For Christmas, I want a new game that inspires me enough to generate material/write articles for it.
Due to some internal discussions within the editorial team here at d6ideas I have come to a terrifying conclusion. I am on a creative one way road. Not a dead end, mind you. A one way road. No sign of writer’s block or lack of ideas, but when I drop the pen, when the brainstorming session comes to an end, or when the editorial meeting is closed, it’s always the same crippled hand full of games whose names come up.
That I still have more than enough ideas for those games shows that I am not through with them by a long shot. And why should I be, really?
But still:
Sometime those games managed to catch my eye in the first place. And if those games managed, others must be capable of the same. But where are they? In the past it seemed to be child’s play to find them, but today they seem to hide from me.
My theory: It’s the internet’s fault! (Sad but true, to have to say something like that as an editor for a blog/online fanzine…)
Practically all the games I fell in love with I “discovered myself”. Without prior knowledge of their very existence, I picked them up in a store for the first time and started to look at them, free of bias. I could get to know them for myself, little by little, at my pace, with my own focus and filter, on my own. To find the things that – to me – were the ones that made the game great. Having grown like that, the relationship to those games is a personal one.
Today, I know of a game’s planned release years before it goes on sale. I get plastered in news, previews, and reviews. People vomit their opinions, praise, or criticism of the game into my face. And that way, I am laden with an opinion even before I got an inkling of a chance to form one. „I already know what kind of girl you are. So let’s talk price.“ How’s that supposed to flower into love?
(On top of that, dear friends, is the sad and sobering fact that in 9 ½ out of 10 cases, designers, publishers (if the two are separate in the first place), reviewers, and fans (of the 0th to 1st hour) are terminally incapable of getting to the point (in a few short words) of why and how a game is truly awesome. Which leads to me not only being saddled with the reviewer’s opinion, but also with my anger about his inaptitude. In the mercifully remaining ½ case, it’s then still open to debate, whether that which the reviewer found awesome about the game is the same I would consider awesome myself.)
I just want to fall in love anew!
But perhaps it’s better to wish for that for Valentine’s Day instead of Christmas …
And for next week I want:
English articles:
On Monday, Shadom is going to show us the second page of his D6 Atlas, this time with maps for the upcoming German game Seelenfänger.
On Thursday, yandere’s Patience, our first board game article, presents a house rule for the excellent Twilight Imperium sci-fi game (which would also make for a nice Christmas gift if you ask us).
German articles:
On Monday, the Atlas second page goes online with the original German text.
On Friday, it’s Shadom once more, unveiling a German character sheet for Changeling: The Lost, accompanied by a translation matrix for any important terms.