Re: [piecepack] Killer App?

[Doug Orleans <dougo@...>]

jdroscha@... writes:
 >    I am curious about others' thoughts on this matter.  Personally, 
 > I wonder if there even could be one such game.  It seems like 
 > that "killer app" might be a different game for each person.

The "Mu und Mehr" game is basically a special deck of cards with rules
for a bunch of games, but probably almost everyone who buys it gets it
for Mu itself.  (Personally I like Wimmuln, the Oh Hell variant, at
least as much as Mu.)  Ditto with Tichu and Wizard.  There are lots of
games you can play on a chess board, but chess is pretty much the
"killer app" for that.  (Although I got a cheapie set mainly so I
could use the board for RAMbots...)  However, there's probably a much
smaller proportion of people who bought an Icehouse set who just
wanted to play Icehouse.  I suspect that a decent-sized, well-rounded
set of polished, interesting games can work just as well as a single
one with universal appeal, but the latter might be easier and more
effective if you're really going for widespread acceptance.  Unique,
high-quality components helps too, but I think you've got that already.

I'm curious about the genesis of the piecepack-- was there a
particular game idea that led to its design, or did you just put
together several different commonly-used piece ideas?  The rules I've
looked at seem mostly to be adaptations of other games to the
piecepack set, and don't use all the features of the set-- a "killer
app" game would probably need to have some fairly unique mechanisms
that take advantage of all the important aspects of the piecepack set.
Although it may not even be clear what all those aspects are yet...

--dougo@...