Open Letter, digital game to complement the boxed game, please consider

To the man in charge, and everyone else playing…

Axis and Allies really needs a digital game to compliment the boxed game!

When Axis and Allies 1942 third edition comes out, it would be extremely helpful to have a digital game available at launch (dvd, digital download app, or whatever the technology.)

I have been playing since I was a kid in the 80s, and while I have enjoyed each new iteration of Axis and Allies, every time a new box comes out (with new rules, units, maps etc.) I find myself encountering the same challenge: it is simply hard to teach new people how to play this game. Even players with experience are often on different boards or familiar with different rules. In the years since Revised came out (almost a decade ago now) there have been several further revisions of the core game, which I suppose I should now refer to as “1942”, itself into the second edition at this point. Not including the anniversary rules, or the additional start dates, or theater specific games, just within the 42 framework A&A has changed pretty frequently relative to other games.

I think this is the reason (more than any inherent complexity of the core game) that it hasn’t achieved the sort of staying power as a Risk, or a Monopoly, or a game like that, where the core game has been in production for decades without seeing much altered beyond the aesthetics. I’m not trying to suggest here that change in A&A is altogether a bad thing, but it provides a consistent dilemma where every time you introduce a new rule, or a new unit price structure, or revise some aspect of the gameplay, it decreases the likelyhood that you will find a playing group with people you actually know, who actually know how to play it.

So I am constantly in the position of teaching people how to play this game on the board. The one thing I would really like to see is a digital game bundled into the purchase of each boxed game. So that way everyone who buys a box can learn to play the game and then play it immediately, digitally, for all those many occasions when it is hard to find other real world players for the board. Absent an official digital version of the game (one that follows each new iteration, catalogs the older versions, and has the same functionality as the actual cardboard and plastic game) what you are left with is a number of different freeware attempts, or one off games with limited support, or play by email schemes, and each with different splintered communities. All of whom are trying to find ways to play this game.

Just put it in the box.
Or if its digitally distributed (the way technology is going) then put the download code in the box.
But whatever you do, do it!

Every year we don’t do this, kids who come up using ipads and their phones to play games are passing us by.
Seriously, please consider this as a way to expand our player base. It will work, if you just do it.

That was the main thing I wanted to say.

A few quick digressions.

1. Almost everyone who plays a digital version of Axis and Allies, has bought a board. Probably multiple times. But if the concern is that digital sales would somehow undercut cardboard profits, then the solution is pretty simple: To bundle the two together.

2. I enjoy second edition 1942, but as others have also suggested, I still find the transport rules introduced since AA50 to be somewhat daunting, and some of the new unit cost structures still mess with my mental math. But all this could be overcome with an official digital game to promote it. Or better yet, one that allows you to port old rules from previous editions, or adopt house rules, or at the very least to Edit. A bid would be helpful as well, since those are the mechanisms that have traditionally been used to house balance the gameboard.

3. Anything that streamlines the game, simplifies the rules, eliminates one off situations or once per game rules, or rules highly specific only to certain scenarios would be helpful for a basic core 1942 game that doesn’t introduce major changes every few years. Keep that in production at all times, and then produce specialized games and expansions to augment it.

4. there are millions of people in China, where much of this game is manufactured, who might play this game, if we could find a reasonably sensitive way to put China in it as a playable faction. I don’t know if it works for the good old 5 power game that I first fell in love with… But it is something to consider, just in terms of scale-ability, or perhaps for an expansion. That’s a lot of players. But for the core game, I do prefer the same major players as we had in Classic, with a moderately scaled world map, and a flexible but simple and consistent ruleset.

Thanks for considering
Best to you all, always
J