Perplex City is not a game.
The 2006 Origins Awards Nominees have been announced. Perplex City is nominated in two categories, "Collectable Card Game or Expansion of the Year" and "Vanguard Nominees for Innovative Game Products." I enjoy Perplex City quite a bit, but it's not a game. The short explanation is this, from Greg Costikyan's fine article on the subject:
In The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford contrasts what he call "games" with "puzzles." Puzzles are static; they present the "player" with a logic structure to be solved with the assistance of clues. "Games," by contrast, are not static, but change with the player's actions.There is nothing interactive about Perplex City. Players have scores and rankings on the website, but that alone does not a game make. Perplex City certainly deserves a "Vanguard" award for its cleverness, but not for being a game product. While I realize that the creation of categories for awards is damned tough, I'd like to see the Origins Awards get it right, just once. Remember when Puerto Rico ended up in the Fantasy and Science Fiction category?
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games
4 comments:
The "fantasy" element of Puerto Rico was the idea that a bunch of dark-colored bits you stacked on a boat as high as you needed them, then put them to work in your plantations, were called "colonists."
(My verification is "glepek." All fear the mighty lord Glepek!)
Looks like there is some disagreement on this point:
http://www.deusexmachinatio.com/deus_ex_machinatio/
wait a second...Puerto Rico is a real place???!?!?!?!?!
Do they make as money selling coffee or is their island filled with Quarries like Chuckdom?
Andrea is absolutely correct. Perplex City is a game, it's just not a collectible card game. I apologize for the nasty tone of this blog post, and the fact that I was dead wrong!
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