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• On Global Toy News, Richard Gottlieb asks "3D Printing – are we near the tipping point?" Not a terribly informative post and it features annoying sidebar ads, but this is still something for publishers, designers and gamers to think about for the future. Selling blueprints and rules for at-home game creation is a definite possibility just a few years from now. For now, though, designers and gamers will have to be content picking up game parts from places like SpielMaterial or the newly launched in July 2012 nestorbits.
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• Trent from The Board Game Family talks up the merits of renting games and teases those of us who don't have a decent game store nearby that offers this service – which would be most of us, I imagine.
• Okay, this post is somewhat off-topic as it relates to games – and yet it's not as I find errors in nearly every rulebook I read, not to mention rules that are incomplete or unclear. Why is it important to have well-written rulebooks? Kyle Wiens makes the case in an article titled "I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why." in Harvard Business Review:
Quote:
[G]rammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're...
If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with...
Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.
When I read a sloppy rulebook, I immediately wonder how much care and attention was put into the game itself. (By chance, I just ran across my 2009 review of Bonnie and Clyde in which I make this exact point.) I'm less trusting of the publisher and any development work done on the game because if you can't get the small details of writing correct – details for which standards exist, details that can be tested by getting others to play your game blindly – what does that suggest about your ability to solve the larger issues of clarity in game play?If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with...
Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.
(For those who find such issues too mind-numbing to care about, I'll throw you a bone by pointing out that the URL for the article above is shortened to "i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo".)
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