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PROFESSOR: We're going to do a little talking
about the reading, and then we'll play a couple of games.
And then the last hour will be time for your teams
to able to work on your projects unless, of course,
you are playing Monopoly, and your property [INAUDIBLE].
So today is kind of like the historical part of class.
I mean, we've looked a little bit
at some board games, some card games that [INAUDIBLE].
But now we're looking at a very specific time, largely 1900
to about 1950, prior to World War II.
There were a number of games that I could have brought out,
things that you would also be familiar with,
things like Boggle, for instance.
But those come a little bit later.
Some of these games, the Scrabble, for instance,
have predecessors that come from the time period
that we're talking about, but these versions
that we're familiar with now, probably
had some rule changes along the way.
Similarly, how many of you played Othello or Reversi?
Yep.
So Reversi dates from the time that I'm talking about.
It might actually be slightly before 1900.
But Othello comes much, much later, like the '70s.
And how many of you knew the game of Othello?
Looks like [? we're quite ?] [? reversing. ?]
So that's kind of like a trademarked version of the rule
set, which basically specifies what the initial start
position of the game that I believe it
was adapted with a game designer who wrote up the rules,
set up [? deployment ?] rules and publicized
the game of Othello.
But the version of the Reversi may be not black and white,
may be different colors on each open face is way before that.
And Uno comes much later, but in doing this reading,
you read a little bit about a game--
I think it was in today's reading--
about a game that Parker Brothers
tried to publish that was kind of like Uno, only it had
five colors instead of four.
So that's the reason why I brought in to this today.
It's not necessarily because all these games,
they come from 1900, but a lot of them came from,
started around about this time.
And [INAUDIBLE] local history, Salem
is really not that far away, and I'm not sure
that the building still exists, but has anyone
been to Salem recently?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Yes?
Then, do they have the Parker Brothers building there
because it's huge?
Or it was.
AUDIENCE: I don't know if it's still--
I'm not actually sure.
PROFESSOR: It's probably a tourist attraction.
AUDIENCE: No, definitely not a tourist attraction.
PROFESSOR: OK.
This is all [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: I think it might be repurposed to [INAUDIBLE]
apartments because they've repurposed a lot of--
PROFESSOR: A lot of Parker Brothers properties
are now owned by Hasbro, which is also not that far
away, over in Rhode Island.
In fact, if you look at all of these games,
they say Milton Bradley, they say Parker Brothers.
But if you look at who currently owns the property,
it says Hasbro.
That the [INAUDIBLE]
And all sorts of games, like Tiddlywinks-- how many of you
played those growing up?
I never played them.
Some of the [INAUDIBLE] showed me how to play them.
This is not part of [? the talk. ?] [? Ted ?]
briefly talked about the [INAUDIBLE]
And anyone remember why Parker Brothers went into card games?
Because they were only were making board games.
They were making things like ping pong before that.
AUDIENCE: They were smaller and easy to manufacture.
PROFESSOR: Uh-huh.
AUDIENCE: Larger profit margin.
PROFESSOR: You print a sheet of cards,
you cut it into identical slices,
pack it in a tiny, little box.
You can put a lot of these on store shelves
or a truck or [INAUDIBLE] as opposed
to big boxes of Monopoly.
So I think that the takeaway from everything
that we're going to discuss today
is really all about how marketing and sales concerns
are going to effect you guys.
If you read the stories of Phil Orbanes,
[? one of ?] the [? most wanted ?] [? ones, ?]
vice president of R&D at Parker Brothers, also, apparently,
the best Monopoly player, [INAUDIBLE] material.
He's also writing from a very biased point of view.
He's writing supposedly as a Parker Brothers [INAUDIBLE].
And you can take everything that he
says with a grain of salt. I'm sure
not everybody who works at--
I'm sure [INAUDIBLE] as the book makes it out to be.
But when [INAUDIBLE] I think we can rely on them
and because I think [? it's ?] a pretty good designer,
a sort of design diary of how various
games became the way that they were.
One thing that he didn't go into a lot of detail on
was Monopoly because that kind of comes after his [INAUDIBLE].
But there's a little bit of that that I wanted to talk about.
And we mentioned that in [INAUDIBLE] it used to be
called [? Landlord's Game. ?] This was a patented product.
And the name of the original designer
was Elizabeth Magie, somewhere right
in the beginning of the 1900s, although it
took about three years between the patents
and type of publishing to actually figure out all
the manufacture [INAUDIBLE].
Parker Brothers only came into ownership of this product
around about 1974.
So it took about 30 years.
And the original feedback from George Parker himself
was that "the game is rejected because it's
too complicated and too technical
and takes too long to play."
So they didn't actually buy Monopoly from the [INAUDIBLE]
They bought it the following year, after Christmas, when
they saw how well [INAUDIBLE].
And in fact, George Parker invented the quick rules
and, I believe, actually imposed a time limit rule,
which does not exists any more.
But everything that we've talked about,
the Parkers and Monopoly, was something
that George Parker and the Parker Brothers
were very, very much aware of.
They knew that there was a problem with the game.
But they also realized how it tapped into the zeitgeist,
that there was an opportunity there
that could be capitalized.
It was one that fit very well with their strengths
as a board game manufacturer and publisher.
You saw how quickly they could turn around the company
to make it [INAUDIBLE] when the demand was there for it
and what they had to do to hire people who basically operated
coin machines to become jigsaw operators.
[INAUDIBLE]
So that was a story of why Monopoly
made its way into the Parker Brothers collection.
It was just [INAUDIBLE].
And it certainly wasn't the design
of the game that attracted them to acquiring the thing.
They just wanted to dominate the American board game industry
and in some cases, the British and Western Europe game
industry, as well.
Clue, on the other hand, it's one
of those things that has a very British origin, [INAUDIBLE]
before it came over to the US.
But I think in writing, we had a couple
of examples of how the Parker Brothers [INAUDIBLE]
initially and then eventually hired
people based in London to try to acquire
work that had been already patented in London and why
the American publishing [INAUDIBLE].
And that kind of gave you an idea
of what the board game industry looks like around
about the turn of the century.
Why is it that it's a little bit hard
to think of many examples of prototype games?
There's a lot [INAUDIBLE] in chess boards and playing cards.
All these things are good.
You might have a design on the back of a playing card or such
a thing [INAUDIBLE] the king or queen is illustrated
that could be copyrighted.
But the games that you can actually play on then
were pretty much [INAUDIBLE] games,
both games are games that you can just really
share with [INAUDIBLE].
Demand [INAUDIBLE] but around 1900s
is where mass production and mass distribution
all come into the fold.
It's not the driving that Parker Brothers
was getting in Salem because of the seaport.
Even though it wasn't the best seaport because, by then,
the war was moving the steam ship,
and you needed a deeper harbor, like what Boston did,
it still had the means of moving large amounts of merchandise.
At least two [? barges ?] were [INAUDIBLE]
of the United States.
So prices-- I just want to give an idea of how recent
this whole idea of buying a game off the shelf is.
And I'm only talking about the 1900s.
And prices, actually-- you might buy a toy.
You might buy something that you played
a game with golf clubs or something
like that, a cricket bat.
But you wouldn't necessarily just
buy a whole game with a branded title on it,
just off the shelf.
The jigsaws are kind of already a pretty extreme case where
this is its only game, and it's not
interchangeable with another game with the same title
because [INAUDIBLE].
And until the 1900s, we didn't necessarily
have a situation where people assumed that games could
be copyrighted or trademarked.
And games were just things that people played,
and if you liked it, you got the products that
needed to play it with, but then you wouldn't necessarily
own it.
Anyone else could go ahead and get
the same number of products or similar products
and, basically, the same game.
One example of this is something that's not in the reading,
but I guess this will be over in [INAUDIBLE].
So how many of you read H.G. Wells?
The War of the Worlds?
[INAUDIBLE]
Do you know that he made a board game?
He made a board game with little, miniaturized tin
soldiers.
It's called Little Wars.
You can find it on Project Gutenberg.
It's about 24 pages.
And the rules are only about six pages long,
so it's a quick read.
But the previous 18 pages is his development diary
of how the rules are made.
And basically, [INAUDIBLE] about how he was actually
specifically ended up developing a set of war game rules
on how you set up troops, how far do they move,
how you launch cannons, shot at each other.
And it was all based on this one little toy
that you can buy from any toy store.
So it wasn't like, here's a box that you will buy with H.G.
Wells' Little Wars on the title.
He just printed it as a [INAUDIBLE].
And if you got that you would read a little story by H.G.
Wells on how to [INAUDIBLE] and then
right in the back of it [INAUDIBLE]
that you can buy these parts.
You can play this game for yourself.
So again, he kind of owns the book,
but he doesn't really own the game.
You are expected to find the parts yourself,
in particular, those little breech loader cannons.
I think actually there were little explosives in it,
and then you could light the little cap.
And you could use that to fire little wooden projectiles
[INAUDIBLE].
It was pretty darn cool.
So you can do things like terrain.
And there were instructions in there
on how you make model terrain.
If you made a building, it had to be completely solid,
you could fill it up with toy blocks
because you don't want anyone to put
their troops inside the building,
but you can put them on top of the building.
Pretty cool.
But that's some time in 1914, 1915.
That's already past the date when
these products were starting to appear on the shelf.
If it gives you any indication of what
it was like before that-- is that people printed out
rulebooks.
And you can still find books for card games,
for instance, on your shelf, like 101 Games
You Can Play With a Deck of Cards, or something like that.
But that's how games were shared.
They weren't put in a box and shrink wrapped, tied together
with twine or something like that and sold as a product.
So today we've got these games.
Just a quick look through some more details, by the way--
I want you take a look at these boxes
that I'm going to be handing around.
And look at the sizes of them.
I want you to think about how you would put this on a store
shelf like Target or Walmart.
I guess at that time it would be a [INAUDIBLE] store.
And these are modern boxes, obviously.
These don't date back to the [? past ?] century.
Because I kind of want to talk about,
also, the reality of what it's like
to be able to sell a product like this in stores today.
Actually, I should have brought in a [INAUDIBLE],
but the jigsaw box is about the size
of the size of box of the time.
The first thing is orientation.
This is meant to be sort of seen this way or this way, possibly
back this way.
How many of you have gone shopping in a Target
or in a Walmart or a Sears or something
for gifts in Christmas?
OK.
Yeah.
You're buying it for family members, [? among them? ?]
Friends?
For yourself?
Anyone buying games for yourself at Christmas?
No, actually, this is recorded.
I don't think it's any great surprise if I told you
that the majority or a very huge chunk of the profit
that a company like Parker Brothers or Hasbro will make
will be during the Christmas season.
But they are not usually bought by the people
who are going to play them.
They're usually going to be bought as gifts.
So all of this stuff is positioned
not to attract you to think that, oh, this is something
I want to play, but rather, this is something
that I want someone else to play.
Or I think someone else is going to like this.
How many of you bought Monopoly for a friend
or for a family member?
Yeah.
Did you think it was a good game at the time when you bought it?
AUDIENCE: Eh.
PROFESSOR: Eh.
So why did you buy it?
AUDIENCE: Because other people liked it--
PROFESSOR: Because other people--
AUDIENCE: It was a gift.
PROFESSOR: --because someone you were buying it for might--
AUDIENCE: They [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Oh, they were your--
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: And maybe you remembered liking it
when you were their age.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Anyone else?
AUDIENCE: We got it for my grandpa.
PROFESSOR: You got one for your grandfather?
And had you played with your grandfather before, Monopoly?
AUDIENCE: No.
PROFESSOR: No?
A [? lot? ?] OK.
So maybe this is a opportunity to play this, OK.
But had your grandfather played it before by the time--
AUDIENCE: I'm sure.
He's old.
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
The game's old.
AUDIENCE: That's right.
PROFESSOR: Who else?
I thought I saw some other hands.
AUDIENCE: Yep.
I think we played with my cousins at Christmas.
I think it's the only thing any of us play.
PROFESSOR: Is that like the thing
you can do with your cousins?
AUDIENCE: Well, they're younger.
We have a kind of wide age range.
We have second or third grade up to high school at the time.
Yeah.
PROFESSOR: This is a hardcore, ruthless, capitalist game
for second graders, right?
But you can play it.
But people have fond memories, not necessarily
of the game itself, but of sessions playing Monopoly
with family and friends.
And even whether or not the game's any good,
you kind of hope that other people
will have those fond memories of playing it
with friends and family, maybe even because it's
you giving the game.
So you might end up actually playing the box
that you bought.
But that's what all these games are designed to do.
These game sets are packaged to be gifts.
And so you look at something like Battleship and Risk
and Monopoly and Clue, they're huge things
that look good if you wrap it up with paper.
And Tiddlywinks?
Tiddlywinks, it's hard to make an argument for a much bigger
box because we really don't need a lot space for a Tiddlywink
box.
Go ahead and open it, actually, so we can see what's inside.
I bet it won't be there.
[LAUGHTER]
PROFESSOR: In fact--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
And probably the box--
let's see how much of that box is actually occupied by stuff.
There is a bell.
And that requires a certain depth of box.
AUDIENCE: And [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
So that's a little deck of cards and a bell.
And the bell, I'm not really sure the bell was clearly
in the original version of it that
was started in [? the beginning. ?]
The deck of cards certainly was.
OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Good.
Is there a copy deck?
AUDIENCE: Yes
PROFESSOR: OK.
There actually is a copy deck.
Good.
All right.
It's not just a cardboard pole.
So again, these products are all designed
to catch your eye-- it's really up on the store
shelf [? like that. ?] I believe the standard shelf is
18 inches.
That's [INAUDIBLE].
That's a standard industry width.
If anyone's worked in retail and knows that number
by these different [INAUDIBLE].
And if you sell boxes, basically, this wide,
you can sort of stack them either on top of each other.
And then put one vertically in front to show it.
This is Risk, and if you take that box off,
then you can see a whole bunch of other Risk boxes
that are back there.
You can take that.
I believe that there is, with the Candyland and the Chutes
and Ladders-- that's kind of an interesting situation where
they're a little bit off, they're
a little shorter, both horizontally and vertically so
that you can actually fit three in a row.
So the Candyland, the Chutes and Ladders--
there's probably some third very simple game--
but I can't think of one-- that all fit in a row.
And then you just see this giant wall of Hasbro.
That's what they want you to do when you come in.
Where is it the boxes are placed in a store,
whether it's Target or Walmart or some specialty game store--
it's all paid for and sold ahead of [? price. ?]
How much Hasbro pays the retailer for placement
determines whether it's the first thing you'll
see when you come into the store or whether they're
stocks that they are keeping in the back room
that you have to ask for.
That's [INAUDIBLE].
So maybe they'll look at one display case somewhere
where they're [INAUDIBLE], but for the most part,
you're not going to be able to pick a game off the shelf
unless the board game manufacturer themselves have
actually paid for that shelf.
And they're going to make it back, for both of them,
they're going to make it back by the end of the season
because that game [? is repeatedly going to be ?] sold.
And it's OK that they're selling the boxes to people
for [? any ?] [? or Monopoly. ?]
[INAUDIBLE] to somebody else. [? You all might ?] already
have a copy of Monopoly, but they don't want people to take
that in consideration when they [? want to buy this. ?] How
many people have multiple copies of Monopoly?
I have two.
OK.
How many?
AUDIENCE: Four, maybe.
PROFESSOR: Four?
Different kinds of Monopoly?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, they all have the different skin,
like there's [INAUDIBLE], Star Wars, Millennial, on and on.
PROFESSOR: There's just different kinds.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I have Star Wars, Nintendo--
PROFESSOR: Nintendo?
AUDIENCE: --Pokemon, and then the original.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: I can imagine Pokemon.
I'm interested in Nintendo.
AUDIENCE: So we have Junior.
I learned to play Monopoly when I was, like, three years old.
But that [? has big board. ?]
PROFESSOR: What's the difference?
Is it--
AUDIENCE: Everything is just simpler.
And I also do like that the dollar amounts
are one, two, three, four, five instead of all these hundreds
and stuff.
The ones don't really matter.
PROFESSOR: Right.
You don't have to have to [INAUDIBLE] under a hundred.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE], but it's
basically the same game with no Community Chest.
PROFESSOR: Is it [INAUDIBLE]?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: I mean, [INAUDIBLE] at least?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
OK.
And you have the Junior, too?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And then, I have Pokemon,
and I also have those electronic ones.
PROFESSOR: Oh, are you talking about electronic devices
that you carry or something you load into a computer?
AUDIENCE: Both.
PROFESSOR: Oh.
OK.
AUDIENCE: I have a disk and I have
a Monopoly thing that's it's kind of Game Boy,
but it's Monopoly.
PROFESSOR: Oh, OK.
I can see LEDs that light up.
AUDIENCE: Those ones with the disk,
you're playing against the computer
or against a person, and the little Game Boy thing,
you're playing against the computer.
PROFESSOR: Cool.
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: I have the new one.
PROFESSOR: Different versions?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Regular, I think [INAUDIBLE], I have a rip off of Monopoly
that's my town.
And so different business in town-- back in 1985,
now they don't exist anymore-- paid for their business
to be bought on the board.
PROFESSOR: Oh, so it's [INAUDIBLE] game, basically.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And I have Junior Monopoly, and I also
have Junior Monopoly, dinosaur theme.
It's by far the best.
PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I do think the board was a little bit smaller.
I don't think there were quite as many spaces.
PROFESSOR: OK.
So was it the best because of dinosaurs
or because it's actually best to play?
AUDIENCE: Well, Junior Monopoly is best to play, [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Oh, it's the dinosaurs.
Right.
I think the [? version ?] is very similar to the local town
version.
And it's properties of the [INAUDIBLE].
Does anybody know where the original road names cam from?
AUDIENCE: Atlantic City.
PROFESSOR: Atlantic City, New Jersey.
And that's the version that we've got.
The version that we've got now is
being published by Winning Moves Games, which
is kind of like a boutique Hasbro subsidiary
that sells classic versions of all of these games.
And so they sell it at fairly higher price points.
I don't know if the price tags are still on these games
but you can take a look.
But they're more expensive than the versions
that you buy in Target.
They have little pieces.
Therefore, people who like physically buying these games
want [INAUDIBLE] rather than the cheapest [INAUDIBLE].
I'm trying to remember other things that Rob mentioned.
Every little thing that you'll find
inside any one of these boxes costs money.
That's just [? the only ?] thing about that.
Scrabble, you all the have the tiles.
You have the board itself.
If you're lucky, there is a nice little piece
of cloth tape holding the board together,
which [INAUDIBLE] opening and closing and can fold up flat.
If you're unlucky, just [? one that ?]
doesn't keep [INAUDIBLE] from folding in half
and falling out later on.
That crease, it's just not going to last.
Risk, of course, has had many different versions where
some of them with soldiers and horses, some of them
with just numbers.
I had the version at home that was big [INAUDIBLE] class
of numbers.
There was a designer who came to our lab who spoke about Risk.
He used to work for Hasbro.
And he had a version where, instead of soldiers and horses,
it was arrows.
And so you move all of these arrows.
And it was like a war map, and all [? these forces ?]
[? were marked. ?]
Unfortunately, the arrows were flat.
And you couldn't even pick them up.
And the side things were kind of sharp and pointy.
And people kind of could get hurt.
And that version [INAUDIBLE].
There's a good story about why that happened.
So today, when you actually play these games,
I'd like you to actually take a look at all of these pieces
and from [? there, ?] you might want to try to [? determine ?]
how each piece actually costs and just add up what
the manufacturing costs of this box might have been.
I don't know if anybody here is from chemical engineering
or any kind of manufacturing.
Actually, Todd, you know [INAUDIBLE].
SPEAKER: Yeah.
Not injection molding, but--
PROFESSOR: So it might just be a fun exercise
versus, like, a deck of cards.
AUDIENCE: And I'd also recommend reading the rules
and actually try to play it the way the rules say, not
maybe the home rules you might have remembered when you played
it as a kid just to see how they are presenting this game.
How are they presenting the rules to somebody
who just got this as a gift, and they're
going to try to figure out how to play this thing.
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
See if they've improved the rules that [INAUDIBLE].
I actually hear about a classic version of Monopoly
where the original set of rules are [INAUDIBLE] updated print
out.
You can see how they described the Scrabble game.
Does this one have a bag?
Does it have a bag?
Oh, wooden pieces.
And a [INAUDIBLE] bag and think about how
that makes things easier.
[INAUDIBLE]
And if you've played these game before--
and I think many of you have--
definitely go into it by reading the rules first, so not just
playing the same way that you remember.
And also try out some of the other games.
OK?
Cool.
Let's talk a little bit about the games.
So I think everyone got a chance to. play.
It's all right that the jigsaw puzzle game is still going on.
So let's talk about the pieces.
Let's talk about things that you're moving around.
I mean, how many of you feel that the pieces that you
are playing with are significantly
different from pieces that you remember playing with?
No?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: For Candyland, the board is [? totally better. ?]
PROFESSOR: Oh, yeah.
So the board design is kind of insane.
AUDIENCE: It's really scary.
AUDIENCE: And I remember it being a little candy
thing like a square.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: The board is potentially like this.
It's like--
PROFESSOR: It's like [INAUDIBLE].
It's like a [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: But the actual cards weren't all that different,
right?
AUDIENCE: No.
I remember the game being each space [? like a candy. ?]
PROFESSOR: Right.
AUDIENCE: Now, each space is a color.
PROFESSOR: Oh, OK.
AUDIENCE: I thought I remembered that.
AUDIENCE: Me, too.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Wait, colors or candy?
OK, colors?
Hands up.
All right.
Different pieces of candy?
OK.
AUDIENCE: Well, he--
PROFESSOR: Well, I think it was--
AUDIENCE: It wasn't every piece, every space.
But there were a number of every other space
had some kind of image on it.
PROFESSOR: I think it still has that.
I think it still has the occasional.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: The thing is that if every piece was
a different kind of candy, it would probably
be more colorblind-friendly because you'd
be able to actually just see the kind of candy
even if you couldn't tell the colors.
AUDIENCE: It's not very colorblind-friendly.
[LAUGHTER]
PROFESSOR: This is not friendly with anyone with eyes, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PROFESSOR: But that's just the visual design of the board.
The actual spacing on the board is not all that different.
So you've had the chance to pick up the pieces, slam on the bell
and pit and stuff like that.
Some of these pieces, like in Clue,
have a lot of money put into some parts that aren't actually
all that useful, like the knife and the lead pipe
and things like that.
Was that solid metal?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Were those pieces?
They are sort of like metal pieces.
AUDIENCE: It's a sharp knife.
PROFESSOR: It's a sharp knife?
AUDIENCE: Well, it was when I was 10.
PROFESSOR: So because, in assignment two,
you are thinking about aesthetics,
what do you think about the choices of the materials
that they used for the various parts of the games
that you played today?
Or that you [? four ?] played today?
AUDIENCE: Well, one thing that bothered me with Clue
was if you committed a murder, or if somebody committed
a murder, and you find a body, you're
going to know whether they were murdered
with a knife or a pipe.
They don't look the same-- or a gun.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PROFESSOR: A very astute murderer.
I don't know.
So yeah.
There is a problem.
I played a version of Clue where the body is down
a dark staircase.
So you can't actually see what's at the bottom.
It's kind of-- you only see the outline.
So I think that was kind of the visual explanation for that.
But you're right.
It's not a very good justification.
Although, if people remember the movie, he's kind of
stabbed by everything, right?
He's hit by a lead pipe and stabbed by a dagger.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
Which was what was the first blow?
It doesn't matter what hit him after he died.
[LAUGHTER]
How about for Risk?
You've got horses, people, and cannons?
Is that right?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
I always found it difficult to remember which was which,
like what was what value.
AUDIENCE: I seem to recall that the pieces were relatively
bigger.
So I remember the cannon being at least as big
as the cavalry, maybe larger.
And that way, oh, that's worth more
than the cavalry, which is worth more than that little guy.
PROFESSOR: The pieces could just have been shrunk due to cost.
It's possible.
I remember big pieces, too, but we had that [? compilation. ?]
And maybe we were smaller, so the pieces looked bigger.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Our pieces were also Roman numerals.
PROFESSOR: Yeah.
I remember seeing people who had that type of pieces
and envying them because all I had
were freaking Roman numerals.
But they were easy to count, at least.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: All right.
So for the rest of today, you've pretty much
got time to work in your teams.
A few of you can continue playing, finishing up
your games.
The prototyping materials are all up here.
Feel free to come up and grab what you need.
Rick or I will be in the room at any given time.
So you can come up and ask us questions.
But use this time to be able to meet up with the team.
SPEAKER: Yeah.
If you want us to play your game,
we can't, but we're in class play tests on Wednesday.
PROFESSOR: This Wednesday?
I have the schedule here.
One second.
Let's see.
March 12th.
Yes we do, in fact, have a play test this Wednesday.
So make sure your games are ready.
Make sure you have a draft of your rules
so that you can test whether people actually
understand your rules.
OK?
On Wednesday.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]