What Kind of Year has 2023 been? – Part 1, News

It’s that time of year to look back at what’s been happening in the world of tabletop. I was going to make this one article but there is so much to cover news wise it felt better to split things up a bit.What’s been going on in the news over the year? 

Sad partings

We lost one of the biggest names in modern boardgaming this year, Klaus Teuber. Teuber was renowned for many games but of course the one that had the most impact was Catan (called Settlers of Catan on its original release). Few would argue that Catan marks the point where modern board games became just that. Catan was the fire under many a designer and continues to sell to this day. It continues to bring new people into the hobby with its easy to understand rules and approachable gameplay. 

Teuber wasn’t the only person we lost this year of course. Serge Laget, the french designer of Shadows over Camelot amongst others, passed at the start of the year. Towards the end of the year we lost Sheldon Menery, the creator of the commander format for Magic:The Gathering and a well regarded member of the community. Most recently Colin Dixon died. Colin was the first full time citadel miniatures painter and his style influenced many miniatures painters over the years, including myself. 

Asmodee embraces change

Asmodee, the company that owns a large number of other tabletop game studios, had a relatively quiet year apart from one detail. Bought by the Swedish investment group Embracer in March of 2022, Embracer had its chickens come home to roost. 

Embracer had a large value, around $2 billion, deal fell through and has been counting the cost of that ever since. This year that failure manifested in the closure of several computer game studios. Asmodee has announced they are affected by Embracers issues though how much remains to be seen. Asmodee was the only profitable part of the company so it seems more likely it would be sold or restructured rather than closed. 

Wizards courts controversy

Wizards of the Coast had a very mixed year, trending towards the negative. Despite the release of the Dungeons and Dragons film and the company accelerating towards the new edition of the RPG, Wizards had huge PR problems that were mostly self-inflicted. 

At the start of the year Wizards tried to change the Open Gaming Licence (OGL). This was an agreement that had existed for almost as long as Dungeons and Dragons itself. The OGL allowed people to produce their own products using the Dungeons and Dragons system. It is this in part that led to the popularity of the game and there being so many adventures and supplements released for it. 

Wizards wanted to radically change the nature of the OGL Wizards were essentially looking to restrict what folk outside of Wizards of the Coast could produce. They also wanted to take a cut from those making a lot of money from OGL products. The community backlash was intense and relentless. Wizards were forced to walk back the OGL changes and eventually ended up cancelling them. The new OGL actually strengthened how much folk would have access to in the future. For a full breakdown listen to our cast on the subject. This has interviews with Lin Codega, who broke the story, and Jon Hodgson, CEO of Handiwork Games who would have been affected by the changes.

This started the year off badly for Wizards and it didn’t get a huge amount better. They called the Pinkertons on a Magic: The Gathering content creator who got some early products by mistake. They were accused of effectively running a lottery when they put a single special card in the Lord of the Rings inspired set for Magic that was later sold for close to $2 million. 

We mentioned the rise of AI in our 2022 roundup and it was here that Wizards came a cropper once more. D&D Book “Bigby presents Glory of the Giants” came under fire for some of the art being produced by AI as an artist used it to finish their work. Towards the end of the year Wizards came under scrutiny again for an artist using another’s work and painting over it for a card in Magic: The Gathering. Such was the magnifying glass turned on the art Wizards was putting out that a piece of cover art teased for the 2025 player’s handbook was accused of being AI generated before the artist came out and denied it. 

Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, also came in for criticism as they fired large numbers of staff in the run up to Christmas. The CEO Chris Cocks, who took home $9.4 million dollars in 2022, announced that in order for the company to weather the continued downturn in sales this decision had to be made. There have been numerous stories about the folk who have been fired and many of them are involved in directly making the products we all love. 

This should have been the lead into a big year for Wizards and Hasbro. Instead they are entering 2024 under intense scrutiny and players looking to other games to get away from the behemoth that is Dungeons and Dragons. How that will ultimately affect the launch of the new edition remains to be seen. 

Artificial Intelligence

Conversations around the ethics of AI were a focus for a lot of the tabletop world this year. Many content creators and companies made a stand against the use of AI in their products. Paizo, Backerkit, and DriveThru all stood on the side against the use of any AI in their products. Kickstarter made a statement that stood on the side of precisely nothing, asking project creators to declare whether or not their product contained AI but not taking a stance themselves. 

Having seen the controversy around Wizards and AI art, the biggest tabletop games fair in the world Essen decided they wanted a piece of that action. Artist Michael Menzel produced the Meeps mascot for Essen earlier in the year. Essen Spiel instead went with AI to produce a lot of the artwork for the posters that would be put up around the convention centre. The results were creepy and heavily criticised. 

Writing wasn’t immune from AI either. Popular site Gizmodo came under scrutiny for a terrible Star Wars article written by AI. This was the company whose owner, Gawker media, would later fire a large amount of its writing staff across its various properties including Lin Codega who broke the OGL Wizards of the Coast story. 

AI is a technology that is having a massive impact across the world. It seems that we will see more controversies in our particular corner of the hobby as companies debate over its ethics. 

Lawsuits 

nuTSR was the gift that kept on giving over 2022 but finally in 2023 it came to an end. After goading Wizards of the Coast repeatedly with lawsuits and claims they owned the rights to Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards took them to court. It didn’t even get to trial as nuTSR collapsed under the weight of its own hubris, and large legal bills, and folded. 

Meanwhile Ravensburger were gearing up to release their big new collectible card game Disney Lorcana. While it went ahead as planned the company became entangled in a lawsuit from Upper Deck. Upper Deck accused Ravensburger and the lead designer of the game Ryan Miller of stealing an in progress game from Upper Deck and repackaging it as Lorcana. For now all that has happened is some legal manoeuvres but no doubt we will hear more about this case over the course of 2024. 

Unions

Unionisation efforts continued in various sections of the tabletop gaming world and it was a wonderful thing to see. 

In June, the United Paizo Workers ratified their first contract with Paizo Publishing, the company behind the Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs. 

Later in the year three New York board game shops/cafes also voted to form unions. Hex & Counters, Uncommons and the Brooklyn Strategist all voted to form Unions over the last few months of the year. All three of these cafes have the same owners. 

Companies in trouble

The last few years have been hard for a lot of tabletop game companies and 2023 saw the end of a few. 

Inside the Box Games, a UK board games company, had been in trouble for a while with multiple late Kickstarters and many frustrated backers. The company finally went into administration this year. It looked like the games that were in limbo would be lost forever. Thankfully Naylor Games stepped in to pick up the pieces and have been doing a stellar job getting as much of the Kickstarter games made by ITB to backers. 

Petersen Games, publishers of Cthulhu Wars, also found themselves in trouble from being over extended on Kickstarters. Their most recent project, Cthulhu Wars: The Demon Sultan, ran into trouble with shipping. In July they posted an update to the Kickstarter asking backers for more money. This was through an odd scheme where they could pledge money towards getting the pallet their game was posted out. Backers said the scheme was badly explained and that some who had their games were being asked for more money regardless.

Much like with Naylor Games and ITB, Catalyst Game Labs came to the rescue of Petersen Games. The company invested in Petersen Games allowing them to complete shipping of the project. Catalyst Game Labs will be taking on fulfilment of future projects from Petersen Games.  

In May, Grimlord Games went into administration with incomplete Kickstarters tailing them into the void. The publisher posted to their most recent project Village Attacks: Grim Dynasty that there was simply nothing left in the tank and that they had tried their hardest to resolve the issues. 

Although they didn’t go under, Mythic Games fought off rumours that they might be about to. Early in the year they had asked for more money from backers for the Rainbow Six board game kickstarter while stating categorically that they were not facing bankruptcy. Later in the year they also asked for more money from Darkest Dungeon Kickstarter. This came after saying that the extra money they had previously asked for in the Wave 1 of the project was the last they would need. 

Finally over the course of the year it seemed that beloved kids games company Haba was facing huge problems. Initially they fired a large amount of their workforce and then in September filed for insolvency. The type of insolvency they filed for means the board remains in place and there is a chance that the company may be able to restructure. At the moment Haba continues to operate and there has been no further information about what the restructure is going to look like.  

Quack Quack

One of the big controversies in the world of tabletop criticism this year came courtesy of YouTube channel Quackalope. This was a fairly typical YouTube channel producing preview and review content, some of it for payment. 

The payment side of that organisation went very wrong for Quackalope when emails between the channel and publisher Into the Unknown emerged. Quackalope had been working on content for the game Aeon: Trespass Odyssey and contacted the publisher saying they were having quite a frustrating experience, despite having recorded about 50 hours of content so far. They offered to make this negative footage go away if they could reach a financial deal with the publisher to produce further content. 

This was seen by many as effectively blackmailing the publisher, and true to their word Quackalope put out a video entitled ‘The horrible truth of Aeon Trespass Odyssey’ (a video you can no longer see as it was taken down). It was when this video hit that the publisher made the wider community aware of the conversations that had been going on behind the scenes. 

Over the next couple of months the story would get stranger as Jesse Anderson, the head honcho of Quackalope, posted apology videos from a Yeshiva in Israel, accusations flew back and forth between Into the Unknown and Quackalope, and eventually all the offending videos were taken down. 

Quackalope still has a large following and has recently been on an apology run of sorts. Videos have appeared explaining the direction of the channel, apologising for previous misdeeds, and finally ‘pulling back the curtain’ on money in board game media. I agree we need to talk about that. Someone who has been caught effectively blackmailing a publisher is not the person to be lecturing us. 

What kind of year will it be?

2024 is going to be an interesting year for the world of tabletop gaming. A new edition of Dungeons and Dragons will release. We will see if Wizards of the Coast retains its dominant position at the top of the RPG hierarchy. 

AI will continue to be a presence and is only going to get better. Sure we might be able to spot dodgy pictures at the moment. As the software gets better what happens when it crosses the line into being really good? 

The ripples from the pandemic years are quietening down. However, I predict we will see more companies struggle with the weight of their decisions during that period. It is likely to be the medium sized companies that struggle the most, the ones that have pushed themselves a little further than they should in the pursuit of crowdfunding. 

As the hobby grows and attracts more attention from outside sources, we are bound to see more acquisitions and mergers. Embracer will decide what it is doing with Asmodee. If Asmodee undergoes major changes it is bound to have a knock on effect down the chain of companies it owns. With growth comes a need for more professionalism in what once was a hobbyist space. Organisations like the Tabletop Game Designers Association are a step in the right direction.

Whatever happens Boardgamewire and the Brainwaves podcast will bring you the latest news and interviews with the people at the heart of those stories. 

I wish you all the best for 2024.