a great place to discuss board games and their game mechanics.
A helpful source, and maybe an important link for the Board Games page would be the boardgamegeek.com I mentioned. They have information, photos, variants and statistics on literally every board game ever created.
TB: This page is exactly the same as the Hollywood Board Games page! What are supposed to be the distinctions between these two?
fleb: I added a line linking to a Massive Multiplayer Crossover homage to Board Games. [1] Feel free to cut it.
