Free, print-and-play Bioshock Monopoly. That is all.
posted by jbickers on Oct 31, 2011 - 14 comments

If you're occupying a financial center, you might want to pass the time with a game of Monopoly. Though Hasbro gives ahighly contested "official history" asserting that the game was invented by an unemployed Philadelphia man, it actually originated 30 years earlier as The Landlord's Game, an anti-capitalist protest against the movement of wealth from poor to rich via real estate profiteering. Designed and patented by a Georgist Quaker woman, Elizabeth Maggie, in 1904, it was published by her Economic Game Company, but also spread far and wide - including in circles of socialist-leaning academic economists like Scott Nearing - as a hand-drawn and independently printed folk game. [more inside]
posted by Miko on Oct 13, 2011 - 24 comments

Tabletop: Analog Game Design - A commons licenced book containing a series of essays about digital and non-digital games from some esteemed boardgame veterans: "Much has been written about the videogame revolution, [...] In a scant thirty some-odd years, we’ve grown from nothing to one of the world’s largest entertainment forms, grossing tens of billions annually [...] Works that discuss the evolution of the game industry from an historical perspective generally talk about the connection between the pre-digital arcade and the earliest digital games; I’ve even heard some claim that “without the arcade, videogames would not exist.” This is, of course, bosh..." [more inside]
posted by Cogentesque on Aug 24, 2011 - 36 comments

Minecraft mastermind Markus "Notch" Persson has officially announced his company's next project: a hybrid online board game/trading card system called Scrolls. Spearheaded by Mojang co-founder Jakob Porser (interview) and with backstory penned by Penny Arcade wordsmith Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, the game will consist of turn-based battles between collectible "scrolls," illustrated character cards strategically deployed on an abstract gaming grid. In an interesting inversion of the Minecraft model, the game itself will be free, while updates in the form of additional scroll packs will cost a nominal fee -- a business model gaming analyst Sean Maelstrom decries as "snake oil." Mojang, for their part, is unafraid and even eager to target an untested slice of the gaming market, and is angling to get their playable prototype of Scrolls ready for a possible Alpha release this summer.
posted by Rhaomi on Mar 2, 2011 - 128 comments

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation (wargame). It also pioneered concepts such as isomorphic mapboards and open-ended design, in which multiple unit counters were provided from which players could fashion their own free-form combat situations rather than simply replaying pre-structured scenarios. (related)
posted by Joe Beese on Nov 11, 2010 - 35 comments

World Wars 2, sequel to the hex-wargame-inspired World Wars, has been released. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Aug 9, 2009 - 24 comments

FrugalWeekendFunFilter: Zombie In My Pocket is a free print-and-play solitaire boardgame that only uses three sheets of paper. Elegantly designed and well balanced, it has inspired a bunch of alternate versions, from Wolfenstein in my Pocket to the classic-dungeon-crawl-inspired Dungeonquest in my Pocket to Star Wars in my Pocket. (Complete list of variants and user-created scenarios - all are free.) There's also a cellphone version, if paper-and-ink isn't your thing.
posted by jbickers on May 8, 2009 - 10 comments

Monopoly killer - how The Settlers of Catan redefined board games.
posted by Artw on Mar 29, 2009 - 160 comments

Play board games during the holidays? Try an updated version of an old classic. You can indulge in as much sex, drugs, crime, and rock and roll as your health will handle, just don't roll a 1 on your first turn or you'll be aborted before you get started. [more inside]
posted by mrmojoflying on Dec 27, 2008 - 6 comments

Snowed in this weekend? Done with your Christmas shopping? Perhaps you're in no mood to shop anymore. Gather your friends together for a low-tech round of The Economist's Credit Crunch Board Game.
posted by thread_makimaki on Dec 19, 2008 - 8 comments

For all of you who remember Cosmic Encounter, a java version of it has been released. Of course, this happened several years ago, I just forgot about it until now. It's a fun game, if you can find the people to play it with!
posted by starduck on Jun 11, 2000 - 2 comments