Game News

On a site called Boardgame News, you expect to see – oh, I don't know – news about board games. Surprisingly enough, BGN does indeed publish such information. Everything related to games both newly published and still to come can be found in New & Upcoming Games. All other game-related news is included in this section, divided into the following categories:

• The Industry at Large – News about game publishers and designers, sales reports, and other items of interest to gamers.
• From Cardboard to Digits – Coverage of digital conversions of analogue board and card games.
• Media Watch – Game-related readings from the mainstream media.

Kris Burm, Niek Neuwahl to Guest Star at Swiss Designers Meeting

The sixth Swiss game designers’ meeting takes place May 1-2, 2010 at Le Musée Suisse du Jeu – the Swiss Museum of Games. Designers Niek Neuwahl and Kris Burm will be the guests for this year’s event, so as co-organizer Sébastien Pauchon writes, “part of the disussions will be about abstract games, as you can guess.”

All game designers, whether Swiss or not, are welcome to attend the event and have their prototypes critiqued by a peer group of designers. For the cost of the event and schedule of activities, along with application details, visit this information page.

IAGO Features Abstract Games Leaderboard

The International Abstract Games Organization (IAGO) has set up a leaderboard that pulls game result information from igGameCenter.com, Super Duper Games and Games.WTanaka.com, then compares players across similar games. Dozens of games are included on the leaderboard, from traditional games like Fanorona and Hex to modern designs such as Cannon, Amazons and Pulling Strings.

The leaderboard is still in the testing phase at this point, says IAGO’s Rich Hutnik. “All of this is automated from a data feed from the partner sites, so there’s no manual entry of data. Players who register at the IAGO site will be tracked this way… We will be looking to add the Arimaa site next, then we hope to get more sites on later.”

Media Watch: Rare World War II Game Bought by Essex Museum

From the BBC comes this story about the purchase of the 1941 game Adler Luftverteidigungs Spiel in an auction for £600:

“I’ve been looking for this particular game for over 40 years,” said the [House on the Hill Toy Museum] owner Alan Goldsmith....

“When [the Allies] bombed Dresden and burnt the factory down all the games went with it, other than the ones that were sold before them, so they’re extremely rare.”

He added: “You have 88m guns and one person is defending the Fatherland, the other person is the English bomber pilot.

Sounds like a good description of Friedemann de Pedro’s Duel in the Dark. Interesting to see game settings repeat like this over the decades…

Media Watch: How to Sex an Abalone

From a Ryan Bradley article in The Atlantic:

1. Pick up the abalone. This may require prying the abalone from its hold, and using a stainless steel putty knife is recommended.

But let’s back up for a minute, because maybe you’re wondering, What is an abalone? Or, Isn’t it a board game? And maybe, Why should I care about the sex of a board game you crazyperson? To answer: It is both a sea snail and a board game. But you can’t sauté the board game in butter or sell it for $50 a pound in Japan. People don’t form international smuggling rings or get themselves eaten by great white sharks over the board game.

Au contraire, Mr. Bradley – everyone knows that the easiest way to slide those marbles down your windpipe is to coat them liberally with a beurre blanc. As for becoming a shark meal out of desire for a board game, well, maybe someone else can speak to that…

Lewis Pulsipher: “You Can Have Two Out of Three…”

Lewis Pulsipher, designer of Brittania, floats the following argument on his blog:

Many people worldwide have talked about a maxim related to any kind of manufactured goods, or to projects, that runs like this: For production in general, “fast, cheap, good – you can have two out of three.” ...

In boardgames, the maxim is something like “short, simple to play, richly detailed. In boardgames, you can have two out of three,” but almost never three out of three.

Oddly, he then suggests that “[g]ames using cards are more likely to be able to achieve all three, I think, with Magic: the Gathering being an example of the many collectible (and sometimes non-collectible) card games that achieve all three.” While certain games of Magic would be simple to play – ones in which the preconstructed decks consist of few special abilities – I’d suggest that most games of Magic would not meet that standard. Cast “Warp World” in a multi-player game for a bunch of creatures with “comes into play” abilities and simple is out the window.

How would you formulate the “two out of three” maxim for games? And do you think it holds true?

Reviews of Money, Viva il Re iPhone Apps

Given the explosion of board and card games being converted to iPhone apps, it’s no surprise to see the game apps covered in places that might not normally write about designer games. On Tuaw.com, Sebastian Blanco reviews two recent game-to-app conversions – Viva il Re and Money! – and from his reviews, he’s clearly played the games in real-life, too. The latter app receives strong praise from Blanco:

[O]f the iPhone card game apps we’ve played so far, Money is our hands down favorite… When playing with friends, Money takes around 10-15 minutes. On the iPhone, it’s a five-minute affair, which is grand. The shuffling and math are all handled for you, so you just have to concentrate on figuring out which bids to make and which currencies to focus on.

BGN columnist Shannon Appelcline designed the iPhone Money app, and he wrote about the conversion process in a January 2010 column. Appelcline is currently working on an iPhone version of Reiner Knizia’s High Society.

As for Viva il Re, Blanco feels that the digital version loses something in the translation:

[W]hen you go through all these steps [moving characters and voting on them] with friends around a table, it can get pretty intense, especially once a few rounds of voting have passed. When playing the iPhone app version, though, everything moves a little too fast and the “opponents” (bots) don’t have any sort of personality to make you feel like you’re playing a bluffing game. Instead, it becomes a simple game of moving your characters up and voting now and again. Sure, this sounds like pretty much the same thing, but if just feels very different and not in a good way.

Identik Wins France’s Game of the Year Award for 2010

The Asmodee release Identik has won the As d’Or, the French Game of the Year award, according to TricTrac.net. Identik is a new version of Portrayal from Amanda Kohout and William Jacobson that Asmodee will release in the U.S. sometime in 2010. Each round, one player describes a bizarre image while the others try to draw it; the artists’ creations are then judged by their fellow artists based on how well they matched certain details included in the description.

Philippe Keyaerts’ Small World (Days of Wonder) won the special jury prize, while Fréderic Moyersoen’s Cache Moutons (Gigamic – released in Germany as Nicht zu fassen by Zoch) won for Game of the Year in the children’s category.

Jeux sur un Plateau has posted a video of the awards ceremony on its website. Congrats to all the winners!

LEGO Increases Net Profit by 63% in 2009

The LEGO group released its annual report today, noting that revenue from sales increased 22.4% from 2008 to 2009 to DKK 11.6 billion and net profit increased 63% during that same time period to DKK 2.2 billion. The annual report, which can be downloaded from the link above, noted:

In 2009, the LEGO Group made its first move into the board game category with the launch of the LEGO Games product line. In 2009, the games were launched solely in the UK and in the German-speaking countries. The games were met with an extremely positive response on these markets, which meant that sales have exceeded expectations significantly. LEGO Games will be launched in North America and the rest of Europe in 2010.

Details on what those games are in one of my NY Toy Fair reports from February 2010.

Blokus Coming to Mobile Phones (Again?)

PocketGamer reports that Gameloft will soon release a mobile version of Blokus that includes the standard four-player game, a team version, and Blokus Duo, in addition to a “Hot Seat” setting for those who want to pass the mobile among friends. Players can set time limits, adjust difficulty levels and choose an icon-based mode to accommodate the color blind. More pics posted in the Gameloft forums.

(I included the “again?” tag in the subject line because I can find prior references to mobile versions of Blokus, but they seem to be shareware, bootlegs or copycats, such as the Kibosh app for iPhone.)

Jesse Schell on How Games Will Infiltrate Everything

To follow up on my recent media watch item about game design in unusual places, here’s a video of Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell from the 2010 D.I.C.E. Summit (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) pontificating on the amazing penetration of Facebook games, the shifting of games and scoring into real life activities, and how much farther this trend can go in the future. Highly recommended for anyone who designs games or dreams of doing so – the opportunities are everywhere…

When You Come Knocking – Game Design in Unusual Places

In early March 2010, the San Jose Mercury News published an article about a special game designed for the more than 300 block leaders within the California town of Cupertino:

Groups of block leaders were invited to play a board game called When You Come Knocking, designed by the city to test knowledge of city resources, emergency situations, block leader training and different scenarios when introducing themselves to strangers....

“When playing the game, block leaders can discuss the situation and ask each other if they had encountered the circumstances and share what has worked and what they could do in that situation,” said Julia Kinst, a block leader. “We wanted to create a game that was fun, but could also help facilitate discussion and learning.”

The game was inspired by a pilot version called Blockopoly by Kinst and her husband Llew. The couple designed the game last summer as part of a joint project with the city and a De Anza College communications class to organize a meeting of 40 block leaders in the southern parts of the city.

Stories like this fascinate me – not because I think the game will be fun to play, but because of the way that game design creeps into unusual and unexpected places. My wife has worked as a freelance magazine writer full-time since 1997, yet you’ll almost never see her name on the newsstands because she mostly writes for specialty and trade publications, publications that don’t carry the cachet of mainstream mags but that do pay salaries that will keep us clothed, housed and fed.

Aspiring game designers might burn with the desire to create a game that will excite friends and family. Aspiring professional game designers, on the other hand, might look for situations in which they’ll be paid for their creative work, even if their game never makes it onto the larger marketplace.

Living Card Games a Winner for Fantasy Flight Games

In an interview with ICv2.com, Fantasy Flight Games’ VP of Marketing Communications Steve Horvath says that the publisher’s decision to convert the Call of Cthulhu and A Game of Thrones collectible card games to its “Living Card Games” format has paid off:

Sales are actually growing on those games where before they were in decline as a CCG.... They’re much stronger now as LCGs, yes.  We’re also seeing a lot of international partners coming on board to print localized versions of the games when that was just not feasible as a CCG.

John Yianni’s Army of Frogs Now Playable at Boardspace.net

Online gaming site Boardspace.net has added John Yianni’s Army of Frogs to its offerings. Your goal in the game is to form a group of seven or more frogs of your color – but you’re not necessarily placing your own frogs into the army. The rules in brief:

• Each player draws two frogs at random from the bag.
• On a turn, a player jumps with one of her frogs, possibly multiple times, to move it to a new location, then adds one of the two frogs she holds to the army, then draws a replacement.
• If all the frogs have been drawn from the bag, players skip this last part, but keep jumping frogs on their turn until someone’s frog army coalesces into a single unit.

Jackson Pope on Games as a Hit-Driven Industry

In his excellent “Creation and Play” blog, Reiver Games’ Jackson Pope writes about games as a hit-driven industry along the lines of the computer game industry, the recording industry, the book-publishing industry, and so on. What does this mean for the prospective game publisher?

If you’re going to start a company publishing original games there’s two likely ways to succeed doing it:

1. Start with a massive hit that funds the rest of your product line for a while, until you’re established.
2. Start with a massive wad of cash that allows you to establish yourself with a reasonable product line and gives you time to find your first hit.

I recall an audio interview with Rio Grande Games’ Jay Tummelson on BoardGameGeek in which he talked about his initial game release strategy: Put out a half-dozen games in small quantities, then move on to the next half-dozen, ideally breaking even each time. Do this for five years, then release Carcassonne in English to vast success. Okay, that last part probably wasn’t part of the plan – but it did result from carrying out the plan!

Game Pirates Aren’t All Bad…

Sometimes they’re merely ignorant, as game designer Bruno Faidutti explains after discovering that he and Alan R. Moon had their Diamant, aka Incan Gold, inadvertently published in Brazil:

The game had been presented to the Brazilian publisher as an original design. The people at Grow had been mistaken and wanted to set things rights. This means that Alan and I are now being paid standard royalties on Risco Total, and that our names will probably be added on the box if the game is ever reprinted – which might well happen since it seems to be well received.

Continuity, a Fun Online Puzzle

In my Feb. 27, 2010 column, I talked about a couple of puzzle games that I enjoy on the iPhone: Rush Hour and Tumbledrop. Another fine puzzle game, one playable on a browser, is Continuity, designed by a group of students in Sweden.

Your goal for each of the 32 levels of Continuity is simple: Use your guy to grab the key, then open the door and leave. The tricky part of the game is that the board is divided into multiple screens, and to move from one screen to another, you must arrange them in the right way. This requires you to zoom in and out from one screen to a wide shot and back again, shifting things around constantly in order to keep moving and not get trapped. Fun stuff!

Interview with Game of Life Designer Reuben Klamer

About.com’s Erik Arneson sat down for a chat with Reuben Klamer, designer of the venerable The Game of Life, at the 2010 Toy Fair in New York in February. An excerpt from the interview:

[H]e never imagined that 50 years later his game would have sold more than 50 million copies. “I wasn’t sure,” he said. “But I had high hopes.”

One of the keys, he added, was having popular television host Art Linkletter on board endorsing The Game of Life right from the start. Klamer had previously worked with Linkletter on a competitor to the hula hoop (known as the Spin-a-Hoop), and he said Linkletter filmed a commercial for The Game of Life “right away” to help encourage sales.

Pictured above is The Game of Life: 50th Anniversary Edition, which Hasbro plans to release in 2010. Details on the title in this Toy Fair report on BGN.

Gone Cardboard: Martinique, Coming from Z-Man Games

Z-Man Games has added Emanuele Ornella’s Martinique, first published by QWG in 2009, to its release schedule with an expected availability of May 2010. Here’s a game description from the publisher:

An ancient legend says a great pirate treasure is buried on the island of Martinique. Pirates would have attacked various merchant vessels, confiscated their loads and eventually sunk the ships. Afterwards they would have brought the stolen jewels, objects and coins to the island to bury the treasure over there. Many have tried to find the Lost Treasure, but nobody has succeeded so far. You are the captain of a pirate ship heading for Martinique. After dropping anchor in the morning, you set off in a rowboat towards the island with four of your most loyal pirates to find the Lost Treasure. Will you unravel the legend and add your name to the illustrious list of great pirates and rulers of the seven seas?

English rules are available on the Z-Man website. You can also check out this preview of Martinique that I published in September 2009. Now to get off my heinie and finally review this game!

This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

Gone Cardboard: Advance Looks at 10 Days in the Americas and Shake ‘n Take

In one of my recent 2010 Toy Fair reports I lamented my forgetfulness when it comes to taking pictures of the games on display – advance preproduction copies that haven’t been seen outside of this venue, mind you. Just the type of thing that an enterprising news guy should covet, but I’m always focused on the pen and paper.

To make up for my absent-mindedness, Leah Sugar at Out of the Box Publishing has forwarded preproduction images of two of the companies forthcoming games. To put these images into context, I’ll include my descriptions of the games below:

In 10 Days in the Americas, players have to assemble a valid journey through North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. For a journey to be complete, a player must have ten travel tiles that connect with one another, whether adjacent countries are placed next to one another or two countries are properly connected via an airplane or ship card.

What’s unique about this game compared to other 10 Days... titles is that players can take cruises by connecting one sailing card to another. The five bodies of water are North and South Atlantic Ocean, North and South Pacific Ocean, and the Caribbean Sea, and you can link North Pacific Ocean to South Pacific Ocean to Caribbean Sea, without needing a Panama card or any other in-between connection. The second difference is that Americas has a huge pull-out box on the gameboard for the Caribbean nations, akin to the highlight box in Asia for the Middle East. (2-4 players, ages 10+, 20-30 minutes, May/June 2010)

Read more...

Michael Mindes on Making a Small Fortune in Games

One long-standing joke about the game industry is that the surest way to make a small fortune publishing games is to start with a large fortune. In response to a reader question, Michael Mindes, owner of Tasty Minstrel Games and prolific blogger, has posted an interesting overview of the company’s finances in its initial year of business. An excerpt:

I just aggregated all of the Tasty Minstrel expenses for 2009, which can all be attributed to the startup of the publishing house. Thus far, Tasty Minstrel has received just under $25,000 in revenues (pre-order and 1 month of distribution). All it took to generate that revenue was $50,000 of investment and approximately 500-1000 hours of work. Also, once I sell out of the initial print run, I should have recovered the entirety of my initial investment. That does not seem like a very good investment on the surface.  However for me, it absolutely has made sense and continues to make sense.

JKLM Games Going into Liquidation

UK publisher JKLM Games will go into liquidation by the end of February 2010, according to Spielbox.de. JKLM’s Markus Welbourne has confirmed that news item on BoardGameGeek, writing (after spelling corrections on my part):

Just to try and keep everyone happy, it’s not all doom and gloom, yes JKLM Games has decided to let go, but a new company is being formed to take up the reins, and all games and preorders are still going to be honoured and at present there is no delay with the arrival of the 1860 reprint, Ascendancy (now being called Alien Ascendency due to trade mark issues), and Great Fire of London.

There will be a more normal notice made shortly.

Welbourne signed his post “JKLM Games/Prime Games” with Prime Games having been formed in 2009 to publish John Ede’s Chelsea, which was distributed by JKLM.

JKLM Distribution, which is separate from JKLM Games and mainly distributes independently published games in the UK and Europe, will continue with its operations.

Edit, Feb. 25: JKLM’s David Norman has now posted a more detailed explanation of the goings-on with JKLM’s various divisions on BoardGameGeek: “JKLM Holdings Ltd intends to launch another manufacturing company. This will start by producing those games which JKLM Games Ltd had planned to produce. The rights to these games are held by the designers, and they have agreed to allow a new company to take over the publication so that these games can be produced. When these games are produced, all preorders will be honoured.” However, Bryan Johnson – designer of Huang Di, which JKLM announced as a forthcoming title in 2007 – says that this new publication plan is news to him.

Media Watch: Werewolf: How a parlour game became a tech phenomenon

From the Wired.co.uk website:

Werewolf is a game of deception and manipulation. It has infected almost every significant tech event around the world, from the informal Foo Camp conferences run by O’Reilly to the music, film and interactive-media crossover of South By Southwest (SXSW). During lunch at San Francisco’s giant Game Developers Conference, or in the bars after closing at ETech, games of Werewolf break out spontaneously. Its core premise is simple – a room is split between villagers and werewolves, and the former aren’t aware who are their enemies, determined to eat them. Can the werewolves eat their prey before the villagers identify and lynch the werewolves?

In practice – perhaps unsurprisingly, given the kind of people playing – the games played at tech events are rarely that simple. Groups splinter off according to arcane variations – someone wants to play with the Slut and the Invalid, someone else with the Vigilante and the Veterinarian, someone else with all four. Rules agreed, the splinter groups reform, spectators gather, and the games begin. And it may be hours before they stop. Although in principle a round of Werewolf can take as little as 30 minutes, epic rounds last for hours - and one round is rarely enough. The next morning, appropriately, you can spot the werewolves by the red rings round their eyes.

Margaret Robertson’s article, scheduled to appear in Wired UK‘s March 2010 issue, includes tons of details about Mafia, its inventor Dimitry Davidoff, and the game’s transition to Werewolf.

(HT: Alf Seegert)

Gone Cardboard: Defenders of the Realm, Coming from Eagle Games

Arkham Horror co-designer Richard Launius has a new design in the pipeline from Eagle Games/FRED Distribution, with a scheduled release date of June 2010, in time for the Origins Game Fair.

Like Arkham Horror, Defenders of the Realm is a cooperative game that pits players against an onslaught of outside forces. In this fantasy world, with artwork by Larry Elmore, players take on the role of one of the Realm’s eight heroes, such as an eagle rider, a rogue, a sorceror or a paladin. To win the game you must defeat the four Generals who are leading armies against your stronghold of Monarch City. If one General makes it to Monarch City – or any five minions inhabit the area – all players lose the game. You can also lose if one General brings its entire army onto the board or if the enemies can taint your homeland to a certain degree.

Before the game, each player chooses a hero and receives two hero cards and a quest. The enemy Generals take their positions on the gameboard, along with three of their minions, and a number of other minions are randomly added to the board. Each turn, a player can take a number of actions equal to her life tokens, with the actions being movement (by foot, horse, eagle or magic gate), special skills unique to that hero, rumor-gathering at the inn, land restoration or minion fighting.

Read more...

Gone Cardboard: 1099: Domus Clari Geminiani

1099: Domus Clari Geminiani by Francesco “Fantavir” Berardi will be realeased in a limited edition (400 copies) during PLAY: The Game Festival, 13-14 March, Modena.

In 1099 started the construction of Duomo di Modena (Modena Cathedral) one of the greatest Italian example of Roman-Gothic architecture. Strongly acclaimed by citizens the construction was initially committed to the architect Lanfranco and the sculptor Wiligelmo and to the disciples of their schools. 7 years later Saint Geminiano Memorabilia were moved from the old church to the new Cathedral, escorted by 6 miles guard and 12 cives guards to avoid thefts. In the following centuries the Cathedral construction was committed to Anselmo da Campione and his disciples.

The goal of this card game is to retrace the stages of the construction trying to be the one to best contribute. Players will use materials deck to build up the different part of the cathedral. Between the first and second stage of construction they need also to take part in the Memorabilia movement.

This game wins an international competition held by Comune di Modena in 2008 for designing a game about Duomo di Modena construction, published by Edicta with the supervision of Patrizia Curzi, one of the greatest expert about Modena Cathedral history, and Club TreEmme.

The game will be available during PLAY: The Game Festival and the final price will be about 12 euros.

Info walter.martinelli@comune.modena.it, info@treemme.org

Design a Mercenary Contest for Summoner Wars

Fortress: Ameritrash is running a “design a mercenary” contest for Colby Dauch’s Summoner Wars, published by Plaid Hat Games.

Currently two starter sets for Summoner Wars are available – Phoenix Elves vs. Tundra Orcs and Guild Dwarves vs. Cave Goblins – but Plaid Hat has two more expansions in the offing, Vanguards and Fallen Kingdom. If you can come up with a suitable mercenary unit – complete with physical description, summon cost, and so on – then you could see your design in print, with you “summoning” a huge box of product as a prize.

If you’re not familiar with the game, you can download the rulebook and FAQ from the Plaid Hat website. Deadline for entry is March 1, 2010.