I was mildly surprised to see a Slashdot entry on the new Steve Jackson Games releases shown at SXSW. Can’t say I recall that site focusing on SJG in the past – but then again, even this “old fashioned” tabletop gaming company is going to have a lot of cred with the tech-focused Slashdot readership. As the blurb notes, the company’s infamous run-in with The Law over its GURPS Cyberpunk book helped lead to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And, as the comments clearly show, there’s a lot of recognition of and love for SJG among the techies. There’s a ton of wistful praise for Car Wars (and calls for a modern computer version; hear, hear!), as well as kind words for GURPS and other products.
Oh, there’s also one fellow who wants us all to know that Steve is overly litigious, “irrational and greedy”, and “not a nice guy”, and we should all quit buying his games. That devolves into a long thread, without much to back the charges. The poster doesn’t help his credibility with the statement “Growing up I was a big fan of his games, including Car Wars, Ogre, and Traveler“. (You’ll see a quick Anonymous Coward post pointing out the problem there; that’s me.)
But anyway. The discussion makes me want to play Car Wars all over again. As well as try out the new games. Zombie Dice? Hmm, will that be anything like the discontinued TSR Dragon Dice?
4 Comments
Domino Writing
Zombie Dice has been out for several years – it’s a yahtzee-style game. There’s an app for it, too.
tbone
Huh, I totally missed the existence of the game until I watched this video. Looks like lots of fun w/ the proverbial beer & pretzels.
But I swear, the iPhone app cheats horribly! I played literally over a dozen games before I finally won once by a point or two. The other tries had me losing again and again with horrible scores like 13-1 or 13-2… In addition, the app crashed several times, and never did play sound for me.
But it was still fun. I’d like to get the actual product as a nice, pocketable game.
Philip Reed
At the moment we’re deep in the new edition of Ogre, but that doesn’t mean that a day goes by when I don’t think of a new edition of Car Wars. Ogre comes first, though.
And always happy to hear when someone else wants Car Wars; it makes me feel like Steve and I aren’t the only ones who really want to have the game back in stores.
tbone
A pleasure to hear from a video star of the Internets. : ) And a pleasure to hear that, maybe, perhaps, someday, the avenue is open for a new edition of Car Wars. It’d be great to see a whole new generation discover it – one that’s actually seeing CW technology (viable electric autos, vehicular computers, etc.) enter the real world.
I’ll round up and post my varied thoughts and notes on what’d be nice to see in an updated CW. Probably nothing that hasn’t been said in forums or other discussions, and possibly nothing of value either, but it’ll be fun anyway.
Best of luck with the Ogre release! That’s another great game, and one of my first SJG purchases.