Ludology 233 - A Sporting Chance

Emma and Gil welcome game designer and publisher Omari Akil to the show to discuss the plight of the sports-themed board game. What kinds of unique challenges do we face when designing one of these games?

Omari's game Hoop Godz will be on Kickstarter soon.

SHOW NOTES

1m21s: Board Game Brothas, Tabletop Backer Party, Pathways Fellowship
4m55s: Gil was 5 years off - Mike's game is Baseball Highlights: 2045.
12m09s: Football Strategy
12m47s: Gil would like to shout out Arthur Franz IV's self-published game Breakaway Football as a game with a really nice mix of play deciding versus output randomness.
15m32s: Gil will defend the term "soccer," seriously. It's a perfectly good way to refer to association football!
16m06s: Strat-O-Matic Baseball, released in 1962.
17m41s: Dino Dunk
18m07s: Crokinole
18m25s: Nok Hockey, Air Hockey, Electric Football. We also neglected to mention the flicking game family Subbuteo, which represents all sorts of sports.
22m43s: Gil eventually gets to his curling thoughts at 39m22s.
25m48s: Madden is EA's long-running NFL gridiron football video game sim (named for legendary player, coach, and broadcaster John Madden).
28m58s: Ultimate is a competitive sport using a throwable disc (like a Frisbee) instead of a ball.
29m50s: In 2017, Geek and Sundry launched a "T-Sports" league for competitive tabletop games (strangely, announcing it on April 1, and then having to explain that it was real). Sadly, it did not go far.
30m57s: Bennett Foddy's talk "Making it Matter: Lessons from Real Sports". Foddy is known for making punishingly-hard digital games like QWOP and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
38m36s: Omari is referring to the common sports term GOAT, an acronym of Greatest Of All Time.
41m28s: Hystericoach
43m16s: Bottom of the Ninth
45m09s: Blaseball. RPG designer Meguey Baker's thread on it.
46m56s: Omari wrote more about how his lived experience affected the design of Rap Godz.
48m24s: More info about how Omari and YouTuber (and all-around excellent person) Danny Plays Gamez raised $80,000 for BLM: 
56m25s: Paula Deming's channel, Things Get Dicey, is absolutely amazing to behold. Top-notch writing, performing, and filming.
57m11s: For those of you who don't have the honor of consuming Capri Sun in the part of the world where you live, it's a (vaguely) fruit-flavored beverage. 
1h01m16s: The GIF Omari is referring to, featuring young Brazilian skater Rayssa Leal. The GIF Gil is referring to, linked to from famous skater Tony Hawk.