The Tao of Gaming

While playing 1v100 live (which has too much of a speed element to make winning from the crowd a likely event, even if you know all the answers), I was delighted to see that the prize was Carcassonne. It's presumably for sale as a small download game (probably for $5-10).

Developing a Euro for XBox (or the MSN network) would be relatively easy, and makes a nice bonus revenue stream for Rio Grande. (And some games on BSW would be vastly improved ... Settlers really demands a voice chat when playing).

I imagine there must be other RGG games on XBox live, but probably only the most widely known and accessible. I doubt we'll be seeing a Puerto Rico any time soon ... but, who knows?

I should also mention that the guys from Penny Arcade were funny co-hosts... 1v100 live has too many commercials but at least the "Host interruptions" improved.

I played several games again last night and then spending some time pondering Wabash, I realized that it may in fact be one of those games that lingers in my mind...

Despite not having played in a year(-ish), I've kept up with the strategy guides and articles. And the game really has an amazing angle ... it's an auction game where "getting good value" for your bids isn't necessarily the most important aspect.

Once people get a handle on the game, 'second order' functions dominate. A company that everyone owns one share of will do almost nothing (except perhaps place some track to hose another company). But change the split from 1-1-1 to 2-1-0 and that company will be expanding like mad ... and the big winner may very well be the guy with one share (since the player with two shares will be spending their actions expanding, letting the minority shareholder leech).

I'd realized that, but Clearclaw's "Joseki" threads [1, 2](which are under "Chicago Express", so I hadn't noticed them until today) drove that point home. There are levels here.

Not that my games last night climbed to that plateau, although we did have null capitalizations and I spent a lot of time thinking "how does this change the incentive structure...." Towards the end you do spend a lot of time on "This stock is likely to be worth X, so I'll bid $X-1."

For all that, the game lasts ~45 minutes. In my mind, Wabash has moved from "Curiosity" to "Gem."