Mark, Ted and I became partners and together we designed it and wrote the topics and instructions. A year later we launched THINGS… at the Canadian Toy & Game Fair. We are now approaching three million copies sold.

But get the right group of players, the right atmosphere, and the right amount of alcohol involved and this very soon descends into a huge amount of laughter and fun. When, in response to “things you wished you knew beforehand” you can get your mother-in-law to read – out loud, of course – some very perverse sexual thoughts (as more than one of us did throughout our various games) you know you’re onto a winner. So now that I got the scoring system out of the way I would like to say that The Game of Things actually has the makings of a good party game if you use the alternative scoring mechanics. The main reason why The Game of Things has so much potential is because of the prompts themselves. While some of the prompts are better than others, for the most part they are quite strong. What I like about the prompts is that they are generic enough that everyone should be able to come up with a response while giving players plenty of opportunities to create a funny response. I honestly think The Game of Things has some of the better prompts that I have seen from these type of party games. While this scoring system is not perfect either it works a lot better for the game because it emphasizes the best element of the game. Using these rules players are focused on making the best/funniest answers instead of trying to pretend to be someone else. This makes the game significantly more enjoyable as most of these party games are enjoyable because they can make you laugh. These type of games are usually more of an experience than a game. With this type of scoring system it doesn’t detract from the game’s best quality since it rewards the most creative player. Everyone (including the Reader) writes a response on one strip of paper from their response sheet. Fold it twice and give it to the Reader. Ever wanted to make people read something out loud that you know for a fact will embarrass them or make them feel awkward? Now’s your chance: The Game of THINGS tests your ability to know how your friends and family think, and in doing so opens up the door to produce some incredibly funny moments.Generally when I review board games I like to start by talking about the positives and moving onto the negatives later. When talking about The Game of Things though I have to start with the negatives. This is due to the fact that I would highly recommend avoiding the official rules for The Game of Things. Items that are not available in store will take 3-5 working days (excluding weekends and bank holidays) to be delivered to your nominated store. Finally I want to touch on the game’s components. For a Parker Brothers game I have to admit that I was actually quite surprised by the component quality of The Game of Things. The game only comes with cards, sheets of paper and pencils but the game does quite a bit with those few components. First I have to commend the game on the number of cards that are included. The game comes with 300 cards which gives players plenty of prompts. For example you could play over 75 four player games (using the official rules) before having to repeat any cards. The prompts are good enough that I don’t really see a problem with repeating them every so often. I also have to give the game credit for including plenty of response sheets. I really like that the game uses sheets that tear apart which allow you to play ten rounds with each response sheet. Finally while unnecessary I have always been a fan of games that use wood boxes. Should You Buy The Game of Things? Our next step is launching THINGS… in non-English speaking markets. We also have a TV show in development with comedians playing a stylised version of THINGS… and a THINGS… app that is about to be beta tested. The reason that’s important is that most of the products we buy reflect a capitalised service or experience. A refrigerator, for example, is the capital investment that delivers cold food. A heat pump is the investment we make in a temperate home. We buy these appliances, believing that they will go on delivering the service we need, over a period of years. The service of cold food is partly an amortised investment, and partly on-going energy cost.

Another problem I had with the scoring mechanics is the fact that it forces the reader to repeat the responses over and over again until the round is over. With four players it is not that hard to remember all of the responses. With more than four players I could see the responses having to be repeated after every guess. After a while this gets a little annoying and unnecessarily extends the length of the game. Unless the players want to turn the game into a memory game, you are basically forced into repeating the answers since it is too hard to remember them while also trying to figure out which response each player gave. Just around the corner is a generation of smart things, potentially more self-aware than the human behind the controls (at least while there are still humans behind the controls). In fact, a lot of the insights from this kind of technology will be applied to understanding the human element — it’s long been the case in the transport industry, for example. The game ends when everyone has had a chance to be the reader. The player who has scored the most points wins the game. My Thoughts on The Game of Things Imagine buying not a heat pump, but contracting for a temperate home, as a service. Year-round, your home will be 21 deg.C. Imagine the appeal of a service like that for people on fixed incomes.The Game of Things is an interesting game. I found the normal rules for the game to be pretty flawed. Most of my problems with the game come from the scoring mechanics. They reward players for guessing what responses the other players came up with which leads players to try to write responses that the other players would normally come up with. The mechanics are distracting to the point where I would throw them out and use your own scoring mechanics. This is where the game actually has the potential to be a good game. If instead of rewarding players for guessing which responses the other players gave you reward players for creating funny/creative answers, the game is actually quite enjoyable. The game includes a lot of prompts and the prompts are actually quite good. With the right group you can get a lot of laughs out of The Game of Things. You must keep everyone engaged at all times so that their attention does not wander when it’s not their turn. There are lots of devices to accomplish that, but we found that keeping people laughing even when they were not writing responses or guessing “who-wrote-what” worked for us. When businesses start offering as-a-service solutions, they effectively take on the risk of service failure. Business enters a whole new game when it rises or falls on the risk of service failure, but that’s where the internet of things is taking us. Marketing is key! Before signing an agreement with any company make sure you understand exactly how it will be presented to the consumer. Have the marketing plan in the contract. No marketing = no sales. There were multiple sources of inspiration for THINGS… but essentially it boils down to my brother Ted and I trying to make each other laugh. We would often adapt other games and sports to make them funnier for us.

The final reason why the scoring mechanics are a problem is that it basically forces players to try and respond like they were one of the other players. If all of the players do this it doesn’t matter how well you know the other players as each player is pretending to be another player. With each player pretending to be someone else, the scoring basically becomes a guessing game. While I admit that this is probably partially due to only playing the game with four players, I think there are a lot of issues with the game’s official rules. Generally these type of games do have issues with score keeping. Since the games are more focused on giving players a way to make their family and friends laugh, usually not a lot of effort is put into figuring out how the game is going to be scored. As they are games though, the designers have to come up with some way to score the game so someone can be declared the winner. For the most part the designers end up with scoring systems that are either mildly annoying to detrimental to the whole game.Imagine walking into an appliance store and seeing that shiny new refrigerator. Imagine that, among the options, I can have this refrigerator as a service, for a price that reflects not just the cost of the refrigerator, but includes it’s actual energy cost too. I love finding new games to play as a family especially as we get closer to the festive season and I have heard great comments about The Game of Things over the last few months so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of the game to give it a try. Also, some players have brought it to our attention that with smaller groups the Reader may recognize handwriting and therefore be able to easily match players to their response. While I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a problem, I would recommend trying to find more then four players for The Game of Things. As I have already mentioned if you plan on using the game’s official rules, they work terribly with only four players. Even if you play the game with the alternative rules, I think the game would be better with more players. The game is fine with four players but as a party game I just think it would be more enjoyable with more players. The game probably needs an upper limit though because the game otherwise might drag on for too long. Now the reader should be able to join in the play and guess who wrote what but as it is handwriting I know that as the reader I would be able to work out who wrote what in my family so there are a few notes at the end of the instructions which recommend that if this is the case then the reader should write a response but not participate in the guessing part of the game. I think this is definitely a good idea for smaller groups.