For years I've been promising Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson that I would play an afternoon game with them, if only once. And for years I've held out. Since I used to play chess, Scrabble, and other games I cannot claim an intrinsic dislike of gaming. Yesterday I tried to play Kremlin with them but I had to give up after thirty minutes. My head hurt and I was not motivated to impose interesting structure on the game as a life activity. I'm still looking for a simple model of my failure. One hypothesis is that anyone who deals with university administration, as I sometimes do, will have no marginal taste for playing Kremlin.
Settlers of Catan!
http://www.amazon.com/MayFair-Games-4102480-Settlers-Catan/dp/B000W7JWUA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1245422836&sr=8-1
I know Russ Roberts has a copy, I turned him on to it. It presents trade as positive sum, you’ll like it.
You just don’t like the game? Try Bohnanza.
I agree with Noah. Settlers of Catan is a great game. One game only lasts about an hour, it’s simple to learn, and as an economist, I think you’ll really like it.
Catan is the easy answer; everyone loves Catan.
As an avid gamer, Race for the Galaxy (especially with it’s expansion pack) has been a staple among my friends since its release. Torres is great for a light game. Both can be played in under an hour, and both are great fun.
is there an obvious dominating strategy in catan (despite the dynamic resource arrangement)?
Perhaps you didn’t really try to like it. Sounds like you’ve been pretty stubborn about gaming before.
I think the best economic game is Twilight Imperium and not neccessarily because there is a lot of money involved. The game revolves around constantly assess the opportunity costs of the different actions you can take, whether its to produce, wage war, invest in technologies or start an importnat vote. You end up making many marginal decisions that have a big impact down the road. Its such a dynamic and interesting game that I think it gets lost on most due to its complex nature and long play time, but if you can get a good group its the best board game IMO
why isn’t ‘preferences’ a god enough model? All the commenters so far suggest you try a different game, or try harder. clearly they don’t get it – some people don’t like games. (and yes i have played settlers, and it’s fine.)
one model would be that you are not that inherently competitive about arbitrary things. you don’t get excited about winning pointless competitions, thus the payoff of winning or drive to try your best isn’t there, and that’s a lot of the fun.
another might be a mind too full of fascinating real world subjects thus getting excited about a fictitious and strictly limited sub-universe just can’t compare to discussing hegel over a beer.
The problem with gaming is that getting good at it involves depth rather breadth.
Tyler is a guy who reads a lot and has an eclectic curiosity about a wide range of topics, not to mention his family life, travel and economics career. By contrast, to perform well at a game involves focusing a lot of time and effort into one narrow thing. I suspect that is why he gave up chess.
I second “Settlers” for the fun.
But “Go” is the best two-player game.
diplomacy. Best Game Ever.
@ Ian Lippert:
You mean that you’ve actually finished a game of Twilight Imperium? I have some friends who play, and sometimes I’ll hang out and have a few drinks while they do so (I tried once to play it, but two hours in I’d had one turn, and hadn’t figured out what was going on, so I gave up). Let’s just say that it’s a good thing I always stop drinking well before they finish playing, because otherwise I would be dead. Hm, maybe this is my friends’ plan…
Joking aside, is there a way to make that game actually progress? When my friends play, they can start before eight p.m. and still not finish by two a.m.
power grid
Reminds me of the time I played RoboRally (a game where you have to preload a series of instructions for your robot to move around a game board with various hazards and obstacles) with some friends. I was the only player who had never played the game before, and I was quite surprised when I won. Afterward I observed that it was entirely too much like assembly language debugging to qualify as fun.
Bohnanza is a good game. No board, simple rules, and lots of trading. It’s all about negotiation.
I also vote for Settlers of Catan (but importantly, with the Cities & Knights expansion once you get the hang of it) with one caveat. Change the rules to allow for more expansive free markets permitting: giving/holding cards, promises of future cards, promises of robber protection, permissions for others to use ports, trading development/progress cards, etc. The game lasts much longer and there is occasional blood shed when people break their promises, but the depth & complexity multiplies and it makes you feel good that free trade turns a good game into a great game.
We usually start at 12pm and finish around 9-10 for a six player game. We play once every month or so. Its definately a difficult game to get the right people for. Often less serious players will get bored halfway through and start doing things that can screw over individual players. I think the hardest part is keeping track of whos turn it is epecialy late in the game when turns are longer and people attention is starting to drift. But for me I dont mind, I used to play 12+ hour games of civilization back in the day.
Cosmic Encounter owns and has always owned. I think they re-released it recently (the version I always played had little cardboard chits and this new one has little spaceships.)
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