Hi fellow game makers and game enthusiasts!

Whether you’re a new reader today or have enjoyed some of our past posts, we here at the League of Gamemakers want to say thanks for joining us on an adventure every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’re up to a couple dozen posts and counting, and we have much more planned in 2014!

WHAT NOW, GAME REVIEWS?

What is a game design blog without discussing a lot of games, right? We mention games in our posts, but how can we talk more about various titles? Oooh, maybe reviews? Sure, that’s cool – but we’re not here to take the place of your latest gaming news. For that, you’ve got Today in Boardgames from Roger Hicks, Cardboard Edison on tumblr, the All Us Geeks podcast – just to name a few the choices for great info.

INTRODUCING THE PILE O’ GAMES!

Let’s do something different! Let’s start with a pile of games on a tabletop. Any ol’ pile? Well, we’ll tie them in somehow. Like when you’re headed out to a game night and you dig into your collection for a certain stack you want to play. And then let’s all guess the theme. C’mon, it’s player interaction! “Name that Pile!” – it could be anything from “Hidden Information Games” to “Games designed by James Ernest”, or “Games for 7 Players”. There’s no telling what pile we’ll make!

AND THE AWARD GOES TO…

Next, which one of these games is funniest? Or which one has the most unique mechanic? Best bits? What one would you pick for the ideal family game selection? And this is where both the league and you, our reader, can vote and we’ll all decide as a group, and post the results when the week ends.

THE POWER OF NUMBERS

Not every game would score the same for each gamer, and the League opinions are no different. With over 12 authors, we can give you a selection of advice on why we own or don’t own a game, what we’ve heard, etc. We’ve got worker placement fans and those that would rather step in front of a bus than allocate wooden discs ‘on a farm’.

We vary on our play testing groups and casual/core game depths, and all of that should help give some diverse opinions. And we’ll even rate games when we haven’t played them! That’s right, you heard it here first – the first game reviews to potentially not have been played by the reviewers! But if someone doesn’t know a title, then no doubt another Leaguer has you covered.

All of this is just to continue to start conversations about games. It’s what we live and breathe around here. Already for me personally, it’s been interesting to see when a game in a pile has the same opinion/reputation from every leaguer vs when they get radically different viewpoints.

Maybe we’ll all gain some info about games we’re interested in but haven’t tried yet. Perhaps at the end of the year, we’ll face off winners in various categories to see what game reigns supreme. In the meantime, every other week you’ll see a new group of games and how they stack up, just for fun.

Thanks for playing!

THIS WEEK’S PILE – CLICK HERE SEE VOTING RESULTS