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Games Magazine Best Party Game of the year 2007/2008

GiftTRAP wins GAMES Magazine’s “Best Party Game of the year 2007/2008”

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Click here to find out how we’ve turned gift giving into a hilarious social experience

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Puts your gifts to the test!

GiftTRAP is the hilarious new game that’s taking the gaming world by storm and putting the social back into board games.

The goal is to really get to know your friends and family.

You win by knowing your friends and choosing the right gifts, but most of all it’s just fun to play and gets you talking about things that matter.

• 3-8 Players, 5+
• Playtime 45-75 mins
• Learn in 10 mins

• 1 full size game board
• 640 Gift Ideas
• Rules
• 8 Organza Gift Bags containing; scoring markers, gift & choice tokens plus advanced strategy cards

Love to play Trivial Pursuit, Cranium or Apples to Apples - You will love this family party game.

GiftTRAP is all the fun of Secret Santa without needing to shop or wrap.

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Board Games are a form of "Arts & Culture" - Discuss

I’ve picked up on this theme a couple of times when surfing the net. It’s begun to niggle in my mind. In fact i posted a suggestion on a website that in my humble opinion should have had a “Games” section to match their “Books” and “Movies” sections.

It was at MindfulMom.com where I posted a comment and a minor rant. Funny but a day later as I went back to find my comment to link to it I notice I was listened to! Way to go. The power of free speech. Susan Kaiser-Greenland responded to my comment and has agreed to add a “Games“ section. I hope this is the beginning of a movement

A few things have made me think that whilst it’s perhaps not perceived to be the case that there is a strong argument that board games (in fact I’m talking about “games” regardless of medium) should fight for an equal standing in the world along with other commonly understood pillars of the “Arts & Culture Club”

• Authors/Books
• Music/Bands
• Plays/Theatre
• Actors/Producers/Movies/Videos

What causes me to comment on this is that as I cruise sites on the web like Entertainment Weekly or LA Times I notice they have review sections for all of the above categories but nothing for Games.

I pick on these sites randomly. There’s no doubt an exhaustive list of sites which consistently fail to recognise the social significance of gaming.

According to Wikipedia Art is defined as;

“Art refers to a diverse range of human activities, creations, and expressions that are appealing or attractive to the senses or have some significance to the mind of an individual.”

and Culture is defined as;

“Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called ‘the way of life for an entire society.’ As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.”

In my mind games fit into both definitions, perhaps not all games, but them I’m sure not all books/movies/plays qualify too. Every sector has it’s own diverse offerings.

I’ve got some theories why this is the case, but it’s an issue that’s been bugging me and I thought I’d air it and work on beginning to develop a strategy to try to take “Gaming” back having a level footing with all these other forms of Arts & Culture

My first observation is that the games industry has done little to promote itself and position itself to have a rightful place in the minds of the consumer alongside books, movies, music etc. Now the unnatural dominance of the sector by giants Hasbro and Mattel does not help this cause. Monopoly, Scrabble, Candyland are all deeply embedded in our culture, but I’m not sure they are “art”. They vary in great degrees to which they might be considered “Art” - Scrabble I’d vote as art for sure

Many mass-produced games are designed to meet the demands of a throwaway audience, a trend that does little for developing the category. Buyers at the likes of Walmart and Toys ‘R Us are looking for highly advertised of highly branded games. Their focus is on sales and the exploitation of fads for the latest TV show or movie and not for the development of the category and the popularization of board games.

There is an emerging sector of games called “Designer” games (so named because the name of the designer is on the box). This trend began in Germany where games are a much deeper part of the social fabric than there are in North America. There are also design differences in the way the game plays and how it’s made and how it’s usually closely and meaningfully themed. These games are all about fun choices, about keeping all players involved to the end of the game and they are all about high re-playability.

Today there are a number of “Designer” games that are crossing into mainstream culture (and even stores like Walmart and Toys ‘R Us) They are typically games that have sold in excess of a million copies. Great examples of such games are Carcasonne by Klaus J켼rgen Wrede published by Rio Grande and Settlers of Catan by Klaus Teuber published by Mayfair Games.

Notice the parallel to books where a title has both an author and a publisher. Both these games won the highly coveted “Spiel Des Yahre” Award and many other awards besides.

Interestingly Barnes and Noble is probably the leader in taking these “Designer” games to the market place. They have a game section featuring many “Designer” games alongside some of the familiar classics and sales growth is strong. They have been rewarded for supporting this category. There’s also a whole series of independent board game stores out there who need your support, these stores, usually run by enthusiasts know the games they sell, they know how to play them and how to help match you to the right game. Many have demo copies and can show you what’s in a specific game.

For me a great game store, just like a great book store places staff reviews on their favorite games.

There’s something like 1,000 new games launched each year - not quite as many as books, but its still significant. There are something like 30,000 games logged on boardgamegeek.com.

I’m certainly not trying to answer all the issues right here and now.  i’m simply seeking to put a stake in the ground and to think a little more about these issues and then try to catalog a more complete response over time.

I’m also curious if I can seek to drum up support to make sure I’m not the only person in the industry who’s banging this drum.