A recent issue of the student newspaper of the University of Michigan-Dearborn contained a whole Fun & Games section with three of five articles on tabletop games, one on gambling, and only one on video games. Articles included a profile of the student Games Club (D&D plus some board games), reviews of the latest versions of Clue and Monopoly, and piece focusing on the history and variants of Euchre.

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The NY Toy Fair is just around the corner, Feb 15 to 18. (The UK Toy Fair is underway.)

I count over 5,000 registered exhibitors, including near every major game company of all types (Kosmos, but not Rio Grande Games), as well as hundreds of companies with the word “game” in their name which I don’t recognize.

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Milton Bradley will be producing a kids game called Missile Mania Game, to coincide with the release of the Transformers movie (Revenge of the Fallen) scheduled for release this summer.

“Kapow!” says the box cover. “Blast Your Way To Victory!”

Milton Bradley? Kindly meet me at camera three. *swivels in his chair*

Hasbro, Milton Bradley, and so on: you can’t use the words, images, and themes of video games to lure kids away from video games. Video games are better at being video games than your plastic ridiculous toys will ever be.

Stop trying to fool kids into thinking that your toys and games will recreate the same experiences they get online. Kids aren’t going to shoot your pathetic plastic spring-loaded clunky missiles and believe that they’re having just as cool a time as they are when they’re causing endless explosions on a screen.

If you want kids to play with games and toys, you have to complete using games and toys’ natural strengths: re-playable, durable, original, imagination enhancing, social, portable, inexpensive, intellectual (sometimes), and fun in a non-zoning way.

Thank you.

(source, hat tip)

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Professor Silvia Ferrari of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls and Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering has jointly published an article in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics showing how the same strategies used to play the game of Clue can be used to program robots to find hidden explosives in unfamiliar terrain.

The trick is to take the information you learned in one location and apply it to the next location. That’s not very helpful, but maybe someone with access to the article can explain further.

She actually figured out the algorithm while playing the game around her kitchen table.

(source)

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Upper Deck has canceled its superhero-themed Vs. System CCG, citing its inability to “move forward with the original vision of the game as a universal Super Hero trading card game platform featuring multiple comic universes.”

It originally tried scaling back on release frequency, but consequently found it difficult to market and sell the game. The lead designer says his goodbyes here.

Of course, you don’t stop playing board games just because they stop being produced, right? So nothing’s stopping you from playing Vs well into the future. Keep playing.

(source, hat tip)

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Think-And-Say Tutoring is a system of illustrated books, card games, and roleplaying exercises for teaching children social skills. Developed by Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin teachers Anne Dachel and Jill Doermann as a service to families who are having trouble accessing formal therapies, Think-And-Say helps children with Asperger’s, attention deficit disorder, and other conditions learn to cooperate with others, communicate with confidence, and deal with change. The system is currently being used by local grade schools, Sylvan Learning Center, and communication disorders departments at the University of Wisconsin, but the teachers are selling kits direct to parents for $20.

(source)

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