Archive for W. Eric Martin
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• French website TricTrac.net reports that Canadian publisher Filosofia has purchased U.S. publisher Z-Man Games. The two companies have worked together a number of times on coproductions such as The Secret of Monte Cristo, Merchants of the Middle Ages and Merchants & Marauders. According to the Tric Trac report, Zev Shlasinger will stay in charge of Z-Man with the only immediate changes being to things like licenses and international publishing rights.
• The winners of the 2011 Origins Awards have been announced, and they are:
-----* Best Board Game – Castle Ravenloft
-----* Best Traditional Card Game – Back to the Future: The Card Game
-----* Best Family, Party or Children's Game – Zombie Dice
-----* Best Historical Board Game – Catan Histories: Settlers of America – Trails to Rails
You can see the nominees for these categories in this April news post. Thanks to Dave Chalker for posting the winners!
• The winners of the 2010 Meeples Choice Awards, which are primarily voted on by readers of the Spielfrieks Yahoo group, are 7 Wonders, Innovation and London.
• Days of Wonder has released a new campaign series of eight scenarios for Memoir '44 called "Audie Murphy's Campaign".
• What's more, Days of Wonder has now launched its online version of Memoir '44, which is playable on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can play against an AI opponent or against other humans, and the game already includes "dozens of scenarios on the Western, Eastern, Pacific and Mediterranean fronts," according to a press release from DoW.
• Both Metallica and AC/DC will be featured in themed editions of Monopoly. To paraphrase Andy Warhol, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for appearing in a 150-minute-long Monopoly game."
• From the UK Daily Mail: Eighty-four-year-old inventor George Weiss sells Dabble board game after receiving eighty rejections for earlier ideas. (HT: Dale Yu)
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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For 2011 the biggest award in board gaming – the Spiel des Jahres, Germany's "Game of the Year" award – has been given to Susan McKinley Ross' Qwirkle, published in Germany by Schmidt Spiele.
Qwirkle's SdJ win, not to mention its nomination for the award in the first place, might come as a shock for some as the game was first published in 2006 by U.S. publisher MindWare. What's relevant for the SdJ, however, is the year of first publication in Germany, and that date is 2010.
How did the game come to be published in Germany in the first place? Well, funny story – my wife Linda and I brought my copy of Qwirkle to Berlin in October 2007 while visiting game designer and then-Boardgame News columnist Jeffrey Allers. I had raved about the game many times on BGN, even naming it my game of the year in April 2007 with eight months left on the calendar. Jeff had asked about buying the game from me, but he played tour guide in Berlin, so I gave him my copy as I could easily buy another in the U.S.
Before I did so, however, Linda and I taught the game to designer and publisher Andrea Meyer and Schmidt Spiele editor (and No Thanks! designer) Thorsten Gimmler while playing games for the evening in Spielwiese Berlin, a boardgame café. Linda and I rolled the newcomers – as Qwirkle is trickier than it seems at first glance – then Linda played again with Andrea, Thorsten and someone else and once again came away victorious. Thorsten asked for a contact at MindWare, and that contact eventually led to Qwirkle appearing on German game shelves and (soon to be) bearing a bright red popple.
After years of conversations via email and at NY Toy Fair, I consider Susan a friend, and I'm tickled to see her creation honored this way. Congrats!
In addition to naming the Spiel des Jahres, the SdJ jury awarded the inaugural Kennerspiel des Jahres – or "Connoisseur's Game of the Year", an award meant to highlight a game aimed at more experienced gamers – and to practically no one's surprise, Antoine Bauza's 7 Wonders took home the prize. (Strangely, just as Reiner Knizia missed the SdJ award ceremony when Keltis won in 2008, Bauza missed being on hand to receive the Kennerspiel as he had apparently missed a flight and was in South Korea.)
Published by Repos Production and distributed by Asmodee, 7 Wonders started making waves in mid-2010 while being shown at game conventions in Europe and the U.S. and the first printing sold out long before the game officially debtued at Spiel 2010 in October. Congrats to Antoine Bauza and the Belgo-Mexicans in charge of Repos!
Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:28 am
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced its list of scheduled releases for September 2011, with the list featuring a typical mix of one new game, one somewhat new game with a twist, Living Card Game expansions, and a few other expansions. In that order, the items are:
• Elder Sign – a cooperative dice game from the designers of Arkham Horror set in the same Lovecraftian universe.
• Dust Tactics: Revised Core Set – a standalone core set that features all-new miniatures, which means that a new player could purchase this and have everything needed to play while an experienced DT player could use the set as an expansion.
• Dust Tactics: Terrain Tile Pack
• Dust Tactics: Unit Card Upgrade Pack
• Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game - Conspiracies of Chaos
• Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game - Curse of the Jade Emperor
• The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game - The Dead Marshes
• Warhammer: Invasion - Realm of the Phoenix King
• Talisman (Fourth Edition): The Dragon Expansion
• Tannhäuser: Mizu
Three notes about FFG releases:
1. The publisher has reduced the price of Gears of War: The Board Game from $80 to $70 and the price of the new version of Red November from $35 to $30.
2. Fantasy Flight will no longer distribute the Wings of War series from Nexus Games in the U.S. and elsewhere. Instead Nexus – which is now self-distributing releases such as Letters from Whitechapel and Dakota – will handle future WoW releases as well as reprints of previously released titles once FFG runs out of stock already on hand.
3. One expected expansion is missing from the list above – a new chapter pack for A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. I'll look into this...
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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My apologies for leaving you all largely newsless for the past couple of weeks, but things on BGGN should be back to normal soon as my family's items are finally on the moving truck and on their way to North Carolina. Even after selling/giving away/recycling/trashing 300+ games, I had nearly 1,300 to box, which was absolute madness. (Not to mention all the other stuff I've collected over the years. My packrat tendencies are a horrible curse.)
In the future I need to either strip down the collection to a more manageable number or else stay in one location until I die...
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• G4 has posted an unboxing video of Wizards of the Coast's Conquest of Nerath.
• Clicker Spiele has noted two releases for 2011 on its website: a second edition of Fliegen naschen limited to 99 copies and a second edition of Blue presented in a tin case.
• Günter Cornett of Bambus Spieleverlag announced in his June 2011 newsletter that he will have a hand-made version of Pingvinas – aka, Hey, That's My Fish! – available at Spiel 2011. No word on how many copies might be available or what one might cost.
• Steve Jackson Games has posted a ten-image photo series of what goes on at its manufacturer in China. The reality is far less glamourous than you might expect.
• Dice Hate Me previews Dark Horse, a game project currently live on Kickstarter, and interviews designer Don Lloyd. I'm posting a designer diary from Lloyd on Monday, June 6, so check back if you want to learn more about the game.
• Stefan Brück notes in the alea Q&A forum that the 10th anniversary edition of Puerto Rico will be at least twice as expensive as the regular edition. The details on what that edition will contain and look like will be released in Q3 2011.
• Tikal II is now playable online on Jeux sur un Plateau. (You need to set up an account on JSP in order to reach the online games section.)
• Not new, but new to me: TricTrac.net highlighted "Life Size Mousetrap", a full-scale version of the Mouse Trap game from the 1960s. Nostalgia is a right powerful force...
• OT and self-serving: My game auction/moving sale with 201 listings ends Monday, June 6 at 8 pm EDT. Titles up for grabs include Talisman (second edition) and four expansions, Marvel Heroes, Mutabohn and much more. A number of games have no bids yet (of course they're mostly sucky games, but still...), and many others have low prices. Add to your collection, while helping to cover my moving costs – we all benefit!
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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Galen Ciscell's first board game – Atlantis Rising – will be released in Q3 2011 by Z-Man Games. Ciscell has been posting designer diary installments on the BGG game page every week or two, but I wanted to know more about the game and sent the following questions his way. Admittedly these questions might make more sense if you've read the rules for Atlantis Rising (PDF)...
WEM: What inspired the basic approach to Atlantis Rising? Why a co-op game? Why allow 2-6 players? Why set the game in Atlantis?
Galen Ciscell: As I detailed in my first Design Journal here on The Geek, Atlantis Rising was, from the start, a game created to my own preferences. It's co-op because co-op games are my favorite type of game; it can play with only two players because I usually play games with just my partner Chelsie; and it plays up to six because Chelsie and I usually play games with other couples when we play with other people, so capping a game at an odd number (like five players) is just frustrating for me. I chose the theme because (at the time of conception) there were very few good games with the Atlantis theme and because I enjoy fantasy. The theme also really drove the mechanisms of the game.
WEM: What pitfalls did you encounter and overcome when designing and developing the game? And how did you know when it was coming together as a finished design?
GC: Surprisingly, the game just flowed from the very first playtest. It has been through a fair number of tweaks since that initial session, but right away I knew I had hit upon something special with the press-your-luck, worker-placement element of the game. One of the biggest pitfalls was balancing the risk and reward of the various placements, which was resolved by changing the penalty for a bad placement from the permanent loss of an Atlantean to the temporary loss of that Atlantean.
Another design challenge was ensuring that the different options in the game were not only balanced against one another, but that they were also all fun for the players. I had to make changes to several councilors' special abilities, as well as the entire "Athenians Attack" phase, in order to make those councilors more fun for the players and to make contributing Atlanteans to the Atlantean Navy more enticing.
I guess I knew Atlantis Rising was nearing completion when everyone who playtested it had very little but praise to offer me. It just sort of felt finished (plus I was exhausted from dozens of playtests), so I sent it off to Zev at Z-Man Games. I actually did several more playtests after signing the contract with Z-Man, but those were mostly fine-tuning, not major overhauls to the rules.
WEM: Assuming you have some familiarity with the genre, how does Atlantic Rising differ from other co-op games? What might entice a player who hasn't enjoyed other co-op games? What might turn off a fan of Pandemic, Ghost Stories, etc., if anything?
GC: As a huge fan of cooperative games, I am extremely familiar with the genre. I own the games you mentioned, along with many other cooperative games and certainly drew from my experiences with those games when creating Atlantis Rising.
Aside from the recently released Brazillian game, Mehinaku, I believe Atlantis Rising is the only major worker-placement co-op game on the market, a feature that may attract players who might otherwise pass over the many cooperative games currently available.
A possible drawback for cooperative game players would be the lack of a current option for solo play, which I know is a much beloved feature of games like Ghost Stories and The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. Atlantis Rising is easy enough to play solo by controlling two councilors, but I hope to release an official variant which will allow for a single player to play the game while controlling just one councilor.
WEM: How does the game play differ with the minimum and maximum number of players? I know that the attack track shows a different threat level for different player counts, but what differs in the pace or challenge of the game? What's your favorite player count and why?
GC: I honestly don't have a favorite player count, which is somewhat odd. I have played the game over 100 times with every different number of players and I enjoy it with more or fewer players for different reasons.
With fewer players there is more time to slowly develop a strategy and it's much more reasonable to take a few more risks, since fewer island tiles are likely to flood each round. The real challenge is getting all ten components built before the Athenians completely overwhelm you.
More players means more misfortunes each round, which makes for a more frantic game with a lot of tense, nail-biting moments, which I always love! The challenge is really more about coordinating who is building what, and you're more likely to lose from the misfortune cards than from not having enough Atlanteans to defend against the Athenians.
WEM: The Athenians come across as being a clock-like mechanism – not saying that's a bad thing! – that spurs players to action, while forcing them to divide their forces. Were they present from the start, and if not, how did they enter the design?
GC: The Athenians are indeed a mechanism that forces the issue of the destruction of the island in a set number of rounds. They were present almost from the very beginning of the game, and included for several reasons.
First, the Athenians-as-enemies-of-Atlantis are in Plato's account of Atlantis and theme was very important to me when designing this game (as I hope I've communicated in the rulebook). Second, the Athenians negate the possibility of the players simply collecting enough mystic energy each turn to cancel all of the misfortune cards and stall the game forever. Third, they allow the game to scale properly for a variable number of players. Fourth, the Athenians provide yet another placement option for players' Atlanteans – I really liked the idea of having one threat the players can't really anticipate or control (the misfortune deck) and one that they can (the Athenians). Fifth, because players will often lose the battle against the Athenians, resulting in the loss of one or more tiles, the Athenians provide one more opportunity for group decision-making (choosing which tiles to destroy) in the game.
WEM: Possibly tying in to the previous question, you've written in your diary about the challenge of getting the difficulty level right (while eventually conceding that having only one "right difficulty level" is an illusion). What is the difficulty level of Atlantis Rising for the various levels of play, say, as a percentage of wins to losses? How do those percentages change over time? What do people learn about the nature of game play that makes them better? What mistakes will first-timers always make?
GC: In terms of difficulty, I like to think of the levels in terms of what needs to happen for casual players to win, rather than a win/loss percentage. For instance, at the beginner level I expect anyone to be able to win, even if they are a bit unlucky, so long as they have any strategy whatsoever. Normal difficulty will take either a bit of luck or a bit of strategy to win; hard will take both; and cosmic difficulty will require some very solid strategy combined with good luck. All of the above difficulty levels approximate what I expect casual gamers to encounter in terms of difficulty. The removal of the starting mystic energy token for each player makes the game about as challenging for hardcore gamers or experienced players at each of the above levels as it would be for casual gamers playing with starting mystic energy.
In terms of the learning curve, people learn over time the value of always having enough mystic energy on hand to cancel a basic Flood misfortune, and the value of recruiting new Atlanteans early in the game. The latter is usually obvious to experienced gamers, but not always, while the former generally takes a few plays to realize for most everyone. First-time players almost always place their Atlanteans lower than necessary to achieve the same benefit (several tiles provide the same benefit, but some are closer to the sea than others) simply because they don't pay close attention to the tiles, and many first-time players will ignore the Athenian threat until it is too late! The biggest difference in strategy comes when groups actually begin to coordinate their actions rather than simply pursuing their own individual goals – this makes a huge difference in the win/loss percentage.
Atlantis Rising prototype
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• Eagle Games has announced three new items, with the first two debuting at the Origins Game Fair in late June 2011 and the third item being released in July 2011:
-----* Railways of the World: Event Deck – a deck of 54 event cards taht can be used with any of the Railways of the World games/expansions.
-----* Railways of the World: The Card Game - Expansion, which adds switchers to change track color, tunnels to connect existing cities and more.
-----* Age of Steam: Moon and Berlin Wall, which is a new edition of two AoS expansions that designer Alban Viard had previously released in limited editions.
• NG International, which releases games under the Nexus brand, has posted a preview in Italian of Micro Monsters, the junior version of Micro Mutants: Evolution from the same designers – Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi – that's aimed at players as young as six. No release date is mentioned.
• Steve Jackson Games is crossing the gaming and fantasy streams with the announcement of Munchkin: Conan the Barbarian, a 15-card booster pack for use with any Munchkin base game.
• Dutch publisher Rocks Games is following its 2010 debut of a localized version of Neuroshima Hex! with Dutch editions of Famiglia, Neuroshima Hex! Duel and Upon a Salty Ocean, the latter title in cooperation with Giochix.it, which is releasing this game in October at Spiel 2011.
• Speaking of Neuroshima Hex!, Portal has released a Polish version of Don Eskridge's The Resistance that includes a few changes from the Indie Boards & Cards version of the game, as detailed on the Portal website. To start with, the game board that allows players to track missions has been replaced with five mission cards that are placed face up or face down to track success/failure.
Since Portal is all about storytelling – something Ignacy Trzewiczek has stressed many times in his writing! – the company went on to add five missions to each of the mission cards, which means that leaders are recruiting players for specific missions to play up the story element of the game. What's more, the game includes ten character cards, each with six personality traits. At the start of the game, each player draws a card and chooses a trait at random, giving him something to playact and build on as the game progresses.
• In the category of "not really a game but I'm covering it anyway", Belgian publisher SMART has formed a U.S. subsidiary called Smart/Tangoes USA to release its line of logic and puzzle games in the U.S. In years past the SMART line was licensed by Educational Insights, then Fundex, but now SMART is handling everything itself, which I can attest to by the SMART logo on the new copy of Anti-Virus that I purchased recently. I love this line of logic games, so I'm delighted that they'll be more widely availabe in the months ahead.
To put a game spin on this item, I asked Smart/Tangoes' Jim Whitney about the status of Flixx, a new version of a Kris Burm game released in 1994 as Flix by Milton Bradley. Burm has been testing a new version of Flix at Spiel 2009 (I think – possibly 2008), and I was surprised to discover that the game is listed on SMART's website! Whitney was unfamiliar with the game, but alas, after checking into the situation he told me, "Apparently it has not been successful, and there are no plans to release it in the U.S."
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• To follow-up on the news from May 26 that Hasbro is creating a "Center of Excellence for Games" – which entails firing half the workforce in East Longmeadow, Mass. prior to moving the remaining employees to Rhode Island – Fantasy Flight Games is hiring an Associate Game Producer. Head to this news post on the FFG website for details on what an Associate Game Producer does and how to apply. Hasbro's loss could be FFG's gain, right?
• Lucas Blair has posted part 3 of his "How to Design Effective Achievements" article series on Gamasutra. This series focuses on video games, but is worth a look for anyone including solo rules with a design.
• Shannon Appelcline details what's going on behind the scenes with the various AIs in his iOS adaption of Knizia's Modern Art: The Card Game.
• Michael Schacht and German site Die Pöppelkiste have organized a game giveaway for three Schacht titles. To enter the contest, you need to complete a Mondo Solo puzzle on Schacht's website, specifically the puzzle titled "Poeppelkiste". To find this puzzle, sign up for an account or log in, then click "Join Game".
• Old news of sorts: The New York Times ran an obituary for Ned Strongin on April 18, 2011, noting that in addition to creating Weebles, he was "co-inventor of Connect Four".
Now, the designer of Connect Four according to BGG (as of May 26, 2011) is Howard Wexler, and if you search for "Howard Wexler", every article or profile of him describes Wexler as the inventor of Connect Four, not the co-inventor. The only mention of Strongin in connection with Connect Four that I can find is from obituaries about the man, as in this (somewhat botched) transcription of an article from the May 13, 2011 Newport Beach Independent. An excerpt, with corrections:
Quote: When Connect 4 was developed he worked with Howard Wexler at their shared business, Strongin and Wexler Corp., [his son] Mike Strongin said. They bought the game as a horizontal board game and made some modifications, like rotating it to become a vertical game, one of the aspects which make it unique.
"Since then, Connect Four has generated a considerable amount of money," Mike Strongin said.
Time for a designer correction, it seems. And here's more about the man from a press release I received:
Quote: Phil Orbanes, currently President of Winning Moves Games who had a long relationship with Strongin and worked with him to license Giggle Wiggle to Hasbro Games said, "Ned was regarded in the toy and game industry as one of the three post-World War II 'fathers' of external toy and game inventions, along with Marvin Glass and Eddy Goldfarb." "Ned's NYC studio on Broadway was always a go-to stop in search of new game ideas. You could count on strong concepts from his creative design staff presented by Ned himself. He had a real love for the toy and game industry," said Ron Weingartner, partner of toy consulting firm Weingartner Associates. Weingartner formerly worked in game development and inventor relations for Hasbro Games, Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley (the latter, during the time in 1973 when the company first licensed Connect 4).
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• Dice Hate Me interviews Ryan Laukat about Empires of the Void, the first game from this artist for Dominion, Bridge Troll and other games.
• Derek Thompson at Meepletown interviews designer Reiner Knizia on Star Trek: Expeditions, spin-offs, licensed games, and more.
• Hasbro is creating a "Center of Excellence for Games" in Rhode Island. From the press release announcing this move:
Quote: "Hasbro has the strongest portfolio of games brands in the industry and this is an important move to accelerate our re-imagination of games. However, it is always difficult to make changes that affect our people," said Brian Goldner, President and CEO. "We are committed to continuously re-inventing this business and growing it for the long term. This includes maintaining our leadership position in face-to-face board gaming, while also more effectively competing in the broader world of gaming across all platforms."
The Center of Excellence for Games will build on Hasbro's strategy of re-imagining, re-inventing and re-igniting its core brands. The group will identify key games brands for new play experiences and development, while focusing its efforts and workforce on initiatives across multiple platforms in both traditional and digital gaming.
(HT: Matthew Horn)
• A columnist for the (UK) Guardian riffs off her discovery of Alf Seegert's The Road to Canterbury to wonder which other literary classics should make the jump to board game. Interesting to see how well news of this game is travelling through non-gamey media outlets. Either Alf is doing a bang-up job of marketing this game or the subject has just the right amount of "Oh, really?" to make others want to write about it.
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