Game On by Basic Assembly, performed at the Chocolate Factory, is “an original performance environment designed for New York City’s creative community. In this hour-long diversion, Basic Assembly shuffles player and spectator together, dealing them to a table of video feeds, motion sensors, and interactive art. Play the wildcard, challenge the Wizard, and bring meaning back to Kansas.”

I honestly have no idea what that means, or what it has to do with the card game SET, but read the New York Times review of the performance and see if you can figure it out.

(review)

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The Supreme Court is weighing whether to hear an appeal from Major League Baseball that a lower court’s decision that fantasy baseball is protected speech should be overturned.

If you’re not following this story, the idea is that MLB recently decided that not only do they own their usual trademarks and copyrights pertaining to their brand, but they own every image, number, statistic, name, idea, and concept related to the professional sport, too.

They’ve been trying to shut down news reporters, bloggers, and columnists who cover games so that they can sell them the scores. They also want to shut down fantasy baseball so that, in their own words, they can make billions of dollars doing the same thing.

Their argument is the “Right of Publicity”, which prevents a company from using a celebrity’s name or image to sell a product. Despite common sense, this right has been used to bully trivia board game companies into removing trivia questions about particular people. MLB has conceded that people can know the scores after the game, but still argues that including players’ names in fantasy baseball is a violation.

Aside from the lower court’s ruling that this is not a case where right to publicity applies, the transparent greed of their position, not to mention that they are attacking their biggest fans when they try to squeeze money out of them – which is sure to backfire big time, the right of publicity has to be pursued, if desired, by the celebrity.

Does MLB represent the players when it sues fantasy football? Is all that money MLB plans to make doing their own version going to end up in the pockets of the players? I don’t think so.

(source)

Update: The appeal was rejected (source)

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Sharma Howard in the Norwich Bulletin contrasts board games with video games. She’s not a board game fan, but she observes:

See, that’s the great thing about board games, isn’t it? You can vent your competition, frustration, at your siblings, your spouse, in a healthy way that hopefully ends up in laughter, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. I just don’t think we can do that electronically.

In electronic games, the action on the screen takes on a life of its own, not the relationships among the players.

(source)

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At Marion Court College in Massachusetts, professor Joan Thompson invited designer Charles Phillips to test his latest game with the students in her macroeconomics course. Phillips’ game is Bux, in which players must learn to take risk in order to get ahead.

(source)

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Friends of Arnold Circus Gardens in East London recently held their annual Carrom competition. In a three-game match, 11-year old Juber Islam beat the defending champion, 10-year old Abu Hussain. Apparently, Juber trained his ability to concentrate in the game by playing Chess.

(source)

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An article on the jobs site of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes how games and simulation activities can be used for employee training. One company mentioned is SillyMonkey, which has, among other work for clients, designed board games to train customer service representatives.

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A father-daughter team is opening a new restaurant in Rochester, New York. On the cafe’s menu is healthy light fare and board games. According to an article in the Democrat & Chronicle, Cafe Amenity is a place to relax, and so the pair have set up tables with Chess, Checkers, Sorry, and Scrabble.

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An opinion column in the Oregon Southwest Community Connection tells of Rick Seifert’s effort to better get to know his neighbors. What did he do? One evening last August, down the block from his house, he set up a card table, chairs, and a Chinese Checkers set. Pretty soon, people had gathered around and other families had come outside with their games. Now that winter has abated and the series of game nights can resume, Rick hopes to use the gatherings as an opportunity to talk about community emergency preparedness.

Now that’s what we love about games.

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