I, regularly, mock Sean about watching people play computer games rather than playing them himself. So it is with some chagrin that I reveal that over the last day or two I have watched a lot of YouTube videos of people playing boardgames. Of course the difference being that if I had the opportunity to play boardgames I would, so I feel my moral superiority over Sean is still intact. Which is the most important takeaway.
<\/p>\n
Now this isn’t my first foray into the world of YouTube X BoardGames (YouTube is clearly the seme). I’ve watched the majority of the Dice Tower’s<\/a> Top 10’s (as well as a number of their reviews). They’re entertaining (and often detrimental to my wallet). I’ve also used YouTube for educational purposes in relation to boardgames (rahdo’s<\/a> gameplay videos are generally pretty good, the Ghost Stories<\/a> one was particularly useful). But I never had any real interest in watching people play boardgames, much as I have no real interest in watching people play any kind of game or sport.<\/p>\n However yesterday I found myself in the unenviable position of having (literally) a thousand or so cards to force into little plastic sleeves and I had watched (and rewatched, and rewatched, and rewatched, etc.) all the comedy shows I had on my hard drive. So I decided to look for some reviews of games I was interested in to throw on in the background. I stumbled across Will Wheaton’s TableTop episode where they play Dead of Winter<\/a> so I threw it on. It turned out to be really entertaining, as well as giving a good idea of how the game might play out. <\/p>\n So I decided to check out the other TableTop videos. But as I did I noticed something, while most of them were entertaining (with some variances based on the guests) I found it hard to pay attention to (and ultimately stopped watching) the episodes for games that I didn’t already own or was interested in. So while I found the episodes to be generally adroit pieces of boardgame centric entertainment I only really enjoyed watching the ones for games I wanted to play. So it proved a poor marketing\/evangelical tool but an excellent source of cardboard methadone. <\/p>\n I suppose its nature as a well produced piece of entertainment, particularly in Season 3, works against it being a solid example of play. Leaving aside unfortunate rules mistakes the fact that it skips turns without giving a solid summary of play can make the actual gameplay feel rather disjointed. Still, I got all my cards sleeved and had a mostly enjoyable viewing experience. I’ll certainly be checking it out going forward. Of the ones I watched the aforementioned Dead of Winter episode along with the playthrough of The Resistance<\/a> and Munchkin<\/a> were probably my favourites. While it certainly didn’t make me want the game the Forbidden Desert<\/a> was very funny, thanks mainly to Alan Tudyk. And to make a lie of my comments about its ability to sway my almighty dollar, it did make me want to own a copy of Tokaido. Though that’s more because I’d only heard of it in passing and hadn’t seen the beautiful board and components. Though the Tokaido episode<\/a> was solid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I, regularly, mock Sean about watching people play computer games rather than playing them himself. So it is with some chagrin that I reveal that over the last day or two I have watched a lot of YouTube videos of people playing boardgames. Of course the difference being that if I had the opportunity to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,6],"tags":[506,521,520,522],"class_list":["post-4192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-play","category-life","category-review-consume","tag-boardgames","tag-dice-tower","tag-tabletop","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4192"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4833,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4192\/revisions\/4833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.templeofmick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}