Interviews by an Optimist # 5 -
Greg Aleknevicus
Greg Aleknevicus is a computer programmer living in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He has written for Counter, The Game Report and Games, Games, Games. He is currently the editor of The Games Journal and is a member of the International Gamers Awards. He's especially fond of games with high production values.
Tom Vasel: Greg, the The Games Journal has some of the best articles about boardgaming and is one of my favorite sites to visit each month. Can you tell us a little about the website, and how it came into being?
Greg Aleknevicus: Around 1999-2000, Burt Hochberg ran a website called The Games Cafe. It was updated weekly and had a host of regular contributors (Peter Sarrett, Greg Schloesser, Bruno Faidutti among others) who would write articles about games and puzzles. I was not involved at all, but I believe it was intended to be a commercial, self-supporting site. (I think the writers were paid but I can't say for sure.) I loved it because it was different from other gaming websites which might have a lot of information about specific games (such as reviews or translations) but very little about games in a general sense. Why are games appealing? What makes for a good game? These were the sorts of questions that the articles in The Games Cafe asked. Unfortunately, it did not last long and after only four months of publication (if I recall correctly), it shut down.
At some point Frank Branham and Greg Schloesser had the idea of continuing the concept in some form or other. To be honest, I'm not really sure why they thought of me; but they did, and they sent me an e-mail asking if I was interested in getting involved. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, whatever came about would require a lot of time and devotion, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit. Still, the idea intrigued me -- it had been something of a dream of mine to start an in-print game magazine. In fact, around this time I had been working on developing the layout and graphic design for just such a venture. It was more of a personal exercise, though; I knew that magazines were very expensive to print and distribute. Even more difficult though is in getting such a venture off the ground -- how do you get people to contribute to something that does not yet exist? So, it pretty much stayed in my head as a "wouldn't that be cool if..." idea. Frank and Greg's proposal solved many of these problems as we could attempt to "piggy-back" on the (short-lived) success of The Games Cafe. Ultimately, I accepted.
First up was getting permission to reprint the articles that had originally appeared on The Games Cafe. We decided that we would narrow our focus to games only, and so we sent letters to the writers. Happily, most gave permission to reprint their articles, and this would be sufficient to launch our site. Frank was willing to pay for the hosting as well as handling the administrative side of things but we didn't know what to call ourselves. The Games Cafe was not available, and we wanted something that was similar so that there was some sense of continuity. After a number of suggestions we eventually settled on The Games Journal.
Next was the decision as to how we would appear. We knew that we would have to be a non-commercial site, and that we'd be reliant on volunteers. (The short life of The Games Cafe had shown us that a commercial venture was unlikely to succeed.) As much as I would have liked to maintain the weekly schedule, it was not very plausible; so we settled on monthly updates. We also debated on how the website would actually operate. I think Frank was leaning towards having an automated system of some sort (so that there wouldn't actually be a schedule at all, and we could just add material as it arrived). We tested a couple of systems, but I was not happy with any of them -- they worked fine for publishing raw text, but I wanted greater control of the look and feel of the site. Unfortunately, I knew next to nothing about HTML (I'd only created one very simple web page prior to starting work on The Games Journal). So, I quickly had to do the best I could to educate myself, and I stumbled through using Microsoft Frontpage. (A poor choice since Frontpage generates terrible HTML code, but it does have the advantage of being very easy to use.) The first task was to develop a "look" for the site. I prefer a rather spartan, clean look; and so I came up with the style that remains largely unchanged to this day. Next was the task of editing the 25 articles into our new format, which took a lot longer than it should have. (Mostly this was due to my inexperience.) Eventually I got through it all; and in July, 2000, we debuted the site.
The response was encouraging; and most importantly, new contributions started coming in. More than anything else, this is what kept us going. Frank and I can only write so much ourselves; and we knew that if we couldn't get others on board, the project would die. Fortunately, we've managed to avoid that fate so far.
Our focus then remains the same today: to publish general purpose articles about board games. We wanted to publish the sorts of things that didn't really have any other outlet. While I suspect that what most people want are reviews, there were already several venues for these. Why duplicate something that already exists? I was much more interested in being involved in a site that offered something different, even if it wasn't the most popular idea. Still, we did (and do) publish reviews, although I had hoped to limit these to overlooked or forgotten titles. In that respect, we've failed – most writers (myself included!) prefer reviewing newer games and our content reflects this although I do try to encourage reviews of unusual titles wherever possible. Either way, I think our "claim to fame" is the articles we've published on a wide range of topics and by an even wider range of writers.
Tom Vasel: I think it is certainly true that there are no other sites on the internet with as detailed, in-depth articles as found at The Games Journal. The articles are "cream-of-the-crop" and are well written, as you said. How has the site progressed in the last few years? Has it continued to grow, with more readers and submissions? And how has the recent surge at BoardgameGeek (which seems to be the center of all things regarding board games) affected your site?
Greg Aleknevicus: Accurately gaging readership is a difficult task. We do have web traffic software, and the numbers have been steadily increasing. The latest stats indicate that there are about 20,000 unique visitors every month. Interpreting this is a whole other matter though as I'm sure there are nowhere near 20,000 individuals reading The Games Journal. (Presumably spiders and bots inflate the statistics, but I don't know enough about our web stat methodology to know to what degree.) A more accurate number can be deduced from our subscription list, which is currently around 1,300 addresses. The question then becomes, "What percentage of our total readership does this represent?" The subscription list is used to send an e-mail informing people that we've added content; but since we update very close to the first of each month, I know that many regular readers do not bother signing up. I suspect that we're currently at 2,000-3,000 active readers, but this is still just a guess.
The sad part is that this increasing readership has not resulted in an increased number of submissions, and this is far and away my biggest disappointment with the site. One of the decisions I made at the beginning was that I'd be very strict about publishing a new issue every month. Enforcing a deadline works wonders on keeping a project like this alive, and I stand by this decision. But, it does have its downside; and in our case, this means that we have published issues that are very sparse content-wise. There have been many times in recent memory, where I considered shutting things down. Is it really worth continuing if we can only publish a single article and a couple of reviews each month? After nearly five years of existence, I'd hoped that we'd be getting a lot more contributions than we were. In our most recent issue (January, 2005) I asked if there was anything we could do to improve The Games Journal. The response was: "more of the same". That is, people really enjoyed the types of things we were already doing, they just wanted more of it each month. Unfortunately, this is the one thing that's difficult for me to implement. I'm a slow writer, and so it's difficult for me to increase my own output. In the past I've made efforts to encourage more contributions, but this has met with limited success.
To be honest, I'm not sure how to solve this dilemma. The foremost idea is to remunerate our writers. Unfortunately, this is rather difficult when the site generates no income whatsoever. I really hate banner ads and doubt that they'd raise the kind of money required (even if that's a relatively modest amount). Becoming a pay-for-view site has a whole series of problems, and I think it would ultimately lead to a declining readership and an eventual death spiral. This doesn't leave much, and I've considered holding a volunteer fund-raising drive but, ever the skeptic, I'm unsure that we'd be able to raise enough money to make it worth our while. If we can only raise enough to pay our writers $4 or $5, then it's hardly worth the effort. Paying $25 per article would require about $2000 per year, and I'm very skeptical that we could raise that amount. Still, it may be the only way to ensure that The Games Journal continues. As I said, there have been many times that I've considered shutting things down, but I haven't; because ultimately, I'd really miss it. I enjoy the work of putting each issue together, but enthusiasm can only hold things together for so long.
As for how the Boardgamegeek has affected us? It's difficult to say. They are, without question, THE site for boardgaming on the internet and tend to dominate everything else. Years ago, Scott Alden made a suggestion of merging The Games Journal into their operations but I declined. My thoughts at the time were that we were two very different websites with different mandates -- the Boardgamegeek was much more focused on reviews, translations and files for specific games. Of course, they have greatly widened their scope over the years. As they've grown, I think their signal-to-noise ratio has dropped considerably; but since they have a virtual avalanche of material, there's a lot of interesting reading there. There have been many times that I've read one of their contributions and thought, "Wow, I wish that had been sent to The Games Journal instead!" Their popularity does make it difficult for anyone else to compete, but how can you argue against the success they've enjoyed?
Tom Vasel: I think one of the reasons for the lack of submissions, etc., to your site is the fact that most board game sites have a fairly low profile. There are piles of internet board game webblogs, sites about specific games, online board game stores, etc.; but very few of them tend to link to one another in a visible way. Perhaps what we need is a boardgame website portal? What are your thoughts on the fact that many of the board game websites "fly solo"?
Greg Aleknevicus: Well, I've always been somewhat skeptical (there's that word again) about the utility of websites linking to each other. What annoys me greatly is the abundance of websites (I'm not necessarily talking about game-related websites here) that are little more than links to other websites with not much actual content themselves. It's very frustrating clicking link after link but rarely finding anything useful. Further, the websites that try to be comprehensive in their links tend to be less useful rather than more. I tend to get wide-eyed when I see a page listing hundreds of links. There's likely to be a gem of a site buried there, but it's difficult to have to dig it out from everything else.
Having got that rant off my chest, I'm not sure if I agree with your suggestion that gaming websites have been lack in linking to each other. Most of the blogs I've visited seem to do a fairly good job of linking to the more useful sites. Do you have any particular sites in mind that "fly solo"?
Tom Vasel: Perhaps I was too hasty in my judgment, as only Consimworld springs to mind as "solo" - but then again they are a site with a distinct community, war gamers. Many sites, however, such as Boardgamegeek, have link pages that are uncategorized or unrated with many dead links. Be that as it may, it's good to see you keeping your site alive because of your love for games. Can you tell us a bit of your history in regards to board games?
Greg Aleknevicus: I'm not sure there's much interesting to say here. I did write an article about my gaming history for Counter magazine that is now available on The Games Journal:
The abbreviated version is that I played the usual games as a kid (Dungeons & Dragons, Risk, etc.) In high school it was Illuminati, Car Wars and Star Fleet Battles. I then dropped away for many years and only got back into things via Usenet and the group rec.games.board. This led to a renewed interest, as I read about a new game called The Settlers of Catan. Things pretty much exploded at that point and have resulted in the sorry, obsessed state I'm currently in.
Tom Vasel: Okay, then let's discuss the state of boardgaming today. We've seen scores of lists on the internet where folks discuss their "nickel and dime" lists, and the top ten games of 2004, etc. But I'm more interested in what you think of the year as a whole. How did the year 2004 affect boardgaming and Euro-games in particular?
Greg Aleknevicus: Ahh yes, the nickel and dime lists. They're an interesting phenomenon, although I'm really only interested in seeing the summarized reports that are to come. (I believe it's Mark Jackson who will be compiling the results?) Unless you know the individual involved, it's pretty boring to read a list of games played. Trends across a wide array of players can be very illuminating though, particularly when they're based on objective facts such as number of times played rather than a subjective rating.
2004 as a whole? Hmmm, I think it may be too soon to make any intelligent comment on its impact on boardgaming. There wasn't anything I noticed that you could point to and say, "Aha! A trend!" But maybe that's just because I wasn't paying close enough attention? I was quite happy that Ticket to Ride won the Spiel des Jahres, it should prove to be a real financial boon to Days of Wonder. I've always been a sucker for well-produced games; and they're right at the top of the field, excellent quality components and production. I also applaud them for the level of support they give their games online; their website has a wealth of resources, so much so that I've wondered how they can possibly afford to maintain it. Selling half a million copies of Ticket to Ride should help pay the bills.
Tom Vasel: Back in February of last year, you wrote that you were running out of things to say about games. In March, you clarified that you were speaking only for yourself; but still, I've seen a general feeling around the internet that there's nothing really NEW when it comes to board games. Obviously there have been some milestones in gaming - Cosmic Encounter, Magic the Gathering, Settlers of Catan, etc. - but is the newness wearing off? Are the new games just starting to be rehashes of older themes, as some have claimed?
Greg Aleknevicus: As for writing, I think that "newness" is better applied to players than to games, particularly in regard to Euro-games. It's a relatively young genre; so when you first discover it, it's like a whole new world opening up to you. The vast number and variety of games is overwhelming, and it is very easy to get caught up in the excitement and enthusiasm of it all. Beyond the games themselves there are also a huge number of excellent resources on the net; in addition to the websites we've already mentioned, there are discussion groups like rec.games.board, the Yahoo group Spielfrieks and many others. Many of the concepts and ideas discussed are unique to these sorts of games and so this too is new. But, it isn't endless. After you've been around for a while you start to run out of things to talk about and discuss. Or, more likely, the discussions become repetitious. The classic example here is the issue of open versus closed holdings in Acquire. It's a valid topic, but it's been engaged in so many times that absolutely no new points are ever raised. For those new to the hobby, it's an interesting exercise; but if you've been around for a few years, it'll cause you to run screaming.
As for the games themselves? Well, these "German style" games are a young genre, but the number of titles published each year is staggering. It should be no surprise then that a game released in 2004 is much more likely to feel derivative than one that was released in 1994. There are simply so many more games against which a new title will be measured than was the case 5 or 10 years ago. Again, it also comes down to an individual's personal history -- if you've played 25 different auction games then discovering Modern Art in 2004 is going to be less thrilling than if you had played the original back in 1992, even if it's the best auction game ever designed.
That said, I do think that German games recycle the same themes far too often. Look at the number of exploration games, auction games, train games. Even when a theme is tacked on, it can be useful to have something unique and interesting; and the German game market is failing miserably at this. Consider the 2004 nominees for the International Gamers Awards: (Attika, Einfach Genial, Finstere Flure, Power Grid, Goa, Hansa, Industria, Maharaja, Princes of the Renaissance, St. Petersburg, San Juan, Santiago, Tahuantinsuyu and Ticket to Ride.) These are all good games, but (with the exception of Finstere Flure) their themes are so generic that they're practically clichés. I think the American game industry has done a far better job of coming up with unique and interesting themes, and it's something that the German publishers should take note of.
Tom Vasel: But the American game industry gets a lot of criticism for poor game mechanics. For example, Eagle Games, while filled with theme, receives an extreme amount of criticism, because they put more emphasis on theme than mechanics. Do you think that there is any game company that successfully merges theme and mechanics, or is it the "impossible dream"?
Greg Aleknevicus: There have already been many, many games that successfully merge clever mechanics with interesting (and well integrated) themes. However, this does not necessarily mean that such games will be better than games with only one or the other. (Bohnanza is one of my all-time favorite games, yet its theme is entirely arbitrary.)
The companies that come to mind when I think of good themes and good mechanisms are actually American companies, as they existed in the 1980's. Games such as Car Wars, Merchant of Venus and Junta are all excellent examples of unusual and interesting themes that work very well with their mechanisms. That a lot of these games from the 1980's don't get as much play today should not suggest that they're poor designs, just that tastes have changed. Today, we'd consider a game with a 20-page rulebook and a 2-3 hour playing time to be long and complex but not so 20 years ago. Part of the reason why such games are rarer today is the fact that it's harder to design short, simple games and yet have a theme that isn't pasted on. But I don't think it's impossible.
In any case, I'd like to clarify that my earlier complaint about German games is that the themes they DO choose (pasted on or not) lack originality. Consider Goldland, a game that I consider to have excellent mechanisms and a well-integrated theme -- it makes sense that you need certain items to overcome obstacles and that the more you carry, the slower you move. It's still fairly abstract, but it works well -- it's easy to create a narrative that explains your actions in the game. But this narrative is so generic that it doesn't excite me, I've seen this "story" too often for that part of the game to pique my interest. A more unique theme would make for a more enjoyable playing experience.
Tom Vasel: Can you name any recent (the past two years) games that are exceptions to this rule - that stand out from the crowd?
Greg Aleknevicus: Do you mean German produced games that have an interesting and unusual theme? If so, there are not really that many that grab my interest based on the theme (and I guess that's really my complaint). A few that spring to mind are Feurio, Finstere Flure and Kablamo. I can't recall any other game that simulates fighting forest fires, and so this is what initially attracted me to Feurio. The actual mechanics are very abstract, although I do like how much of the game is about controlling/predicting how the fire will spread. I love the cover artwork of Finstere Flure (it's an homage to those old EC horror comics of the 1950's), and it fits right in with the theme – trying to escape an old castle without being eaten by the monster roaming the halls. I haven't played Kablamo, but the rather twisted theme (a game of Russian Roulette) is definitely unique. I'm sure there are a few other really obvious ones that I'm missing.
Tom Vasel: Thanks, Greg for taking the time to answer these questions. The gaming hobby is fortunate to have people like you leading the way. Any last words for our readers?
Greg Aleknevicus: Play nice!
Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"
January 23rd, 2005