I believe you are falling into the same extremism that Lev exhibits in this matter. I play boardgames with quite a number of groups, and have not seen a copy of Snakes & Ladders in any of them. It is fair to assume that in a realistic scenario, games which nobody likes are not present. Hence, the downside of making a hasty choice is much less than what you claim.
My point was that I know many people who would prefer to simply start playing (out of a decent group of options which do not include Snakes & Ladders) rather than to spend large periods of time in analysis of the features of the possible games. For them, the analysis process is tedious and detracts from the gaming experience to the extent that it doesn't matter if the "perfect" game is eventually chosen.
We can take this into even simpler realms. At one extreme, there's the guy who simply grabs the first apple his hand encounters in the supermarket. He'll probably enjoy it.... unless it's rotten. He should have checked. :) At the other extreme, we have Lev, who wants to taste every type of apple available and then inspects every apple of that type to make sure he buys the best one. Which is the best apple-eating experience? That will inevitably come down to whether you consider the searching process enjoyable or unenjoyable.
As someone who falls somewhere in the middle, I'm not very interested in the specifics, but I'm interested that people find it worthwhile enough to have a flame war about.
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Re: System doesn't matter much
Date: 2007-01-13 06:43 am (UTC)My point was that I know many people who would prefer to simply start playing (out of a decent group of options which do not include Snakes & Ladders) rather than to spend large periods of time in analysis of the features of the possible games. For them, the analysis process is tedious and detracts from the gaming experience to the extent that it doesn't matter if the "perfect" game is eventually chosen.
We can take this into even simpler realms. At one extreme, there's the guy who simply grabs the first apple his hand encounters in the supermarket. He'll probably enjoy it.... unless it's rotten. He should have checked. :) At the other extreme, we have Lev, who wants to taste every type of apple available and then inspects every apple of that type to make sure he buys the best one. Which is the best apple-eating experience? That will inevitably come down to whether you consider the searching process enjoyable or unenjoyable.
As someone who falls somewhere in the middle, I'm not very interested in the specifics, but I'm interested that people find it worthwhile enough to have a flame war about.