War of the Ring 2nd Edition is back in stock on Amazon. For the reasonable price of $100 (and not the crazy inflated price of last month).
I'm gonna bite and ask a question about Into the Dead. Let's talk about this idea of "porting" a game from digital to physical.
First of all, there's the notion that a board game could recreate the complexity of certain game mechanics, that a computer game calculates on the fly (IMO, it can't)
But earlier today I got a thought about environmental impact of board game production, after playing CO2 last night. There's a lot of paper, wood, and plastic getting produced for stuff that is becoming more and more disposable. Despite that, games don't really tout recyclable material much at all (either by using recycled material, or asking consumers to recycle when done).
So then at the junction of these two problems is this game just presented to us, Into the Dead. It was a digital game (presumably with no factory production involved), and now it's been "ported" to a format where it's maybe not quite the same as the original version, but uses a ton of paper and plastic.
Can you tell us about the production process of the game, and whether you considered the environmental cost of taking a digital game to a big pile of stuff on a table as in that photo? I'm not asking to be preachy about it, I just think the idea of "digital to cardboard" uniquely highlights the issue of overproduction in board games.
Wow, good post, and while I'm not a developer or board game designer, I want to chip in my 2 cents.
I absolutely agree there's an environmental impact when producing anything physical in general (board games included). In my own life, I try to minimize waste where possible and question if its possible to whether things could be down a certain way to reduce the impact on the environment.
Regarding board games though, I think by and large, with most games I have played, most of the bits and pieces have been necessary to the game design that the game designer has wanted to achieve. I don't usually think that games would be better simplified, and use fewer bits in turn making a better game. If the game needs the bits, then they should be produced, the type of material used should definitely be taken into consideration so that its biodegradable. On a separate matter, if people are buying the game and letting it sit on the shelf, well that's kind of a 'waste' unless you're a collector or that sort of thing. That's probably much worse than a designer designing a ton of bits in their game. If the game is played and enjoyed with so many bits I think that's a good thing. Especially when board games are physical and the same feeling is difficult to recreate digitally.
Personally I don't think designers should really be held back by the 'environmental impact' of a board game unless there's a stupidly ridiculous amount of bits, a game's pieces should be designed based on how it should play out.
Also don't want this to get to 'whataboutism' but this world has far far bigger waste problems than board games, off the top of my head, those photos of the rentabikes from China that just get dumped are insane.
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