Don’t downplay the importance of coming up with the phrase “worker placement”, Kris.  I’ve been writing about games for a decade and the only phrase I can think of that I coined was calling Knizia, Kramer, and (Klaus) Teuber the “Special K’s” of German Game Design.  That gets invoked maybe half a dozen times a year by the few people who remember it.  But I bet the term “worker placement” is used on the Geek at least 100 times a day.  Small wonder that it stuck:  it’s concise and accurate, and rolls nicely off the tongue.  I think it’s pretty cool, myself.

I don’t wish to sound confrontational, but how do you know you coined the term?  Is there an interesting story behind the claim?  :)

Michael, this isn’t proof (I’m not sure how you would go about “proving” such a claim), but for your reading pleasure:

http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/kris_hall_the_year_of_the_worker_placement_mechanism/

That dates from December of ‘07.  It was the first time I’d heard the term “worker placement” and I said so in the comments.  My position was that Kris should be given credit for coining the phrase unless I heard anything different and I haven’t seen any counterclaims in two years.  Shoot, even the origin of the term “meeple” is more controversial than that (though just about everyone, including me, agrees that Alison Hansel should get the credit).  Moreover, acceptance of the phrase was almost immediate and pretty much universal.  That’s awfully unusual in gaming.  So if Kris thinks he coined it, I have no reason to doubt him (and lots of evidence that he’s correct).

Thanks for the link!  I don’t really have any idea about this term’s origins, but I do know that sometimes the same thing originates from totally different independent sources.  I was just curious.

Agreed, most of my favourite games are worker placement, nowhere near tired of them yet.

I think we need to go well past Dec. 2007 to find the invention of “worker placement”. It was pretty common terminology in Caylus discussions two full years earlier in 2005, and Pillars in 2006.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/637007#637007
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/685660#685660
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1248978#1248978

A very specific reference to worker placement as a mechanic:

Leonardo Da Vinci Nov 2006:
“So anyways back to the actual mechanic… Leonardo takes the worker placement idea one step further”
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1169793#1169793

Very interesting, Stephen.  The first three comments basically use standard English to talk about an action (Player X was “placing workers”, therefore the action he did was “worker placement").  The last comment actually refers to the mechanic as “worker placement”, as you said.  However, in none of them is there any mention of a “worker placement” game.  Actually, the last comment mentions it, but it occurs in an update which looks like it was made shortly after Kris’ article appeared.

To me, it looks like a natural progression, where a descriptive phrase was first used to identify an action, then a mechanic, and finally a game genre.  Kris may still be the first person to talk about “worker placement” games, but it now looks as if it might have been an inevitable term.  Prior to all this, I do recall people talking about “Caylus-type” or “Caylus-style” games, so there was some terminology which had to be replaced.  I think the better and more descriptive phrase won out.

Thanks for coming to my defense, Larry.  But the first time I used the term was in a Gone Gaming article in March of 2007 “Age of Empires III and the Workers of Fun.” http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/kris_hall_age_of_empires_iii_and_the_workers_of_fun/

But I agree that it seems to be an absolutely inevitable development.  I told you it was a tiny contribution!

Without wishing to detract from Kris’s identification of this as a phrase describing a genre of games, I see that the phrase was used in passing by a number of commentators on Keythedral, a game which is for me still one of the best of its kind.

See for example a BGG session report by Doug Garrett on 2002-11-15 and a BGG review by Andrew Fisher on 2002-11-15.

I think this probably supports what Larry Levy has already said.

Detract away!  I don’t read BGG obsessively and came up with the worker placement phrase on my own.  But you gents have shown me that it was an obvious coinage used by lots of folks before me.  I’ll be more careful to make such claims in the future.