Live from Studio B

This past weekend, Studio B was more a place of thought than action, but I did manage to make some important progress on a couple fronts. First, I made a decision on a website style for the impending dedicated website for this project. It's a pretty template, with the same rich browns and solid colors that I gravitated to for my business cards. It's all subjective and somewhat arbitrary, but these colors just feel "board gamey" to me. I'm an old-school HTML'er and not a whiz with Flash web templates, so I'm going to have to get somebody to help me customize this template, but I'm sure it'll get figured out.

I added more notes to the project notebook, including some thoughts about a couples and friends segment (I was surprised at how many couples met through board gaming, but really, why not?), and also some ideas for putting a big survey out to gain some interesting data on dedicated board gamers.

Board games are popping up regularly in the news, with a lot of media focusing on the "budget-friendliness" of them in "these tough economic times." They're clearly not talking about dedicated designer board gamers when they say that, at least not from what I've seen of the average size of a Thought Hammer order. The following article is more about non designer-games, but it's still encouraging people to game, and that's what counts.

Board games come back in a big way

“What do we get out of it? Sometimes useless knowledge,” said brother Nicholas DiGesare, 29. “It saves a lot of money, too. Movies are so expensive. Spend $20 on a board game, and then all chip in for food. It becomes easy to have a good night, rather than going out.”

Now that staying home is even more in vogue, board games have become a preferred form of entertainment for many families who would rather talk than text.

I think just as significant as the economic aspect is that "rather talk than text" part. I love eye candy as much as the next technophile, but with big screen tv, iMax 3D, iPhones, Nintendo DS, and computers, computers, computers...sometimes it's nice to do something that doesn't run off a power source.

Here's another article, about a different economic element of board gaming; the board game version of a Tupperware party?

City woman plays games for work

...After deciding to become a consultant for SimplyFun, she started hosting game parties, where guests play the games and have the opportunity to buy the ones they like.

“Since I love games so much, I could talk about them and get excited about them,” she said. “You don’t really need me to tell you anything because you’ll like them.”

She said she’s recently been able to get approval to show her games to Stillwater Public Schools....

Again, not really designer board games, but mostly designer board gamers seem non-judgemental about these things. I just think it's good that classrooms are open to this sort of thing. Good for the hobby in the long run, and good for the kids too. :)