Talk:German-style board game

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the German-style board game article.
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Requestes move This article was nominated for renaming on 29th June 2006.
The result of the discussion was no consensus.
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[edit] List

It seems to me that, without a definition of what a german-style game is to test against, the list of games section is original research, which is forbidden by WP:NOR. As a result, we should remove it. Percy Snoodle 10:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Rather than deleting this list, which in my mind is vital to help others fully understand what a german-style board game is, why not simply break it out into a page of it's own where all German-style games are listed be they old, new, in print, or out of print. I want to add the game War On Terror by TerrorBull games but at this stage have no criteria to go by to determine if it is deemed notable enough to include yet 81.144.157.50 12:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC) Trollgod 12:19, 05 January 2007 (GMT)
I have a very stupid question: according to the definition, Monopoly would qualify as a (precursor) of German Style board games (although, of course, it's American, but that's not the point). Have I misunderstood something? --Hartmut Haberland 08:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I see your point about Monopoly, but we have to have some sensitivity to history: German-style games are not absolutely unique--Mancala would be an even better example--but they represent a design movement starting in the late 20th century. Also, Monopoly fails the criterion of having a definely time-end to the game, something German Style games have almost universally.

[edit] Removable of BGG

I'm curious why BoardGameGeek was removed from the see also (especially given that BrettSpielWelt was not). Rdore 04:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I added a link to BGG under the external links section. I can't imagine why it shouldn't be there. Bgplayer 23:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably because BGG had already been linked to in the article, but BSW hadn't. --McGeddon 23:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, here is the explanation given by the anonymous user: "removed inappropriate see also only included to spam the boards." Probably the same guy who wanted to delete BGG from Wikipedia a few weeks ago. --Jcbutler 02:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Currently BGG is in the "See also" section, but it has been removed again from the "External links" section. We really need to discuss this and come up with a consensus, rather than continually adding and removing it. --Jcbutler 18:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

My feeling is that since it has an external link on its own page, it shouldn't appear in the external links on this page. However, if there's a page on the BGG wiki specifically about designer games, rather than the wole of BGG's rather broad remit, then that page would be a suitable target for an external link. Percy Snoodle 19:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if it was in the "See also" section before or not but I'm fine with it being there and not in "External links". It probably makes more sense even since it has its own page. Bgplayer 22:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The playing with BGG links may relate to politics on BGG, a small but vehement (and not particularly polite or scrupulous) faction believing that BGG is far too Eurogame-oriented. In my opinion, this is the result of the greater number of Eurogames being published compared to non-German-style US games (wargames excluded on either side). This brouhaha seems to be dying out. It seems most useful to directly reference BGG; requiring access to the the Wikipedia article on BGG to then get to the reference to BGG is annoying to a user who would just like to get to BGG.

No, it's not got anything to do with bgg politics. Percy Snoodle 19:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Italics

This article seems very inconsistent about whether and when the name of a game gets italicised. Are there rules about this that I'm not aware of?

According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting), italics are used for the titles of books, films, video games, computer games, musical albums, and works of art. Board games are not specifically mentioned, but I would argue that we should use the same rule that applies to computer and video games, and italicize all of them for the sake of consistency. The exception might be noncommercial games like chess and go, which are generally not italicized, or capitalized for that matter. --Jcbutler 17:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influence on MTG is inaccurate

I believe this article is inaccurate in describing Eurogaming as an influence on Garfield's Magic TCG. The only time Garfield has mentioned a board game influencing his card game is in the instance of Cosmic Encounter, which could hardly be considered a German-style game.ELPsteel 07:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I say go ahead and delete it. That's been in the article for ever, never sourced, I'm not sure where it came from. Rdore 19:37, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

To note here, as I have in asnwer to Rdore's question on my talk page, two paragraphs were removed - one about M:TG, which was false, as ELPSteel notes; and one about games like Bohnanza, which was true. I assumed the second paragraph had been removed in error and have returned it. Percy Snoodle 18:32, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change of name?

I'm interested in getting some opinion. On BGG, "Euro" is the much more common term over "German" these days. Doing some quick google searches suggests that that's true across the board. Searching for German-style board game gets 61,600 hits[1], for Euro-style board game gets 77,200 hits[2], and European-style board game gets 208,000[3]. Given that, I'm proposing moving this to European-style board game and then redirecting this to there, and also redirecting Euro-style board game to there. I know I could be bold but I'd like to see what others think first. — Timotab Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!) 23:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

This has been extensively discussed earlier. — Aldaron • T/C 03:32, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Two years ago, the consensus seemed to be that German was the more common term. A little over one year ago, Euro started to gain prominence. Today, Euro(pean) has the clear win. Shouldn't we reflect current terminology? — Timotab Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!) 03:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Again, I'd like to recommend that you use the requested moves process if you do decide to move the page. I'd also advise dropping the "-style" if you want to reflect current use; your google searches don't really apply because hardly anyone ever says "style". without "style", the searches give 15,000,000 for "German"[4] and only 2,800,000 for "Euro"[5], but the clear winner is "Designer" with 94,200,000[6]. However, your searches didn't use quotes, which give us 13,600[7] / 2,520[8] / 1,970[9] - so with quotes, "German" still takes it. Dropping "board", since the article deals with all the designer game types, gives us 120,000[10] / 391,000[11] / 21,500[12] - showing you can make google support whichever one you want just by varying the search. What would be useful would be a breakdown of use of each term on BGG by year. Percy Snoodle 07:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

So - are we going to have another RM? It's been more than a year since the last one, and I'm not keen to be the one to start this off as I started the last one and it got messy; but at least we can get rid of "board". Percy Snoodle 14:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The source mentioned (Bob Schwartz) claims that German Style doesn't work from a retailers perspective, because of negative connotations. The source goes even that far and claims that they look for a new name, not that a new name is already in use. It's like posting somewhere "I want to call those games XYZ Games now" and then claim that as a source. And that got such a prominent place in the article? All designers names in that list are german and "german" very much dominates that article. I cannot see that issue as some naive attempt to find a better name. In fact, the source claims economical reasons and in that case just have to do with peoples bias. So we have Disneys Tales instead of Grimms Fairytales and norse / scandinavian religion as source in Fantasy instead of germanic religion and the german influence on Comics is probably also unwanted as it doesn't help to keep the germans as humourless Nazis they have become since the world wars. Now, I'll eat some American Pizza and go buy a truly american Levi Jeans. — best wishes from germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.58.136.255 (talk) 08:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

'Euro' is by far the more common way they are referred to in the community nowadays. I was pretty surprised to see people still clinging to 'German' since it is pretty uncommon to hear them referred to that way these days and sounds so out of touch. 156.142.34.20 (talk) 13:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

As noted above, this has been extensively discussed earlier. That discussion should be reviewed before reopening this issue. The basic outcome was that (a) the (then) proposed term "Designer game" would be a bad choice (it's just a marketing term that no one actually uses), but that (b) people were divided as to whether "German" and "Euro" was more appropriate, with inertia favoring retaining "German". My view is that "Euro" is more accurate, and increasingly widely used, and I would support a change to either "Euro game" or "Eurogame". — Aldaron • T/C 16:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)