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Some board games tend to have a lot of complex rules, and many also have several official variants. Sometimes the mechanics of a mobile device (iPhone, Android, iPad), make implementing some rules cumbersome. In these cases, do the mobile versions take liberties with how faithful of an adaptation they implement? Do they tend to also implement rule variations? When things are changed, are the changes generally received well, or do gamers, in general, feel let down by the changes?

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  • Care to provide an example?
    – user1873
    Feb 13, 2012 at 2:58
  • Sure. In Reiner Knizia's Money, the iPhone version had slightly different mechanics, and wasn't true to the rules (it was changed in later updates of the app), for example, the number of currencies didn't scale down to the number of players (as the print rules proscribe). Feb 13, 2012 at 3:12
  • So the answer to your question, based on the example you had in mind, is "yes". Feb 13, 2012 at 3:58
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    I voted to close; I think the question is too broad. There is no right answer, and the specific examples will be different for every app. Feb 13, 2012 at 5:11
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    What you want is not a good fit for a Q&A site. Just go to ipadboardgames.org (as I did), and read the reviews for the top games. I listed them in another comment. Also, monopoly is a lot faster since the moneychanging time is minimal. Feb 13, 2012 at 17:41

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You are probably going to have to perform more research to find an answer to your question.

Yes, mobile application developers take liberties. I would guess that few mobile app developers implement variations, official or not. no one is going to waste development time on version 1 implementing a variant that might not be played. (but the only way to verify this would be to find all mobile apps for Boardgames and figure out which of those have game variations in physical form, then figure out what percentage of those have mobile app variants)

Are mobile apps that behave differently received well? Don't know. Do you know of a polling company that does this kind of research? Do you have a list of all liberal implementations of board games, such that a poll could determine that 50% or more of those games were received poorly/well?

I don't think your question can be answered without considerable effort.

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  • Considerable effort, indeed! A cursory investigation reveals that quite a few "top games" (eg Carcasonne, Catan, Caylus, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, Tigris, Small World, Forbidden Island) have faithful iPad versions. And if we broaden the scope of this question (crazy, I know!) to include browser-based versions, then we have all the BSW games - faithful. Feb 13, 2012 at 9:49
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As user1873 says, a full answer to this question would take a tremendous amount of research.

But I think the general rule is that many (most?) representations are perfectly faithful to the original rules or are clearly laid out as variants. The mobile versions of Chess, and Zombie dies are true to the rules. The mobile Go games can get slightly quirky for scoring for complicated board positions (deciding whether a shape is alive or dead), but the game play itself is true to the rules and the automated scoring as close to perfect as possible (many have a fallback of letting the humans decide).

As The Chaz points out even more modern games with complicated rules often have true-to-rules adaptations.

So in short, I suspect most adapations are true-to-original when they are amenable to being adaptabled and those that are simply not amenable to being adapted (pictionary? Charades?) are simply not adapter. There are certainly some exceptions, but I suspect they are just that.

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