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- The Palmation
stat (stat) adv. immediately.
[abbreviation of the Latin term statim "immediately."]
Herbie: Fully Loaded :|
A cute, wholesome film.
Check out the big headlights!
(The car is nice, too.)
 
Skills
Found Only In China
"It's hard for me to remember what was my first exposure
to Looney Labs. Was it a random Fluxx game at Origins? Was it
one of the all night sessions of Are You A Werewolf? at GenCon?
About a year and a half ago, I decided to get a copy of Fluxx
in order to carry it around in my pocket. That was the start
of a game collection that has grown to a obsessive compulsive
side." -- Lowell K, comments with order
#77723
   
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It's Hamilton! (Not Montreal) |
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 Well,
we're back from Origins,
and it was the best one yet. Of course, I say that every year,
but this year I felt like it was particularly true, since most
of the new things we tried seemed to work out REALLY well. I
have a million things to say about it (well, half a million,
anyway) which is why this report is so late this week. I had
so much to say that I decided to put it onto a page of its own:
Andy's
Report on Big Experiment #6. (I even gave some of my extra
text to Kristin for her page on what it was like Not
Having a Booth at Origins.)
With Origins now out of the way, I can get back to the task
of packing to move to Canada. Speaking of which, I wrote here
several weeks ago about having Montreal
on my mind. I said it had become one of our candidate cities,
and that we were planning to take a trip soon after Origins to
begin checking out Montreal.
Well, we've changed ours minds on all that. Wonderful though
it sounds, Montreal has some drawbacks which (thanks to some
insightful emails, and a little more research) we've decided
must take Montreal out of the running. The key problem is the
whole French language thing... their government's requirement
that all business be conducted in French first and English second
would make it very difficult for us, even given Alison's
reasonable skill with the language. Plus, it sounds like taxes
are really high and the cost of living none too cheap, Alison
points out that Montreal is 2 hardiness zones colder than Hamilton,
and I'm still fascinated by the escarpment...
In view of all this, our eyes are fixed on Hamilton
again, and we're starting to feel like we've really made up our
minds this time. At Origins we met a nice family from Hamilton
who told us how much they loved it there. We're getting in contact
with Chamber of Commerce types in Hamilton who are described
as being "very aggressive in recruiting businesses"
to the area.
So, instead of all going to Montreal next week, we're staying
home to work on getting art for our newest games off to the printers.
Then, when Alison goes
back to summer camp, I'll focus on packing while Kristin
goes to Hamilton solo to begin really scouting out and learning
about life in our new home town. For myself, I don't feel the
need to go to Canada again until we're actually moving there.
I know now where I want to go: it's Hamilton.
I read an article about Americans moving to Canada (people
keep pointing and clipping those out for us) which quoted one
guy as saying he was on the "24 month plan." That's
about what we're on, too, I think. It was almost exactly one
year ago that we first decided that what we really wanted to
do was move to Canada. We've spent the past year thinking about
where in Canada we'd like to go (not to mention moving
the office, establishing a sales
department, packing
125 boxes,
etc), and while we still have an extremely enormous amount of
work to do in order to relocate, I'm hoping we'll be residents
of Hamilton by this time next year.
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 Thanks
for Playing our Games, and Have a Great Week! |
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In the distant future, say 20 years from now, the Looney
Labs World Headquarters will be housed in a cluster of buildings
shaped like giant Icehouse pieces. The compound of 4 or 5 house-sized
pyramids with glass walls will be perched somewhere along the
edge of the cliff that runs through the center of Hamilton, known
as the Niagara Escarpment. The pyramids will have inner and outer
chambers; the inner areas will be the office and living spaces
for our business and our co-housing community. The outer rooms
will serve as greenhouses for whatever Alison wants to grow,
including the marijuana we hope to legally begin farming someday.
At night, we'll be able to turn on colorful lamps that will make
each pyramid glow with a different hue, making them beautifully
visible from far away, and the view from the top room in the
tallest of the pyramids will be truly spectacular. This is where
I hope to be, when I'm 64. (I wonder how many Fluxx decks we'll
have to sell to make that happen...) |
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"My life climaxes twice every year. Being professional
game-manufacturers, Christmas is always very big for us. Games
make great gifts, plus we create something cool each year to
give away to our friends (that's how we got our business started).
Six months later comes Origins, a huge gaming convention, where
we hold a gathering called the Big Experiment. For 4 days we
run official tournaments for all our games, awarding Olympic-style
medallions to the winners. These 4 days are my favorites of the
whole year. But now, Origins is over, and the next 6 month cycle
is beginning." -- a "Life is Short"
autobiography which I just sent to the Washington Post |
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"I was, in a word, unprepared for my exposure
to the game as it's really played, by those who have been
playing it a long time. (And those who designed it in the first
place, who were among the tournament players.) I had thought
the game was just a contest of tactical piece-placement with
room for diplomacy; that's how I had played it with all my friends.
Oh, no no no. It is actually all about diplomacy,
carried out through piece placement. Every important move seemed
to be a team effort, with opponents forming brief alliances (very
brief, since games have a 10-minute timer) to disrupt other opponents'
defensive formations and swap captured "prisoner" pieces,
shuffling them around the table to foil attackers in ways that
made my head spin. It was an entirely different game than the
Icehouse I knew anything about." -- Jason
McIntosh, describing his experiences with Icehouse at the 13th
International Icehouse Tournament, in the section on Icehouse
in his page about his
favorite board and card games |
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