Daily Archives: May 8, 2021

5 Alternatives To Classics

In literary circles it’s not uncommon for core texts to be seen as fundamentally important, perhaps because of their long-term impact, or their origination of important ideas to a particular grouping of texts. This is seen as one of those ideas that can legitimise a field – it’s not so much that videogames have been waiting for their Citizen Kane as much as is that they’ve been waiting for their advocates to be taken seriously inside and out of academia.

In board games, this conversation about a ‘canon’ is even harder to manage – it tends to be not about games as critically meaningful units of culture, because that’s… that’s real hard. Typically instead we get sales numbers, and that can create the idea that the gaming marketplace is itself fundamentally rational and never elevates anything bad and there’s no such thing as a distribution network.

Now, I think some of these ‘classic’ games aren’t… really interesting to me. And for me, as long as I have some games in my collection, I feel replace or displace other games in the same general field. Don’t think ‘I have to get these classics,’ just give them a play and see if you like them. There are almost always good alternatives, and now I’m gunna talk about some.

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