The new thing in boardgaming

[undyingking]

Wired is that prestigious magazine of the technological elites, its finger firmly on the cutting edge of all things geeky and zeitgeisty, right?

Apparently there's a new boardgame called Settlers of Catan, which is "poised" to become popular in the US. "Along the way, it's teaching Americans that board games don't have to be either predictable fluff aimed at kids or competitive, hyperintellectual pastimes for eggheads. Through the complex, artful dance of algorithms and probabilities lurking at its core, Settlers manages to be effortlessly fun, intuitively enjoyable, and still intellectually rewarding, a potent combination that's changing the American idea of what a board game can be."

Who'd have thought it? Why have none of us ever heard of this game before -- why have the Germans been keeping it secret for the fourteen years since its launch? What will those fiendish foreigners come up with next?

Comments

[theo]

Siedler was launched at the Nurenbur Toy Fair in 1995 and published that summer. I am not sure when Mayfair first published the English language edition. It must have been before Janet Bromley pulled the plug on the company in January 1997. I remember that we found that the German edition outsold the English edition in the UK for the first few years.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I knew a few people who pointedly bought the German version in preference.

[theo]

This may not have been mere posturing: the English version lagged the German with the expansions.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I shall give them the benefit of the doubt ;-)

BTW are you up for another attempt at the Greyhound this evening?

[theo]

See you at 2030.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Saloon bar side, at the bar? Hopefully I'll recognize you from your userpic...

[theo]

especially as I am still wearing that shirt!