Over the previous four articles in this series, I have explored the history of Spiel des Jahres, the purpose behind its awards, the way its jury works, and the wider activities funded through its income. Together, those articles painted a picture of an organisation that sees its annual awards as a means rather than an end. Promoting games as a cultural asset, encouraging people to play board games together and providing guidance to newcomers to the hobby have all remained at the core of its mission for almost fifty years. In this article, I want to look at the 2026 nominations and see whether the association's values can also be found in the games the jury has selected.

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Awards often attract attention because of the games they recognise. Far less attention is usually paid to how the organisations behind those awards operate. In the case of Spiel des Jahres, the financial side of the story is particularly interesting because it helps explain how the association funds its activities while maintaining the independence that it considers central to its mission. The famous Red Pawn appears on millions of game boxes, yet many players know little about the licensing system behind it or the way that income supports projects far beyond the annual awards ceremony. In this fourth article in the series, I look at the finances that reveal how the organisation has transformed the commercial success of its award into support for a much broader cultural mission.

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Every year, the announcement of the Spiel des Jahres nominations leads to a lot of discussion across our hobby. Some people agree with the choices, others question why certain games were not included, and many try to predict the eventual winners. What most people don't realise when they discuss the nominations is that the jury does not gather for a single weekend to decide the best game of the year. No, jurors spend many months playing hundreds of new releases several times with different groups of people. It is a lot of work that often goes unnoticed, but that explains why the award continues to carry such influence nearly fifty years after it began. In the second article of the series, I look at this in more detail.

The post Spiel des Jahres – how the jury chooses games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

For many board gamers, Spiel des Jahres is simply the little red pawn on a game box. Spotting it on a shelf often suggests that a game is worth paying attention to. That's not only true in the German-speaking board game world, but also in many other countries, including the UK. Over the years, winners such as The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride have helped establish the award as one of the most influential honours in tabletop gaming. Yet, there is a lot more to this story. According to its own history and mission statements, the annual prize was never intended to be the end goal. Instead, it was created as a tool to encourage people to play games, to promote games as a cultural asset, and to help the wider public discover the value of gathering around a table. In the first in a series of articles, I want to look at this further.

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Hi, it’s Joe Slack here. Oliver was kind enough to allow me to write another guest blog. In this article, I thought it would be interesting to discuss board games for two and the gaming experience for two people (especially couples).

The post Tabletop Games for 2 Players (Especially Couples) (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Designers don't like it when players criticise their board game, and the response often is that the game was intentionally designed that way. Players complain that a strategy feels unfair, a mechanism is frustrating, or a game simply isn't very clear. Designers reply that that just misses the point. Similar disagreements exist in films, novels, and art, yet board games seem to have them more often, and they are often more personal. Part of the reason may be that board games are not passive experiences. Players are not simply watching events unfold, but instead are interpreting rules and shaping the experience themselves every time the game hits the table.

The post Intentional Experience – designer intent and player experience (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Many of us play board games because they offer us some certainty. There are rules, objectives, specific actions, and so on that define how a game is played. These things provide a clear, well-defined framework. We know what is possible, what is not allowed and what we are trying to achieve. At the same time, board games also contain uncertainty. It is uncertainty that creates tension, excitement and a range of other emotions. In many cases, this uncertainty is exactly why we look forward to playing them. Inspired by Bez from Stuff by Bez, in this article, I want to explore why uncertainty in board games matters.

The post Clearly Uncertain – the role of uncertainty in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Throughout human history, stories have been a way for people to share the concerns and ideas of their time. I think we can all agree that books and films are often shaped by the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were created, whether deliberately or not. Readers and viewers will usually be able to see reflections of real-world anxieties, hopes, and tensions within them. Board games, while also being a form of entertainment, alongside books and films, work differently. In this article, I want to look at whether they still reflect the times in which they were designed.

The post Expressive Entertainment – board games and social commentary (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

A recent episode of the Game Design Deep Dive, featuring the podcast host, Dan Bullock, in conversation with prolific board game designer of many historical and storytelling games, Cole Wehrle, got me thinking about something I had never really questioned before: who we actually are when we play board games. Player roles are often afterthoughts, taken for granted as part of the theme or setting. However, the more I thought about it, the more it became clear that they shape how we understand a game, how we make decisions, and even how they influence our emotions as we engage with what is happening on the table.

The post Player Roles – who we are in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Legacy games have probably had their golden days. They were something new that hadn't been done before in our hobby. They promised a unique experience of a game that would change as you played it. Not only that, the change would be permanent, requiring you not to only remove components, but actually destroy them, or put stickers into the rulebook, onto the main game board or otherwise apply them to make an irreversible change to the game. However, as exciting as the idea was, it never sat comfortably with me. In this article, I want to talk about this in more detail.

The post Throwaway Legacy – legacy games as a symbol of our throwaway society (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Gatekeeping has long been a concern within the board game hobby. For decades, our hobby was shaped by small communities, often dominated by white men of a certain age. They decided who was allowed to call themselves a board gamer and who couldn't. However, as the hobby grew, it also became more diverse. Nowadays, welcoming newcomers and making the hobby accessible to a wider audience has become a highly important goal, a goal which I strongly support and feel very passionate about. Unfortunately, some people have started to use the term gatekeeping in such a way as to become gatekeepers themselves. In this article, I want to look at this paradox more closely.

The post Gatekeeping the Gatekeepers – discussing standards in our hobby (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Hello everyone! I'm Eugene, founder of Genie Games and creator of Rats to Riches, Peranakan: Tiles and Tactics, and Singapore Showdown. This is my first time ever writing a guest blog, and I'm incredibly honoured to be given this opportunity by Oliver to share my story with you. As the title states, I'm 29 years old as of writing this. Nine months ago, I quit my job as a Singaporean Navy Officer, to start my own company to design and publish board games full-time. How did I end up here? Well, the answer to that goes back 20 years ago.

The post 29-Year-Old Navy Captain Turned Board Game Designer (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

The last time I played 1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight, I found myself in the lead from fairly early on. As the game progressed, that lead only kept growing. Each round, the gap widened until it was clear that nobody had a realistic way to catch up with me. The game carried on, turns were taken, but the excitement and tension had gone. The game had become a fight for second place. I call this soft elimination, and it is especially common in longer games, when you are technically still playing, but no longer really competing. In this article, I want to talk about this a bit more.

The post Killing Me Softly – a look at player elimination (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Ryan Dancey was, until last Wednesday, the Chief Operating Officer at Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). On LinkedIn, the self-help site for managers who want to tell each other how great they are and how little their subordinates/customers appreciate them, Dancey published a post (link to a photo of the post, because I do not link to LinkedIn) in which he explained that he is firmly convinced that AI (or rather the LLMs that are usually labelled as AIs) will, in just a few years, be as useful as any employee.

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Historical board games occupy an awkward space in our hobby. They are usually not designed to teach history in any formal sense, and they are also not entertaining in the sense of being fun. These games stop short of education, offering no syllabus, no claims of being a detailed treatise of their setting, and no obligation to explain themselves. The subject matter historical board games draw on, war, exploitation, inequality, famine, and systemic violence, doesn't suit the lightness or escapism people often expect when playing board games as a leisure activity. The result is a form of play that somehow feels serious but incomplete. In this article, I want to explore this in more detail.

The post No Man’s Land – historical board games’ position between entertainment and education (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Finding the time to play board games can be difficult. Working out which games to play in the time you've got together is often even harder. Mostly, that's down to what games players are in the mood for. Sometimes they want a very deep, thinky game that requires a lot of attention. At other times, a lighter game might be preferred. Setting can also play a role. Yet, what is often the ultimate decider is game length. Knowing when a game will end is helpful in that respect. So in this article, I want to talk about games with fixed rounds and compare them to games with endgame triggers, but no other hard limit.

The post Finding the Finish Line – fixed rounds vs end game triggers (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

Let me be clear from the start: there is no such thing as a "good game". I know, it sounds controversial. After all, at the end of every year and often many times during the year, lots of people publish lists of the best games and regale you with how "good" these games are. If you're seen as the board game expert in your family circle or friendship group, you will be asked what "good game" they should buy or play next. Yet, "good" by itself is pretty meaningless - but let me explain.

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I have long been fascinated by historical board games. I was never very good at history in school, but whenever I play a board game with a historical setting, I feel I learn something. Often, I feel compelled to find out more about the events that took place back then. No class in school ever evoked that curiosity in me. These days, I look at historical board games from an additional angle: the human element. While war games rarely identify individuals and often work on a larger scale, there is a new breed of historical games that bring players closer to the human experience. In this article, I want to explore these games further,

The post Historical Humanity – the human element in modern historical board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

As I was listening to an episode of the Ludology podcast recently, one focused on games and health, I started to think about how much the people we play with influence our gameplay experience. Selecting board games based on the audience is much more important than we may like to believe. Get it wrong, and you have one player rebelling and playing opposite to expectations, another disengaging completely, and the overall mood shifting from playful enjoyment to uncomfortable tension. In this article, I want to discuss how a mismatch can impact the enjoyment of the whole group, alter the tone of reviews, and even affect playtest outcomes.

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