Finding the Perfect Family Game

kowalski1971 writes "Some poor soul with far too much time on his hands has decided - in an attempt to increase sales at his toyshop - to calculate the formula for the perfect family game. Apparently it is, 0.22a + 0.17f + 0.153n + (0.12c - 0.1g) + 0.1s + 0.09e + 0.06d + 0.054l + 0.05m + 0.011c = pfg ...and which game came out top? Cards. So much for the increased sales then."

Aces!

[eaglebtc]

This is interesting to me because there are a bazillion board games out there, and most of them are overpriced and have limited playability. Card games and their variants are countless.

Go cards!

Simpler formula

[C17GMaster]

I notice that most of those factors are vaguely defined at best... "Fun factor?" Get real! As long as we're pulling qualitative numbers out of the air, why not design a simpler system? Perfect Family Game = 1.0g, where "g" is the "goodness level." Practical, huh?

cards

[gotem]

"Cards" is not a game
a game is poker, bridge, blackjack etc.
which card game are they talking about?

Best selling

[Tet]

So much for the increased sales then

Best selling game != best game. Admittedly, the point of this exercise was probably to increase sales, so on that front, it's failed... Also note that his formula reuses symbols ("C" is both competitive factor, and complexity), and he parenthesizes items for no apparently good reason when the operators are commutative. Is he just trying to come up with an impressive looking formula to get a newsworthy story and bring his store some publicity? On that front, he's succeeded...

Re:Aces!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and it puzzles me as to why cards is just considered one game, while monopoly appears to be broken down, with Simpsons monopoly taking #2. I wonder why they didn't want to break down cards into individual games?

An old truth

[gxv]

Good for everybody and therefore probably good for nobody. And if anybody hopes complicated equations will help him pick the best Christmas gift for his nephew he's mistaken. It will be easier to ask.

2 Cs

[Huge Pi Removal]

Silly bugger's gone and used 'C' twice - first for competitiveness, the second for complexity. And what's with the superfluous brackets anyway? Load of cobblers.

Not surprising

[93 Escort Wagon]

My family always played a lot of games while we were growing up, and they were almost exclusively card games. The rules tend to be simple, which is a big plus if you're trying to hold the interest of people covering a big age range (60 year old granny along with 8 year old younger bro'). We burned a lot of hours with Uno, Spades, Pit!, and others.

Board games had a narrower appeal. If it was just "us kids" we'd play those, since it seemed the adults weren't interested in the same ones we were. Once we'd grown into teenagers we did find a few everyone enjoyed - Pictionary immediately comes to mind.

Ah, memories...

Toy stores do not sell "games"

[tepples]

"Cards" is not a game

But it is game equipment. Toy stores do not deal in "games" as such but rather game equipment. A pair of decks of 52 cards can be used for 100 plus well-known games, which may figure into the decision that cards are nearly optimal game equipment.

Re:Cards? Not at my house!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least don't do the same thing to your kids.

Everquest

[ekephart]

EQ is the obvious winner. With:
A = age range
F = fun factor
N = number of people
C = competitive factor
G - argumentative factor
S = stimulation
E = engagement
D = duration
L = longevity
M = mobility
C = complexity

While age range is fairly narrow and stimulation, engagement, and mobility are, well, zero, I think N and D make up for it.

N = several thousand
D = in hours? - sigh - several thousand

No news here, move on please!

[heironymouscoward]

This is just a puff of smoke intended to stimulate Christmas toy sales. The formula is ridiculously over-complex and loaded with unexplained constants. How on earth did this make Slashdot when perfectly good stories (like the one about SCO violations being found on the Moon) get refused?

Re:Simpler formula

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually enjoy having a group of hot naked swedish women ridiculing your tiny genitals and throwing rocks at you?

Problem with the article

[GeckoFood]

The writer gives a nifty little formula and all, with the constants included. But, what values did he plug in to said formula to get .98 for cards? What are the acceptable ranges of the coefficients? How do you decide which coeffients have more weight than others?

Re:2 Cs

[hurtstotouchfire]

You are correct. He also doesn't seem to have provided any kind of list as to how many different games they tested. Is the the top ten or did they test ten?

Also, this formula should really include variables for different people. I know monopoly with my grandfather is a blast, because he's old and cheap and sits on all his money and kicks butt at the end, but monopoly with my youngest cousins can be hellish, because they cry when anyone plays rough.

This should really be more of a function, where you supply 5 or 10 bits of information, and the top 10 list is customized to you.

Re:mathematicians! Bah!

[Coryoth]

This is why in addition to mathematician we have experimental physicists who whack the mathematician on the snout, take their formulations, and subject the equations to a rigorous dose of reality.

Interestingly it goes the other way too sometimes. The physicists posit a nice theory, then some mathematician comes along and says "sorry, the math just doesn't work that way - it ought to really go like this...". The physicists say "but that's just bloody stupid, reality wouldn't work that way", then go away and test it and find that, oddly enough, it does.

Jedidiah

This is bogus on so many levels!

[sbaker]

Man - where do you start with such a bogus thing as this?

Take a large number of vaguely defined terms - with no units or ranges associated with them - and which are "measured" by the scientific method of asking some guy to rate them.

Then multiply each by a suspiciously exact number - accurate to one part in a hundred - and just add them up! What are the odds that none of these terms need to be squared or something?

Even if you ignore the actual equation - and take this as some kind of list of the things you should think about when buying a game - it doesn't make sense.

Just look at the first term:

"Age range"

The importance of the age range of the game depends crucially on the range of ages of the people playing. If everyone is aged 12 years - then a game that's rated "Ages 12 to 14" is likely to be more fun than something rated "Ages 2 to adult" because it's targetted at the precise ages of the people playing it. Then, if the people playing include a 2 year old and an adult - then a wide age range is indeed important. But if this equation is to be believed, then a game with a 12 to 14 year age range is doomed compared to a game that's simple enough for a 2 year old to play. That's ridiculous.

But in any case, this is a circular argument - age ranges are set such that the people within that range will have fun playing the game - so using that number to calculate how much fun the game is to play is just silly.

Argh!

This is the kind of thing that dramatically reduces the public's perception of the value of the scientific method.

Re:The only reason "Cards" won...

[CaseyB]

Or "Pen and paper" for that matter. That includes everything from Tic-Tac-Toe to AD&D.

Re:Best selling

[kruntiform]

the point of this exercise was probably to increase sales, so on that front, it's failed...

A cynical person (like me) would say that he rigged it so that cards would would come out on top in order to lend his silly formula an air of objectivity. He knows full well that no one will buy cards and that they will buy the next one on the list, "Monopoly Simpsons", instead.

Of course, this is not the perfect game.

[Rothron the Wise]

It might be the perfect game if you have to pick ONE game to give to a million families. It is not the perfect game for a specific familiy, just the perfect game when the familiy is not known.

By the same logic, you can find out that the perfect food is a Big mac, since nobody really hates it (You can't hate something which tastes nothing).

Whenever you create something with the ultimate all-encompassing demographic, you end up with something which is infinitely bland and infinitely inoffensive.

In beauty contests, you typically have several rounds with different jurys, a mechanism which is sure to filter out someones ideals and move towards the average, which is why you'll find that Miss Universe can be less attractive than the girl next door.

Of course, there are objective parameters you can measure, but if you get all or most of them right, you just end up with something that doesn't totally suck. To create something brilliant you have to narrow your appeal, to match the individual preferences of a spesific group.

Re:The only reason "Cards" won...

[radiotalent]

Actually the best games are "Carboard and wooden pieces". Get the family hooked on a game like Settlers of Catan [boardgamegeek.com], Puerto Rico [boardgamegeek.com] or Pirate's Cove [boardgamegeek.com] and then ask yourself why you are watching so much television.