We got a new member on the site today, who is the maker of one of my families' favorite games--make that the only board game in the house.
So, the story behind "Bux" is a little unique compared to most. I need to share it, and Charles Philips, the creator of Bux and President/CEO of Newscool could use the support in that he's one fish taking on a whale of an entertainment industry.
Bux is a game like no other on the market. If you can imagine a mix between Poker, Spades, and Monopoly (sort of) you are on your way to understanding the simple complexity of spending money to make money that is at the center of the game. All of this sounded foreign to me before I actually played about twice, so don't feel bad if you don't have a visual.
Philips had a lead role in the creation of Advance to Boardwalk, and a number of other games put out by Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley and Hasbro. He started off as an electrical engineer after Howard University. He did some work with Ford, probably went back to school and then it was gaming up to this point.
He's astute at taking the highly complex and breaking it down into pieces so small, that an 11-year-old can be playing the game of life in practice and
be playing his heart out in fun. That's what's amazing about this game over others.
I played with an 11-year-old, 13-year-old and a 40-something year old. It tripped me out how I lost Bux being conservative. While other players lost out being way too AGRESSIVE and went flat broke. hehe. I won that game though! anyway...
I'm just a player, I would like to have Charles Philips, himself answer some questions on the game. Let's see what kind of feedback/insight we can conjure up.
First of all I can tell you that if you want to buy the game, or if you want general details about Charles, his company, gamers, etc. check out BUX the Game - Your money game!. Now more specifically for Charles:
What were you thinking this game should be all about when you took it from idea to reality?
I know that it has a correlation to the real world, what was it designed to actually do for players? How does it play on economics?
Who did you have in mind as players when you designed it?
What makes it fun?
Why couldn't I get it from Walmart?
oh yea, What happened between Howard graduation and Newscool inception that led to this point?
Thanks for the intro, JP.
My story could be your story in the future. You'll think of something, or a new way to do something, and want to put it out on the market.
Let me regress a little and say that I graduated from Howard's engineering school in '66. (No, not 1866, but me and the homies named the "punch out" at Howard. We gave it that name because so many students punched out of school for playing Bid.) I have always had ideas and dreams of 'the future'. I'll never lose that. But the future I found was a little different from the future I expected. I thought that if you did the best, you'd come in first, or near the front. While that may be true for many, my experience has been that if I thought the race was a mile, at what I thought was the finish line, I'd hear, "Good start. Now double your pace." (Remember these words.)
Which brings me to now. If you do something that is different, different people will have different reactions to it. Remember when rap first came out? No radio station would play it. The guys started selling it out of the trunks of their cars. When the establishment heard of its grassroots popularity they had to mention it, even though they slammed it. Then when the numbers got significant, and they knew they couldn't get rid of it, they capitalized on it and it became part of the culture. Now you see rap everywhere from TV ads to cars to life. But the important thing is that rap, as hip as it was, just wasn't accepted at first. It took time and effort and sweat, risk and cleaver marketing techniques.
JP, I'm glad you won being conservative. The game does show your money handling skills and style. If you are conservative, not wanting to spend and risk, you could win, but only if the others are spending and risking (as you say, being AGRESSIVE) in an all-or-nothing strategy. If they had been a little less conservative that you, they could have won. But whatever, you had fun playing your money style.
OK (whew), Q-1
What were you thinking this game should be all about when you took it from idea to reality?
Developing an idea occurs differently in different developers. So, I'll describe the route we took. I had an idea that if kids (8-12) could get an idea how business worked, they would have more options when they grew up. So, in typical game inventor style, I quickly made up a board, put a track around the outside and started. If each player was a company, buying goods at the right side of the track in front of them on their side of the board, and they added value to it (in the form of little plastic pieces), they could sell it to the player at their left for a higher price and make a profit. I'll FF here. That got rather involved with changing prices, value-piece acquisition, moving the goods (little transparent plastic boxes) on the track, labor problems, etc. I stopped development for a rethink. Ain't no way a kid was going to do that. So, I thought about it for about a year before sending the game up to a graphic designer, game inventor friend to take a look at. I told him what I wanted to do. He put an entirely different spin on the game, which involved throwing dice and taking plastic disks from a revolving carousel. Beautiful model. But with the dice, paper money, plastic color-coded disks and about 5 things to do on a turn- and in order too, my math teacher neighbor said it was way too complicated for him. BUT IT PLAYED. At that point, the game as it is now became obvious to me and I took it back from my friend. And what you see is my interpretation of my friend's interpretation of what I originally came up with. So what started out as a game for kids only is now an all-age game where all players are bustin' their butts to out-think and out-do others to be successful and win. Quite extraordinary.
We are surprised by it's broad appeal.
[This brings up an important point. I don't think I would have been able to come close to this game without the viewpoint and full participation of my friend. No way. ]
Got to cut. Rushing to our weekly play session at a local retirement home. Last week a woman 91 beat be by about 25 bux. I got to get her this week.
I'll answer the rest later.
JP, thanks for those glowing words. I appreciate them.
Continuing with question Q-2,
I know that it has a correlation to the real world, what was it designed to actually do for players? How does it play on economics?
A game should be fun. Most games are only fun. That's cool. That's what they are supposed to be. But games that are fun only get tired fast. Some games get tired so fast, that they're DOA when you open the box. (If possible you should give them a chance. You never know- or maybe you do.)
Many so called 'classic' games give you something more than just fun. Chess is a war game and prompts you to think strategically in a military sense, in terms of patterns of forces, attack and defennse. Backgammon is a race game and prompts you to think of statistical odds, timing, and some attack and defense. Monopoly is a real estate game, invented in 1903 by Elizabeth Magie (IDarrow who gets the cre.dit, ripped her off), to demonstrate the causes and effects of the single land tax. But it does get you thinking about real estate and how you can make money at it.
Bux was originally designed to introduce younger players to business- adding value to make a profit. But the game has evolved beyond that now. Bux has become a metaphor for success in general- regardless of what you are doing. In its upcoming book, ?Tha Bux Book- play to your success?, steps to success will be put out. Playing the Bux game will support the book and give meanings and most importantly, experiences to what is written in the book. In other words, the book and the game will work together.
Economics? Bux doesn?t do much to make you think of ?economics?- like we?ve been taught, with numerous definitions of meaningless words, unknown variables, theories and graphs. How does this knowledge benefit you, the individual? Right. Not much, if at all.
But playing Bux to win does connect you with your own personal economics. By your personal economics, we mean your personal, individual relationship to ?the economy?. Maybe you are curious about ?how you can benefit economically from your own actions?. That is the question and issue that Bux, the game now and the book later are dedicated to answering.
You know the scene. The world is changing fast. The ways people are doing things are changing fast too. If you think you?ll become a doctor or a lawyer and ride the high horse, think again. Jobs and professions are being exported faster than you can dance. And what was ain?t necessarily going to be. So get hip to the process of dealing with your own personal economics in a world of change.
Yo, I like 24? wheels under 5000 watts with 4 steel mounted 18? woofers too. But all that is within personal economics. First things first.
