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Sure, it's easier to contextualise a text, if there are more explicitly personal takes in i. It requires less effort reading something you have to evaluate yourself. It's easier to respond to yay/nay than to a statement phrased like a fact.

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Explaining why you (dis)liked something is only helpful when it leads to a clearer picture of what happens during play. Game criticism isn't a written argument for your opinion. You write criticism, because a game is worth talking about. For what it means, what it does or what impact it has.

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At best your enjoyment offers a hint what you should be looking at in your criticism. At worst, it keeps you from doing actual criticism. Which has to start with analysis; with asking yourself “what actually happens when we play?” The substance of criticism is exploring the process of play.

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Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

One of the most important lessons for a board game critic is this: your taste in games doesn’t matter. I don’t mean in some nihilistic sense of „we’re all just a tiny grain of sand in the vastness of the cosmos“. But literally: it does not matter what parts of a game you like or have fun with.

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Played MiniWWII tonight for the first time in at least 5 years. Rules needed a page or two of clarifications, but we stumbled our way through it. I quite enjoyed the small narrative moments, that emerged through play. And it's surprisingly elegant at times, too. A good choice for four players.

I think friction gets used too casually. There is (good) friction of something challenging your expectations, but IME that's telegraphed in a game ahead of time. (Bad) Friction during play is when things don't seem to "add up". And to me that's a failure of either design or teaching.

Predator: Arnold Schwarzenegger's Handshake Of The Gods

In that case, we should reject the idea of championing shovelware because there's some shiny kernel of something good buried within.

static.klipy.com

Alt: Predator: Arnold Schwarzenegger's Handshake Of The Gods

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Not sure I follow. For most games (shovelware excluded) putting in effort yields a more gratifying experience. This is true of most things, and people know that. But if it doesn't seem worth the effort, they won't bother. Great design makes effort seem easy, bad design does the opposite.

Eh... that seems to suggest that the difference between a challenging design and a bad one, is whether you get along with it. I don't mind challenge, but I do mind work I didn't ask for.

Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I used to make the argument, that if a game takes too much effort to get played in a way that feels gratifying, the game is not very good. Then I listened to a designer argue that with some games pre-empting the learning curve, by theorycrafting early sessions, is a better way to teach some games.

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Are we really comfortable with looking at games as art, if it means they can't be judged as entertainment? Are we comfortable with treating "having fun" as a flavour of a game and not as its primary purpose? I don't think enough gamers are.

Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I think terms like eurogame or ameritrash game have outlived their usefulness. Their only purpose lies in reinforcing stereotypes within the hobby.

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Reposted by Georgios

Laserbrille 💚 @laserbrille.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Wer CDU wählt wählt AfD #SachsenAnhalt

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Reposted by Georgios

William Bibbiani @williambibbiani.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

An "arithmetic" system that declares critics "untrustworthy" if they don't share the majority opinion makes me want to vomit. This is not how you foster honest reviews or better critics. This is how you stamp out dissent.

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Reposted by Georgios

Buy Mass Effect The Board Game! @ithayla.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

this thread about story in games is really good but i think this is the crux

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Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

That's what the strong parts of Descent Legends of the Dark succeeded in: tying player choices to narrative impact. I've long argued that our understanding of narrative needs to adjust to the medium. And if games are interactive, our conceptualisation of game narratives must follow suit.

Eric Lang @ericlang.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Reposted by Georgios

Random career tidbits: I have two out-of-print published games (won't say which) that went from initial concept meeting to "files to the printer" in less than a week. Quarriors was turned down by 5 publishers before Wizkids took it. I've still designed more TCG content than any other type of game

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Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This is a really fun review of Blighted Reach. But it makes me wonder why these games always seem to invite grandiose comparisons and language. Especially because reviewers don't seem to talk about the same idea, but different facets of the game. Either way, this is worth a watch.

youtu.be

Herding a Space Whale | Arcs: Blighted Reach Review

YouTube video by analog arnie

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This just in: the Fury of Dracula rulebook (FFG edition) continues to be an utter embarrassment. Vague in details and obscure in turn structure.

Technically, with that set-up, you could explain why hobby gamers by and large consider Munchkin a bad game.

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There's an essay in there somewhere about how this is both a great and a terrible title for the German edition of the game.

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At the end of the day, the magic circle is just our willingness to buy into the game and the implicit assumption that any of it matters. Decisions, outcomes, winning, theme... etc. Indifference to those things breaks the magic circle, and turns 'play' into something irrelevant.

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Magical Athlete is a great way to explain the concept of the magic circle. Players who reject the game as being 'random nonsense with no player agency' fail to create it at their table. Players who buy into the game, and become emotionally invested in the outcome, have a functional magic circle.

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Running a TTRPG adventure that you wrote is the epitome of 'Death of the author'. A bunch of people who all think they know why things happen and what they're about, but they're all valid. (One of them is trying to get everyone else into trouble, though.)

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*eye twitching in literary studies*

Sure, but at least there the comments about Wehrle games (from haters and disciples alike) agree on some base line of 'fact' or at least arguments about a game.

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That could well be the case. But it's such a narrow understanding of games and competitive play.

Except for the fact that a number of them have developed a tournament scene around them.

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I'm quite certain that's what they mean, but that just makes the whole comment sound obnoxiously arrogant to to my ears.

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Alternative facts now include game designs as well. Who knew?

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Quite. Especially because it was phrased with such conviction.

I am sliding into a whirlpool of self-doubt myself.

Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Just read somewhere that Wehrle games are many things, but competitive isn't one of them. Which is not the kind of take, I expected on a weekday.

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Reposted by Georgios

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Just saw folk who join the uncritical rush towards AI referred to as "LLMings", and I am stealing that.

static.klipy.com

Vintage Pixel Game: Lemmings

Alt: Vintage Pixel Game: Lemmings

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I agree that proficiency leads to a clearer idea of your own agency. Or at least a more accurate one. I guess it depends on if you overvalued or undervalued your own agency, whether the two are in or out of sync.

I think there are a number of games in which proficiency increases agency. Namely LCGs, where knowing the card pool intimately means your decisions are much more nuanced and intentional.

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To a player, that distinction is meaningless. Their experience (positive or negative) is based on what agency they feel they have, not what can be proven to them. The fuzziness of that belief is the point. "Optimising the fun out of a game" is a criticism, not praise for clarifying one's agency.

Parents For Future #EndFossilFuels 🪧🛢️❌ @parentsforfuture.de · 29/09/2026

Roughly: agency is the self-assessed ability to make informed decisions. Proficiency is the familiarity with/understanding of various game states and how they come about (which necessitates rules knowledge of course.) Whether proficiency and skill are synonymous, I'm not entirely sure yet.

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Reposted by Georgios

"Die Bewohnbarkeit des Planeten darf nicht auf Kosten des Wirtschaftswachstums gehen." "Man kann die B.d.P. nicht gegen den Willen der Menschen erzwingen." "Die B.d.P. ist wichtig aber von Verboten halte ich nichts." @johanneskoepl.bsky.social (via @robinschmidt.bsky.social ) passend📺 #Merz April

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I am not convinced that proficiency has a standard definition within the context of play, but sure.

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Perception is central to agency, yes. And while you can trick yourself into thinking you have more (or less) agency than you objectively do, the only relevant measure during play is what you *feel* you can do. Cf. Players passing on complex/heavy/deep games as "too random" after a few plays.

Yes, hence the original post. 😉 But this exchange got me thinking about the differences between these statements: I am proficient at: ...Uno ...Scrabble ...Ticket to Ride ...Root ...On Mars Does the sentence convey the same meaning with each game?

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