Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform? 531
andylim writes "recombu.com is running an interesting piece about how Apple has created a 'Jumanji (board game) platform.' The 9.7-inch multi-touch screen is perfect for playing board games at home, and you could use Wi-Fi or 3G to play against other people when you're on your own. What would be really interesting is if you could pair the iPad with iPhones, 'Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone.' Now that would be cool."
Size (Score:2, Informative)
TOO SMALL!
Re:Too Small (Score:2, Informative)
I know Scrabble is one where I certainly want to be able to take in the whole board at once. And I want to be looking at different parts than the other players, without them knowing what I'm focused on.
The desire to keep what I'm looking at to myself is true of a lot of games.
I'd like to see one of these table sized interfaces we've seen used this way. I know it's been done with d&d [boingboing.net]. That would be cool for board games.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
i just bought stratego and monopoly from target. they came in a wood box. all quality parts. $19.99.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Most people who play board games really don't sit around and play Scrabble and Monopoly all the time.
They play games like:
Settlers of Catan
Power Grid
Runewars
Puerto Rico
Dominion
etc
All of those are not cheap at all.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Ugg, I'm getting tired of hearing this misunderstanding. The iPhone OS is completely, 100% capable of full multitasking and uses multithreading extensively. Apple has chosen to restrict most of its own and all 3rd party applications to run only 1 at a time. Several built-in applications run in the background instead of exiting, such as Safari, Mail and the Phone applications. I do not agree with their decision to do this, however, but understand why they did. In a way, though, I should be thankful that so many people are complaining about this, even not entirely accurately, since I think the negative publicity might be enough to push Apple to change this. Apple isn't completely immune to consumer pressure.
Re:Sure thing (Score:1, Informative)
There are a lot of board games that cost this much. Sure, monopoly, scrabble, et al don't, but there are other types of board games out there.
Here are some examples of the cost of specialty board games:
1) Short print run drives price up
2) Imported from Europe
3) Lots of quality bits
Some specialty board game examples: Agricola, Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, Runewars, Descent, Dungeon Lords, Space Hulk 3rd Edition
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
What you're saying is: you're not a board gamer, you're not familiar with modern board games, the only board games you do know are old and tired, and you only play those as a last resort.
Maybe you should have a look at BoardGameGeek [boardgamegeek.com]. Several of the games he mentioned are in the top-10, and deservedly so.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh man, I didn't realize anyone else knew about Hero Quest. I just got incredible nostalgia from your post. I used to make all my non-nerd friends come over and play Hero Quest for my birthdays when I was a kid. Either that or the board game version of Civilization.
Eventually the computer version of Civilization came out, but I still prefer the board game format to be honest. I'm not sure how well Hero Quest would survive the transition to an iPad, given that the plastic figurines were half the visual/tactile appeal of the game.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
What board games are you buying and where are you shopping? Last time I checked Scrabble and Monopoly were still in the sub-20 dollar range. Even Axis and Allies is 40-50 bucks.
Those are some pretty old games. True, there are also many recent boardgames are also in the $20-$30 price bracket, but there are also a lot that cost $50+ even for just the basic game. With expansions, many games can easily cost more than $100. Even good old Settlers of Catan can get close to $200 if you buy all the expansions.
The basic ASL rulebook costs $100, and that's without any boards. Get Beyond Valor as well, and you're close to $200. I'm sure there are people who've spent more than $1000 on that game. (Hm... porting VASL to the iPad could be a very good idea.)
Speaking of games that people spend $1000s on, what about Magic the Gathering? Playing that on a couple of automated boards so you don't have to buy all the cards, could save you a fortune.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the music will quite happily keep playing in the background.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Runewars [boardgamegeek.com] for the Casual gamer? Give me a fucking break. I've never heard of it, and when I looked at the # of pieces that comes with the game, I thought it made Axis and Allies look like Candyland.
Runewars includes:
* 40-page instruction guide
* Nearly two hundred highly-detailed plastic miniatures
* Over two hundred tokens
* Over two hundred cards, both small and standard sized
* 13 map tiles
The contents of the box:
192 plastic figures
10 plastic mountains
12 plastic dial connectors
16 activation tokens
1 battle marker
7 city tokens
26 damage tokens
8 defeated hero markers
20 development tokens
35 exploration tokens
4 home realm setup markers
40 influence tokens
13 large map tiles
12 resource arrows
38 rune tokens
16 stronghold tokens
24 training tokens
4 faction sheets
4 reference sheets
32 order cards
23 quest cards
30 fate cards
12 hero cards
16 objective cards
25 reward cards
32 season cards
50 tactics cards
3 title cards
1 40-page rulebook
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:3, Informative)
bacon is not kosher, and I am a jew who knows about keeping kosher. your argument is moot, you meshuguna.
Let me try a spin at your bacon analogy. It's more like:
you make awesome bacon, and you'd love to eat it how you want, but apple has said you may only eat tripe, and well...a lot of people don't like tripe.
It doesn't matter what functionality exists if you cannot use it. Car analogy #2 today: Maybe my car can get 100 miles to the gallon, but only if I was capable to drive 100% downhill with the engine off. etc.
Meanwhile, every other tablet AND netbook I know has a: multitasking, b: touchscreen, c: flash support and d: realistic battery usage as opposed to magic promises of 10 hrs of battery life that doesn't specify if it's under heavy usage or what. Factor in what battery life a 1.5lb device has, and it's super unlikely that it's more than 10 hours standby.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:2, Informative)
If your going to quote someone, at least use the whole part of whatever they wrote/said that is in reference to what your trying to contradict seeing as how he wrote:
"Ugg, I'm getting tired of hearing this misunderstanding. The iPhone OS is completely, 100% capable of full multitasking and uses multithreading extensively. Apple has chosen to restrict most of its own and all 3rd party applications to run only 1 at a time. Several built-in applications run in the background instead of exiting, such as Safari, Mail and the Phone applications."
You seemed to miss the whole last line, as right there he is saying that it does have serveral built-in applications that run in the background, even naming them. Now if you had been saying that as a developer you want that capability that's one thing, but stating that it doesn't allow it at all is false.
Re:Uh, no. They didn't. (Score:2, Informative)
To clarify what others have tried, but apparently failed, to inform you of.
The iPhone OS, which is OS X with some differences here and there between it and Mac OS X, is quite good at multitasking and multithreading. The iPhone makes extensive use of this, as do its apps.
What the iPhone OS disallows is running third-party apps *in the background*. Built-in functions, like iPod music playing, Mail checking, SMS and call receiving, etc., all run in the background just fine.
The Anti-iPad (Score:3, Informative)
That being said, I'm not paying $500 or more for a locked down device with no expansion, no external ports, and no multitasking. I'll just wait for some other similarly priced (or cheaper!) tablet that doesn't require permission from the company that built it just so I can use whatever program I want.
Like me, you seem to be in the exact opposite demographics as the one targetted by Apple.
So let me just drop a link about Always Innovating's Touch Book [alwaysinnovating.com] that I've found the other day on the web.
It's a (non-capacitative) touchscreen tablet which can be docked into a keyboard to form a netbook.
It's got plenty of USB ports, both outside (2 free) and inside (3 free) to be used the for modules (the things comes with an USB and a Wifi dongles you can put on 2 inside ports). It's powered by an ARM (the same as the beagle board) so it has a good battery life. And it's running Linux (their own distro, but compatible with Ubuntu, Android, etc.)
On the down side : no built-in VGA out, nor webcam, nor GPS, though the USB ports are here for a reason.
The price is acceptable given the openness of the device.
It's not what I would buy for a Grandma, but if you want something hackable - this is hackable by design. It's the exact anti-iPad ("anti" in the meaning "opposite of")
Not standby (Score:2, Informative)
Re:iFail (Score:1, Informative)
in the last 24 hours I've started 3 apps based loosely on ideas from slashdot alone that will be great on this device.
And maybe when they finally get approved 16 months after you first submit them to Apple, you can submit a story about them to Slashdot.