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This episode is a little different, as Bruce will share there has been some life things that popped up which threw off recording schedule. This being said, Bruce was able to make some new content and post it to the Board Game Impact YouTube Channel. In this episode Bruce shares what has been going on, the inspiration for the video, and the introduces the audio of the video content which has been very popular on the YouTube Channel. This is not the norm for the channel, but Bruce felt this is still a great way to get you some podcast content while acknowledging that there has been some life that has come up…alas the narrative of 2020. Thanks for understanding, and we hope you enjoy!
Specific Game Discussed:
- Tell Stones (Riot Games)
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Audio Transcript (Generated by AI)
00:00:11 – 00:05:05
In today’s episode of boardgame impact Bruce is off talk about bias in reviewing. So stay tuned. Howdy everybody. It’s Bruce with board game impact and in this episode. It’s going to be a little different. It’s just me and that’s wonderful. But Josh is sorely missed of course and so this is your first time tuning into board game impact where podcast in which we are bringing our educational ends is both Josh and I work full time in higher education. I also teach a couple of classes adjoining my PhD and so what we do is we take those educational lenses and apply them to the games and gaming experiences that we’re playing and getting to enjoy some time and apply that to your benefit and your gaming groups benefit so you can make informed choices. And so that sounds like something of interest to you make sure to hit subscribe but that being said today is going to be a little different in that if you are listening to this live you might be wondering. Hey, I I think we’re a week behind where was the content and but if you’re listening to us in the future dead there was a week Gap and so what’s going on in being fully transparent with everybody is Josh had his wedding anniversary and then we were supposed to record but then I actually got a pretty sick -4 That Russell looking forward to our semesters ending so we have even more freedom but that being said in these like different times and not really knowing when families going to need different things. There’s a couple of moments in which I got pretty just inspired by some conversations. I was seeing online and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to do something different that I haven’t done before off and that was combined the kind of work and kind of lenses. I know that sounds interesting based on the intro just did but really take like let’s go to the library and let’s look stuff up and let’s scripts something out and let’s do an educational lesson from like my teaching side of things something. I hadn’t really considered before cuz there’s no content that looks like that and I did it and I put it out there to the world and immediately. I got some really good feedback and I’m not going to go through like what inspired it because you’re going to hear that in a second job. Is what this episode is today, is it is that first video? So this one’s going to be on what’s called epistemology. So what is knowledge and unpacking that as well as a little bit about value off. But the reason I did this I will tell you that and I’m going to talk about it more in the upcoming minutes here in a second. But what happened was I was in a conversation over on the secret cabal guilt cuz Josh and I both listen to the secret cabal. We love their content and there was this interesting conversation about honestly a distrust of reviewers and not because people were distrusting secret ball is a box because Jamie of The Secret of all posted one video in which he really enjoyed a new game that came out. Let’s called tell Stones by Riot games and that’s what the focus of the start of the video is going to be about. But then also the next day Tom vasel came out with his own review and it couldn’t have been more opposite. If anything it was Polar Opposites one said they liked it. The other one said it’s not a game. And so this whole conversation ensued and I saw not perfect opportunity to speak towards this of like well, how are we viewing things and what what factors can affect the way we could give you a piece of content what our biases what are latent different things. And so I really enjoyed making this to the point of and so next week you’re going to get the second video. I’ve now made in this which has in the first these last 3 days has just gone wild and crazy online.
00:05:05 – 00:10:04
So I make make sure to tune in also for next week and that’s going to be the Dune Imperium pre-order by far. It’s the most views I’ve had on a YouTube piece of content and the conversations I’ve been able to have between this content year about the listen to and the one that going to get to listen to next week are the most engaging I’ve been able to have situations. I’ve been able to have with some of the content. We’re putting out online Now podcast birth. Right, but it’s just been super rewarding and super different for me personally, and I also can’t wait to unpack it with Josh and like talk more about it, which is probably what we’re going to do in the upcoming episode, but that’s for the future to listen to and so again what you’re going to be experiencing here in a second is the YouTube video which is on how different board game reviewers can have different views on the same game and that’s all inspired about this game tell Stones. So if you want to watch that you can do that go on over to the board game impact YouTube channel and make sure to sit subscriber you can get that content cuz I know you’re already a subscriber here and cuz you’re listening this and if you’re not click that subscribe button because we love just putting out content to help and we always end of that episode with go make a positive impact on the world and I personally truthfully believe that doing this content has been bringing nothing but good things and good conversation into this board game Space. And I cannot wait to do more and so I encourage you to listen to this episode. If you’ve liked any of our content in the past or any of this has sounded interesting, but just listen to it anyway and unpack and think for yourself of well, how do I view things? Cuz I think this can really help you make better purchasing power as well as how do you consume better content? Cuz at the end of it I talk about three things you can do to get more out of reviews listen to read and watch so I hope you enjoy this episode and next week. I’ll be posting the other one and then we’ll be after that. We’ll be getting back to our regular schedule. So thank you for understanding. I thank God for those who are reaching out and enjoy. Hey everybody. It’s Bruce with boardgame impacts. So typically we’re doing the podcast content or other types of content. But recently there’s been some conversation online that I’ve been a part of and I have been watching that. I thought I’d just went away in based on some of the commentary that I’ve been seeing. So if you’re new to board game impact, we release a Bi weekly podcast for the last two years. It’s myself and Josh talking about the gaming experiences that we’re having and breaking those down for you and your gaming group, but we’re bringing what we bring to that though is our educational end. So if you’ve listened to show, you know, I talked about this sometimes but part of my work in education. So I teach full-time and Leadership at a university in Texas, but I also have been working for the past couple of years completing a PhD so I’m working on that and educational human resource development. So what that means is essentially organization Consulting and how can we build up unlock and unleash the potential of individuals groups organizations and the like so you want to talk about that. Let’s talk About that but part of being in a PhD program and and having a PhD I’m getting there y’all is essentially being able to be a researcher. And so with that we take classes in what’s called system ology and digging into knowledge and this is important because this little game tell Stones has caused an uproar on line between different reviewers and young people watching those reviews and commenting and what is right what is wrong? And so I wanted to share some perspective and this is actually coming out of some conversations that were had over on the secret cabal. So young Avid listener to secret cabal support them every year on Kickstarter. They do really great content. And so this last episode it was two of them plus Rodney Smith watch it played talking about everything that’s going on and so from that I wanted a way in a little bit. So I was chatting and Rodney encourage like hey, I’d love to hear more about this epistemology thing. So what I’m doing is I’m actually this video Just to give you a crash course in epistemology for boardgaming but more importantly, let’s just crash course through this and then let’s also talk about three things that you can do to unpack your views of reviewers and content and things like that. So that way you can get more out of it. So I’m going to give you a crash course and then three things at the end to leave you with to get you more empowered within your own board game content, but first of all, we got start with this little game and what’s going on in case you hadn’t seen all this yet. So what is going on is you have this little game Handle fits in my palm essentially. This is by riot games. So it’s tell Stones. It’s honestly a little memory game and honestly a little bit of like social manipulation month. And so with that being said Riot games, if you’re not familiar with them, they have the very popular League of Legends a couple of years ago.
00:10:04 – 00:15:01
They came out with the immensely popular and I really enjoy it mechs vs. Minions wage is a programming Style game with also some unlock things. The production value is off the charts and this is the now second game from Riot games in terms of board games. And so there was a lot of excitement about this of oh my God, they’re coming off of this big hit. What is this going to be like and it is not like the other it’s an abstract little game and for me and I’m going to talk about this more in the podcast. If you want to hear more about my thoughts on it now that I played it a couple of times with my wife. I’ll give you a crash course real fast though. It reminds me. Sometimes a playing some games at the table with my grandfather and which we had little coins wage. And would do something. So I really look forward to using this with some other people in my life and having just that intimate two-player experience. But what’s going on in terms of the review world is you had within two days. There was a NDA on all of this and an embargo in which reviewers couldn’t post content about this game until a certain date a couple of days after that the secret cabal Jamie posted about it compared to a hive settlement. She loves it. Literally the next day Tom vasel posted from The Dice Tower posted his review and it couldn’t be a more opposite thing. And ironically they’re back in the days to our Network. And so how can we have this different thing? So for Jamie it was like, this is great. It’s I’m going to play it with many others where Tom’s like this isn’t a game. It’s seven little hockey pucks that you have to memorize and if you can memorize a better then you’re going to win and so from an epistemological perspective. It’s really important to dig wage. What’s going on? So we’re going to dig into the core foundations and then really more into it. But then again at the end three things that you can do to get more out of your reviews. So first of all, how can reviewers have different views of the same game in a nutshell Behavioral Science? So the first thing I’m going to talk to you about is bias. So we all have biases they may come out in different ways, but I want to show you this and that is so if you have a cylinder depending on where you tend to be viewing it from you may either see a shadow of a square or a shadow of a circle now the problem with this is you might be saying oh, it’s absolutely a circle somebody else is saying it’s absolutely Square. Well, the absolute part is a part. That’s kind of Muddy. But both of you are coming at it thinking you’re absolutely right and you’re you are right from your perspective the reality might be different. And so I always encourage you whenever you’re having any kind of disagreement are reviewing things from the same paradigms. And so that’s what we’re going to get into now with epistemology and later took the ology. So first of all epistemology is essentially how do we know what we know if you want a more definition though. It’s the investigation of what distinguishes Justified belief fact from opinion some examples of this is truths and capital T truths. So absolute knowledge. Is there a absolute truth and so for board game, is there an absolute truth whether or not a game is good. Well, or is it your relative truth or your group’s relative truth, right or is that truth? Existing in time and place. So if we if you talked to some people now like Monopoly is that’s not good. Right but is that from a hobbyist perspective or is that from a game perspective of like a new gamer who their only access is going to Walmart? And that’s the main games they have their luckily. They’re adding some more but still or is this back in the 1930s? Well, there wasn’t many other games right? And so is there an absolute truth is it ubiquitous across all things another example of this? I don’t want to just talk about is the purpose of Iraq. So if we had a rock so imagine the game tell Stones is just a rock just a grey rock. Well Rock by itself. Doesn’t mean anything or does it doesn’t tell you how to use it doesn’t tell you what it’s for it just exists. So how do we know that Iraq could be used for XYZ could be used for a tool right to sharpen other tools or it can even be a weapon. So how do we know what we know? Within that then we got to dig a little bit further. So we’re going to dig into some different paradigms of epistemology real fast. So these different areas. So their first is positivism So within positivism, it’s that objects have meaning prior to an independent of any awareness of them. So this game tell Stones always had a purpose.
00:15:03 – 00:20:10
Before we ever gave purpose to it. I know it might seem weird. But that is a positivist perspective that this game had inherent purpose before we ever made it it always existed. So there’s this thing of like a chair so a chair has always existed, right? So if we just have this natural occurring shape of a chair, what we know is a chair off, it’s always existed and that its existence and purpose has been independent of whatever purpose we want to assign to it and which we’ll get to that in a second but it’s been independent of or Earnest of it being a thing. So the next part of that though is behaviorism. So behaviorism though is that knowledge exists in the world and it influences our Behavior so a chair chairs exist and by having them we sit in them. That would be a behaviorist perspective of these things exist. And because they exist they then influence us right another lens though is that there’s constructivism which is that yes chairs may exist. But we assign the value of it being a chair. It is just a structure. We then come together and we think of a purpose and we construct the meaning internally and then project that share that with others. So we then associate the word that we created share with a structure and how to use it. So for a game that could mean a lot of things we then associate what this game is for us. And then what its meaning. Therefore is where with the other ones the meaning already existed. It has this kind of purpose these kind of outcomes independent of us or are we constructing our own meaning of what this game is and how it works and what it will do for a group of friends with that last part the group of friends. It’s important to also know their social constructivist constructivism, which also sometimes goes to social reinforcement Theory which is that we create knowledge as social beings together. So think of whenever you’ve been in a meeting and all of a sudden you come to an understanding together of what you’re wanting to do. So for this does me playing it with my wife have a different outcome than me playing it with my niece probably maybe therefore does it have a different game. And because of the social constructs that are surrounding it and how we are creating the meaning between ourselves. It’s a little bit more. So now we’re going to Pivot to axiology. So that’s a crash course in some epistemology things axiology from a different lens has to do with morals and Aesthetics, but it’s very important for this conversation and morals are absolute Goods ends and means type things where as Aesthetics are things like taste and aesthetic experiences. So thinking like going to a museum viewing a beautiful board game or not beautiful board game where morals would be more of the this game has these outcomes that are good inherently good and it does that through these means so the ultimate question for axiology is what people ought to like. And so there’s a little bit that we have to dig into about. What is good. So with what is good, we have to understand that what might be good for that one might be evil for another right? So, how do we associate what is good for us between what is good for others and are we flawed in that bias of perspective cuz as cultural references and those undertones that that lean into that then we also need to also dig into our senses. Our senses are like the computer that’s in front of me. So yes, we feel right but those are just neurological impulses and energy going to our brain to make sense of what’s going on around us. So our sense Jews are the periphery that we are interpreting the world and so a lot. Oh, there’s a really good book called DV8 about like Neuroscience essentially says that we are dead. Always in RV camper, right? So Winnebago, let’s say driving around the world and all we can view the world is through the portholes that we have those portholes. Our our senses taste touch smell et cetera. And so some of us experienced the things differently we have different we’ve seen different parts of the world. And so all we are doing though is consuming that from the information that we happen to get happened to get so our senses in themselves are flawed. So it’s based on what we’ve seen where we’ve been and our associations then with other experiences wage at Lastly about the virtues we hold and this is just important to note and then I’m just going to quote directly this from author named noddings.
00:20:10 – 00:25:11
So some people because of the positions they hold have had opportunities to develop to develop virtues and Excellence is that they see as highly prized others do not a hierarchy of Virtues tends to then induce and maintain a hierarchy of status and privilege many Society. Therefore have tried to justify that result by arguing either that certain virtues earn people or things the opportunity to further those virtues and so forth and those privileges accorded with the most virtues are compensating for the burdens. They must assume for the rest of society. So what that saying is sense is because of privilege we some of us have been able to determine virtues that we see good Above All Else. And then it can within that create a hierarchy that then socially reinforces that these things are generally accepted to be what is good when in fact currently. No, that’s just us constructing what what we have right? And so I encourage you the thing that’s with this is one of the things was well, is it a good experience for two people or is it just seven stones in a row, right? So it’s us applying our privileges to our viewpoints and we need to unpack that. It’s very important. We do that money, especially as we’re wanting to grow and diversify the hobby cuz there’s nothing but good things that can come from that so what can we do about it? So I’m going to in Crash Course through this real fast one engaged not the world. You have my permission for whatever that is worth is think about the conversation. We just had to play more games as more people get more information in your head and experiences under your belt track. Two different conventions, see how games play differently in different cultures and asked about that engage with that. It’s beautiful read listen and watch more board game content by in caging with more content you’re going to have them more reference points to applied back to the world and to reflect on the next thing is evaluating your own Journey the Privileges of your experiences and the virtues that they should have informed them. So with that being said think about and unpack where you come from and what that means for the way you look at the world the next thing though and this is from a different lens but acknowledging and appreciating that you’ve changed. So your your preferences in the hobby may have changed a lot o again talks about from a relationship standpoint when you’re in a relationship with somebody else the things that once attracted us to somebody else ceased to feel miraculous to us and become then the norm they in becoming the norm becomes expected the cost is that we took no longer see a person or a thing in terms of the wonderful deviances or their uniqueness, but in terms of their no malady, And in doing so we risk taking them for granted or even worse. So those games that might have gotten us into the hobby. That’s just Catan like vanilla, right? And so I encouraged to think through that we weren’t always in that perspective. So how do we hold on to that uniqueness and cherish those memories and then lastly examine your emotions. So first of all stress encourages of focusing on the immediate, so when we’re stressed we want instant return. So if we’re getting stress then and evaluating when we’re watching content when we’re consuming content and what’s going on around us when we’re consuming that it’ll influence the way we think about it and feel about it. So an example of this is stockbrokers have been shown by researchers to make really really awful investing decisions right before lunch because they’re lizard brain is kicking in to say hey, you’re hungry. We need food home. Get these get these things and so they tend to be more risky because their body is kicking into we need to get we need to get so let’s get as good as we can get and then from another lens of happiness and this is just important to know about reviews in general. And that is we are driven to pleasure at often the cost of our own well-being So within that the Neuroscience shows us that the dopamine so the happiness centers of our brain actually releases when we anticipate a reward, so when watching a review he’s like, yeah, I want to get that looks so much fun. I’m going to get this box at the game store and I’m going to do so much so many good things with it that release is like man, it’s awesome. It is phenomenal. The problem though is a research also shows that getting the reward doesn’t trigger the same Center of your brain. And so with that being said understanding that the promise of a reward and what it’s doing for One reviewer might not do for you.
00:25:11 – 00:25:46
It’s no guarantee. So that’s why you want to consume more content be clear of my name and make decisions that are for you your context your feelings your emotions the situations you’re going to get to play them in and so much more so I thought I thought I’d make this video real fast just to kind of talk from this perspective. I hope that this has been helpful. We’ll probably dig a little bit more into this and an upcoming podcast. But either way just go out there play games have fun with people wage and as we end every episode of the podcast go out there and make your positive impact on the world. See you later.