Sky Team has won the coveted Spiel des Jahres for 2024, pipping fellow nominees Captain Flip and In the Footsteps of Darwin to the German game of the year prize. The co-op design from Luc Remond and Scorpion Masque is the first two-player-only game to win the prize in the Spiel des Jahres’ 45-year history. Targi was nominated for the prize in 2012, seven years after the only other two-player-only nominee, Jambo. Sky Team in action Sky Team’s win marks the second time in three years a game published in Germany by Kosmos has won the top prize, following the success of Cascadia in 2022. Kosmos-pu ..read more

Financially-troubled French board game publisher FunForge is understood to be within weeks of signing a contract which will give it the funding to get its heavily-delayed Monumental Kickstarter to backers within the next two months. More than 4,200 people pledged a combined €467,000 in 2020 for a reprint of the Matthew Dunstan-designed strategy game and a new expansion, African Empires, with expectations it would arrive by April 2021. Huge delays and a rise in shipping costs saw FunForge having to swallow about $250,000 of extra costs for the campaign – and a severe lack of capital a ..read more

Kickstarter has named Exploding Kittens Inc’s senior sales manager Maggie Clayton as its new head of games, as the crowdfunding giant continues its battle against tabletop-focused competitors Gamefound and BackerKit. Clayton spent almost three years at Exploding Kittens as senior sales manager and North American sales manager, following a four-year stint working in sales and marketing at tabletop publishers Greater Than Games. She replaces Jon Ritter-Roderick, who will lead creator strategy on the new Kickstarter Performance team after two years as head of games – one of the crowdfunding heavy ..read more

Gaming giant Hasbro has named long-serving Blizzard senior exec John Hight as its new president of Wizards of the Coast and digital gaming, three months after the resignation of former incumbent Cynthia Williams. Hight takes on responsibility for leading strategy at Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons as part of the role, in addition to overseeing Hasbro’s network of gaming studios and digital licensing agreements. He previously spent 12 years at video games major Blizzard Entertainment, where he was senior vice president and general manager of the Warcraft franchise. He directed d ..read more

Africa’s longest-running board games convention has returned to Kickstarter after two years of self-financing, as soaring inflation in its home country of Nigeria weighs heavily on the event’s finances. The African Boardgames Convention has grown rapidly over the past seven years, with organisers hoping to draw in 3,000 people for this year’s event – well up from the 750 recorded in 2022 and about 1,000 who attended in November last year. AB Con co-host Oluwafemi Olusanya AB Con raised more than $23,700 through its last Kickstarter campaign in 2021, before becoming self-funding across the last ..read more

Heat: Pedal to the Metal co-designer Asger Harding Granerud has completed a full lap of the board game industry since he began designing games just over a decade ago, having launched a distributor, retail shop and design studio in addition to seeing his motor racing co-design accelerate into the BoardGameGeek Top 40. Granerud sat down with BoardGameWire to discuss his learning curve as a designer and publisher, the challenges of running a three-person indie studio, and how to avoid common pitfalls in bringing your game to market. Hi Asger! Thanks so much for speaking with us, really looking fo ..read more

Academic researchers planning board game-related projects are being offered up to €20,000 in grant money through this year’s programme from Game in Lab, which was co-created by Asmodee in 2018. Game in Lab looks to “promote the valorisation and recognition of board games as a generator of societal value” with its annual grants for academic research. The 2024 call for projects is open until September 6, with special attention being given this year to projects investigating sustainability and justice, 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons, health people and planet, and cultural heritage. Game in La ..read more

Bigger money crowdfunding projects inevitably take up the lion’s share of discussion in board game circles, but the vast majority of projects inevitably run on a smaller scale – and with smaller margins for error. Managing production at that scale can be a significant challenge, but is one frequently faced by first-time designers and more established board game publishers alike. Seppy Yoon from board game publisher Fight In A Box has successfully managed a string of small Kickstarter projects – and one which failed to reach its goal. Amid raising funds for the company’s latest Kickstarter proj ..read more

GAMA’s annual tabletop gaming convention Origins has sealed a record post-Covid attendance, with visitor numbers up 10% compared to last year’s event. More than 17,700 people visited this year’s fair in Columbus, Ohio between June 19 and 23, underscoring a steady recovery from the lows of about 10,500 and 11,500 posted in 2021 and 2022, when many people were still reluctant to attend large gatherings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The recovery in Origins’ visitor numbers has not been as marked as other large conventions, however – Gen Con had already rebounded to its 70,000 ..read more

Petersen Games, the Cthulhu Wars publisher left struggling to fulfill more than $2m of Kickstarter projects after hitting severe financial issues during the coronavirus pandemic, has been bailed out by fledgling board game publisher and manufacturer Quimbley’s Toys and Games. Quimbley’s, which was launched out of Salt Lake City last year, has agreed to manufacture and fulfill all of Petersen’s outstanding Kickstarter projects, starting with Hyperspace before moving on to Glorantha: The Gods War 2. Petersen Games will cease to be a publisher and manufacturer of games following the deal, instead ..read more