My weekend

Have you ever noticed, when looking at games in a store, that some of them have a sticker "mensa select?" Well, some mensa pals of mine invited me to join in the process of choosing this year's 5 games. I am not a Mensa member, so I didn't get to vote; I just played a zillion games over the course of 2 days.

49 entries. Each participant is assigned 30 games to rate. Each voting member ranks the top 7 of their 30 games. It was an interesting weekend. It was in San Diego, but it could have been anywhere, because we never ventured outside the hotel. Too many games to play in too short a time.

Not all the games are "gamers games" - I played a lot of party games and word games. Some baaad games. I was fortunate in not being assigned the worst of the religious games. Some games were essentially rip offs of other games. Some games were designed to appeal to children, some for adults.

After diligently working on my 30 assigned games, getting about 20 of them done, it occurred to me that I wasn't voting. So why the hell was I trying so hard to stick to my list? After that, I just played games that interested me, or that other people needed to try or whatever.

My favorite game was a cooperative game very similar to Pandemic, called Forbidden Island.