No, they really shouldn't. These games are better at ruining friendships than Monopoly. The point of the article wasn't to name the most popular bad board games, otherwise sure Monopoly and Risk would be up there..

Those games are frustrating because they're poorly designed, not because they allow clever opportunities for subterfuge.

Diplomacy is the same as Risk as Bugatti Veyron is to a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.

As a seasoned player of board games, Risk and Monopoly have NOTHING on the ability of these games to make you hate everyone you used to love.

I love how the only thing in this video to properly use a crosswalk is a pigeon.

while I agree the NRA is way too extreme the fact remains that without them we'd be an unarmed population with no real means to keep the government at least remotely honest.

That company is awesome btw.

I highly recommend their Summoner Wars game as well (start with the Master Set).

It's kinda like magic, minus the deck building and is insanely balanced.

Plus, you can buy expansions which allow for limited deck building (always have to have 3 champions, 18 commons, no more than 10x of any…

That is the quinessential screwing people over game. Also fun to try is "Red Dragon Inn".

Cosmic Encounter. That game is so freaking fun to play that I could care less if I win. In fact, I've been known to purposefully not win just to drag it out.

I play a lot of games like this. I am not nearly as smug of a snob about them as Quinin seems to be (I'll cite his prior articles here as evidence) BUT I can tell you that they can be a huge amount of fun.

Monopoly, Risk and Candyland are like the Wii Sports of board games. They are popular and accessible, but they a far from the best examples of what the medium has to offer.

Personally I prefer Twilight Imperium to Eclipse in just about every situation except perhaps "You have something else to do with that day" :).

They are both fantastic games in their own right. When you're in the mood for a 6 hour plodding, epic knock down drag out, Twilight Imperium is an experience that can't be matched. Eclipse on the other hand encapsulates a similar theme and does it in a much more digestible 2 hour stint. And it has pretty much the most…

I think the 'binary view' the author is talking about is in regards to the fact that success = fun and failure = not fun. I think the author has a good point in posing the question, 'How can we make losing more fun?', and then introduces several games where success = fun and failure = fun as well.

Playing Agricola or most boardgames is a lot of fun, even if you lose. Like really, sometimes you don't even care if you had the chance to try the setup you wanted.

Because, as we all know, video games are about exactly copying "harsh reality". That makes them so much fun!