Columbia Games

Role-playing games and technology are two areas that continue to thrive in our modern world, and more synergies between the two are appearing more and more frequently. Dungeons and Dragons alone has experienced tremendous growth with the advent of the internet. Role-playing games have always been popular since their introduction, and can actually help your child’s mental development as well as act as a fun way to connect with friends. Symbiotic relationships such as these beg the question: what does technology have in store for RPGs in the future?

No Longer Restricted To The Table

If there is one thing technology has given us, it’s an abundance of monitors. Computer screens, projector screens, and phone screens are only some of the new media for RPG players. Televisions remain among the most popular for displaying maps and informative sheets on a larger screen and researching a good television is important for RPG players and casual viewers alone. With more technology comes more ways to play, however.

Virtual Reality is taking the world by storm. What was once a technology ahead of its time has finally caught up. VR headsets work with viewing TV, playing video games, and can even work with RPGs to completely immerse players inside their imaginary world. This brings the two-dimensional world of tabletop playing into an expansive and fully interactive 3d experience. Be a part of the maps and see the details in person and wield your weapons like they’re right in front of you. Virtual Reality is looking to completely change the way we play RPGs.

Fully Customize With 3D Printing

Maps and figures have always been available to buy to represent in-game items, but what if you could customize them exactly how you wanted them to appear? If you’re a fan of old school board games, take it to the next level and build your own map, characters, settings, and weapons from scratch. 3d printing technology is not only a future dream – it’s already here. If you don’t want to design one yourself, you can always choose from a list of hundreds of premade models instead. Dragons, Vikings, trees, cottages, and swords are just some of the customizable options. The most exciting part of 3d printing is its versatility and limitless options.

RPGs will continue to be played worldwide. They’re a traditional way to hang out with friends, develop leadership skills, utilize your imagination, and have fun. But with technology getting more and more advanced, we may begin to see our favorite RPGs morph from table to screen in full immersion. Only time will tell exactly how far the possibilities will take us.

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Critical Success: How Role Playing is Vital for Your Child’s Mental Development.

Columbia Games — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:43:08 +0000

Critical Success: How Role Playing is Vital for Your Child’s Mental Development.

Freelance Contribution

Karoline Gore

Critical Success: How Role Playing is Vital for Your Child’s Mental Development.

With 1.2 billion people playing games nowadays, role playing games have become more popular than ever. When someone mentions role playing games, everyone would think of something different. Some might think of modern RPG-style video games playing out on a television, while others might call to mind more traditional block board games and war games.

The great thing is that they all share benefits, especially for the sake of teens and adolescent players that have taken an interest in them. As tabletop games continue to rise in popularity, it becomes more and more important to analyze the effects they have on our youth.

Growing in Confidence

Coming out of your shell throughout your youth can be incredibly difficult, and this can lead to a stunting of social skills. Adopting a role can help teens to overcome this shyness. Games like charades with its high-energy group atmosphere can help youths of all ages to become used to being in groups. This can help with eliminating feelings of shyness and stage fright and replace them with an activity that forces abstract thought, as well as being a great work out!

Learning About the World Around You

Role-playing games tend to be more focused towards teenagers, but there are excellent benefits for younger children as well when applied with a fitting game. One of the best uses of role playing for a child is that it helps them learn about societal roles. To be clear, I don’t mean gender roles, but more occupational ones. A young child might put on a white coat and a stethoscope and play doctor for their parents. This helps them learn what a doctor does in society, and has the added boon of helping them not be so afraid when the time comes for them to visit the real doctors themselves.

The same example can be applied to most toys. A child playing with a garbage truck will make the link to the truck that comes around every week to collect trash. Another playing with a construction set will feel engaged when they see a construction site outside of the car window.

A child learns these things by adapting into the role themselves. There’s no need to sit them down with a book and explain to them what each and every occupation in society does. The child learns their own way through becoming that role!

Becoming Another Person

The amount of creativity poured into role playing games is incredible. Games like Dungeons & Dragons put teens and youths into fantastical situations that can be related to the real world. Adolescents playing this game develop necessary skills like leadership and camaraderie, helping them in challenges they’ll face every day as they grow in today’s society.

Ultimately, there are few if any observable drawbacks to role playing games on youths and teens alike. The dominant effects it has seem to be an increase in confidence, skills, and helping them to learn about the world around them. Role playing might be the most valuable resource for your child’s mental development.

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A War Over the Name “Star Wars”?

Columbia Games — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 07:00:22 +0000

A War Over the Name “Star Wars”?

Tom Dalgliesh

President, Columbia Games

Starwars 1977

In 1977, Columbia Games, then known as Gamma Two Games, published a strategy game called “Starwars”. This game had no connection to the movie Starwars, but was a simple space strategy game for 2-4 players that involved exploration and conquest of six star systems. The game was published in Canada before the movie was released in Canada.

In Canada, as in the USA, names are registered in a variety of classes. Both countries have a registration class for games. We registered “STARWARS” in Canada for games but not in the USA. Later we received a fat letter from the lawyers of 20th Century Fox claiming we had no right to this game name and demanding we cease and desist selling our game. Apparently, they had licensed the name to Parker Brothers (of Monopoly fame) for a game, but had neglected to register the name in Canada.

At first we declined their request. Our game was selling extremely well. But it soon became clear that the success of the movie was responsible for the high sales which meant we could be charged with “passing-off”, a legal term. And we did receive a number of complaints from customers who felt the game had nothing to do with Starwars. And they were right. 20th Century Fox turned up the heat and waved some money at us. For the large (to us then) sum of $20,000, we sold the name to 20th Century Fox, and republished our game under the name STARLORD.

Starlord can be found in the Boargamegeek.com database.

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/223584/starlord

It was the right thing to do, but gosh we just might have left a lot of money on the table. George Lucas recently sold the rights to Starwars to Disney for something like FOUR BILLION DOLLARS.

Enjoy Slapshot for family game night!

You can get it from the Columbia Games website!

You can also get it from Amazon!

The post A War Over the Name “Star Wars”? appeared first on Columbia Games.

The history of the board game Go

Columbia Games — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 07:00:38 +0000

The history of the board game Go

Tim Frank Anderson

Guest Blogger

The history of the board game Go can be traced back several thousand years to Asia, particularly China where it’s thought to have originated. Go is played on a board of various sizes (standard size is 19×19 grids, but can also be played on 13×13 or 9×9). The board itself may look similar to Othello for example, but the Go pieces are not played inside the squares (that is to say, not placed in the squares like Ludo King or Monopoly) – rather, the stone game pieces are placed on the intersections of the squares, directly on the grids.

The objective of Go is basically to own the largest section of territory on the board, achieved by strategic piece placement, and effectively blockading your opponent. It is a highly strategic game that really flourished in feudal Japan, with several schools popping up during the Shogunate era, and stipends being awarded to the best Go players. However, despite its huge popularity in Japan, it is generally agreed upon that Go originated in China, and was considered one of the “Four Accomplishments” that should be mastered by Chinese gentlemen – the other three being the qin (a stringed musical instrument), shu (Chinese calligraphy), and hua (painting).

Thus we can trace the history of Go all over the Asian region, but it wasn’t imported to the Western world until around 1880, when a German chemist, Oskar Korschelt, wrote about the game after encountering it during his travels in Japan. Korschelt wrote several pieces on Go, including commentaries on expert strategies from Japan. Despite this, Go was slow to catch on in Europe, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that championship-level tournaments were being organized in Europe.

It’s not entirely difficult to hypothesize why Go enjoyed so much popularity in Asia, but not as much in Europe – the gameplay lended itself extremely well to Asian interests during those eras, with its strategy of capturing territories and blockading opponents. When considering the reverence that Japanese Shoguns and war-generals were afforded in Asia during these times, and the writings of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, which contain many passages that can be directly applicable to Go strategy, it’s easy to perceive how Go was the war strategian’s game of choice. In fact, an old saying goes – “Chess is a battle, Go is a war”. Interestingly enough, chess also has its origins in Asia.

With the history lesson out of the way, we can now focus on the fact that Go is still enjoyed today, and the easiest place to hop into a game is online. There are several large and established online Go communities that hold tournaments for players all over the world, notably websites like USGo, KGS, and Pandanet.

New players looking to hop into Go are recommended to begin on the smaller 9×9 boards, for quicker games. There’s a wealth of interactive tutorials out there, such as this interactive Go tutorial on USGo – furthermore, many online Go servers have ranking systems that allow handicaps for beginners, when playing against experienced players. For example, a lower ranking player may be allowed to place several stones on the board to begin the game, rather than only one.

Though Go is not widely known in the western world even today, it is still a huge deal in Asian countries, with international tournaments regularly held. Top Go players in countries like China, Korea, and Japan can enjoy international celebrity status, the same way Gary Kasparov is synonymous with chess – through the pool of Go celebrities is rather deeper than that of chess, which is a testament to how celebrated this board game is in the Asia region.

In fact, most people remember Gary Kasparov for his chess matches against Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer. Korea has its own similar celebrity, Lee Sedol, who managed to win 1 out of 4 games against supercomputer AlphaGo in 2016 – AlphaGo was developed by Google subsidiary DeepMind. Prior to this legendary matchup, Lee Sedol was already earning millions of dollars in Go tournaments throughout his career, and he speaks of retiring to the United States to promote Go in the western world.

Regardless of whether or not Go ever completely catches on in the western world, it is a highly enjoyable game for strategic thinkers of all ages, and is simultaneously one of the most simple yet complex games to play. By joining the ranks of Go players, you’ll be taking part in a board game with quite possibly the most storied history of all board games. Good luck!

Grab The Last Spike for family night!

You can get it from the Columbia Games website!

You can also get it from Amazon!

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