It's Disney's Universe...

...we just live in it.

Lego has its own Universe, and now Disney wants theirs. Disney isn't going the full massively multiplayer route (they already own Club Penguin), but is instead creating a minorly multiplayer game for Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Disney Universe will be the first time characters from all of Disney's different realms (classic and contemporary animation, television, Pixar, and live action) will appear in a single property (other than a theme park). Gamers will be able to "suit up" as 40 different characters from movies like Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Tron, Lilo and Stich, and others. There has been remarkably little information on the project, which is odd given its Fall release date. Thus far, there's no complete list of characters, only two screen shots, and the teaser (below) to show what it might be like.

We do know that players get specific tools and abilities based on the character costume they're wearing. They'll be able to explore 6 different world to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, in either co-operative or competitive play. The Disney Blog is reporting that Alice in Wonderland and Monstropolis will be two of the game worlds.

Disney Interactive just published Traveler's Tales Lego Pirates of the Caribbean, which is the same classic gameplay (and some of the same classic annoyances) as other Lego games. Disney/Lego also struck a deal for Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean Lego sets. Could we see a Lego Toy Story game in the near future?

Warren Spector Does DuckTales

WARNING: Comic book geekery ahead.

While game designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex, System Shock) was still working on Epic Mickey, he was already expressing a desire to do a DuckTales game: "A day does not go by where I don't tell somebody at Disney: 'Uncle Scrooge, come on! Donald! Huey, Dewey, and Louie! Come on, let me do a duck game!' So yeah, I would love to do a duck game."

Spector didn't get his Uncle Scrooge game, but he got the next best thing: the chance to write BOOM! Comics' new DuckTales comic book. The series relaunched this week with the first issue of Spector's new storyline, and the results are ... unfortunate.

Let's back up a little. Uncle Scrooge McDuck is one of the great comic book characters of all time. His greatest adventures--best chronicled by Don Rosa and Carl Barks--are epic quests for treasure. First Barks, and later Rosa, evolved an elaborate mythology and cast of characters, with Rosa in particular taking pains to turn the Barks "Duck" mythos (it's like the Cthulhu mythos, only more feathery and less tentacally) into a coherent storyline. Rosa's Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is one of the finest achievements in comic history.

Scrooge isn't a villain. He's hardworking, brave, austere, adventurous, clever, and, yes, very stingy: a perfect Scottish stereotype. His money and treasure were earned through sweat, courage, and negotiation. This is the core of the entire 60 year history of the character.

And that's what makes Spector's first issue of DuckTales such a misbegotten mess. He gets off to a promising start with some fan service as Scrooge tours through a museum filled with treasure from past adventures. And then Webbigail (the annoying mini-Daisy Duck from the DuckTales TV series) takes center stage and turns herself into the Voice of Moral Authority. And she does it while running a game of D&D (Ducks and Danger) for Huey, Dewey, and Louie, no less! She begins by complaining that D&D is just about "taking things that don't belong to you," and then proceeds to lecture everyone about how wicked Scrooge is for collecting (not stealing, mind you: earning) all his treasure and how he needs to give it all back.

I so wish I was making that up, but the whole premise of Spector's storyline is a rebuke of the entire series. I was going to title this post "Warren Spector Wrecks DuckTales," but I'm still hoping this is all a setup for some clever turnaround. Perhaps by issue 2 Webbigail will wind up as a tiny serving of Peking Duck in a Chinese restaurant and the whole notion of returning treasure will turn out to be a bad idea. The issue ends on a promising note as Huey, Dewey, and Louie--hectored and sidelined for most of the issue--make a surprise appearance, so perhaps they finally found that page in the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook that says "Ignore self-righteous little girl ducks."

The comic reviewer at PopMatters is applauding the new storyline for reversing "a pernicious and recursive problem in Uncle Scrooge, the slide into an oligarchical, messianic view of Western paternalistic attitudes to native cultures." That's the kind of anti-Western, jargon-laden, leftist nonsense you can only write after earning a "doctorate in literary and cultural theory." McDuck was a pennyless immigrant who earned his money by his wits and hard labor. He's an example of The American Dream, and some of us still believe in that.

I get the appeal of reversing the standard treasure-quest storyline, but the premise is the worst kind of politically correct revisionism. Spector has a fine storytelling sensibility, and he certainly has a lot of good geek-love for all things Disney and Duck. That's why I'm hoping the rest of the series turns out a lot better than issue number 1.

Report From Joplin

Photo: Josh Edwards

Josh Edwards (of Board Game Reviews by Josh) posts a lengthy report about losing his house in the tornadoes that hit Joplin, Mo. Here's how he begins:

Hi. My name is Josh. For a while, I have been using this blog to exclusively write reviews of board games. I've debated back and forth in my mind for a while whether I wanted to include "site news" posts or not, but thus far have refrained. However, something has happened that has caused me to go ahead and start that section. Bluntly, my house was blown down in a tornado.

Read the whole thing.

Spiel des Jahres: Nominees for 2011

"Spiel des Jahres" is German for "Game of the Year," and it's the most prestigious award in board gaming. A select group of German game critics puts forth various nominees in several different categories, and the winners (and even the nominees) can always expect a considerable spike in sales.

The Game of Year nominees are:

• Qwirkle (an old MindWare title that was just released in Germany this year: it's on sale for 57% off at Amazon)
• Forbidden Island (Matt Leacock's family friendly version of Pandemic)
• Asara (Rio Grande Games)

A new category called "Kennerspiel des Jahres" was introduced this year for more complex games. Those nominees are:

• 7 Wonders (Asmodee)
• Strasbourg (Pegasus Spiele)
• Lancaster (Queen Games)

A third category, "Kinderspiel des Jahres," nominates children's games. This year, the nominees are

• Das ist der Wyrm drin (Zoch)
• Magician's Kitchen (Playroom)
• Monster-Falle (Kosmos)

I believe only four of these games are easily available in the US right now. Those are:

Who Are The Associated Gamers?

Some of you may have noticed the little "Associated Gamers" brand in the corner. AG is the brainchild of the Kevin Schlabach, of Seize Your Turn and Play in Public fame. It's essentially a broadcast channel where a  group of Eurogame bloggers can share their links in one handy place. Although I'm not strictly a Eurogame blogger, Kevin was kind enough to ask me to participate, and I think it's a great place to get links to all your news and reviews in one place.

This is probably a good moment to reiterate what State of Play is and isn't. This is a personal blog focused on games of all types in order to bring interesting items (news, games, puzzles, reviews) to a mainstream readership. There are a number of people covering Eurogames far better than I. Writers and podcasters like W. Eric Martin, Tom Vasel, Dice Hate Me, Board Games Reviews by Josh, the members of Associated Gamers, and many others do a terrific job. And, of course, there are always the BoardGameGeek forums for the brave or foolhardy. I do cover Eurogames, but I don't single them out as the only "good" kind of game. I'm just as likely to write about chess or playing cards or videogames. (In fact, my playing card posts--particularly playing card art--get far, far more hits than anything else here.)

Associated Gamers is also helping to create a sense of community among various game bloggers, which brings me to the most important part of this post. Through the AG messages on Posterous, I've been able to exchange comments with a number of different writers, including Josh Edwards of Board Game Reviews by Josh. Josh lives in Joplin, Missouri. He writes on Twitter: "I and my family are all safe. Unfortunately, my house (and boardgames) were completely lost. So... Yeah... Don't really know what to say."

Someone on BGG has already started a thread to help Josh and his family as they try to rebuild their lives. As I learn more, I'll report it in a future post. Our prayers are with them all.

Free RPG Day

In the tradition of Free Comic Book Day, game stores and publishers are coming together to make June 18th "Free RPG Day." Participating retailers will have free quickstart adventures, dice, and similar items from White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and other companies. Check out the official site to find a store near you.

Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype on Kickstarter

Paul Nowak of Eternal Revolution has begun a Kickstarter Campaign to continue the production of Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype, which just won a MENSA select award and was also on our Games 100 list for 2011. Paul just sent me a copy of this wonderful game, and I hope to have a review of it here in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy these video that explain a bit about the game, G.K. Chesterton, and Distributism.

Chesterton On Chess and Madness

The previous post about Bobby Fischer calls to mind a famous passage from Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton. Long before Bobby Fischer, G.K. Chesterton wrote of the madness of chess players, the sanity of the imagination, and the challenges of reason. (I've paragraphed the passage to make it easier to read on the blog.)

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. 

Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram.[...] 

The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein*. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

*Note: This is a reference to Montague Holbein, who tried to swim the English Channel.

Bobby Fischer Against the World

Susan Polgar posted a link to a trailer for Bobby Fischer Against the World, the first feature documentary about Bobby Fischer. (Polgar is featured at the 22-second mark.)



It's an interesting minute that explains the sheer mathematical complexity of chess, which may or may not be what drove Fischer batty. You can find out more at bobbyfischermovie.co.uk.

Ticket to Ride and Bohnanza Are Now Apps

The headline pretty well says it all.  Ticket to Ride is iPad only. Here's a 5 minute video walk through from Days of Wonder.


Bohnanza, a port of the classic bean-planting card game, is available in regular and HD flavors. I've spent some time with the Bohnanza app and it plays fairly well, albeit a bit slowly.

Both of these are classic Eurogames, now available in handy portal formats for a fraction of their original price. With Tikal released last month and Puerto Rico on the way, the Spring is shaping up to be a very good season for mobile Eurogames.

Review: Stacking (XBLA/PS3)

A game set at the turn of the century dealing with child abduction, labor strife, and poverty, all done in a whimsical silent-movie style and featuring a cast of matryoshka (nesting) dolls with diverse powers? Yeah, Tim Shafer and Double Fine Productions are back.

Stacking is a small, Xbox/PSN Arcade game developed simultaneously with Double Fine’s more high-profile Brutal Legend, and is altogether more entertaining and imaginative than its big-budget cousin.

Stacking concerns the adventures of Charlie Blackmore, the smallest member of a family of nesting dolls. When his siblings are kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude, Charlie is left behind due to his small size. This, however, becomes one of his greatest assets, because Charlie is able to “nest” in any doll that is one size larger than him.

Each kind of doll has a unique power. Some of these are useless, such as playing tag or going to the bathroom. But some are essential for solving puzzles, and therein lay the key to the gameplay. If you need to lure a doorman away from his door, you can use the female doll that screams (he’ll rush to her aid) or the female doll that “seduces” (he’ll fall in love and abandon his post for a few seconds). Many locations include multiple solutions, so you might find yourself clearing a room by (ahem) passing gas into a ventilator, or by infiltrating the room as a mechanic, or by sneaking past the guard.

The variety of dolls and powers along with the detailed environments mean the game is rich in content. You can simply go about collecting new dolls and trying out their powers. You can search out sets of matching dolls in order to learn their stories. Or you can just follow the adventure where it leads by talking to characters and using various doll abilities to solve puzzles.

This is an immensely clever and appealing game. There is a bit of potty humor (belching, flatulence, bathroom visits, etc), but nothing too offensive. The odd and disappointing part is the length. For a game that is jammed with detail and loaded with potential, the adventure itself plays out rather quickly. A sequel—The Lost Hobo King—is already out, but it’s even shorter. I guess there are worse things to say about a game than “I wish it went on longer.”

Site Update

Sorry for the light blogging lately, but a combination of work, vacation, volunteer obligations, the beginning of grad school, minimal gaming time, and the complete meltdown of Blogger conspired to keep me away from the game table and the blog.

Also: I'm lazy.

While I find some balance among work, school, home, and sanity, blogging may be light, but there will still be new content each week. I have a lot of items I've been wanting to review, and I hope to start getting some of those posted next week.

And just so reading this post wasn't a total waste, here's a sculpture made of Scrabble tiles.

The sculpture and the photo are by David Mach (the link is NSFW).

The Rivals For Catan: The Card Editor

I haven't had a chance to play The Rivals for Catan, but I just noticed that Mayfair has a custom card creator for the game. Here's how they describe it:

Here you have the possibility to create your very own playing card within minutes. The “Harald” card serves as a template. Just insert a picture, choose a name, and create a short text for your very own hero card. After that, all you have to do is save your work as a JPG or PDF file, print it, and glue it to the original “Harald” card.

Repostings

Blogger kept saying they were going to restore the posts they wiped out, but that never happened. Instead, I've reconstructed them from the RSS feed. It's not that the content was so deathless and essential that I felt it needed to be preserved forever, but it's irritating to do something and have it deleted.

Games Magazine: Online Contest (Xiangqi/Chinese Chess)

Wayne Schmittberger, my boss at Games Magazine, designed a new online contest based on Chinese Chess (Xiangqi). I haven't tried it yet, but it looks fairly brutal.

The goal is to use the opening setup shown above, and then "determine the number of different positions that can occur after the first player’s (Red’s) second move in a game of xiangqi, if both of Red’s moves are made with cannons. That is, after Red moves a cannon, Black replies with any legal move by any piece, and Red moves a cannon again (either the same cannon as before or the other one), how many different positions can appear on the board?"

Check out the site for the full instructions and details on how to enter the contest. The prizes are a year's subscription to Games Magazine. Deadline is July 1st.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Home Sheep Home: A Shaun the Sheep Game

Home Sheep Home is a remarkably popular free Java game featured on the Shaun the Sheep home page. It's a simple but immensely appealing puzzle game with a gentle watercolor/ink art style and clever challenges. The goal is to get Shaun, Shirley, and Timmy back to the barn by solving various obstacle-based puzzles. It's not particularly hard, but it's fun nonetheless.

Now, Home Sheep Home has made the leap to the App Store. It's the same as the flash game, but for $1 you can take it along with you on all your plasticine-animated adventures.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Tetris Gets a Movie

Directed by Michael Bay, starring Johnny Depp as "Four-Block-L-Shaped-Piece," and with special effects by WETA Workshop!

Okay, so I made that up. But there is a Tetris movie, and it's called Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. In the tradition of The King of Kong, Darkon, The Dungeon Masters, and Word Wars, this is a documentary about a particular gamer subculture, and no doubt will feature the usual obsessives and Aspergians wrapping their entire lives around something most us only find passingly entertaining.


Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters Full Trailer from Adam Cornelius on Vimeo.


NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

WIM Sona Pertlova Passes Away

Susan Polgar is reporting that Woman International Master Sona Perlova died last Sunday at the age of 23. She was diagnosed with cancer during the 2008 Chess Olympiad.

Viktor Novotny writes:

Sona decided to fight the disease, under the influence of strong medication she played the Dresden Olympiad and undertook the chemotherapy right after it. After a year of intensive medical care she seemed to be fit again and she made the best individual result of the Czech players on the European Team Championship achieving a WGM norm. But the cancer came back. In the September of 2010 she became paralyzed during the tournament in Rijeka and the prediction of the doctors didn’t give much hope.

Our prayers are with Sona and her family.

NOTE: This is a republication of a post lost by the Blogger software. Originally posted 5/12/2011.

Blogger Problems

Blogger had some sort of meltdown and wiped my last couple days worth of posts. They're making noise about restoring them, but so far, nothing. I'm not going to post much until they straighten this out. If my posts don't return by tomorrow, I'll try to reconstruct the lost items.

Scrabble Gets Dumber, Sort Of

Last year around this time, Mattel announced that Scrabble would now "allow" proper nouns in play. (Mattel owns the rights to Scrabble outside of the US, while Hasbro owns the US rights.) This was the outrageous outrage du-jour among the gaming community in general and Scrabble cognoscenti in particular.

Except that Mattel didn't do anything of the sort. They were merely creating a branded spin-off called Scrabble Trickster, and misleading the press just a bit in order to gin up controversy and thus get some free publicity.

It worked like a charm (searches for the phase "Scrabble proper nouns" yield thousands of links), so they decided to do it again.

The latest news is that stupid non-words like "grrl","innit", and "thang" are being added as "official" Scrabble words. Wellllll ... yes and no.

The Collins Official Scrabble Word Book, in a desperate attempt to get themselves permanently dropped as a resource for tournament play, is indeed publishing a new edition with 3,000 additional words, some of them quite stupid. "Innit" is a kind slang contraction, which would exclude it from play. "Grrl" is just an abbreviation that's not abbreviated. No word yet on whether "pwned" is included, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

The World Scrabble Championships uses the SOWPODS list as its official word source. SOWPODS is a combination of the US/Canadian Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (the OSPD) and the UK Chambers Official Scrabble Words (the OWL). In 2005, Mattel changed their preferred (non-US) dictionary to the Collins Official Scrabble Word Book, but as far as I can tell, SOWPODS remains on the OSPD/OWL standard. If I'm wrong about that, please correct me and I'll update this post.

The US, Canada, and Thailand still use The Official Tournament and Club Word List (TWL), a modfication of the OSPD for tournament play, so these changes affect US play not at all. One the other hand, WESPA, the World English Scrabble Players Association, appears to be getting ready to use the new Collins list for international play.

All this does is create maximum confusion for international play and further discredit the use of Collins as any kind of international standard. The US player associations were correct to maintain conservative standards for acceptable words, thus avoiding the desperate trend-chasing and regionalisms of the international Scrabble community.

None of this matters one jot, however, in standard play. If someone slams down "grrl" during a home game, you're quite free to shake your head in sad disappointment and refer to the OSPD or TWL. This is exactly why my ancestors fought the Revolutionary War: so I didn't have to suffer stupid British word standards during Scrabble play. Up the Colonies!