 Okay, oops, go back, there we go. Okay, good morning everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, we're a webcast, we're an online show. There is lots of discussion about which of those terms are appropriate or even acceptable. We don't care what you call us. We're here live, online. Every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. So join us here. We are, the show is free and open to anyone to watch. So definitely share with any of your colleagues out there as are our recordings. Every week the show is recorded and posted to our website that I'll show you at the end so you can see there. So if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m., that's fine. You can always come back whenever you do have time, when it's convenient for you and watch our recordings. We post recordings, PowerPoint presentations, links to any websites that are mentioned, hopefully everything you'd need to get the full information about the show. And we do a mixture of things here on the show. Interviews, book reviews, mini training sessions, demos. Basically our criteria is, is it library related? We'll have it on the show. We're pretty open. And any type of library out there we've had all across the board. We have on Nebraska Library Commission staff sometimes do sessions and we also bring in guest speakers sometime as we have now. This morning to my left is Phil Hendrickson. He's the director at the Link Library at Concordia University out in Seward. So just west of us, just a little bit. About half hour. About half hour, yeah, not bad just outside of Lincoln. So, and I saw that he had done this presentation at a spring meeting. I think it was for our College and University section. Did actually a combo meeting with the Kansas Library Association's College and University section. And I was just perusing their agenda of things. And this one jumped out at me. It's a really cool program. And I know many libraries are doing this kind of things both academic and public. And so I invited Phil to come on and share with us what he had done at the meeting here. So I'm just gonna hand over to you. If you want to, you can use either the keyboard or the mouse and for you to take it away. Very good. Well, thanks for having me. I think we need to know about games. Great. Well, this is a timely topic, because in the gaming sub-community, if you will, sort of a buzz question right now is has gaming gone mainstream? Now, in the public, that question would elicit snickers because people think gaming, they think video gaming. No. But we're talking about board games and tabletop games. So more on that terminology in a minute, but it's appearing in more and more places. You'll see popular TV shows that'll have, you know, a board game laid out, and it's not just Clue or Monopoly or Candyland anymore that you're used to. So we'll refer to the fact that we're in what we call renaissance of board games. And... I don't need it, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because of the hundreds of new ones that are coming out every year, but most people don't hear about them. And so that's a little bit about what we're gonna talk about today is what's going on there and what are we doing with it in our library? So this was a Wall Street Journal article during the last Super Bowl, January of this year. There was a little bit of a, or during the playoffs, there was an article in there about the Green Bay Packers playing Settlers of Catan. Really? And having a regular game night, a few of the players, one in particular, were aficionados of the game and they developed a group that loved to play this game. Settlers of Catan is sort of the poster child for these newer style of games. It came out in Germany in 1995, came to the US in an English translation in 96, and really sort of took the world by storm. But you still won't find it in Walmart because it's not a mass market, so popular level game like that. But anyway, it was sort of news that the Packers were playing it because this is not something you'd necessarily expect. No. Out of a team of football players, especially the linemen, the big linemen who are the ones who were playing it the most. But if we say we don't expect them to play that, then we're stereotyping them as being sort of big brutes. That's not true. They're very smart as well and these are strategy games and such. But anyway, moving on a little bit, when we talk about board games, we often think of the things that we played as children. Now some of us were children longer ago than others, but it's pretty common to think of Monopoly as sort of the most well-known board game probably in the world. I bet a lot of our folks, yeah. Not of all time, obviously things like chess, checkers, Go, and things in different parts of the world were around far longer. But Monopoly really has been around, the design dates back to when the Model T was also designed. And if you think about it, there's been a lot of changes in automobiles since the Model T. So what about board games? Why do we still think of Monopoly and a game that's designed that long ago? So today's games look quite a bit different. Oh yeah, there's so much stuff. Have a lot of different stuff going on. So this is one of my favorite new ones to show. Graphically, it's called Rococo. And it's about the court of King Louis XV. And the players are actually owners of dressmaking firms. You're making the suits and the dresses that the gentlemen and ladies wear to the ball at the court of the King. Not a typical topic that you think of for board games. No, not something people have maybe off the top of their head say, oh, I'm interested in that either. Yeah, I'm gonna be a dressmaker. But if the gaming aspect of it is interesting, what the topic is maybe is important that it's relevant or interesting to you. And there's so many different themes these days, obviously everything from dressmaking to there's own teen zombie games to all sorts of different strategy things. Trading in the Mediterranean is a catchphrase used for quite a few of these games that were developed out of Europe. But getting ahead of ourselves just a little bit, I'm gonna mention a little bit of terminology here that these games are known by. When you think back in how games were played, at least in American culture, there was a common term parlor games. And parlor games were things like Monopoly or other types of games that you would play on a table or card games, you know, back in the day, just about every family, probably depending on what part of the country you grew up in had a game, P-knuckle or Euker or 500 or pitch, or whatever, that was the common family game to play. They're sort of a rite of passage when children were old enough to sit on your dad's lap and learn the game. And then when you actually got to play with the adults, that was quite a thing, I remember that. See, I grew up in a Euker family and my wife grew up in a P-knuckle family, so we're a mixed marriage. But yeah, so that was kind of a thing in our past and that has seemed to fade away, not entirely, and still in certain parts of the country, obviously those traditional games and card games are still being played. But that concept of sitting around the family game table had maybe waned some, especially with the rise of video games. They got the attention of children and just gave them something to sit at and do for hours and hours. But it's starting to come back and that's sort of why we're on this topic today. Now, we'll use the terms board and card games and that's just obvious if it's got a board and it's on the table, it's a board game or a card game, those are pretty well known. Some people use the term tabletop games. Anything that's on the table. Anything that's on a table because that can also encompass role-playing games, games with lots of little miniatures and that sort of thing, other types of things. The terms hobby games or modern games are sometimes used to differentiate and say, no, when I say board games, I'm not talking about Candyland or Sorry. I'm talking about new stuff and if you're not familiar with that, then let me explain. Sometimes they're called designer games and as you can see in the picture there, that's because the name of the designer is right on the box. When you get those long flat boxes of games in Walmart, you typically don't see a designer credited on the game. It's the company that makes it. Asbro, Parker Brothers, those sorts of things. Well, in the new era of modern games, people will follow game designers like they follow authors. So if you've got favorite authors that you'd like to read and they come out with a new book, you pay attention. It's the same way with designers. So Ticket to Ride is one of the most popular board games of the modern era and its designer Alan Moon has become kind of a rock star. So at gaming conventions, he'll be mobbed when he walks out or maybe mobbed is the wrong word, but well recognized, often asked for autographs or things like that. And when he comes out with a new game, people pay attention because they know they like his previous work. So it's a similar thing. Now also would that also go along with, because I've paid attention to certain, all these new independent gaming companies that come out with various types of games. I've kind of noticed I like this game from this company and I went to their website and said, oh, there's that other cool one too. There's a totally different style. So I've kind of done that kind of thing as well that the new smaller companies are something I follow. And that is very true. Sort of like as librarians, sometimes we will follow publishers and we'll be very familiar with this publisher. Does this sort of work? They maybe have a certain bias or whatever, or maybe not. And they're known for different things. That's very true of the publishers as well. And the game publishers that we're talking about are small. Most of them are very small companies. There are only one or two that have grown sizable enough to really be noticed in the general marketplace. Most of these are small companies and the game runs, the print runs, are say two to 5,000 copies. And then when that sells out over the course of two or three years, they judge its popularity and decide whether to reprint it. So these are obviously not being sold in Walmart. No. Because Walmart would buy too many. How many tens of thousands of copies of something if they think it's small. More than they'd be able to produce at the level that they're at. Now a lot of these too, I don't know if you're going to talk about Kickstarter and things like that, some of these games are. Yeah, that's a rising thing and a little bit controversial, but that's okay. It's a risk. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, a lot of the games that people design because sometimes these designers will come up with a game idea. Maybe they'll pitch it to some publishers and not succeed selling it. So they decide to go and become a publisher and sell it themselves. That's where, like you say, there's a risk involved because some of them have no idea what they're doing. Yeah. And they'll try to sell it to Kickstarter and get in over their head. It becomes too popular and they can't handle all of the. Yeah. Or they haven't done enough math and they realize that they're actually losing money on every copy they sell instead of making money. That sort of thing. That's an interesting version. But I don't tend to follow the Kickstarter ones very much. Now you'll find some of the publishers are starting to use Kickstarter as a pre-order system. Oh, okay. And that's also sort of controversial because people will say, oh Kickstarter is supposed to be for the little guy. Just trying to do their own project. Yeah. And the rebuttal is most of these companies are little guys. They are. It's Hasbro's not doing a Kickstarter. No. No, they're not. But some moderately sized hobby game companies do use Kickstarter regularly. So that is whatever you're comfortable with. That's fine. Now you'll see also in there the term Euro games and we'll get into that in a little bit. But the concept is that the big movement to start what I'm calling a Renaissance really grew out of Europe and specifically Germany. Now it's a little broader than that but in particular there's a strong history point in Germany that sort of triggered this. And so that's where the term Euro games come from. In fact, that's a broadening of what used to be called German games. We mentioned Zelligte Katan and when it came over in the 90s it was referred to as one of these new German games. He said it had to be translated. So yeah. In German originally. Right. And so there were some of these publishing companies that got started by picking, going over to Europe picking good new game titles and then signing a contract with the publisher to do the translation and import them and sell them over here. That's all gotten broader and not so specialized now in the intervening decades. But yeah, it's a little bit of an interesting global marketing history. I do have a question that came in and you may get into this about how libraries can get a hold of these games. How can they come by them? That's one of the things we'll get to. Okay. We'll get to that in a second in a bit. Right. Yeah. That's collection development. Right. So there we go. Okay. Just to touch a little bit on what the values are in these board games and why we felt comfortable even bringing them into the library in the first place. Somebody might say, well, this is just for fun. Well, it is fun. And that's a big part of it. But there are plenty of other valuable skills that you can develop out of these board games. I won't dwell on this. That's more of an education webinar, if you will. But since we're not talking about simple games where you roll a pair of days and just see what happens to you, these modern games are built upon usually an open decision set in a way that you're faced with a challenge, a problem, and you have to make decisions on how you're gonna address that. So that's a lot more involving logic, problem-solving skills, communication skills. And it's kind of funny too, a lot of them use subjects that we learn in school, geography and flora and fauna and biology and different things like that. But they're not designed as educational games. They don't promote themselves as that. They don't promote themselves as that. And people who were used to the idea of educational games, things specifically designed for that purpose, typically those will say they were worksheets in a box where you had specific learning goals in mind and you put some game mechanism onto it to help the kids not be quite as bored getting through it in class. But how many of those types of games would the kids go home at night and say, can we play this game? That's a difference here. The emphasis is on games that you want to play and it's children and their parents and it's fun playing together. So that's what makes this a little bit different. It's a funny thing about Ticket to Ride. We talked about that earlier. That is played the original game on a map of the United States. It has railroad routes that cover the whole country and they go from city to city. Well, to make the game work on the map, the designer had to move Duluth. To a different spot that's not geographically accurate to make the pieces fit on the board. And it was a game, designed as a game, but it became so popular with teachers to use it as a fun thing to play. And oh, by the way, you're learning your geography, you're learning where Pocatello is or something like that, but we're not gonna push that notion. But he got teachers writing to him saying, why did you put Duluth in the wrong place? Because now I can't use this in my class, especially teachers in Minnesota. But he had to say, it's a game. It was designed, you know. I didn't design it for that purpose, I'm sorry. Yeah, the 10th anniversary edition of that that just came out a year or two ago, last year maybe, is this beautiful new map. It's larger, it's got interesting trains that have circus animals and all kinds of fun stuff on it. And there's a little joke because on the map it's still laid out the same way as originally, but there's a little sign in a different spot that says, here lies the real Duluth. That's a nod to all those people that talked to him. So you can now use it. Yeah, I suppose so. And you can just use that. Well, sometimes you have to do things. Yeah, you have to adjust it. Right, so the concept is we're having fun and putting the use skills that we learn in class, but it's not intended as a teaching tool for that, although there are some that are starting to do that and maybe we'll touch on that later. Now, as I said before, everybody knows how popular video games are. So one of the things that I like to point out is as tabletop games are growing in popularity, this is one of the things I like to point out. Even when you play multiplayer video games, it's still face to screen. There is a certain amount of, if you get together in a group, maybe some fist bumping or whatever, but there's a whole different level of social interactivity. When you're sitting around the table, handling the same cards and bits and chops of wood and that, you're looking somebody in the face, negotiating with them or communicating, we're trying to guess what they're going to do. That's a whole nother level of social interaction, personally, than you get with video games. It really helps in those- It's a different kind of being social. Yeah, it's the communication skills and those subtle body cues and all that stuff, that you don't get in video games at all. Your avatar doesn't mean you can't read avatar language the way you do body language. And even when we play video games in our house, next to each other in the couch, multiplayer, each with a controller, I'm still not looking at him. I have to watch the screen to see what's happening and I can't see, oh, he's leaning this way, so he's going to go that way. It's kind of hard to, we're still being social and doing it together, but it is a little different than looking him in the eye like a poker match. Say, is he bluffing? Does he really have that card? Yeah, you even touch each other when you reach for the M&Ms at the same time. Yeah, so, okay, my one big tech screen. Just some highlights about what we think we gain at the library by hosting game nights. We, I'll go into the history in a bit, but we do have a monthly game night and that draws a lot of people into the library that otherwise wouldn't, probably half of our attendees are not Concordia people. Yeah, so you also open to the public. We are open to the public and we get a lot of people, we get a whole bunch of regulars from Lincoln. We have people that come from Omaha, from Fremont, from York, all around in the region, because as far as an hour and a half away. And so, some of the things that we've noted that we like about game nights when we started doing this is, well, Seward's a small town. And so it wasn't a hard sell to the administration to say it's something new to do. It's something different than the, we have good sports, we have good rich arts activities and such on campus. But this is something different. Perhaps a different group of people or it's more of an intellectual but fun activity. So it's not that, now I have to ask, I noticed that it's not something the public library's doing? Well, they have some and my apologies to Becky. If I don't recall the exact details, but I know they did, they had a big Lego program. Oh yeah, yeah, they've come into that because there's the Lego building Lego, yeah. Right, and there are certainly public libraries that are doing things. And in fact, one of our regular attendees from Lincoln, who comes to our game night and even demos games for a game company, has started running a monthly game night, game day, I should say, at the Isley branch of public library. Okay. Up on Superior Street. So it's, I believe the last Sunday of every month, noon to six. So I come into town for that when I can just come into play and I don't have to be the host. But that's one thing that's going on there. But that one is not run by the library staff. It's run by this patron who uses their community right. Oh right. Right. Not to say it couldn't be run by library staff like any other program. Yeah. Now you'll find chess clubs throughout the country. I'm not the one that, I haven't done the research on this myself but I know Scott Nicholson writes about that and how I want to say it was in San Francisco. One of the oldest chess clubs, perhaps the oldest still extant chess club in the country is in the public library. It's been a service of the public library forever. Yeah. If you're big into wanting to know what's going on with libraries and board games, Scott Nicholson, he's the guy. And I'll look for his website and get some links up to that. Yeah. Yeah, and I have one of his books later in my bibliography page, too. Yeah, it's really good. So another thing, obviously I mentioned our administration likes it when we draw visitors to campus. So that's one of the things we benefit by this. But I like the fact in the library that it gives me a chance to develop informal relationships with our students who come and get to know them personally and then later when they're working on a research project or something, they know me. And I might be walking through the library and they'll say, hey, Phil, can you help me find this or find out something about the Renaissance or whatever that they need to do research on because they know me personally. There is a reluctance on the part of researchers, students in particular, they want to do it themselves. And they feel like if Google and Wikipedia can't lead them to where they're going, of course, it's a stereotype to say that, but it's fairly true. That's where they start. That's where they start. Whether we like it or not. And they don't know where to go next. And they have this reluctance to talk to one of us adults and ask for help. Well, if they know me personally from game night, they're less reluctant to talk to me about it because they know I'm not gonna push them into stuff that they see me as a friendly guy so they know they can talk to me. It also gives me a chance to talk, to make a point when prospective students are touring the campus with their parents and they're passing through the library. And I use that as a talking point. I'll say the library is not for the sake of the books, it's for the sake of the students and the faculty and those who need information. And we try to stress that we're there to help them. But then we'll also make the point that by doing this monthly game night, we also like to have fun and we're approachable people. And it just adds a level of humanity, a comfortableness. A real people. Exactly, trying to build those relationships to our library users. It's also an opportunity to draw into the library students who maybe otherwise would have even made a point of pride of saying I made it through college without ever having to use the library. Well, what's the point in that? We know we're not their enemy, but I want them to feel comfortable coming in. So yeah, we've had people off the wrestling team and other athletes and such come in and just get more comfortable being in the library space. And that's I think a cool thing. So I'm happy about that. Here's a shot and you'll see several pictures from our game nights. This is the space where we do our game nights once a month. The man that's waving there right next to him in the red shirt is his daughter. And we allow families to come to any children that are old enough to be engaged in the games. We're not a babysitting service. So they're responsible for managing their own children. You can see we have a snack bar down the side that we intentionally use the word snack potluck. So that we put it on the attendees, I'll provide coffee, a pot of coffee, I'll provide the paper goods, but we leave it to the attendees to bring in snacks and things like that. And that creates a sense of community when they come in. And that helps a lot of people I know who are trying to arrange these things with budget. How much does it cost to pull off one of these? Exactly, exactly. So I'm not spending probably more than $10 each time if that for the paper goods and such. I really like that community idea, yeah. They are helping create it. Exactly, exactly. I don't know if you can see it well enough, but down in the bottom of the picture, we have a little sign-in table there just for attendance purposes. And I always promise people, I'm not gonna spam you with anything, just sign in so I get a count. But we've got little green and orange signs that say players wanted and teacher wanted. And when people get out a game that they're not familiar with, which is often the case, they can put out a sign that says we'd like somebody to teach us this game. There's this constant culture of teaching and learning with the new board games, because as I said before, there are hundreds and hundreds of them coming out every year. And even those of us who are aficionados who pay attention to the online sites and who are really with it, we're always looking to learn new games. And yeah, you can't just necessarily jump in even if you've played other games. They're all so being, they're all so different now. I mean, the basics and the things you gotta know, yeah. Yeah, there are differences and wide variety of styles and subject matter. We've talked about subjects before, but some of them are very simple. Two or three very simple rules that just work together well to create an interesting game environment. Some of them are complex, highly complex strategy games. And everybody gets to their level of comfort with what's your favorite style of game? What ones do you like the best? So there really is something for everything, everyone in these. And on that, I wanna touch a little bit, give just a little bit of a backstory here of what makes this a game renaissance. Now in this picture, I've picked these four games from our library collection intentionally because you can see on the cover of some of them, this red sort of pawn shaped thing with little wings on it. That is a prize that's the spiel de siaris. And this is kind of where our history gets interesting of these games. If you think back to the mid 20th century, in America, we had just won two world wars, as we would say it with our national pride. And so coming out with a new game like risk where you're trying to take over the world, made sense. We were proud of that. Toys like G.I. Joe, where you could play with and play dark guns, whatever, any of that stuff. We were okay with that. And for our children, because we had this pride in what our country had accomplished. Over in Germany, they had just lost two world wars. Their country was devastated by it. They're almost laid waste, really. They had to rebuild from ashes quite literally. They didn't want anything to do with military type toys or games. Now Germany had a long history of excellent toy makers and having quality things for their children to do. But they intentionally, as a society, said we are going to impose limits. They actually passed laws that toys could not be militaristic, that they could not have Nazi symbolism or things like that. So they forced designers and companies to say, what can we do differently to make toys that we like our children to play with, that we like our families to be involved in? What new subjects can we deal with? Well, as they did that, and because they obviously had a history of toys and games and such, they actually have press, they have journalists that specialize in writing about games, toys, things like that. So some members of the press who were specialists in games came up with this award and they simply called it Spiel des Yars, which is the German for game of the year. Very simple title. And there is no money awarded with the award, but it started in 1979, the first awards were given. But what happens is when this award is put on a game or even the nominees, but in particular, the one that wins it, the publishers and designers know that when that pawn is on their game, it will sell anywhere from 10 to 100 times as many copies, maybe even more. So that's the financial incentive. It's sales. And I've never heard of it before, but I buy award games. Well, that's, it's a German for the year. And so, but their intention as a committee is to pick games that promote family game time. So they like games that work well at a family level, that children say middle school and up can enjoy, can understand and participate fully in. And yet are fun enough that their parents like to play it with them. You know, what parent likes to play Candyland? You do it because you want to spend time with your children and we understand that, but the game itself, you know, but the games that are promoted by Spiel des Yars, the games themselves are good and are interesting enough for adults to enjoy together with their children. In recent years, they've branched out to have two more awards, the Kinder Spiel des Yars, which is specifically for children's games. So those are games that are even for younger children, but still very good quality games. And then the Kinder Spiel, which is a little more complicated, a little more complex, still not off the deep end, but a little more complex than the Spiel des Yars. So yeah, with that history in mind that the games started getting better and it was created a snowball effect. So the awards started in the late 70s and then as we got through the 80s, better games were being developed and the bar just kept rising year by year to where you get to the mid-90s and then you get settlers of Catan and that one really became a watershed. People who were like military people stationed over there would play it or people who had traveled over there to visit friends, played it and would buy a copy and bring it back and teach it to their friends. And it caught on really quickly, yeah. And within a year, they found a publisher over here that wanted to bring it over here and create an English edition, sell it, and it's been huge. So it has sold Catan with all of its sub-parts and spin-offs and such have sold over 30 million units worldwide and it's published in 30 languages around the world. So that one really has become the poster child for how games developed in Germany and then became worldwide phenomena. Now that's mid-90s. So that's literally 20 years ago now from when it came out in Germany. So we've advanced and continued that. Snowball has continued to grow through the years to great stuff. So what's different between those games and the monopoly, the sorry, and so on? When you put one of those games from Walmart on your table and you look at the components and the flimsy money or the little pieces and so on and then the cheap cards, you know it's a children's toy. You can tell just by looking at it. The new games have components made of wood, fashion plastic that are really nice. I've been very impressed with some that I've bought and you open it up and you expect the plastic pieces and they're not, they're made out of actual wood, not like wood looking stuff or anything. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And then I know, well, that's why it costs so much. I guess it's okay. That is true. They are pricier. They are, they are two or three times as much, but it's worth it because you're getting stuff that you'll play for years. You don't just play it for a couple of years with your kids until they outgrow it. Because you'll keep playing these games after the kids go to bed or when they move out, whatever. But often, especially games at the spiel to CRS level or even the Kenner spiel, they're easy to learn. They're not a huge rule book. Some of the military history and simulation games that were popular in American hobby culture in the 70s and so on would literally have big thick rule books, maybe inch, inch and a half thick that you'd have to wade through and all the little sub point 2.1.6DF when such and such occurs. If this and that, these games aren't like that. They have a simple rule book, usually full pictures that help you understand what to do. They're much easier to learn and get into. Now the deep ones still exist and some of them are getting a lot better as well, but it's very easy to get into this with games that have rule books no more than four pages, six pages, good stuff and they're fun. The game on the left there is called Takenoko and the theme is that China has given one of its prized pandas to the emperor of Japan. And it's just darling, have you ever seen it? I've seen, I want it, I haven't gotten it yet, but I haven't got it yet. I always tell people it wins the cute award because it's got this darling little panda and this darling little farmer that you move around the board growing bamboo and eating bamboo and that. It's a great one to introduce to people and it's easy to learn and fun and very colorful. Children love it, adults love it, yeah. So beyond that, what was one of the key complaints people have about games like Monopoly, Risk, some of the old games is they could go on forever. Yeah. Ad nauseam, now part of that was because of house rules and so on, but still, epic sessions of risk that take all weekend or whatever and then still don't end. Yeah, we've played in the years of trivial pursuit can sometimes go on forever and we just said, you know what, let's just end now, whoever's got the most pieces, that's the winner because we just can't anymore, it's taken so long. Indeed. Well, the design of many of these modern games, most of them in fact have a definite length. They'll target 60 minutes or 45 minutes or 90 minutes, depending on their target audience, but that's a specific thing where it's often a collection of points or a race to certain achievements. It's not about eliminating all the other players like you have to in Monopoly, Risk, some of those. And I like I've noticed because I've put it into on the boxes that tells you that about how long it will take to play one session of the game. Exactly. I usually say added another half hour, at least that first time. When you're trying to learn it, yeah. Trying to learn it and then you'll feel comfortable after that deciding how long does the game really take. A lot more player interaction and meaningful decisions, that's the key. It's not about, as I say, flipping a card, rolling dice and finding out what happens to you. A little bit of that, maybe in some of the games, but almost never do you do something like that and move around a track and just see what happens. That's gone. It's all about open-ended decisions. And that can be intimidating the first time you try to play one of these modern games. When you sit down at the game and people say, what do I do? And you say, well, you've got this and this and this. You've got all these choices. So pick something to do. Well, what should I do? Well, pick something. And you might need to negotiate with the person next to you to figure out, well, if you're going to do that, I'm going to try this or, yeah. Yeah, but they're meaningful decisions. And that's what drives the games. That's what makes them strategy games rather than just games of luck and chance. So onto a little bit about what our game nights are like at Concordia. And I said that these are once a month. The history started a little over two years ago, 2013, April. Now our family was already a fan of these games. And we would play them at home with the kids and with our friends and we'd become sort of evangelists as is common with fans of these games. You tend to have to introduce them to people to get more players. With a video game, you can just go online and find another player. But with board games, you need three, four people sitting around the table to play it with you. And so you look for other people who aren't going to think you're weird. If you say let's play a board game and you sort of find out, you learn to read people and say, who can I introduce these to and they won't think I'm strange? But so doing that, we started with Game Nights at Home. And we would get students coming from Concordia, friends from church or whatever. And they grew too big for our house. We could have three tables set up. We can have about 15 people playing in our hall. And they just got too big. And it finally occurred to me one night, hey, I'm a library director. I've got a key to the library. And we've got space with lots of tables, good lighting. That's where you start. Do you have good open tables? The larger the better, but good open tables and light. This is not like in a bar where you like soft lighting or anything like that. You like good lighting so you can see the pieces, just know what you're doing. That's about all you need to start is a willingness to let people in and tables and lighting, the worst bathrooms. All the stuff that libraries have. So our library closes at five on Fridays and Saturdays. So for us, it was really easy. I could say, well, we'll do it on Saturday night after we close. So we go from six to midnight, Saturday nights. And I set up a few extra tables up front, the ones that you can see on an angle up there so that people who bring their own games to share have a place to set them up and spread them out. There's some tables, old index tables. They no longer have the indexes on that I use to put the library game collection on. So that's a permanent location right near here. And people just come in and game. We set up the snack pot luck down the side, have them sign in. And like I said before, about half of the attendees have no direct connection to Concordia. We think that's pretty cool. Now, one of the real benefits is we have some avid gamers from Lincoln, from York.com, and join us, and they're ready teachers. So the fact that we're dealing with all these new games, or new to people who haven't played them before, that's okay because we have people who are willing and ready to teach them. And that's a fun thing that I get involved in as well. So we're often teaching people new games and then turning around and learning new games ourselves. So that's a lot of fun. We are trying to do a better job of connecting with faculty. Because one of the other goals that I have for this collection is knowing that these games have a purpose in the classroom. And that Concordia grew up as a teacher's college. So probably close to half of our student body are going to be future teachers. I want them to be exposed to this new medium that can be used in their classroom, that can provide fun ways for their kids to exercise the skills they're learning in class. And so I'm trying to get inroads to the faculty to get them involved a little bit. Had some success, had a few faculty that have come, even brought their children, and so on. And step by step, we're getting there. It's been growing more as an event than specifically on the educational goals, but we're making progress a little bit at a time. You can sneak it in there. We do, and it's really interesting because that's also a growing use in the gaming community. They're growing connections in how they're being used in education. In fact, I brought a book along to show you, it's part of a series by Rosen Publishing, on teaching different subjects through play. And in the series, they have five books to start with. They'll take specific board games and give actual lesson plans for how you would use this game in the classroom to teach. The one that I brought along is called teaching the Underground Railroad through play. Now, that might not be the first subject that you think of to have a fun game about the Underground Railroad. Well, let me tell you, I'll just briefly show it. We don't really even have to zoom in, but for people who are interested in that subject matter, this game is incredible. It's called Freedom, the Underground Railroad, and the designer, Brian Meyer, is a librarian. Nice. Go figure. Awesome. Yeah. This is one of those new cooperative games. Now, that's a style of game that has come out in the last, say, 10 years in the board gaming environment. In cooperative games, the players do not compete against each other. They compete against the mechanism of the game to win or lose as a team. And when Brian Meyer was trying to work with this subject matter of the Underground Railroad and build a game on it, he knew nobody's gonna wanna play the bad guys. Nobody's gonna wanna play the slave catchers, the people who are doing things that we have, in our historical perspective, realized were wrong. They didn't feel wrong at the time, but we don't wanna put ourselves in those roles. So instead, the game mechanisms play that role, have the slave catchers moving across the board in certain methods based upon what you do, and your role in the game as players is to get slaves, the pieces that represent the slaves, from plantations in the South through the Northern States and up into Canada, where they'll be free. And you have to try to do that within a certain amount of time and get a certain number of them up to freedom without losing too many back to the slave market or to getting caught. And it's an interesting, challenging mechanism. You also have to raise funds and raise political support through the game as you're doing it. And there are a whole bunch of cards in the game that are historic people and historic events. And as you see the card, it might be John Brown, or it might be Lincoln, or it might be the Emancipation Proclamation, or just different things, many that I had never heard of until getting out the game. And so you're learning those bits of historical context for how things worked and different roles that people played in that process. It adds a richness, a depth, that just reading the stories, reading about it in your history textbook doesn't convey. We do have a question about that. And well, the question starts up more broad. What ages are these games appropriate for? And I guess it's gonna vary, but specifically that undergrad railroad one, does it, what do they say? It says, oh, ages 13 and up. 13 and up, yeah, this one says 13 and up. And that may be based on both the content and the complexity of the game playing. Yeah, that is true, because in that one, it's a little bit sensitive. Actually, it's a little bit intense when you play it, because there are times, as you're moving these slaves up to freedom, where you might say to get these four up through wherever, Chicago, to freedom, I'm gonna have to let this one over in DC get captured. That's harsh, yeah. And that's harsh to make those decisions. And when you embody the subject matter of the game, then you're thinking, I just let a person die, or let a person get captured and be put back in the slavery. But it was for the greater good of having these four or six or whatever. You have to weigh those decisions. Now it'd be tough for young children. Yeah, so on the boxes, they'll have both a number of players about length of time and ages. Underground Railway 1 specifically says 13 and up. Yeah, and parents who play these games with their children will get a sense for what games, after you've played a few, it's like, well, yeah, my kid is nine, but he gets it. He can understand these things and we can play together. And then it's just a matter of subject matter and other things like that. So yeah, very interesting opportunities really wide age range. There's a company called Habba, and their games are very recognizable because they're bright yellow boxes with bright red letters H-A-B-A. It's a German company. They make toys, they make games, they make children's furniture, they even have their own little resort. They're really a family entertainment company in Germany. But their games are well known worldwide for being excellently made, lots of big chunky wooden components and such. And interesting for children and interesting enough for the parents to wanna play them with the kids. Their games are designed more for younger children, even ages two and up. But depending on the game, but even so they're, but they're more interesting than Hi-Ho Chereo. Yeah, that's just how it is. So, and they're fun to look at too, like I said, big colorful chunks of wooden pieces that are fun to handle. The kids are gonna like that, yeah. Right. We do have another question about what kinds of games you allow. Do you allow loud games where people yell and shout out answers and guesses? I suppose if it's after hours. That's a key for us. Is our game night is after hours? That's what I was wondering about earlier and I was waiting to see who would get to it. It doesn't bother the people who are actually trying to study. So you can have anything as loud as you want in there at that time? Yeah, at that time we can. Now, are the space that we have, there's no way to enclose it? Well, obviously, yeah. You don't have a separate room that you use for it. If you were doing a library gaming event in a public library in a community room that has a door, you know, you can let them go. Have fun. I don't specifically limit what games people bring. We don't have any electronic stuff set up. So if anybody even asks. Well, it's a typically sword game. Right, if anybody asks about video games. Because I asked about charades or something. So you wouldn't be that kind of game. You could. And we have some extra lounge spaces that aren't far away from this space. So if a group wanted to do a game that's a little bit more socially interactive, you know, we can let them have a space that's a little bit aside, but still not out of the area. Because you don't want them running crazy all over the library where you can't monitor. Exactly. I don't even turn on the lights upstairs and downstairs, you know, certain areas. And the group is fairly self-policing. Usually that's the case, yeah. Yeah. So we had an incident within the first year when we first started doing these game nights. Both my sons were still in high school. One of them is now a student at Concordia. But one of them that's an avid gamer was bringing a few friends from high school inviting them to come. And we had an incident one night where they came, got out a couple of games, played a couple of things, and then left. And as high schoolers will do, well, that's fine. It's open house style. But they left their snack trash all over and the floor. They left the game pieces out and so on. So when they came back the next time, I just talked to them and I said, you're welcome and we're happy to have you here. But this is an adult style event. It's not a party. So we expect people to clean up after themselves and to pick the game pieces back up in the box, and put them back in the game area when you're done. But we are glad to have you here. And they have come back in the future time. So I didn't scare them away. No. But we want them to understand that they need to be sort of self-policing in that regard. And then they're welcome to come and play. So we like that. So that's something actually, it's interesting that you've got all ages here because someone did comment earlier and when I'd asked about, does the public library do this kind of thing? Someone said that at a public library would generally be viewed as something for teens or younger to do. Which is maybe true. It depends on who you market it to and what you're doing. I mean, the game nights that are being done at Isley is that similar to this, where it's any L-age type thing? All ages are welcome. We have not had very many unexpected guests, I'll say, come in. We've had a couple. We've had a few. There's a lady and her younger son that have come in a couple of times, a couple of months, and just some other people. But because it's in its own room, closed off, it's not so obvious. And I'm not trying to denigrate the library staff in any way, but it's not a library event. So I don't think the library promotes it. I think it's left up to the host of the event to do his promotion. It happens to be being done at the library. There's many people that do use the library community rooms for all sorts of things, yeah. Right. Yeah, and so he promotes it through the channels he's familiar with, his own Facebook account, and Board Game Geek, which I'll get to in a minute. In fact, that's coming up next. Yeah. So through gaming channels, when you advertise it, you get other gamers. And so that's the primary attendees at that event. So it's gonna depend on who's running it. But those are adults. Yeah, so this one would be adults at Isley because of where it's coming through. But if the public library, and that's something we're getting today, this is about an academic, but in a future show, I've got plans. I've got things in the works. It depends on who's running it. Is it somebody coming in from the outside with their particular area, or is it the public library? Either the teen librarian, the children's, or adult. Adult board gaming run by public libraries is a thing. Yeah, it is. And my key suggestion on that is to connect through Board Game Geek or meet up or through your local game shop, connect with your local adult gamers. They love to find new opportunities to play, especially if your tables are large and your lighting's good. If you're not charging them to come, those are key things that that's all they're looking for is a place to do that and not have any guilt late on them. If you play at a game shop, they're sort of an implied, well, then buy a game or two here. It varies, yeah. Which is true, and that's fine, because it is a store after all. But get them involved, and they will spread the word through the gaming community, and they will be there to teach games, which is huge, just huge. There's actually a game shop here in Lincoln that we've gone to every now and then, where they're actually very friendly and don't push this. They have a huge collection of board games that are available for people to play, and then people do bring in their own. And there's all sorts of strangers getting together and learning and just kind of looking over the shoulders at something saying, what is that? And this place, not every game shop's gonna be as I've heard about some that are not so, they're very clicky, but this one, and they, come on, sit down, we'll show you how to play. Hi, my name's Bob. Hi, I'm Susan, and yeah. But you know, it'll vary. Right, and that, this is an interesting stereotype of gamers, especially the adult gamers, are often people who maybe dabbled in it as a kid, at least the ones that have been gamers for a while. Maybe we dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons in high school or some other miniatures or role-playing or card games like Magic the Gathering or something like that. And then as adults, they find that this is a social event they can enjoy with other people where they didn't necessarily learn a lot of social skills as younger people or maybe experienced a little bit of being ostracized as geeks, as younger people, and that being their background, they don't want to impose that on others. No. So they're very welcoming. They want it. They're like, I don't want you to feel ostracized about coming to join our game group because I was, and that was no fun. Yeah. Let's change how it's done. Right, so the culture in adult board gaming is actually very welcoming. I thought it was very... That's not true of everybody, but across the board generally speaking, it's a very welcoming culture inviting. So collection development, we can move on to that real quickly. Board Game Geek is the online Bible for board games. That site now has over a million registered users around the world and it's just this huge community. It's got a database of, I think, closing in on 80,000 games. The largest gaming event in the world, if you will, at least historically, is the Spiel Game Fair in Essen, held every fall in Germany, in Essen, Germany. And the reports last year were that, I think there were something like 790 new games being debuted at Essen last year. Too many. It's huge and nobody can play them all. But there's, so that just creates this culture of craving the knowledge. What's coming out? What's new? What can we, what gossip? Maybe gossip rumors. What preview information can we hear about the games that are coming so that I can sift through that and say which ones do I like? Which ones do I wanna watch out for? So Board Game Geek is all about that. Any game that you've played probably has an entry there and there will be a forum full of posts where people ask questions. Like, we got stuck on this rule or this situation. We didn't know how to resolve it. How did you guys figure it out? Who else has dealt with that? How do you figure it out? And surprisingly, often, especially with these hobby games, it may be the designer himself or herself that comes on and answers their question. Because they're involved on the geek as well. It's affectionately known as the geek. I like on Board Game Geek and I use that too, that it gives a really nice for collection development type thing that librarians are looking for who are not into this. Maybe breakdown of all these different categories where they say, what grade is it for? What level is their expansion? It's all these real details about everything about the game. So you don't have to just go and get it yourself or go and find, review yourself to figure out it's got really comprehensive entries on each game with all sorts of extra info. Exactly. And there's so many different styles, so many different ages and all that you need a resource like that to be able to sift through them and figure out what's good. And on the geek, there's a sub form for games in the classroom. And you'll often find discussions about library use of games as well in there. So yeah, it's a very good resource. Two others that I just put up that are also pretty widely known. The Dice Tower is now a whole network of podcasts, video reviews, so on. And on their site, you will find a lot of top 10 lists, top 100 lists, so top 10 games to play with your young children or top, I don't know, they have all kinds of lists, slice and dice, different ways. But recommendations, it's great source for recommendations and reviews. You hear of a game, what is it really like? What does it look like? What's the subject matter? How's it treated? What age group is this for? You can get those reviews on Dice Tower. Casual Game Revolution is a fairly new site because it's connected with a very new magazine called Casual Game Insider. And the terminology for casual game is basically saying we're not swimming in the deep end of the pool. We are staying with the games at the level of the Spiel de Ciaris or games that people can play with their children, games that aren't terribly hard to learn and get into. So they're all new games, but they're avoiding the ones that are really the heavy complex games. They're sticking with the ones that are a little bit easier to get into. So that's a good entry point because they also have reviews, written reviews, descriptions and lists and things like that. Another resource to turn to. Actually, I wanted to go back. There's a question here that I should have asked before when you're talking about the game nights you guys do, and I forgot, but I got distracted. How do you advertise the game nights on campus? Okay. To try and get on campus people. Perfect, thank you. So I have a set list of things that I do. Board game geek was actually the first thing I turned to because in the regional forums, there's a forum for Midwest. So I have a regular posting in there every month for when our next game night is. There is a guild for Lincoln, Lincoln BGGers that I always post in. There's a guild for Central Nebraska that I post in. Now there's an Omaha guild that I also post in because a few people have come from Omaha. That is a great way to reach gamers in your region. And I like to promote that as a core audience because when they come, they bring games. They're willing to teach the games and they keep coming back, right? So that's a really great resource. I also use Facebook on our library Facebook page. I post it as an event every month. And then on campus, we have a campus wide email list for all faculty and staff. So I put it to there. And we have the student life office that does a mass email to student body. So they pick up on that and they send it up to the student body. They put it on the student events calendar. Oh, cool. Just library game night. So you've got both the university involved and it helps out. So they're supportive that way. They're happy. The president has gotten responses from students. Our president is very student oriented. He gets to know them personally and he had one of his presidential scholars, one of the students who got an award scholarship at their dinner when he asked what, now that you're a Concordia for your first month, what have you experienced that you love? And one of them said, just got to the first game night. It was awesome. I'm looking forward to next month. And so the president had to tell me that the next week and I just glowed because that was so fun to hear that. So he's supportive. Yeah, that helps. There we go. Great support from your administration. Oh yeah. I just want to let everyone know we are a little after 11 o'clock. Yes, Encompass Live officially goes 10 to 11, but we won't get cut off here. We'll go as long as it takes to get through all of Phil's presentation and any questions you guys have. But if you do need to leave because you had just blocked out this hour and time, feel free, that's fine. We are recording and you'll be able to watch the anything you missed afterwards. So go ahead. Excellent. Well, some other sources that you can use that you can turn to. Now, this is a whole list and I'm not even gonna go through it, but there are umpteen lists, podcasts, blogs, YouTube channels and other sources where people just love to evangelize the new games they've discovered. That's the culture here is people love to share. So this other site called BoardGameLinks.com is actually a page devoted to what are your favorite websites about board games? Cool. Sliced and diced by different categories by podcasts, by reviews, by game stores, by just general information sites, conventions and so on. So BoardGameLinks is a great one to look at to see where can I go to to find information about it. That's, and like if you're looking up what are game stores around me, you might find them there, that sort of thing. There's no end of these things. And the podcasts are interesting too. They're fun to listen to, opinionated at times. But these sites, one difference that you'll see between the media that reports on video games and the media that reports on board games is you almost never find them providing game sheets or how to win at such and such game. Now, those discussions might occur on BoardGameGeek. There'll be strategy tips shared for different games and that's there. But discovering, taking a new game, exploring its challenges and discovering what are the ways, the paths that you can take through this game, that's the fun. That's the fun of discovering all these new challenges and figuring them out. So people who are into this game and culture aren't about the winning. They're about exploring the experience. And learning a new game, yeah. I know some of these, it says you have YouTube channels. I like the ones, there's some that do actual run-throughs of the games to show you how to play, which has been very useful for some of the more complex ones we've tried at our house. But sometimes we've tried it and like I said, sometimes because these are independently made, the instruction books can be maybe not as clearly written as you'd like. So then you find some video, not even long ones. Then you do a whole game. But just here's a 20 minute thing that shows you the basics and then you figure out, oh, that's what that rule means. Now it makes sense that I see someone else doing it. So looking for things like that ahead of time really has helped us too. Yeah, I gotta give a shout out to the one called Watch It Played. That's hosted by Rodney Smith up in Canada. And that is what he does. He will actually be contacted by publishers and they will say, we're coming out with a new game. Here's a copy of it. Will you, and they will pay him to make a video specifically walking through it. And he enlists the aid of his children to play it with him. And they will walk it through step by step and say, here's how you put it out. Here's how you play the game. And he's just really good. He's developed a routine that's really good for that. Now, obviously he hasn't done every game that's out there. But yeah, watch these different channels. Some of the games now are even coming with a QR code on the rulebook that says to see a video on this game. There's one where we just started, we've just started with Mycin Mystics that has a, on the front of the instruction book, it says go to our website at blah, blah, blah for a video on how to play video. So the company itself had put together a video. And unfortunately, we didn't watch that first. So we're gonna go back and start over again. But once we watch it, we're like, oh, yeah. Yep. So yeah. And that, again, is how this gaming hobby industry is evolving. They're learning those new techniques to make it more accessible to people. They're really getting good at that. And of course, I wouldn't be a fair librarian without mentioning some of the books that are relevant. These are some of the books we have in our collection. Well, the last one's a DVD. But that I think are good places to start. I mentioned that Freedom the Underground Railroad was by Brian Mayer, who's a librarian. And Christopher Harris. And Christopher Harris, exactly, yeah. So they have partnered up, in fact, they're the driving force behind that series of books from Rosen that I talked about. Yep. And I got a link to that. I added to the link here. I found their main publisher page with all the five books listed. So. Excellent. So that top book, Libraries Got Game, is a really good one from A.O.A. on how to use games, in particular with elementary, middle school, and high school age children. They give some good examples of how the games will align to actual curriculum points. Teachers have to align their activities in class to core curriculum standards. And that book actually talks about that. But it also just gives examples of what are good games. So any librarian would be, it would do you well to look at that and get an idea what games are good. Then the second one is about one of the Rosen books again. Scott Nicholson's book, Everyone Plays at the Library. That's great for everybody, in particular public libraries. It goes into the different types of games. And then it also goes into different types of events and experiences that tie in with them. And it's not just about board games. It's also about role playing, even video and other sorts of things. So that's a very helpful resource. If you're just interested in what is this board gaming culture? Why are adults doing this or whatnot? Then the last two items that I have down there are really interesting to reflect on that. Now they're already about three, four years old and the information keeps changing. But Eurogames, the book by Stuart Woods, if you want to read the dissertation on what is this gaming culture, that's it. It's excellent. And then Lauren Green's Going Cardboard Documentary, that's just a neat overview of the gaming culture. You get, she interviews a lot of designers, publishers, people who attend game conventions, the founder of Board Game Geek, this kind of stuff and just lets them tell their story. Some of the people involved in it have moved on to new endeavors, different functions within the hobby, and still it's just fun to see those people sharing. So I recommend it. And it's actually one of the most popular things out of our collection that gets borrowed by interlibrary loan. If you're sending it out to other libraries. More people need to get that obviously. Yeah. All right, so where to buy them? Right. Now you won't find them at Walmart, although a few are starting to sneak into some Walmart's. I say, I don't look at Walmart. I've seen at Target. Yes. Yeah, Ticket to Ride. Target has started to carry a core number of them. Ticket to Ride is very popular, Pandemic, which is probably the poster child for cooperative games. Excellent game, Settlers of Catan. You can find a few of those core titles at Target. You can also find a growing number of them at Barnes & Noble. Yeah. Depending by the store and location, they adjust their stock. But in those places, you're going to pay list price. And for some of these, Ticket to Ride, that's $50. Thank you. Which might seem a lot to pay for board game. Hopefully when you open it, you'll agree that the components make it worthwhile. But when you go online to specific game shops, Cool Stuff, Inc, Miniature Market, Fun Again, there's many of them, but those are three of the top ones. You'll find that same game for $35 instead of $50. That's significant. So don't be afraid to shop around a little bit. And Amazon. We've gotten stuff on Amazon. OK. I'm sorry. At Amazon, you're right. They actually did a thing. It was International Board Game Day last month, the month before, I forget. And they did a whole bunch of things really on sale in conjunction with the International Board Gaming Day. That's an event type thing. And we picked up a couple there because they were like half price from $50. Yeah, I looked at that real fast. And I had almost all the ones on the list of the lights. I know. You already had them. But yeah, that's a good source to look at. Although I will say these dedicated online game stores across the board have better prices than Amazon. Now many of these stores also have a presence on Amazon. Amazon has a regular price if it wasn't for that special sale. Yeah, well, some of them are. Some of them are still better priced. Wow, that's Amazon. You know their thing. But I do want to give a shout out to friendly local game stores. That's a term used in the hobby, FLGS, sometimes with a smicker, because some of them are more friendly than others. Some of them are more or less smelly than others, depending on how many junior high boys come in after school to play Magic the Gathering or whatnot. So enter at your own risk. But many of them have learned their lessons and are becoming more family friendly, adult friendly, are clean and well stocked. Some of them, because they have to pay the rent, are charging a list price. But some of them have realized now that they can't compete with the online stores at that price, so they're having to discount and still creating a viable market. So support your local game store if you feel the desire. You can also connect with them relative to your events and you might get them to donate like coupons for your attendees. Just like anybody who you get to promote, help sponsor an event at your library, they can put their name on like sponsored by. Right. So a local game shop. Yeah, and your local game shop might give you coupons that say 10% off and you can put those out at your game night by your signing sheet. And people who go there to say, oh, I learned this new game, maybe they have it over here. I had such and such game store. So those are the sources that I go to. And I'm learning new ones all the time first, so. Okay, the necessary credits for all my images and stuff. We don't really have to dwell on that. It's on the recording. And this was kind of what started it a little bit. I did a library or Nebraska Libraries article back in February. And that kind of caught some attention when I've done some of these presentations. So you can find some more there about that. Great. So speaking of questions. Yes, so does anybody have any more questions? I grabbed all the ones that had been asked throughout the show. So those have all been done. And if he has any more questions you want to ask, Phil, go ahead and get them in right now. I'll let you know while I'm waiting for that. I do have the slides. So I'll be posting that up along with the recording when that's done. And I think I've grabbed all the different links and book links and websites that were mentioned. I'll go through and double check and make sure. So you'll have quick links to all of those as well. I put those into our delicious account for the library commission. Maybe while we're listening for questions, I'll just point out too, I brought a couple of other games and I won't go into them in detail. But this one's fun. It's called The Three Little Pigs. Oh, okay. This publisher, Yellow, starts with an I. It's like the word yellow, but with an I, because it's French. So they have to spell things funny. Sorry. They have this series called Tales and Games. And the titles in this series are Baba Yaga, The Three Little Pigs, I think the Ant and the Grasshopper is the newest one. The Hare and the Tortoise. They look like little books. They look like little story books on the shelf. The games are designed to be approachable for children. This one is ages seven and up. But they're also fun for adults. And a copy of the storybook actually comes with the game. Oh, nice. So if you wanna promote the literacy aspect of connecting with these games or using them as an exploration of that story after you've read the story, you can look into the games from Yellow. Yeah. Now I see on here, I was gonna ask about and just kind of miss, you've got it barcoded and, you know, spine label and everything on there. Are, because you just talked about doing the game nights in the library, are these gonna be checked out by people if they want to? Good question. That's a whole other issue I know that people's libraries are getting into. It is. It is. And that's one we've struggled with. Some libraries that support school systems that are getting into games will buy multiple copies of a game to be used in classrooms and so on. Sure. And they're used to the process of obtaining extra parts, replacements, things like that. Things are gonna get lost. Things are gonna get lost. Ruin, cards will get torn, that sort of thing. We're not at that point yet in our collection. I've basically been expanding the collection both to support game night and to provide a broader spectrum of titles for our ed students to see. So we only have one of each. And I'm not too comfortable yet with checking them out. So they're marked non-circulating. Okay. I've had a couple of occasions where somebody's asked if they could use it for a particular student teaching or, and I've told faculty members, I'd be more than happy for them to check it out. Take it to use with their class on campus if they want to. So I'm open to the idea, but right now the collection itself says non-circulating. I override that when I feel it's more. Case by case, yeah. I know some libraries, public libraries are circulating them and that could be a whole nother show. How you can actually circulate it. How do you deal with missing pieces, lost pieces, damage, all that, yeah. There is a conference, I'm going to the end of this month on the 31st down at Mid-American Nazarene University, down outside of Kansas City in Olathe. It's called, they have a center now called the Center for Games and Learning. Yes. And they are doing a Games and Learning conference, a one day conference on the 31st. She also, Lauren Hayes, the co-director of the center, also gave a presentation at the spring meeting where I presented this presentation about their center. They are doing multiple copies of things and getting them into classroom use. Their co-director is one of the faculty members for that center. And she gets into their cataloging processes and general library practices with the games as well. That's actually going to be one of the sessions at the conference there. So if anybody wants to join me down there at the conference, I'm going to be going just as an attendee this time. That day. So a shout out to Lauren at the conference there. I just love this little game as an example. It's called Eight Minute Empire. And it has this little board, this little box, these little cubes. I mean, the whole board for this game is less than a foot square. Wow. But it's an imaginary world map. It's not our world, but it's an imaginary map of continents and regions, two different maps on the two sides of the board. When you get it out and you start seeing little cubes moving around on a map, you think risk or world domination. And that's what you're sort of trying to do in this game. But it's called Eight Minute Empire. Okay, it's my favorite Ms. Nomer. This actually takes about 15 minutes. Is it really? But who can imagine a game that's in a tiny little box and a tiny little board that gives you that sense of taking over the world in 15 minutes. And a real big is one piece of paper folded. So it's easy to learn. It's just a great example of how they've taken something and boiled it down to its essence. I made it a fun. It is. It's very fun. But learning. And yeah, you get angst over the decisions you have to make. Should I do this or that? Yeah. Which is gonna pay out. But in the end, you just do it. And in 15 minutes, you're done and somebody wanted. Play again. If it didn't go well. Yeah, you play again. Try it over, try it again. I just love that example. Yeah. All right, no questions came in at the last minute. So I guess we got them all answered. Wonderful. If you do have other questions, Phil's at Concordia. I'm sure he would be happy to answer. Indeed. You can find them there. Other than that, so if you have any questions, I think we'll wrap it up. Any last minute to keep playing games? Keep playing games. Try them out. And that's where whenever somebody asks about this and about what we do with game rights, I stress the fact that the culture is one of teaching and learning with so many new games. Because anybody that's new to it, they come in with that fear, oh, I won't know the games. That's okay. Because we love to teach them. And that's the point. There was a point when you didn't know how to play Monopoly. You might not remember. Yeah. But it was. And somebody taught you without the book and they probably taught you wrong. House rules. But yeah, don't be afraid. And any of you who are listening are welcome to come to Game Night. Yeah. We have a great time. Check out the one out there. The one here. The month they won here at Eisley and Lincoln. Or looking for not here. Of course, I know many of you are not here in Nebraska. Look for them in your local areas too. Yep. Great. Okay. There you go. All right. Thanks a lot, Phil. Thank you, everyone for attending. That will wrap it up for this week's Encompass Live. It is being recorded and will be available potentially later today, depending on how long it takes me to get through everything I need to do to get it all together. As I said, the PowerPoint will be available. This is our Encompass Live website. There it goes. On our archive sessions page right here is where it will be posted. As you can see, we list all of our recordings here, going back to the very beginning of Encompass Live in January, 2009. So you can find everything here. And we will have just like this was last week's, we'll have the recording, we'll have the slides, and I've got, like I said, captured all the links that I could that'll be available for you there as well. So everyone who attended, you'll get an email letting you know when the recording is ready for you to go look at and share. So I'll wrap it up for this week. Hope you'll join us next week when our topic is Managing the Device Deluge, Training and Supporting Staff. We will have Jennifer Korber, who is at Boston Public Library. She's a public instruction curriculum development coordinator. Wow, what a title. But she has information about how to get your staff trained and all these new devices and technology and things that are coming into your library anyways. So ways to help you train your staff to be able to deal with this technology. So I hope you'll join us next week for that and for any of our other shows that we've got coming up here. You see this, we only have a couple of shows listed on the schedule right now. I've got discussions and works for other ones. So there will be things filling in. So keep checking back to our website to see what new topics are coming up. Also, Encompass Live is on Facebook. So if you are a big Facebook user, please do go ahead and like us over there. You'll get notifications when the recordings are available. I also let people know here, people can log in on the fly every Wednesday morning. So I let you know when the show is about ready to start as I did for today's show. So to get all your updates on Facebook. So if you're big on Facebook, go ahead and like us there. Other than that, that wraps it up for this morning. Thank you very much, Bill. Thank you very much for attending and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye.