Games accelerating for faster-paced lives

Makers of board games are trying to keep up in a world of broadband, flashy video games and cable television.

The story "Games accelerating for faster-paced lives" published December 29, 2005 at 4:41 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[ThatAdamGuy]

I have a GREAT idea for a game!

My game -- which I'm so kindly sharing with all of you -- is:<br />- Simple... no rulebook needed!<br />- Fast... can be done in literally under a minute!<br />- Cheap... costs only pennies!<br />- Easy... you don't even have to be in the same room as your competitors!<br /><br />Ready? Okay, here goes...<br />Each player takes a penny.<br />Before flipping it in the air, they call tails or heads. If they are correct, they win. If not, they lose.<br /><br />If you're feeling REALLY extravagant and have lots of extra time, you can actually do a best two-out-of-three.<br /><br />And if it's not high tech enough for you, hire someone in India to do a randomized Flash movie of this, so you don't even have to TOUCH a REAL penny... you can press a button and have it flipped for you!<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Okay, on a totally serious note, this article depressed me. <br /><br />The quotes are so pathetic, they'd be laughable if they weren't, well, said in earnest.<br /><br />"We ended up playing for 30 minutes or 40 minutes. It whizzed by"<br /><br />Oh. My. God. People actually playing something together for over half an hour? What is this world coming to? Tell me, dear, did you feel guilty for *wasting* that much time on frivolity instead of, say, watching inane TV programs for 20 hours a week?<br /><br />Yep, anything more than an hour of entertainment with friends is clearly pushing it:<br />"A lot of people are strapped for time, and they don't want to pull out a game if they know it's going to be an hour or more," said the toymaker fella. I mean, yeah, it's cutting into my videogame time, for crying out loud!<br /><br />BUT WAIT! It's a race to the bottom, folks:<br /><br />"Our games are designed so that you don't have to read the rules...and then they're all designed to be played in less than 20 minutes," said CEO Nicholas Wodtke.<br /><br />Less than *20* minutes. And mind you, no distractions during the game... no joking around, no spontaneous stories or sipping of wine or eating of popcorn. This, folks, is SERIOUS, COMPRESSED FUN! Did I say fun? Er, I mean, flashy entertainment. Fun just sounds too, well, you know, wasteful!<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Just pathetic. It's bad enough that most kids are no longer permitted, much less encouraged, to engage in idle play with non-electronic things... hands-on building with wooden blocks or even making treehouses, etc. But I'm so #$*&#38;@! sick of our everything-in-under-60-seconds microwavable culture.<br /><br />UP NEXT: Sex and romance taking too long? Author details how you can compress your foreplay AND lovemaking into 7 minutes or less!<br /><br />AND: American CEOs and macho men decry the standard 2 weeks of paid vacation. "We can't afford the loss of productivity. We're not a bunch of girlie men needing spa vacations. We're hardworking A MER I CANS, gosh darnit! We don't need no steenking 'vacations'!"<br /><br />LASTLY: In an era where everyone's on the go, many people are finding they just have the time to attend funerals for people who have, well, gone up and went. "There's a need and demand for -- how shall I put this? -- more efficient funerals" noted Mack from Moron and Associates Research Firm. "I think we'll start seeing more of the 'quickie funerals'... you know, respectfully requesting guests to keep their eulogies at 60 seconds or less, you know what I mean." "Look," he added, "Grandma Mabel's dead, okay, and we're not. And we're busy people. So let's just get on with things. We've got quarterly earnings to meet..."<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Regards,<br />Adam<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.bladam.com/" target="_newWindow">http://www.bladam.com/</a>

[just_some_guy]

Gold!

I enjoyed every word.<br /><br />:)

[Anonymous1234567890]

Spot on!

Everything you said, Adam, is absolutely spot on! :)

[Tomkat6669]

*applause*

That was absolutely fantastic. I have to say you have managed to sum up my feelings in the matter quite well. The part that had me laughing the most? "UP NEXT: Sex and romance taking too long? Author details how you can compress your foreplay AND lovemaking into 7 minutes or less!"<br /><br />That was funny.

[blindspot]

Word Adam!

Word up Adam!<br /><br />Time is and always has been relative. Relative to what you ask? <br />Well...individual values for one. People spend time lots of time <br />on things they like to do. I could agree that overall attention <br />spans may be on down tick right now and many people believe <br />they are getting shorter. It is also true that people spend many <br />hours of time engaging with such individually focused <br />entertainments such as movies (2 hours), professional sporting <br />events (2+ hours), television (??? hours), video games (sky is the <br />limit here). <br /><br />These kinds of activities and the amounts of time spent on them <br />prove to me that people want to be enganged with engrossing <br />activities. The kinda sad thing is that most of the above activities <br />involve either a kind of isolation or a shelling out of money per <br />engagement, or both! It's not surprising to me that an article of <br />this bent would appear on CNET. The entertainment industry, <br />including all of the above players (yes, professional sports is an <br />entertainment industry) want our attention spans, and more <br />importantly, our dollars hooked up to them. <br /><br />A friend of mine told me about how over the holiday weekend <br />breaking out settlers of catan was a highly enjoyable way for him <br />and his family to engage face to face for extended periods of <br />time. I think he is right on the money. Board games are a great <br />way to bring people together for time to enjoy one another's <br />company. And it flies directly in the face of the ideas of most of <br />the entertainment industry.