News Digest Brainwaves Episode 159

 This is a copy of the “script” we used to organise Brainwaves Episode 159. It is not a full transcript but should give you an overview of the news as we reported it. Quotes are in italics.

Headlines

CMON Issues Profit Warning

• CMON, the US-based publisher of games such as Zombicide, Blood Rage, Rising Sun and Ankh, has issued a profit warning, stating it could face losses of up to $2.1 million in 2024. This was first reported by the site Boardgamewire.
• The company attributes this downturn to the rising cost of living, which has impacted tabletop game sales.
• This loss would nearly erase CMON’s combined $1.8 million profit over the past three years, ending a period of financial recovery since its $5 million loss in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Despite past successes on Kickstarter, where it raised over $108 million, CMON switched to Gamefound in 2023, raising over $12.1 million. However, its revenue fell in the first half of 2024, with wholesale earnings dropping by 39% and crowdfunding revenue declining by nearly 10%. Cash reserves have also dwindled, from $3.9 million in 2022 to $1.9 million by mid-2024.
• CMON began 2025 with financial difficulties, including the failed sale of some intellectual property and an abandoned investment deal worth $1.39 million from two new shareholders. The company is now seeking alternative funding to strengthen its financial position.
• CMON currently has 10 pending crowdfunding projects of their own, including the $3.8 million Zombicide: White Death, and seven more games available for pre-order.
• In addition, the company has made key acquisitions, such as Japon Brand and intellectual property from troubled publisher Mythic Games. However, backers of Mythic’s games Hel and Anastyr have not received updates in over a year. It is worth noting that those two games are not on the pending crowdfunding list that CMON has produced.

Is Magic losing its sparkle? No of course not.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/58912/wotc-magic-sales-down-q4-full-year-2024

• Hasbro announced that sales for Wizards of the Coast, which is behind Magic: The Gathering, saw a decline in both Q4 and the full year of 2024.
• Magic: The Gathering sales, including digital revenue, plummeted 19% for the quarter, while Wizards’ overall tabletop revenue declined 22% to $207 million.
• The Q4 results reflect the impact of tough comparisons to the prior year’s Lord of the Rings set.
• Hasbro’s total gaming sales, which include its broader portfolio, fell 5% to $542.5 million in Q4. However, the company’s overall profitability improved significantly, turning a $34.3 million profit for the quarter compared to a $1.1 billion loss in Q4 2023.
• Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks highlighted strong engagement, including rising player numbers and increased MagicCon attendance, as indicators of the brand’s resilience.
• Hasbro forecasts a 5-7% increase in Wizards of the Coast revenue for 2025, driven by three major Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond sets featuring Final Fantasy, Spider-Man, and an unannounced third franchise.
• The Final Fantasy set could become the best-selling Magic: The Gathering set ever, according to Cocks, though the Spider-Man set will be standard-only, potentially limiting its sales.
• The company also unveiled its “Playing to Win” strategy, focusing on expanding key franchises, increasing appeal among older and female audiences, and growing digital and direct-to-consumer sales.
• Additionally, Hasbro raised its cost-saving goal from $750 million by the end of 2025 to $1 billion by 2027.
• We would like to remind people that in the last round of layoffs at Hasbro they got rid of many of the folk involved in creating Universes Beyond including Megan Galbraith who had led the initiative at WIzards of the Coast. We covered that story in episode 135. 

The Sigils aren’t good

https://www.rascal.news/wizards-of-the-coast-shutters-sigil-virtual-tabletop-project-lays-off-30-staff

• Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have been scrabbling for several years to create an in-house virtual tabletop (VTT) project to rival Roll20. But this week, things took a turn for the worst, with Wizards laying off all but three workers from the Sigil project, effectively ending its development.
• A message was sent on Monday the 17th of March from Dan Rawson, senior vice president of Dungeons & Dragons and Hasbro Direct:

• “Dear Team, I want to share an important update regarding Sigil. After several months of alpha testing, we’ve concluded that our aspirations for Sigil as a larger, standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be realized. As such, we cannot maintain a large development effort and most of the Sigil team will be separated from the company this week. We are, however, proud of what the Sigil team has developed and want to make sure that fans and players on DDB (D&D Beyond) can use it. To that end, we will transition Sigil to a DDB feature. We will maintain a small team to sustain Sigil and release products already developed at no additional cost to users. To those moving on as a result of this decision, we will provide robust support, including severance packages, 2024 bonus, career placement services, and internal opportunities where possible.
• I want to take a moment to praise the entire Sigil team for their incredible work to deliver this product to our community. One of the things I’m most proud of here at D&D is our strong sense of purpose. We aim to honor our current players while ensuring D&D continues to build connections and bring joy to future generations. And that’s what the Sigil team was doing. Although we haven’t fully realized our vision for Sigil to scale, the team should be proud of their achievements.”

• 30 employees, about 90% of the workforce, have been fired with the final three workers folding elements of Sigil into D&D Beyond.
• An anonymous employee spoke to Rascal News and estimated that Hasbro invested between $20 and $30 million into Sigil so far but after the “somewhat disastrous” 2024 Gen Con demo, development slowed and relationships were strained. At this point, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks started his involvement with the project and did not seem keen on continued development.
• The employee describes (quoting from the Rascal article):
  • “… a company-wide lack of coordination during their tenure where they never interacted with the book publishing team and only stumbled into the already existing Maps VTT by accidentally signing up for an internal playtest believing it was Sigil, instead. In fact, the employee claims WotC engineers would constantly clash with D&D Beyond staff over access to the latter’s fiercely protected internal data”
• The employee further says that they believe Hasbro saw Sigil as a video game as opposed to a VTT, expecting it to be profitable in a similar way to Magic: The Gathering or the phenomenally successful Baldur’s Gate 3. 
• Sigil’s team was also affected by the layoffs at Hasbro in December 2023, according to the employee, where 1100 staff were fired two weeks before Christmas.

News

GAMA/Origins Award Nominations

https://www.originsawards.net/news/announcing-the-48th-annual-origins-awards-finalists

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59086/the-academy-adventure-gaming-arts-designs-hall-fame-inducts-three

• The Origins Award 2025, which rewards excellence in game design, has announced its over 100 nominees.
• Nominations are made by members of the Game Manufacturer’s Association, or GAMA for short, which include individual designers, social media influencers, publishers and distributors, as well as game stores.
• We can’t list them all here and refer you to the Origins website, a link to which you will find in the show notes, but we can tell you the categories.
• Nominees are divided into board games, so-called constructible games, which refers to deck-building games such as Magic: The Gathering or Star Wars Rebellion, miniature games and role-playing games.
• The winners will be announced at this year’s Origins Game Fassdair in Columbus, Ohio, which takes place between the 18th and 22nd of June.
• Congratulations to all the nominees!
• At Origins the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, a division of GAMA, will induct 3 new members.
  • Susan McKinley Ross, designer of Quirkle and the first woman to win a Spiel des Jahres.
  • Stefan Feld, designer of Castle of Burgundy and the recent Civolution
  • Ryo Mizuno who is recognised for their contribution to the RPG scene in Japan
• It will also induct two new games
  • Codenames by Vlaada Chvatil
  • Times up by R&R games

Cardboard Edison award finalists announced 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rZLrFoWkt4E4uDjcUYDYvkwAUcjlqkCR/view

• Cardboard Edison is a site that has loads of resources for first-time and established designers. 
• Every year they host an award highlighting upcoming designs and designers. Specifically, the games submitted must not currently be published.
• The award has recently announced its finalists for 2025. 
• The competition received 348 entries and from those 21 finalists were selected.
• They will be asked to send a prototype to the awards and then the game will be played by some industry professionals. Those prototypes are due by April the 1st with winners announced in May.
• The finalists are a diverse range of themes from plate reconstruction in Athenia, salsa making in Molcajete, to creating potions in Wildcrafting. The full list of winners will be linked to from our show notes. 

As D’Or Award

https://www.festivaldesjeux-cannes.com/en/festival-as-d-or-jeu-de-l-annee

Oliver’s Review

• The As D’Or award is France’s premier board game award, awarded every year at the international games festival in Cannes. 
• In episode 157 we covered all the nominees for this year’s award
• The award has 4 categories and the winners in each one have been announced. 
• Children’s game of the year, Operation Noisettes designed by Jerome Soleil, Emilie Soleil, art by Marko Renko
• Intermediate award: Behind designed by Cedric Millet, art by Maud Chaalmel, Piero, Martin Vidberg
• Expert Award: Kutna Hora designed by Ondrej Bystron, Pavel Jarosch, Petr Caslava, art by Stepan Drastak, Milan Vavron, Roman Bednar and
• The game of the year was Odin designed by Remo Conzadori, Paolo Mori, art by Jonathan Aucomte. 
• (award lists distributors which I don’t think are worth covering)
• Congratulations to all the winners! 

Stonemaier Games Stockholder Report

• Stonemaier Games, the St. Louis-based publisher of games such as Wingspan, Viticulture, Charterstone, and Tapestry, has released its 2024 stakeholder report.
• The company recorded $23.7 million in revenue, up from $16.7 million in 2023, with 48% coming from distribution and 22% from its webstore.
• Despite revenue being up, profits remain modest due to reinvestments in manufacturing, shipping and personnel.
• The company also adjusted its Amazon sales approach, opting to sell directly to consumers rather than through a distributor.
• The publisher’s most successful title remains Wingspan & Wingspan Asia, which has sold over 2.4 million copies, followed by Scythe with 559,602 units.
• In 2024, Stonemaier Games released two new games, Wyrmspan, Stamp Swap, and three expansions, Rolling Realms Redux, Expeditions: Gears of Corruption and Apiary: Expanding the Hive.
• One of the most significant developments was the acquisition of the Tokaido brand, with a Stonemaier version of the game scheduled for release in April 2025.
• Community engagement remains a cornerstone of Stonemaier Games’ success, with 49,590 newsletter subscribers, 52,665 YouTube subscribers and over 100,000 members across its Facebook groups. The company’s Champions programme has grown to 14,448 members and it continues to support 685 active ambassadors and 244 engaged reviewers, and Stonemaier’s annual charity auction raised $35,121 for a number of different causes.
• Jamey Stegmaier, the co-founder and owner of Stonemaier Games, prefaced the report by saying this:
  • “Joy is always our goal–we don’t measure success by money, units sold, rankings, followers, or awards. Those are just metrics. So all of the data aside, I truly hope we were able to create some joy for you in the last year, and I’m grateful for your connection to Stonemaier Games.”

Obituaries

Respected boardgame box artist Rodger MacGowan passes

https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/1/blogpost/171204/rodger-b-macgowan-has-passed-away-at-age-77

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-recovery-of-rodger-mae-and-steven 

• Rodger B. MacGowan, a pioneering artist, game developer, and magazine publisher, passed away on the 22nd of February at the age of 76.
• Best known for his iconic wargame cover art, MacGowan shaped the visual identity of board wargaming for over five decades. He founded Fire & Movement magazine in 1976 and later co-founded GMT Games in 1990. He also launched C3i magazine, serving as Editor-in-Chief and Art Director, further cementing his influence in the industry.
• His artistic career began in advertising, where he contributed to the sci-fi magazine Vertex, before transitioning to television graphic design. His breakthrough in wargame art came in 1977 with his cover for The Russian Campaign, which was the first American wargame to depict Soviet soldiers.
• He went on to create covers for Squad Leader, Flat Top, Twilight Struggle, and many more, earning a reputation as one of the greatest illustrators in the field.
• MacGowan won the Charles S. Roberts award, an annual award that began in 1975 and focuses on “conflict simulation” tabletop war games, for “Best Professional Wargaming Magazine” annually from 1978-1981 and again in 2008, 2012, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
• MacGowan’s leadership in independent gaming journalism and publishing left a lasting impact. He was instrumental in expanding the visual appeal of wargames, ensuring diverse historical representation on covers, and setting new standards for game design aesthetics.
• Fans and colleagues across the gaming world have shared tributes, celebrating his creativity and dedication. His family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help recover from the loss of his home and studio in the Palisades fire, a link to which you can find in our show notes.
• The Brainwaves team sends their condolences to MacGowan’s family in these tough times.

Ernie Gygax has passed away

• Ernie Gygax, one of the sons of Dungeons and Dragons co-creator E Gary Gygax, has died. 
• He contributed to some of the early versions of Dungeons & Dragons and is probably best known for a character called Tenser whose name appears on many of the spells in D&D
• He is probably most known, infamously so, for the attempt to resurrect TSR with the company that we reported on many times that became known as nuTSR. That company tried to sue Wizards of the Coast for control of the TSR brand and D&D name but ended up being counter-sued into oblivion by Wizards. 
• That company also pursued new versions of Star Frontiers, a sci-fi RPG published by the original TSR. In the new version there were many heinous stereotypes, racism, sexism and more. It was roundly mocked and derided by the wider RPG community. 
• Our condolences to his family and friends. 

Jobs, Opportunities, and Events

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TabletopJobs

Tabletop Mentorship Programme

https://www.unpub.org/mentorship

• The tabletop mentorship programme is currently open for both mentor and mentee applicants. 
• The programme consists of a 3-month period where people can get help in all sorts of aspects of tabletop games from podcast creation to game design. 
• If you would like to be part of the programme on either side of it you should know that applications close on the 21st of April

Patreon Shoutouts

Kevin Bertram

James Naylor

https://naylorgames.com

Shaun Newan
game-a-lot.fun/en
facebook.com/gamealotboardgames

Our Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/thegiantbrain

Support Us

Fanroll

https://fanrolldice.com/ref/2783

Outro

Nearly 2 decades later, they win again

• A little combo of outro and award here to finish off. 
• The Japanese Boardgame Prize has been running since 2002, where a jury choose the “U-more Award”, for beginners and families, and a Voter’s Choice, voted on by the public.
• The winner of the Voter’s Choice this year is Aiue battle by Yonemitsu Kazunari
• The winner of the U-more Award is Wild Vikings by Wolfgang Dirscherl. 
• Wild Vikings was first released in 2008, and was a recommended game in that year’s Spiel des Jahres Kinderspiel category. This means that it has been 17 years since this game has even been looked at for an award and may be how long it’s taken for a Japanese language edition to be released. 
• Is this a record? We don’t know. If you can think of a game that’s been awarded an award with a longer gap, please let us know. 
• Also, a salient reminder that if you are an English or German native speaker, you are very lucky in the volume of games being released. Sometimes it can take years until other languages get released.

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