Links: Legal Trouble for Cards Against Humanity, Thirty Years of Knizia & Haiku Winners

• On Bangor Daily News, Abigail Curtis reports on apparent zoning violations by the owners of Cards Against Humanity for "installation of a platform, shed and safe within 22 feet of the lake’s normal high-water line" and the issuance of "250,000 'licenses' that grant the exclusive use of 1 square foot of land" on Birch Island in Lake St. George in Maine.

• On League of Gamemakers, designer Scott Caputo explores the pluses and minuses of using dice or cards as randomizing elements in your game design.

• Also on League of Gamemakers, designer JR Honeycutt admits that he was wrong about Splendor — or does he? He writes: "I'd played Splendor twice, and panned the game while being generally dismissive of its popularity. It's very light, the theme is tacked-on, and much of its appeal is based on the heavy, high-quality poker chips that represent gems in the game. It's not a 'gamer's game', it's not deeply strategic, and it doesn't engender any kind of special interaction between players."

He goes on to say, "Splendor is undoubtedly guilty of the above things, and yet, it's wildly popular", and when he played the game again, he found himself enjoying it. So he wasn't wrong about Splendor as much as he was wrong about the things that mattered to him in a game design, or rather the things that he felt were important for a game to be (objectively?) good. The game is still light, the theme is still tacked on, it's not deeply strategic — and yet here I am having fun? What's wrong with me? Why am I enjoying this thing that's not good? Could I be mistaken about what I actually enjoy? (As longtime readers of BGGN might know, I answer this last question in the affirmative.)

• "Don't play your new game with me unless you want to go home angry", warns designer James Ernest in a blog post railing against "derivative" game design. "Maybe it's because I play more prototypes than published games, but even after seven years, every new deckbuilding game still feels like an expansion for Dominion... Look, you could start where Dominion started, with the basic idea of turning a Magic draft into a boxed game, and end up in a thousand different places, none of which feel anything like Dominion. Right? But nobody does."

• A Reuters article from Daniel Kelly claims that "Consumers [Are] Turning To Tabletop Options In Backlash Against Video Games", but that article doesn't support this headline. I did learn, though, that "the games are not just for children".

• In The Wall Street Journal, Christopher Chabris reports on "The Rise of Cooperative Games", but the article can't be viewed unless you subscribe to the WSJ, so don't bother clicking through. Sorry! Just wanted to highlight the presence of Pandemic in an unexpected location.

• Reiner Knizia celebrates his 30th year as a published designer in 2015, and to encourage others to play along, he's offering a special package of signed games and winner certificates for anyone who runs a Kniziathon, a Kniziathon being an open gaming event at which people play lots of games designed by Knizia, winning position points based on how well they do in those games.

• In early April 2015, I threw down a haiku challenge and it's time to choose the winners from those who commented on that BGGN post, with those three winners receiving a copy of Hipster Dice courtesy of Steve Jackson Games. I'll start with runners-up, such as this metacomment on the prize from Douglas MacIntyre:

shadowruin wrote:

Only you can use
rolling six sided dice
ironically

I thought highly of jflartner's haiku, but it broke rhythm, so I couldn't consider it for the prize:

jobin13 wrote:

Time marches onward
Gears are what happen
When you're making other plans.

Phil Alberg wins the suck-up no-prize for taking a comment that I left on Facebook about his game-playing session and building a haiku around it. I really need to record a video about Deep Sea Adventure at some point:

Spielfreak wrote:

I have no treasure
Deep Sea Adventure awaits
Dive, dive, dive, die! Ooops...

And now for the winners, starting with the first haiku on that post, which took the contest in a direction that I hadn't considered:

Chris Schreiber wrote:

The game I needed,
The game I wanted, and the
game for free shipping.

For some reason I had imagined the haiku each relating to a single game as with my own example that I had included, but I didn't make that a requirement and Chris' haiku said a lot about gratification and addiction in a few words. The other two haiku that struck me most, though, did each relate to a single game, but without naming them in the haiku. First up is Rick Senki:

airydisk wrote:

If only she knew!
I rend my soul in missives;
Cruel guard mocks my pain.

And the final winner is Mike DiLisio, who gets props for this existential question on a recent controversy:

MikeDiLisio wrote:

What is a fakir?
A man on a bed of nails,
or a compromise?

I've sent Geekmail to the winners with an explanation of how to claim your prize. Don't brag about it in public, though, or else you'll throw away whatever hipster cred you might have...