Continuing my thoughts on things barbarian in games, it’s been extremely interesting to see the way the concept of “culture”( usually = civilization) is increasingly present in the games we play. What I find less interesting, is the idea of the civilized cultures conquoring the uncivilized. And I don’t mean…
What is a barbarian? Etymologically, it supposedly comes from the Greek word barbaros; bar-bar being the Greek variant of the modern english blah-blah-blah. In essence, then, one might say that barbarian simply means “people who speak funny”. This is why, to the ancient Greeks, anyone who was not a Greek…
I recently read a discussion about barbarians and their representation in games which reminded me of the classical article “You Have Unleashed a Horde of Barbarians!”: Fighting Indians, Playing Games, Forming Disciplines by Christopher Douglas, published in Postmodern Culture in 2002. In the article, Douglas argues how games are not…
Republic of Rome (RoR), soon to be republished by Valley Games, is the one boardgame that invariably always crops up in any discussion about Roman games. In one sense, this is not particularly surprising – it is the classic political game, unique in being both extremely competitive and extremely cooperative,…
So, after yet another year of working with the Imperium game engine, I am finally back where I have a fairly playable version of the game on my desktop. Wait a moment, wasn’t that the situation a couple of years ago? Pretty much. Those of you who have followed the…
A few weeks ago, I ran into another variant of the perennial “Great Wargamers Debate” – also known as the “Realism vs Playability”, the “Historical vs Random”, or – in my preferred title: “Simulation vs Gaming” debate. Bruce Geryk partly touched upon the subject in the excellent Geryk Analysis: Wargaming…