Comments on: A Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

By: Free Games

Free Games — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:30:56 +0000

A great collection of games in Hexwar. Really a rare revival of the classical SPI games.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:08:00 +0000

I’m tempeted by Hexwar but I really can’t tell how many players there are for any particular game. The subscription price is keeping me away.

I’m having a great time plating Advanced Tactics, WWII via PBEM right now, so maybe I’ll just stick with that, it’s paid for.

By: Pete UK

Pete UK — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:27:51 +0000

I am currently playing on HexWar for first time. I too spent ages reading rules for games like “To the Green Fields Beyond” and “Art of Siege” and many others. Just finding a space in the house to leave a map with stacks of counters dotted around it for any length of time without my younger brother or parents bumping into it and trashing the whole game was always a problem. Growing up in a village in rural England meant that opponents were IMPOSSIBLE to find.
Hexwar seems to solve both these problems!

By: Zone of Influence » Talk at University of Maryland

Zone of Influence » Talk at University of Maryland — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:25:28 +0000

[...] of Steel, where there is a nice write-up of the proceedings. From there I also stumbled across this entry on Soren Johnson’s Designer’s Notes blog (such an obvious title for a game design blog [...]

By: What You Left Behind » Obscurorant 2.0

What You Left Behind » Obscurorant 2.0 — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:02:07 +0000

[...] in my mid-twenties. I didn’t own a console (my beloved PS2) until I was in my thirties. Like this guy, I spent a lot of my childhood conquering the world via Risk or Third Reich. « [...]

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:56:53 +0000

As long as exposing the numbers helps the player not hinders. When showing the numbers leads to confusion, that’s a definite no no.

By: Dave Mark

Dave Mark — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:20:08 +0000

One of the things I like about Civ 4, for example, is the fact that many of the numbers are exposed right there in the interface. In the diplomacy screen, you know exactly WHY dude is annoyed with you. On the map, you can actually SEE the influence map decaying as it spreads away from your cities. You could make the point that exposing the numbers is a slow leak in the immersion bubble, but it makes me feel more comfortable that there is a reason for why things are happening.

The major advantage of doing it on the computer, of course, is that it beats the heck outta manually looking up rules and charts when doing it in a board game.

By: Troy Goodfellow

Troy Goodfellow — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:53:24 +0000

Re designing for the computer:

Given the advances in UI, graphics and ingame help, there is no excuse for “bloated, fuzzy games”. I think we’ve passed the point where the problem was that the rules became to too complex for manageable gameplay with forseeable results, and into a wargame world where basic interface stuff that is in every other genre just doesn’t get done.

There is a difference between complex and complicated and I think that for too long wargames have conflated the two. All us strategy nuts have played complex games that we could learn in a matter of an hour or two – at least enough to get moving forward.

And just because a calculation is done by the computer doesn’t mean that the player shouldn’t be aware of how the calculation is being done. One of the great things about SSG’s Decisive Battles games is that so much of this information is made available with garish colors and basic odds.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:40:42 +0000

I suppose, at the same time, there’s something to be said for the practice of deliberately inscrutable mechanics. Not as much in a strategic wargame, though.

By: Soren Johnson

Soren Johnson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:35:49 +0000

Yes, I am saying that the fact that the computer can handle all the calculations allows the designer to be less strict about keeping the complexity down. This used to be seen as a good thing (perhaps still is in some corners), but I think it has led to bloated, fuzzy games. Sid used to call this “designing for the computer” instead of “designing for the player.”