by Dan Moren
The future of board games: malleable, personal, and finite
Slate has a nice piece on the changing future of board games, from things that you play endlessly to a more finite experience, and the designer who started the trend:
Designers like Rob Daviau are at the center of this change. In 2008, Daviau was working at the toy behemoth Hasbro, cranking out variations on classic games–a Harry Potter edition of Clue, Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, and countless version of Risk. One day, at a brainstorming session for Clue, he cracked a joke. “I don’t know why they keep inviting these people over,” he said. “They’re all murderers.”
I’ve been playing Daviau’s Pandemic Legacy with a few friends since earlier this year, and it’s just as good as the buzz says. Last night, during our latest session, we ended up FaceTiming one of our players who couldn’t make it, because we had to share with her the utter craziness that had just gone down.
Seafall, Daviau’s next title, might be among the most hotly anticipated games of all time. When I was at Gen Con earlier this month, one of my friends made a beeline to the booth for publisher Z-Man as soon as the doors to the exhibit hall opened, but they were already sold out of all their copies. (It doesn’t ship for real until later this fall.)
The current Pandemic Legacy is billed as “Season 1”, so I’m intrigued to see what happens when a Season 2–which they’re reportedly working on–comes down the pike.