How do you determine Play It! games?

By Mitchell Land

Dear Armchair General Editors,

I was reading the September 2006 Play It! section online this morning, and I was wondering what the criteria was for including games. For instance, under the Bulge topic, you left out several games such as GMT’s "Ardennes ’44" and "Tigers in the Mist", and, for the Market-Garden topic, you left out The Games (via MMP) "Screaming Eagles in Holland" as well as GMT’s "Airbridge to Victory". I am sure there are other games that I missed in these two topics as well as games that would fit well in the other topics (for instance, I know there are MMP Gamers games dealing with North Africa). Thanks,

— In His Grip,

Mitchell Land

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Mitchell,

An excellent question! 

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We design Play It! to be a small blurb in the magazine which is designed to give readers a small taste of what games are available for each story we cover.  Since some topics have many games (D-Day, Stalingrad, etc.) it sometimes isn’t possible to even scratch the surface of what is available.  Thus, many excellent games are left off each list.  Wherever possible, we also try to find games that are current, or at least are still in print.  We don’t want to suggest OOP games unless we have no other choice!

However, when you go to the link in each Play It! piece (playit.armchairgeneral.com), you will see the original list, plus many more for each topic – for a more inclusive gaming experience.  We are also working with game companies and designers to provide custom scenarios for situations which aren’t specifically covered in previous titles (for example our Tiger Trap! Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin scenario).  Our goal is to wrap our interactive stories in the magazine with interactive gaming and discussions on the website!

We hope you like what you see!

Brian King
Website Editor
ArmchairGeneral.com