News Digest Episode 143
This is a copy of the “script” we used to organise Brainwaves Episode 143. It is not a full transcript but should give you an overview of the news as we reported it. Quotes are in italics.
Headlines
Cardboard Edison Awards
https://cardboardedison.com/award
- We are putting the cast out a little later than normal because we wanted to bring you this breaking news about the Cardboard Edison Awards
- Cardboard Edison is a website full of resources for new and established designers. Every year they hold a set of awards, giving recognition to designs that have not yet made it to publication. It’s a veritable who’s who of future board game stars.
- This year’s award was won by Crowded Frontier, designed by Myles Wallace. This game sees players travelling West, we presume in America though it isn’t clear, to claim prime real estate that has been offered by the government. From the press release
- Award judges called Crowded Frontier “super-simple and engaging,” featuring a core puzzle that “felt agonizing in all the right ways” and a resource collection system that “feels like … some kind of magic trick.” They praised how the game “ingeniously blends the placement of workers to gather resources with the strategic deployment of these resources to expand into new territories.” It plays with 3-5 players in 45 minutes.
- The designer of Crowded Frontier, Myles Wallace, has been designing games since 2011 and is the president of the ATX Game Designers Club, a flourishing community of passionate game designers and playtesters. Hailing from Austin, Texas, he works for a nonprofit doing community outreach and at home lives with his wife and cat.
- There were also two runner-up games announced.
- First was Snowy Peaks by Yuri Morroni & Gabriel Toschi. This is a two-player game of mountain climbing.
- Second was Cart’nage by Loic Lamy. Players use dominoes to construct buildings and then activate them to throw or flick various tokens at opponents’ buildings to try and destroy them.
- The competition saw 339 entries from designers all over the world.
Asmodee financials and Embracer Write Down
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56967/embracer-writes-down-asmodee-dark-horse
- Embracer Group, the Swedish games investment that company owns Asmodee, has released financial information for the first quarter of 2024.
- Net sales at the company decreased 5% to 8, 875 million Swedish Kroner. PC and console games were down 10%, but tabletop games sales were up 1%.
- The net sales at the Tabletop Games segment of the company increased 13% to 14797 million Swedish Kroner.
- Asmodee has written down the value of its assets by more than $620 million, which represents about 20% of the price it was originally bought for by Embracer 2.75 million euros.
- Asmodee’s sales were up for the last fiscal year to $1.4 billion. The company would have been profitable if it weren’t for the asset write-down.
- The reasons given for the write-down by Embracer were
- “macroeconomic headwinds and rising interest rates, combined with prudent future expectations.”
- Over the course of the last year, Embracer has parted company with close to 4500 employees. About half of those have lost their jobs, while others belong to companies that have been sold as part of Embracer’s streamlining efforts.
- From the earnings report, it seems that Embracer is putting a lot of emphasis on Star Wars Unlimited, the new CCG from Fantasy Flight Games.
Is Ryan Dancey Accountable?
- https://twitter.com/rsdancey/status/1661409374735327235
- [email protected]
- https://x.com/PonchoRebound/status/1661308221326229504/photo/3
- Just under a year ago Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of cultural juggernaut Wingspan amongst other games, posted a thread on Twitter pointing out the lack of female nominees for the Spiel des Jahres, and criticising the pipeline for game production that resisted women designers.
- Amongst the rather predictable replies to this was Ryan Dancey, CEO of Aldreac Entertainment Group. This company has published one of Elizabeth’s designs “Mariposas”
- In that he said
- The backlash to that was also predictable.
- Ryan posted this the following day.
- Yesterday I engaged in a discussion about the lack of representation of women as designers in the gaming community. It was not my finest moment. I’m embarrassed and mad at myself for the tone and content of my contribution to that discussion. It doesn’t reflect my views and it certainly doesn’t reflect the views of the company I work for. I’m sorry for any harm I have caused and any offense I have given.
- This topic is extremely important to me and I want to be a part of the solution not a part of the problem. I’ve discussed both my poor original message and the aftermath with my leadership team and with the rest of our company and I want to outline some concrete steps that we’ll be taking to do better in this regard.
- * We are going to actively connect with designers from under-represented demographic groups, especially women, and offer mentorship and development support of their projects even if AEG is not publishing games of that kind.
- * Some people have suggested various organizations that could benefit from our support. We will proactively reach out to the groups that we have been made aware of and aggressively look at pitches from members of these groups.
- * Our goal has been to publish the very best games, we are going to expand that goal to help and provide more support to the people who we want to be in business with get to a place where they are being seen and published.
- Check back with me in a year and hold me accountable; I’ll provide updates as we make progress.
- We have done just that to no avail. We contacted Alderac Entertainment Group on the 13th of May, reminding them of the incident and Ryan’s reply and pledges. Boardgamewire have taken a similar course of action.
- I reached out on Bluesky to find out if anyone knew of any progress on these pledges. A couple of designers said they had sent pitches AEG’s way but heard nothing back or been told no and that they only accept pitches at certain times.
- I also reached out to Ryan Dancey directly on Bluesky but I don’t know how often he has checked it.
- We did receive a reply from Ryan, he will post on X when he is ready to say something about this.
Updates
Mythic doubles down
We’re not wizards link
- On the last episode of Brainwaves, we brought you news that infamous board game publisher Mythic Games were on the hunt for reviewers for 6: Siege, their game based on the computer game Rainbow Six: Siege.
- This game has been plagued by late deliveries, missed deliveries, delayed production and of course Mythic has asked for ‘contributions’ from backers in order to deliver the games to them.
- We expressed incredulity at Mythic then offering totally free, including p&p, review copies to the media.
- After that episode, we decided to dive deeper into Mythic’s crowdfunding efforts.
- Mythic has run multiple campaigns on Kickstarter, while having games undelivered.
- You would think Kickstarter had a policy against this, and they do, sort of.
- Kickstarter’s page entitled ‘Can I run more than one campaign at once?’ says this
- ..we do allow experienced creators in good standing to launch and manage a certain number of projects back to back, within and depending on the category they have experience in on the site. We consider a creator to be “experienced” once they have completely fulfilled at least four projects.
- A creator is considered to be in good standing when they have demonstrated they can abide by Our Rules and Community Guidelines, present their projects honestly and clearly, and fulfill their campaigns to a high standard. This means maintaining regular, open, and honest communication with backers and delivering rewards as promised.
- We have reached out to Kickstarter for comment but are yet to hear back as of the time of recording.
- We also discovered that some of these games had appeared on Gamefound. We reached out to them for comment and heard back from them.
- Gamefound
- The projects you mentioned, including Monsterpocalypse, were handled as part of our PMv1 (Pledge Manager version 1) system. These projects were not used to raise additional funds but were rather tools to facilitate the delivery of already funded projects.
- Our policy, as outlined here, applies to first-time creators starting their second project on our platform. This means that new creators must fully deliver their first project on Gamefound before launching another. For Mythic Games, we have only hosted one actual campaign, which was thoroughly reviewed and approved by our compliance department following a comprehensive evaluation process.
- At Gamefound, we are committed to protecting our backers. We have implemented several measures to ensure better safety, including comprehensive project reviews, continuous monitoring, and a dedicated compliance team to oversee all campaigns. Our goal is to maintain the highest standards of trust and reliability in the crowdfunding community.
- We understand the importance of these matters to your audience. We hope this clarifies our position and the steps we are taking to uphold our platform’s integrity.
- The campaign mentioned in that email is called Rise of the Necromancers, a collaboration with Mythic and Sore Loser games
- I went on to ask Gamefound how they felt about the project given the current state of mythic Games. They replied
- We always aim to bring projects to our platform that will deliver as promised. We have a thorough onboarding process to make sure backers get the best board games through crowdfunding. Our goal is to create a reliable space for both backers and creators, reducing the risk of unsuccessful campaigns.
- However, despite our best efforts, sometimes things happen that we can’t foresee or control. We do everything we can to prevent these situations.
News
Dicebreaker acquired by IGN
- IGN Entertainment, a large US-based corporation which runs media site IGN, has acquired the Gamer Network family of digital media sites. These include Rock, Paper Shotgun, a UK-based PC gaming site, Gamesindustry.biz, and Dicebreaker, the tabletop gaming site that has a fairly prominent place in the gaming journalism landscape.
- The acquisition has led to some redundancies across those companies including editors at the 3 companies mentioned above.
- There has been no comment on the situation from Dicebreaker at this time.
18th Annual Golden Geek Winners for 2023 Announced
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3300892/18th-annual-golden-geek-winners-for-2023
- Board Game Geek, the online forum for board game hobbyists and a database of board games, has announced the winners of their 18th Annual Golden Geek Awards.
- The awards recognise the best board games for 2023 across 15 categories and are voted on by the site’s users.
- We won’t name all the winners here, but let us give you some highlights:
- Waypoints won the Best Print-and-Play category;
- The juggernaut of an asymmetric politico-economic card-driven board game that is Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory won in three categories: Most Innovative Game, Heavy Game of the Year and Best Thematic Game
- Undaunted: Battle of Britain won Best Wargame
- Alongside the best games across the various categories, the Golden Geek Awards also selects the best podcast of the year. For 2023, that was One Stop Co-Op Shop, with Beyond Solitaire and Talk Cardboard, the podcast from No Pun Included, coming in as runners-up.
- If you want to see the full list of winners and runners-up, please go to the Board Game Geek website. There is a link to the relevant page in our show notes.
- The Brainwaves team would like to congratulate all the winners.
Diana Jones emerging designer
- Purveyors of perspex pyramid prize, the Diana Jones Award has announced the final four winners of their Emerging Designer program, which aims to focus on up-and-coming designers, especially those from marginalised communities.
- Quinn Brander, Taylor Navarro, Clarence Simpson and Basil Wright are the four winners
- They will each receive an all-expenses trip to Gen Con as part of a $6500 prize package, which includes a year voting membership of American tabletop body GAMA, a chance to demo on Gen Con TV and prototyping credits at The Game Crafter, a company produced print on demand board and card games, based in the USA.
- Sadly, the legendary perspex pyramid containing a scrap from the infamous TSR Indiana Jones roleplaying game, which was awarded to the winner of the Diana Jones award since 2001, was lost in the post several years ago.
- To find out more about the finalists and their work so far, we will provide a link to the winners in the show notes.
Dice Tower AI
- Dice Tower West is a convention happening in Las Vegas from March 5th to 9th in 2025.
- The convention came under fire recently for posting a promotional tweet about May the 10th being “Stay up all night night”. They asked which game would keep you up all night playing.
- The controversy came with the image they shared that showed 3 people playing board games in an animated image. Those people had extra fingers and some other telltale signs of the image being made by an AI generator.
- The image was quickly removed with The Dice Tower yet to comment on the issue.
Funko Gets a Wizard
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56880/wotc-prez-funko
- As reported by ICv2, Funko, an American company best known for licensed vinyl bobblehead figures, announces that former Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming President Cynthia Williams is joining them on the 20th of May as their new CEO.
- Funko has been without a permanent CEO since Brian Mariotti left the company last July, with board member Michael Lunsford holding the role of Funko Interim CEO in the meantime.
- Williams ran Wizards of the Coast for a little over two years, and her tenure at Hasbro was marked by record sales.
- However, Williams has also courted controversy, in particular with the handling of the changes to the OGL (Open Gaming License) for Dungeons & Dragons, as we have previously reported on the cast.
- The appointment was announced alongside a statement that Funko recorded a $23.7 million loss in its first quarter.
- So Williams is joining Funko amongst tough conditions, but she said she is very hopeful about the company’s future:
- “My extensive experience with the devoted fans of Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Xbox will be highly beneficial in developing products that continue to appeal to Funko’s passionate fans, both core fans and collectors.”
- Funko is also clearly confident in Williams’ abilities and says of her appointment:
- “Cynthia has served in a variety of senior leadership roles with some of the largest and most well-respected companies in the world. She has a deep understanding of pop culture, entertainment and fandoms, with a proven background in building consumer brands, developing worldwide strategies and driving global growth. We are confident Cynthia has the experience, leadership capabilities and strategic vision to guide Funko into the future.”
- Discussion: Let’s see what she can bring to Funko. Let’s hope there aren’t any other licence changes for her to handle.
Japan’s Game Market Website Hacked
- The website of Game Market, the organiser of many of Japan’s biggest board game events, was hacked last week and tens of thousands of “fraudulent” images were posted illegally, overwriting many existing genuine files.
- The attack took place last week on Thursday, the 15th of May at around 10am local time and the organiser reported it on their website the following day.
- The illegal images have since been deleted, but unfortunately, it was impossible for the company to restore the originals
- Game Market sincerely apologises for the loss and asks everyone to resubmit the original files where possible.
- The company goes on to say that they are working on strengthening their website’s security and assures exhibitors that their applications and other information are not affected by the attack, as these are stored on a separate system.
Jobs, Opportunities, and Events
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TabletopJobs
Patreon Shoutouts
Kevin Bertram
James Naylor
Shaun Newan
game-a-lot.fun/en
facebook.com/gamealotboardgames
Our Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/thegiantbrain
Fanroll
https://fanrolldice.com/ref/2783
Outro
Cluedo Conspiracy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/391824/clue-conspiracy
- Cluedo has been through many iterations (Metallica and Scouts come to mind), but this new one puts in a strange new world. Teams.
- In Cluedo: Conspiracy (marketed as “the team-based, hidden role, adult party game version”), you are either Friends or the Conspiracy, all at the tropical Black Adder resort run by Mr Coral.
- Friends need to save Mr Coral by finding out who, what and where is the murder going to be (classic Cluedo) or by disarming booby traps that the Conspiracy set to sabotage the Friends and help their assigned murder of Mr Coral.
- It plays up to ten players, and the board has locations such as the INfinity Pool and the Hidden Cove, and a Storm Tracker as well as a health tracker for Mr Coral.
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