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

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Wired, the magazine about what would have been new and cool if we had written about it 10 years ago. This is much the point Andrew Orlowski makes about the new British edition of Why-Read in The Register.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I wonder what they think will be different from when they tried to launch it here last time. Apart from, oh yes, the print magazine market now being in a state of collapse.