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Navia Dratp. An upcoming commercial chess variant with collectible, tradable pieces. (7x7, Cells: 49) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Matt Arnold wrote on Fri, Jul 2, 2004 04:38 PM UTC:

An ugly, meaningless name was not a problem for Yu-Gi-Oh, an anime-themed
franchise which is wildly profitable and popular in both its card and
miniatures collectable forms. I myself and countless kids and adults I
know collect Wiz Kids click-dial miniatures which are just as expensive as
Navia Dratp, and it too is financially successful beyond any wildest
dreams. If you know anything about Japanese naming their products, just be
grateful it isn't worse. Japan has a beverage named 'Bacardi Sweat.'

I agree that ABC chess, Nova chess and Pick-a-Team chess are intrinsically
better games than ND. Vastly so. But by the standard of intrinsic objective
superiority, the Klingon language is inferior to the artificially
constructed language Lojban. But it's exponentially more widely spoken
than Lojban, because of Star Trek. This is the same kind of 'unfair'
reason that ND will be more popular than its superiors.

BUT... unlike many other Lojban supporters, I support Klingon just because
at least it exposes people to the hobby of artificial languages. I suggest
we take the same attitude here: at least ND is a chess variant. People who
Bandai markets to are unlikely to even find out about superior chess
without ND as a gateway drug. It can never in a million years take away
the fan base of people who would care about serious chess variants and add
them to the ranks of toy collectors. Think of it as taking a bit of the
gigantic target market of collectors and adding a few of them to the ranks
of chess variant enthusiasts.

Therefore for ND to be 'bad' or 'good' depends on what you want out of
it. The perfect chess, no. Good for our hobby, yes. You don't have to like
it or play it to be glad it's there.