Today my schedule took me, and with me GameTime 24x7, all over the city to meet with a variety of game-loving people.  First thing this morning, I had the privilege of sharing breakfast with Mary Couzin, founder of the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, Carina of Casa De Carina, and Carina's cousin Danny Lewis of the DLRP Marketing Company.  We are developing a collaborative effort to market an incredible game system to the Latino community - LOTERIA MIX™.  You'll be hearing more about this over the next few days.

I also had the opportunity to speak with Michael Harper of TalentGenesis.  We're going to meet in a couple weeks, when he returns to Chicago, to discuss games and professional development.  In the mean time, he suggested that I get a copy of The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace.  I found a copy on sale cheap at Amazon.com, so I should have it shortly to review.  I'll share what I learn about the gamer culture and its impact on the business world via this blog.

At lunch, my friend and business associate Brian Blankstein met up with me and we got together with Yan Pritzker, CEO of Planypus, a website designed to support impromptu get-togethers among friends.  We may find ourselves collaborating soon on a special project - stay tuned.

In the evening, I returned to my favorite Argo Tea over at 16 W. Randolph for this Wednesday's GameTime Afterhours.  Brian and I helped introduce a few newbies to Settlers of Catan and then we settled in for some team-based party games, beginning with a rousing game of Cranium and wrapping up with a marathon session of Taboo.  We almost ran through every single one of the pink-colored cards.  My most intriguing observation of the experience was how radically differently every player approached the challenge of providing clues without using the restricted words.  Players provided hints ranging from very literal word associations to vague implications and from terse terms or expressions to very verbose, rapid-fire commentary.  From this observation, I discovered that there is a value to collaborating with someone who has a complementary communication style OR one who has a style that can adapt to complement yours.  When you discount the challenge of avoiding the restriction words, performance between pairs or teams varied wildly from -2 points at the minimum to 7 points at the maximum in a single round.  I'm very eager to learn more about how Taboo could be used to evaluate communications styles and enable teams to more effectively communicate.

After a fruitful meeting of the minds with the marketing team at Argo Tea, we have made arrangements to have ongoing GameTime Afterhours events at the Argo Tea at 16 W. Randolph every Wednesday from 6pm-10pm.  I'm so giddy that now I've got the theme song from The Jeffersons stuck in my head.  I love the feeling of positive results.

So, plan to join us for our inaugural regularly scheduled GameTime Afterhours, this Wednesday, February 20 at Argo Tea!

This evening, I had the pleasure of meeting John Ashton, the founder of a new downtown Chicago bridge meetup.  After observing that all major bridge groups were on the way north side, i.e. near me :-P, John decided to put together a casual bridge group to allow players of all caliber to have an enjoyable social engagement around the game of bridge.

Turns out that John is also an avid history buff with a penchant for games.  He was telling me all about a variety of truly classic games, including an early Scandinanian variant of chess called Tablut.  He recently wrote a paper analyzing the game and has cordially given me permission to post the paper on our blog - Tablut Summary-Longer.pdf (73.79 kb).  Tablut is apparently a more contemporary, i.e. circa 1700s, variation of the Viking game Hnefatafl (just don't ask me to pronounce it).  John also shared with me that Aage Nielsen, a Danish software developer, produced a Java version of the game that is playable online - Hnefatafl Online.

I find old school games intriguing, having played my share of Parcheesi, Mankala and Nine Men's Morris over the years.  John promised me a chance to view his collection of historic games at the bridge meetup this Wednesday at his place.  For those of you more interested in contemporary board games, be sure to check out the Chicago Boardgames Meetup Group this Tuesday night at Goose Island.

I was blown away this evening by the incredible reception that GameTime Afterhours gathered today and over the course of the week at Argo Tea on Randolph Street.  Eleven people came out for games and socializing.

Kalin and I played a head-to-head Settlers of Catan game, using it as a teaching opportunity for some of our other guests.  We're still working out some of the details for our two-player variation - suggestions are welcome.

Just as we were wrapping up the Settlers game, four gents from University of Chicago stopped in and we decided to put together some Texas Hold'Em.  Using Monopoly money in lieu of chips, which turned out to be a wonderful substitution, we played winner-keeps-all.  I had to step away, so I didn't catch the final winner, but it became a close head-to-head match when I met up with Phil Simborg to discuss the club vision.

Even more people came to check out GameTime Afterhours tonight at the Randolph Street Argo Tea.  Renea, Herb, Dick and I played a few rounds of gin to warm up - get it, rounds of gin to warm up.  As more guests arrived, we split into a couple games - one game of Scrabble and one big game of Settlers of Catan.  Greg, a new arrival introduced to GameTime Afterhours by Renea, turned out to be a huge Settlers fan.  He helped bring Renea up to speed for her first game of Settlers ever and she almost came out victorious, just short by one point when the dust settled.

It's such a great experience to get together and play games with friends and to make new friends over games.  Greg even had an epiphany of an economic persuasion when he determined that, all other things being equal, it was almost always better to upgrade a settlement to a city than to buy a development card.  Like The Richest Man in Babylon, the idea of putting your valuable resources to use to earn more resources was not lost on the man of many voices.