One day, we’re going to take this for granted (maybe we already do?)

I remember a time in the late 80s or 90s, visiting one of my grandparents’ homes and playing… some board game. All I really remember is that it had:

– a bazaar
– some electronic component (with a sinister voice, maybe?)

That was it! I don’t really remember much else.

I search Google and get:

Clicking through, none of that looked or sounded familiar.

Let’s try ChatGPT.

Wouldn’t you know… it basically one-shot the search result!

That initial image looked like the ones Google returned, so no dice (hah) there. But! Dark Tower? What is this?

Uhhh, THIS WAS IT!

Apparently, it’s fondly remembered. And there is a modern sequel that uses your smartphone.

EDIT:

I realize that this might not be a totally fair comparison since I gave ChatGPT so much more context. It might be the nature of how we interact with these services (e.g., natural language chat vs “guttural” input in a search engine).

But… just to do some proper due diligence:

We’ve been doing a semi-weekly board game night at work. A coworker brought in Food Chain Magnate. This has to be one of the most complex and crazy board games I’ve ever played!

Well… not really. Just via a table.

Maybe it’s because I like maps, but I really love this game.

Civilization is one of my favorite games of all time. But good god man, this is torture.

Recently, I downloaded a game for the iPhone called “Words with Friends.” It’s very similar to Scrabble, with a different board and slightly different letter values (one would assume to avoid Scrabble’s IP lawyers).

Many of my family and friends are playing the game and we’re all having fun trying to best each other’s scores. I like to think I have a good vocabulary, but apparently I don’t know how to effectively play for points, as evidenced above by the 60-point bomb that Kerry dropped on me, two moves into the game!

No matter though. I’ll just have to brush up on the following video, “Fighting dirty in Scrabble.”