Digitally Disillusioned

For a while now, popular board and card games have been showing up on Xbox Live Arcade. Setters of Catan was first, but Carcasonne, Lost Cities, and now Wits and Wagers have followed suit. This is bringing a new kind of gaming to the masses that throng to Xbox live. Or, at least its trying. I’ve purchased each and every one of these games and have found a constant theme: nobody is playing them.

I don’t mean nobody in the absolute sense, but I do mean it in the sense of every time I try to go online to play with the matchmaking service I find no opponents. Or, at best, one opponent. One opponent who will stick around for one game and refuses to chat. Awesome.

Wits and Wagers is the latest game to hit the platform, having been released this last Wednesday. And now, on a a lazy Saturday night, I’ve spent 15 minutes unable to find an opponent. Am I wrong to imagine that this would be a peak period of activity? Do I need to be looking to get my game on Thursday morning instead? Unfortunately I don’t know many people with Xboxes, and all the individuals on my friends list would rather be playing Grand Theft Auto 4.

Even more unfortunate is my inability to stop buying these games because I am desperate for this to be awesome yet now, for the fourth time, I am totally disappointed.