How to Build Team Morale & Cohesion by Goofing Off
From the Accidental Scientist. Relates to trust building through camaraderie I touch on in my WoW paper…
How to Build Team Morale & Cohesion by Goofing Off
From the Accidental Scientist. Relates to trust building through camaraderie I touch on in my WoW paper…
but right now it occupies about 200GB of my hard drive and I ran out of disk space to actually compress the files! So yesterday, after dropping SG off at the airport, we went to Fry’s so I could get a new external hard drive. $100 for 500GB! I remember when I paid $550 for 340MB or so (early 90s)… (and of course even crazier about 10 years before that when my dad bought our first computer…)
So anyway, videos of the World of Warcraft conference that was held in WoW will be compressed soon and uploaded to a server somewhere… π
Today, tomorrow, and Sunday, there is a conference on virtual worlds research being held in World of Warcraft (noon Eastern Time, Earthen Ring, US, Horde side, Science guild). If you can’t join, you can watch the live feed each day at World2Worlds.
I’ll write-up full comments after this weekend when Gray and Song Gong (house guests who need someone to play boardgames with!) leave.
I have to say, though, that the panelists and moderators and that whole format worked a lot more in WoW than what I’ve seen similarly attempted in Second Life, but part of it was that I knew exactly how to manipulate WoW’s interface so that I could easily follow the chat. I also was able to /chatlog it all and Frapsed it all as a half-size movie to my HD. Now I have to compress the videos for storage (my HD is FULL!).
Last Night On Earth, about 5 times – Best zombie game I’ve played.. though I’ve only played 3 or so. It can be unbalanced depending on the luck of the draw and dice rolling, especially for the zombie master, but it’s still a fun game. And it comes with a soundtrack CD! Too bad it isn’t quite long enough… We ended up playing that and the Event Horizon soundtrack, which was perfect.
Arkham Horror, three times – Fun cooperative Cthulhu-themed game. A little long to set up, so we played it again the next day before putting it away. Our first game, including set-up, took about 8 hours (spread over two days)! The next one took only 3 or so and the final one took about 5 hours… but that was partially because midway through we had a black-out. Seriously! And had to take some time to find and light candles. Photos soon… π
World of Warcraft the Boardgame – I set expectations low on this one since I’ve played it many times before and decided that it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Alliance and Horde factions end up playing two separate games, almost, with lots of downtime as you wait for the other faction. So this time we played with a variant where we were all on one side (Horde, of course!). The only problem here was that we had four players so the end fight was a little unbalanced. But still, I thought it was fun. I think maybe there should be some way to keep a running total of all dice you get to role so that you don’t have to keep counting them during each battle. That might save some time.
Rummikub – I played this with Robin, my mom, and my brother a few weeks ago when we were at Ocean Shores. Fun game. Gray is very, very tired of it, after apparently growing up with it.
Give me the Brain – Aaron gave me this along with a bunch of other Cheap Ass Games (see below for others) since he was clearing out his closet. Players are zombies in a fast food joint and compete for control of the one brain among them to fulfill various orders or complete tasks. It wasn’t as fun as I remember, but still… :p
Lord of the Fries – Another CAG. This game is what I remember more and liked more. And this time I still liked it. A card matching game. I wonder if it could be combined with needing the brain to put fulfill orders… or if that would just make it mean you need one more card for the run…
Bleeding Sherwood, twice – Another CAG. Very resource-scarce bidding game featuring men of Sherwood Forest exploiting/ransoming or whatever various characters they meet. I thought it was fun and quick.
Duff Dice, about 8 times – Basically, Liar’s Dice with a Simpsons theme. The Duff beer cans need felt lining or something to make the game less loud and jarring to my bleeding ears.
Blackbeard – Gray bought this pirate simulation game and had it shipped to my place (it just came out and note that the photo above is not what comes with the game but since it just came out I had a hard time finding a good photo on bgg). It’s one of those independent publishers that wait for enough pre-orders before printing a game. Some bad things about it are: a. there a numerous typos despite the manual being available on the web for a while (I guess no one who read the manual reported back to them that there were typos). One huge typo on the game board itself (Soth instead of South). and b. the game seemed relatively dependent on the cards you drew without a lot of strategy that you could do with two or more of your pirate ships. I think Gray thought it royally sucked. Song Gong and I are willing to give it another shot before we pass judgment.
Pandemic – Fun cooperative game that I mentioned before. I like this game because it takes about 45 minutes. Makes for a great, light game to introduce others to boardgaming, since coop mode makes the possibility of newbies being trounced by veterans impossible.
Clans, twice – A cool area control game… Somewhat reminds me of water beading up on a smooth, water resistant surface. π
for a week of total geekdom.
We’re going to try to play at least these games:
And we’re going to the Seattle Art Museum‘s Roman exhibit (with a slew of Reedies–“slew?”Β gaggle?Β grouping? an anarchy of Reedies maybe?).
I’ll post game write-ups and photos if I have time.
This comes at a time when I’m trying to write a game review on The Witcher and morality in games.Β I’m also going to submit something for a pre-conference on games ethnography happening as part of AoIR 9 in Copenhagen in October.Β Due in one week!Β But if I don’t get in, there’s also a doc consortium happening there and the deadline to submit for that is in 3 weeks.Β π
Nice write-up on academic Thomas Malone from Only a Game
The Bowery Boys | New York City History: The history of New York City in video games
One day back from New York and I see this post.Β π
The Grumpy Gamer posted that a fan-made sequel to Zak McKracken is out!
I am way more excited about this than GTAIV. :p
[Edit May 2: Oh, boo… it’s not in English yet.Β Damn my lack of multilingualism.]
We were in New York over the weekend for a wedding ceremony for my brother Max and new sis-in-law Nancy (and Nancy’s sister Nora and her new husband Brice)! Song Gong joined us there and it was fun as hell. Photos soon.
Impossibly tiny hotel room, especially the bathroom, at the Hudson Hotel which seemed to be more of a dance club for locals than peaceful rest for guests. Crazy taxis putting those found in Crazy Taxi to shame. (Lanes have no meaning.) A subway where half the stops seemed to be under construction making for lots of walking. Really good pastrami at Katz’s Deli (better than Carnegie Deli). A really nice day of walking around Central Park. Some slices of pizza at Sacco (near our hotel recommended by our concierge and good). Good museum going at the Whitney‘s biennial. An amazing lunch at Crema, a restaurant owned by Julieta, chef and wife of a high school friend, Jafe. (BTW, this was our best meal in NYC. Go eat there!) Incredibly good scallops and honey walnut prawn at the wedding banquet (Chatham Square Restaurant) where these three French girls at our table (cousins of Brice) didn’t eat anything!. Completely soaking rain one night after visiting Jafe and Julieta the night after the wedding banquet after they couldn’t make it because Jafe sprained his ankle while trying to catch an express subway to meet up with us (ouch!). Really nice pastries at Veniero’s. Two great grocery and dry goods stores: Zabar’s and Kalustyan’s. And a whole lot more! At one point we even had a cannoli in our pocket. But we didn’t have enough time to go everywhere we wanted. Next time it’ll have to be a week… or longer.
And the week before Scott was in town, up from Portland. He, Brian, Erik, Ari, and I played lots of games: Pandemic, Zombietown, Clans, Family Business, and Race for the Galaxy. We also watched The Forbidden Kingdom, the Jackie Chan, Jet Li movie out now. Fun
A brief overview of some good manga out there.Β I haven’t read any of them but now plan to!