Game Metrics for 2006

Here's the game metrics for 2006.

Huber Happiness Metric

Equation for a games "happiness units (HU)": (Rating-Offset)*Total Time (minutes)

1. Descent
   
2. Blue Moon City
   
3. Um Krone und Kragen
   
4. Battlestations
   
5. Fiese Freunde Fette Feten
   
6. Thurn und Taxis
   
7. Augsburg 1520
   
8. Puerto Rico
   
9. Traumfabrik
   
10. Blue Moon
    

Month Metric

1. Um Krone und Kragen (5 months in 2006, 5 ever)
   
2. Blue Moon City (4 months in 2006, 4 ever)
   
3. Descent (4 months in 2006, 4 ever)
   
4. Fiese Freunde Fette Feten (4 months in 2006, 10 ever)
   
5. Blue Moon (4 months in 2006, 9 ever)
   

I'll post my 2006-Games-Report shortly, which will include the most played lists and such.

Games of the year, 2006

This year, I'm doing a few categories as well as an overall "game of the year".

Best Light Game/Filler

Um Krone und Kragen

I really enjoy this one and it is a shame the English edition has run
into printing problems and the like. Once I get my own copy, I expect plays to go up.

2-player Game

Times Square

This is fun, but unfortunately it is more representative of a bit of a
weak year for 2-player games, for me. Honorable mention for two older
2-player games that I enjoyed a lot this year: Deflexion and Darter.

Kids/Family Game

Nacht der Magier

Very cute and plays well (albeit very differently) in the dark and in the light.

Eurogame

Blue Moon City
An outstanding offering from Knizia. Honorable mentions (both very strong): Thurn & Taxis and Augsburg 1520.

Amerigame and Game of the Year

Descent

I am not usually a big fan of long games, but when I like them, they
tend to be the deeply thematic games. This game really manages to hit
that the dungeon crawl sweet spot and remains engaging and interesting
for it's full (4 hour) duration as either Hero or Overlord and over
multiple scenarios.

My BGG tools and toys

I've written a variety of BoardGameGeek tools and toys, some mentioned
here, some mentioned on the BGG forums. I thought it would be useful
to have a single page which lists them. Here it is: Matthew Gray's BGG Tools. It includes the
trade tools, colllection tools, and a "random BGG game" bookmarklet.
There's one more, very neat, addition I'll hopefully be adding soon,
but it may take some time to work out the kinks. Enjoy.

(This is posted under the WebServices category because most, but not
all of the tools use the BGG XML API)

Great Service

I've had three remarkably good customer service experiences recently,
so I thought I'd take a moment to remark on them here.

A couple of months ago, I decided to order Darter (href=http://www.dartergame.com/>www.dartergame.com), and placed an
order on their web site. They indicated when in shipped, and I
eagerly looked forward to its arrival. Given that they sent it
priority mail, I expected it in a couple of days. After a week had
gone by, I was getting worried. I took an evening walk when I noticed
a box in the bushes of a neighbors house a few doors down. I fished
the box out, and it was addressed to me, from the Darter folks, ripped
open and completely empty. I emailed the publisher, letting them know
what had happened. They mailed me a replacement immediately for no
extra charge. Oh, and it's a very good game.

Last month, I decided to order some games that had come out earlier in
the year as well as a new release or two and some Christmas presents.
However, some of them had just gone out of stock at GameSurplus, so I
emailed them. I asked if they could wait to see if they could get
more in stock quickly, and if so, hold off on mailing them, otherwise
ship them immediately. Then, I changed my order. Then, I added
something else to my order. GameSurplus dealt with all this
indecision and complication wonderfully. They got one game, and
weren't able to get another, and shipped the order such that I had the
games by the weekend. Most online retailers do a reasonably good job
if you do things in a straightforward manner. Any complication, they
usually don't do as well. In this regard GameSurplus excels.
Additionally, most places, the reason shipping takes so long is they
don't "fulfill" or "handle" and order often until the day after you
order, if not more. The actually delivery companies are pretty quick.
GameSurplus takes, as far as I can tell, zero time doing "handling".
Plus, to the Boston, the shipping is fast. An order placed on early
Wednesday afternoon is here on Friday. href=http://www.gamesurplus.com>GameSurplus is a paragon of
mom-and-pop online retailing.

Finally, I had an issue with my iPod nano. For some reason, it got
stuck on "lock". I'd toggle the little switch, but nothing would
happen. I read about a few other similar reports online and tried
various approaches: toggle the switch fast, drain the battery to
nothing, reinstall the firmware, etc. Nothing had any effect. I
could plug it in and see everything on it on the computer, but I
couldn't do anything with the iPod directly because the buttons were
non-responsive, because that's the whole point of the "lock". So, I
happened to be near an Apple Store and I brought it over to the
"Genius Bar". This was on Black Friday. There was no wait, and the
guy looked at it, asked if he could take it in the back, and
disappeared for a little while. He came back and had not had any
success. He asked if it was still under warranty, and I indicated I
was pretty sure it was not, as I had purchased it last September. He
looked it up by serial number and confirmed it was out of warranty,
but asked, "Well, do you mind losing the engraving?" referring to the
engraved name on the back. I said no and was given an identical new
(possibly refurbished, but completely pristine) replacement unit, in
exchange for my non-functioning out-of-warranty iPod. That's customer
service "genius".

Not a collector

I own a lot of games, but I don't really consider myself a "game
collector", since I own them to play them, not just to own them,
generally. But as I continue to acquire more games, despite a reduced
rate, I occasionally question whether I've become a collector.

I recently looked at the list of SdJ winners and realized I owned most
of them. It turns out, other than this years, and 3 others, I own
them all. So, I thought about whether I feel any compulsion to buy
Torres, Auf Achse and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Well,
I've been meaning to try Auf Achse and Sherlock, which sound sort of
appealing, but without trying them, I don't feel any need to own them.
Torres I've tried several times and don't like. I don't need to own
it. I feel vindicated, for surely a "collector" would feel a need to
have the complete set.

But, just to be sure, I checked the DSP list. I don't own Lowenherz,
but I do have Domaine, so that doesn't really count. The only one I'm
genuinely missing is Der Fliegende Hollander. Again, no compulsion.
But, actually, it's only one game, and it does sound sort of
interesting. Uh oh.

BGG XML Snapshots

I made a href=https://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BGG_XML_Snapshot>snapshot
of all the ranked games on BGG in XML format. Do interesting
things with it.

Another month metric update

A few years ago, I posted the idea of a month metric
for gauging the long term worthiness of a game. Last year, I posted
an update to my top games by month metric and
I figured it's worth doing again. Games that score 10 or above on the
month metric (played on at least 10 occasions in different months),
make for a nice sort of "hall of fame".

When I posted a bit over a year ago, the list was 27 games: Electronic
Catchphrase, Crokinole, Can't Stop, 6 nimmt!, Call my Bluff, Battle
Line, Zirkus Flohcati, Speed, Lost Cities, TransAmerica, RoboRally,
Ra, For Sale, Apples to Apples, Knockabout, Carcassonne, Hick Hack in
Gacklewack, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Ricochet Robot,
SpinBall, Traumfabrik, Settlers of Catan, Medici, Igel Argern, Lord of
the Rings, and Schnaeppchen Jagd.

In the past year or so since I updated, the following 7 games have
joined the list: Cartagena, San Juan, Basari,
Euphrat & Tigris, Loopin' Louie, Fiese Freunde Fette
Feten, and Shit!. I remain pretty happy with the metric as
a "hall of fame" measure.

When I last posted, I predicted a few games would make this list
before long. Of those predicted, only San Juan has made it so far,
but Heroscape is only one more play away from making the list and the
others (Ticket to Ride, Oasis, Adam & Eva) seem like still not bad
bets for the next year or two, but it may take a while for them to get
up there.

Of this years crop, Um Krone und Kragen seems likely to make
the list before too long. It's already at 4 and I don't even own a
copy yet, plus it's short. Thurn und Taxis, Descent and
Blue Moon City each have a score of 3 so far and will likely
climb, but it may take some time before they hit 10.

The "elite" set, those that score 20 or above, remain the same:
Electronic Catchphrase, Crokinole, 6 nimmt!, Call my Bluff, Can't Stop
and Battle Line. Zirkus Flohcati and Ra will probably
break in before too long.

Spider

Orb-weaver Spider

I believe this is an Araneus, but I'm not certain. An inch or two across.

Image Stitching

One of my game shelves

For many years, I've found the idea of image stitching, where a piece
of software takes several overlapping images and constructs one larger
image from them. Years ago, I looked for a program to do this, and
was always disappointed in the results. I even wrote one of my own,
in Java, using a simulated annealing algorithm that worked quite well,
but still not as well as I'd like. Since then, every couple of years
I've checked out the current offerings and always walked away a little
disappointed.

What I've been hoping for is a program that is

• wholly automated and doesn't require pre-aligning or tweaking the images,
  
• usable with handheld shots, not just nicely rotated images taken off a tripod,
  
• able to use not just horizontal arrays, but full grids of images, and
  
• capable of producing reasonable results with indoor and near objects, rather than just landscapes.
  

My own algorithm worked fine with tripod-shot landscapes of arbitrary
composition, but I don't shoot with a tripod much, so it's not really
useful to me. Well, I recently did some more research and I finally
found something that meets my needs, and another one that came close.

The winner is Calico by Kekus Digital. Calico is the fully automated version of PTMac, a supposedly very nice stitcher which involves a lot of tweaking. Calico
essentially doesn't allow any tweaking. You open up all the images,
tell it to stitch, and it does. It does remarkably well with handheld
shots and even does funky angles very well. For the "easy" case of
mostly horizontal panoramas such as this "small" one of the 2005 Blizzard, it does a
flawless job. For the harder case, such as the game shelf shown,
where the images were taken very nearby and there was a large array of
images (over a dozen), it does outstandingly. There are some issues, but they are remarkably minor. If you want a closeup to see the imperfections, check out this 32+ megapixel composite of one of my my game shelves. If you want to see an essentially flawless one, check out this 8 megapixel 180-degree composite of Baltimore, constructed from original 2 megapixel images. Calico is $39.

The runner-up is DoubleTake which has a far better user interface and is a real pleasure to use,
but doesn't do nearly as well on the multi-row short-range handheld
stitching as Calico did. DoubleTake is also less than half the price
of Calico, at $16.

Game Store Database

For 6+ years, I've run a game store database at my site. It's user interface was ugly, clunky, but functional. For a long time, I've been meaning to update this to a more modern interface, with Google Maps, better geocoding support, and things like that. Well, it's finally done. Please check out GameStoreDB.com.