Tobold's Blog

A week from now, half of the United States of America will be in uproar. We don't know which half yet, but the chance of the loser saying "good game, congratulations, you won" are close to zero. ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/democracy-is-when-other-side-wins.html

I had the opportunity to play Thorgal: The Board Game today. I did receive the crowdfunding version of the game about a month ago, but played the retail version at my board game night. With the ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/thorgal-board-game.html

Back in 2009, EA Bioware sent me a review copy of Dragon Age: Origins. That is remarkable insofar as that I only got a handful of review copies in two decades of writing this blog. I didn't profi...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/dragon-age-shitstorm.html

Normally, after having played a game for some time, I like to switch to another game of a different genre. But after playing Ara: History Untold for a while and being somewhat disappointed with i...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/millennia-vs-ara.html

Whether it is board games or video games, I tend to get a lot my information about new releases these days from YouTube (plus Twitch, but only for video games). For video games, publishers tend t...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-weird-world-of-board-game-releases.html

One thing I learned as a scientist is that you can almost never extrapolate a curve beyond the existing data points. Since electric vehicles came onto the mass market for cars, analysts have freq...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/ev-inflection-point.html

At the Spiel in Essen I crossed paths with a YouTube content creator, part of the Dice Tower team. Recognizing his face, I gave a short "hi" wave, and he politely nodded back. And that is the mos...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/parasocial-relationship.html

Earlier this year I bought Crusader Kings 3 on Steam, because the Gamepass version I previously played does not have access to the DLCs. So, of course I was interested when last month another hig...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/grafting-on-different-game.html

Arcs is a very deep game, where there is a long way from understanding and memorizing all the rules to actually mastering the game. I would like to help people on this way, by talking about one o...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-action-economy-of-arcs.html

Arcs is one of the hottest board games of 2024. Its Kickstarter campaign is currently being delivered, and the game isn't available in retail yet. But I managed to snatch a copy during the Spiel ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/my-first-game-of-arcs.html

Earlier this year, a "less competitive" version of Scrabble was released. Quote: “The makers of Scrabble, Mattel, have done some research and found that younger people, Gen Z people, don’t ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/arcs-generational-conflict.html

In 1933 the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazis for short, took control of Germany after winning an election there. They dismantled democracy, started a world war, c...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/nazis-back-in-europe.html

I just came back from the Spiel in Essen, the world's largest board game convention. On the positive side, I managed to buy one of the hottest games of the year before it is available in retail: ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/spiel-essen-2024.html

In the history of MMORPGs there was a period of several years between the time that World of Warcraft had established itself as the biggest game in the genre, and the time where interest in MMORP...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/some-more-thoughts-on-ara-history-untold.html

Dear Lurkers Readers! Thank you very much for the overwhelming response to my previous post. I didn't even know I had that many readers left! There seems to be a good number of you who are read...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/10/dear-readers.html

I need some feedback from my readers. A long time ago I reserved the domain Tobold.com for this blog. But of course it can also be reached via tobolds.blogspot.com . As I am having problems with...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/anybody-using-toboldcom.html

I have played Ara: History Untold for 26 hours. It is one of those games where I am happy enough playing it for a bit via Gamepass at $12/month, but would have regretted buying the game on Steam ...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/ara-history-untold.html

Tomorrow my Game Pass subscription rises in price from $10 to $12. And YouTube first cancelled my Premium Lite plan, forcing me to go to the full Premium, and is now raising the price of that one...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/leisure-dollars.html

In The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett writes "The gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows". Not believing in something is only an option if there is no con...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/beliefs-and-insurance.html

This week a study by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said that social media collect a lot more data about their customers than those customers are aware of, mostly for purposes of targeted ad...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/limited-future-potential-of-advertising.html

I am still playing a lot of Dune: Imperium, as physical board game and digital, in different constellations of base game plus expansions. And that has led to some observations on how one learns g...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/learning-concepts.html

Dune: Imperium Digital tomorrow releases the Rise of Ix expansion on mobile and console, making cross-play with Steam players possible, who had that expansion for a few months already. The physic...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/so-how-about-that-uprising.html

There has been a trend in these past years of large game companies making live service games and failing miserably with them. The latest entry, Concord from Sony, probably broke all records by sh...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/predicting-death-of-live-service-games.html

I play a lot of board games. Sometimes I have people invited over to my place, and I already know what we will be playing, so I have all the time in the world to set the game up. But more often I...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/folded-space-board-game-inserts.html

I read and watch international news. In a globalized world, it helps with understanding when you can compare what is going on in different countries. And sometimes, surprisingly, you hear the sam...

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2024/09/housing-and-perceived-market-failure.html