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What makes iPhone (or iTouch or iPad) a gamer must-have?
Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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In addition to the mobile telephone thing, the constant internet access and both built-in and custom applications have turned this into a prime gaming accessory.
Oh, iPhone -- how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Edit: Most of the following is true for the iTouch and iPad, especially if you have wifi available in your gaming area. The iPad also is very good at holding/displaying rules PDFs.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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The most obvious use for a gamer is to actually play boardgames on the phone. Instead of getting any further into that here, please check out the excellent geeklist from Alexander Zhang that covers this nicely, including the pictured Tigris & Euphrates.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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As soon as I got my iPhone I began using the built-in browser to enter games played here on BGG right from the table while waiting for my turn. A process I'd often forget became easy to do while the game was still in progress or immediately after it ended, so I seldom miss logging a game these days. It satisfies my OCD.
Since then, it's become both easier and harder to do this:
Easier with the 3G model, more prevalent wi-fi connections and now with ryanch's free "BGG" application (see below or search in the Application Store).
Harder with all the tempting enhancements to game logging where we may enter the location, player names, BGG IDs, scores, etc. because the iPhone isn't always smooth with these pop up input screens. It's doable but sometimes takes awhile. It's still quite easy to mark a game played if I wait until I'm at a desktop to enter the other details, though.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Czech Games have provided English language MP3s of the tracks from the game CDs (and promise additional tracks will be made available eventually). I have the German version of the game, so these MP3s (and the English-language Rules PDFs) make the game playable for me.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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I ripped my Space Dealer CD and carry it on my iPhone for easy playback of the timer track.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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I wouldn't play Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game without the excellent mood music they supplied in the game. I enjoyed it enough to get the special edition for the couple extra tracks* and immediately ripped it to my phone so it's always available when we play.
* The additional cards are nice too, especially the guitar -- I'm a fan of Dead Rising on Xbox 360 and there's no thrill like Stratocasting the undead.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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For roleplaying games especially, there are some MP3 files of background noises for various environments that you can loop to add ambiance to the game.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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The built-in timer is handy for any game with timed rounds.
I used to use a magnetic Godzilla kitchen timer for this -- you could set the value to count down, pause it if necessary, and when it went off it sounded like Godzilla's distinctive roar.
Always having such a flexible timer on me has been handy, but I do miss the big guy's shriek. I'll have to add that as a tone.
There are, of course, several actual chess clock applications for the phone that offer more features.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Ryan Christianson did a great list of "Best iPhone Apps for Boardgamers" that immodestly (but not incorrectly) begins with his own Score application. Score is a handy way not just to score a game, but the game-specific modules calculate point values for supported games. For more information see Bruce Bridges's geeklist Modules for Score iPhone/iTouch Application, or to suggest the next modules to include add your thoughts to johnweldy's iPhone/iTouch Score App Suggestions.
The other applications in Ryan's list are also worthy of note.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Ryan Christianson wrote a very handy application (currently free) called BGG that allows fast access to your collection and wishlist here. It caches entries, making it much faster to access while shopping.
I've been using the iPhone's built-in web interface to access BGG from my Local Game Store (and also from my Friendly Game Store), but there's a lot to load (especially if you're not on wi-fi or 3G) and you constantly have to zoom in to enter text or see ratings. Ryan's application is much faster and allows you to quickly log a play (sans detail).
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Carrying an iPhone around BGG Con was handy for Twittering, checking game FAQs, snapping some lo-rez pics and logging plays.
It would have been handier if the wi-fi reached the ballrooms where the games were played, but even at dial-up speeds it was useful.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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I thought it would be good to snap some shots of games-in-progress or closeups of game materials, but the camera isn't as good as it could be (good luck getting the low-contrast, slightly blurry images past the rabid Mods).
An application called Darkroom helps the quality of images by triggering the shutter when the camera is completely still. Run Darkroom, line up the shot trying to hold the camera still, and press the shutter button. Pictures are noticably sharper when you remove hand shake that I didn't even realize was there.
A bit of post-processing on the computer (cropping, resampling down) may salvage some otherwise unusable snaps.
Still, while you'll often have an iPhone handy when a real camera is not, praise for its camera is like applause for performing dogs; one applauds not the quality of the performance but the fact it didn't eat its own feces. Or something.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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You can carry an entire library of boardgame rules and RPG games in PDF form for searching and quick reference. This is especially useful on the iPad screen.
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Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Days of Wonder officially released Small World for the iPad. It is 2-player only, no AI. Instead, the iPad is placed between the players and autorotates the interface to the player whose turn it is.
It is the proper boardgame implemented on the tablet. You touch and drag units into place, it handles the scoring and final combat die. Your VP total is hidden unless you touch the symbol (they suggest cupping your hand over it when you do so).
I can't wait to see more boardgames released in this format. THIS is a "travel edition" -- no pieces to lose, no space for the board -- it could be played easily on an airplane.
Edit: They've now added a "travel mode" where it assumes the players are sitting side-by-side (no flipping).
Edit: Several of the expansions are now available in-game.
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15.
Board Game: Together
[Average Rating:0.00 Unranked]
Bill H
United States
Absecon
New Jersey
You can't take the sky from me!
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." LP Jacks
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Scrabble for the iPad is the first game to integrate iPhones/iPod Touches as personal displays (it also allows Facebook play, local network, pass-n-play or solo vs. the computer).
In "party mode", each player uses their iPhone/Touch as a tile rack (via a free app) visible only to themselves. The main game board (on the iPad) is visible to players the whole time. Even when it isn't your turn you can move tiles around in your rack or (if you permit it) check the built-in dictionary for viability of a word.
When it's your turn, you flick the tiles and they appear on an empty rack on the iPad where they can then be placed onto the board. You can also rotate the iPad display from within the tile rack app, although it currently doesn't remember from turn to turn where you're sitting.
Connectivity is via WiFi or Bluetooth.
We found that WiFi dropped each of our connections several times during the game, but when we clicked on reconnect it resumed with nothing lost. They recommend you turn off WiFi and use Bluetooth (at least for now). Hopefully, stability will improve with future patches.
This concept holds much promise for other games implemented in a similar manner, with public info on the large iPad screen and all hidden info displaying (and being interacted with) only on player's iPhones/Touches.
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