Despite playing Dominion close to 200 times, I had thought that the game would be dubbed too complicated for the mainstream audience for which the Spiel des Jahres is intended. Guess I should have followed my gut instead of trying to reason out what the SdJ jury would do. (I’ll note for the record that I was a playtester of the base design, as well as Intrigue and possible future expansions, and the obsession continues.)

Interesting to note that Vaccarino, Baumann and Kellet are all rookie designers. That certainly gives hope to those who aspire to have their own designs put into print!

Eric

Those it’s easy to say now, in hindsight this really should have seemed inevitable.  Few games have inspired the kind of enthusiasm that Dominion has, and “too complicated” or not, the deck building mechanism make it accessible to a large (if not quite mainstream) audience of once and future CCGers.  I think it’s gonna be big, even by SdJ standards.

I have to agree with Eric, I thought it would be considered “too complicated” compared to a game like Pandemic.

Dominion is good, but I feel it is lacking something. A little too repetitive to me, but it was the best of all the other games on the SdJ list by far. I love the idea and some of the mechanics behind Dominion, but really wish it was expanded… maybe Dominion: The Board Game? Where you travel around on a board to buy cards and more powerful cards are harder to acquire through board mechanics. =) hmm, sounds like a good idea. I might actually work on something like that!

Anyway, congrats on the win! Hope to see what else you guys come up with now that you have the prestigious SdJ award under your belt (and probably a lot more money because of it).

Congrats on the win!!! I had this one predicted. I even argued that it was not too complicated. My question would be, too complicated for who? My 6 year old loves it and he has just learned to read.
Complicated? please.

What can I say - I’m very surprised! It’s a pleasant surprise, though, as Dominion is a truly innovative game that I enjoy playing.

Congratulations to Donald for designing the first pure card game to win the Spiel des Jahres (unless I’m missed something), Jay for recognizing it for the gem that it is, and Valerie and Dale for their development work.

I also want to congratulate the jury - they picked a truly wonderful set of nominees. All five of the games nominated this year are gems - it’s been a while since it was this hard to pick a winner.

Yay for Dominion!  Although I had no fear of a lack of expansions for it, this will certainly guarantee I’ll see many more.  (My poor pocketbook!)

Congrats to Donald, Jay, Dale, & Val for their successful work.  I’ve met 3 of the four folks behind it and am very glad to see them get more recognition.

Stefan, I wanted to point out that BGN earns nothing from sales of Dominion. Dale and Valerie are freelance writers for the site, and whatever they earn as developers is theirs alone. My compensation for being a playtester is a copy of the game.

Eric

Congratulations to everyone involved with Dominion!  It’s ironic that we finally have an SdJ winner that has gamer geeks dancing in the streets and it’s a design that does very little for me.  But my enthusiasm for this award goes beyond whether or not I like the game.

First of all, I’m thrilled for the creative people behind the game.  I’ve never met the talented and enigmatic Donald X., but I’m really happy for Dale and Valerie.  All that hard work really paid off, guys!  I can’t wait to read about their reactions when the announcement was made!  Just what do Germans think about a Snoopy dance?  :-)

I’m equally happy for Jay Tummelson and Rio Grande.  As we all know, this game didn’t follow the usual practice of an RGG or Z-Man piggybacking on a game designed by a German publisher; for this one, the creative work came from RGG, and it was Hans im Gluck which went along for the ride.  I have no idea if this means any more money for Jay (I sure hope it does), but even if that isn’t the case, the prestige and impact on American gaming has to be immense.

A Hans im Gluck victory is always worth celebrating as well (and who knows, maybe their decision to change the art on the cover was a deciding factor in the win).  Of the established German publishers, HiG is the one best suited to create challenging gamers games.  The economic downturn in Germany has pushed them toward simpler designs, like so many other publishers.  But maybe the win of a more complex game, and the infusion of cash that always follows an SdJ win, will inspire them to return to their roots.  That would be an excellent result.  Moreover, with about a jillion expansions already planned, I can see this being a cash cow that might almost rival Carcassonne.  With two steady sources of income, HiG figures to be around for many years to come and that’s a very good thing.

The real hope is that a win for a game of this complexity will lead to another period where the SdJ Jury considers more games of this ilk for the award.  Settler’s win in 1995 brought on a five-year period where more complex games were nominated and won (with the victors including games like El Grande, Tikal, and Torres).  I have no idea if something like this is likely to occur again.  The economic pressures that have pushed the publishers toward lighter fare continue.  But the German publishers are always alert to any trends from the Jury (the red Poppel is the big prize, after all), so this may lead to good things.  With recent Special Awards to games like Caylus and Agricola, the Jury has shown appreciation of gamers games and now we have a win for Dominion to add to that.  A nudge toward more gamerly SdJ games would be fantastic, not only because of the increased exposure for such games, but because publishers would be encouraged to design such titles.  We won’t know the true effects of this award for some time, but it’s a very encouraging thing nonetheless.  And that’s why, even though I have no more interest in playing Dominion than I do Finca, I’m very excited about this award.

Awesome news! I never thought it was too complicated* and it is a great game. I thought all the games this year were worthy nominees (I haven’t played Fauna) and any of them winning would have been a good win, but it is great seeing a game developed by Rio Grande, Valerie, and Dale be recognized.

It’s also great timing for them and Hans im Glück since the first expansion is just out. Let’s hope it is a long-term seller for everyone involved.

*Heck, Terry can understand it! :)

Congratulations to all involved with Dominion! A deserving win indeed.

Dale, Valerie, does this mean you two get to quit your day jobs and live the life of rock star game developers? ;)

Kidding, I know how much work you two put into the game and I’m very happy to see it get rewarded like this!

pk

I think the designer showed Jay Tummelson 35 *cards* not games.  Please correct me if I’ve got the story wrong.

Dominion is a fun, addictive game, and I’m jazzed that they won.

So I was wrong in betting on Fauna.
Congratulation for Dominion!

It’s the first SdJ with an extension already published! Wow!
Did this influence the jury maybe? :-P

emanuele

>HiG is the one best suited to create challenging gamers games.  The economic downturn in Germany has pushed them toward simpler designs, like so many other publishers.

Lary, I really don´t think so. HiG just only can publish what they get offered…

Yes, Klaus, but they get offered quite a bit!  About 400 prototypes a year, when last I heard:)

Eric, I ment more money for the designers. I assume they get royalties for the sales of their game. And knowing that they post on this website, I was just wishing them luck. Didn’t mean to imply that BGN gets money from them.

Mark, the Spiel des Jahres ticker, which ran live with updates when the winners were announced, includes this line: “Vaccarino hatte Tummelson 35 Spiele gleichzeitig angeboten.” So unless the notetaker got something wrong, Vaccarino did indeed show Jay 35 games.

Eric

You are right Jeff, however there is a trend to observe that more of the low complexity games are designed. Something which also was imminent in Göttingen last year as far as I know…

Congratulations to all the winners!

Ok, I thought Tummelson said 35 expansion cards when he was at AGOS in SLC.  That would be great if there were 35 more games in the wings!

Dominion is currently my favorite game of all time.  I’m really glad to see that it won the SdJ.  Congratulations to Donald Vaccarino.

Here’s what DonaldX wrote when I asked him about it:

“I showed Jay 10 games at Origins 2007 (and he took two of them - I don’t have a release date on the other one yet).

Dominion as I showed it to him then had ~500 cards, including 25 kingdom cards. When he took it I also gave him an earlier version of Intrigue, which was 20 kingdom cards, plus pictures of expansions 3-5, which were 20 kingdom cards each at the time.

I didn’t show him 35 of anything.”

So hopefully more fun stuff is in the works.