“You can run a $1.5m campaign and end up with a net loss of $1m”: Why math, math, math has been key to Dux Somnium’s blossoming board game Kickstarters
Plus: The word ‘meeple’ is being trademarked in the US in reaction to ‘cease and desist’ activity from Carcassonne publisher Hans Im Glueck
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The big news everyone in the industry has been talking about this week has centred around the word meeple - an iconic term which passed into general usage in board gaming years ago for describing just about any vaguely character-shaped playing piece, as well as being used across swathes of merchandise and in the names of board games, podcasts and gaming cafes worldwide.
Far from being free to use, however, the word meeple was trademarked by Carcassonne publisher Hans Im Glueck in 2019, and the company has just created waves across the industry by sending a 'cease and desist' email calling for a crowdfunding project, Meeple Inc, to be taken down. That action has directly led to an application for meeple to be trademarked in the US. BoardGameWire has the full story, including extensive interviews with HiG and the other parties involved, below.
We also have a pair of features digging into big-money Kickstarter successes from small-scale publishers, as well as the appalling news that Dicebreaker, one of the few professional board game news websites, has been shuttered amid sweeping redundancies. The site was one of the vanishingly few board game journalism outlets whose reporting went beyond new game announcements and reviews – something BoardGameWire believes is hugely important for an industry which has quickly grown from a relatively small niche hobby into a multibillion-dollar sector. The whole team have put out some fantastic work over the years, and they deserved far, far better than to be unceremoniously dumped in the trash by IGN.
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Mike Didymus-True - Editor
“You can run a $1.5m campaign and end up with a net loss of $1m”: Why math, math, math has been key to Dux Somnium’s blossoming board game Kickstarters
Raising $1m in crowdfunding for a board game is no mean feat, even for veteran publishers with multiple campaigns under their belts. But high school sweethearts Dusty and Amy Droz managed just that last year on their first try, after more than 15,000 backers pledged funding to create Victorian-themed flower hunting game Botany. Amid juggling their wedding photograph business and managing their own lavender farm, Dusty spoke to BoardGameWire about how the lessons learned from their crowdfunding debut helped Dux Somnium score its second success in raising $550,000 for follow-up game La Fleur.
The word ‘meeple’ is being trademarked in the US in reaction to ‘cease and desist’ activity from Carcassonne publisher Hans Im Glueck
The word 'meeple', which board gamers around the world will recognise as meaning a stylised human-shaped playing piece, is being trademarked in the US in reaction to Carcassonne's German publisher Hans Im Glueck sending a 'cease and desist' email calling for a crowdfunding project to be taken down.
The letter, which has been seen by BoardGameWire, points out that Hans Im Glueck owns the German and European trademarks for the word meeple across a wide range of use cases, as well as the trademark representing the classic meeple figure – recognisable in the original Carcassonne game published in 2000.
Digging In: How a four-person UK board game design studio turned 58 million-selling video game Terraria into a tabletop crowdfunding hit
Paper Fort Games, a small UK board game design studio with a single game under its belt, could hardly have been more ambitious when it approached video game developer Re-logic with the pitch for its second game - adapting Terraria, one of the biggest-selling video games of all time, to the tabletop. That ambition has paid off in droves, however – as has Re-logic’s decision to run with Paper Fort’s vision for Terraria: The Board Game. With about 48 hours still to go on the game’s Kickstarter campaign, more than 12,500 backers have pledged over $1.7m to fund the project.
Sky Team, Captain Flip, In the Footsteps of Darwin set for sales boost after being unveiled as this year’s Spiel des Jahres award nominees
The trio of games in the running for this year’s Spiel des Jahres prize – widely considered the biggest award in board gaming – have been revealed. Sky Team, Captain Flip and In the Footsteps of Darwin have been picked as finalists for the German game of the year prize, which can explode sales by hundreds of thousands of copies for the winner – and by thousands of copies for the nominees.
Dicebreaker’s future remains unclear as silenced site makes editor-in-chief, senior staff writer redundant after IGN takeover
Board game news website Dicebreaker has made at least four of its five permanent staff members redundant, including editor-in-chief Matt Jarvis, following three weeks of silence on the website in the wake of its parent company’s takeover by IGN. One staff member tweeted on June 13 to say Dicebreaker was “over”. There has still been no official update from IGN about the redundancies or the site’s future.
New Cardboard Edison Award winner apologises for gamifying colonialist land grab for American West, promises to retheme game
The winner of this year’s Cardboard Edison Award, which aims to highlight the best in currently unpublished board games, has apologised for theming his game around the rush to colonise the American West. Myles Wallace said he was “in no way” seeking to glorify America’s westward expansion at the expense of indigenous people with his game Crowded Frontier, which sees players using worker placement, area control and resource management to outdo other pioneers staking claims on “prime real estate”.
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Other news:
Spiel Essen set for another record-breaking year as upsized show sells out for exhibitor space
Hegemony, Nucleum and Evacuation are among five games fighting for Portugal’s game of the year award
Asmodee’s Atomic Mass Games ends development of X-Wing, Armada miniatures games - ICv2
Design Zone
An extremely insightful Twitter thread from board game design royalty Eric Lang, providing advice ‘nuggets’ for new or newer designers
Bezzerwizzer, MixLore and Zygomatic: Jonas Resting-Jeppesen on pitching to Asmodee - Mojo Nation
Designer Diary: City of Six Moons by Amabel Holland - BoardGameGeek
Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games and Nick Bentley from Underdog Games on ‘pre-mortems’ and anticipating future failures
The Cardboard Philosophy Podcast explores how catch-up mechanics are used in games, and discuss whether they are even necessary
Designer Diary: The Genesis of Doggerland by Laurent Guilbert - BoardGameGeek
Pam Walls’ tips for new designers, framed around how she would go about getting a game signed by a publisher within six months
Jobs of the Week
US - Game Designer - Star Wars: Unlimited - Asmodee North America
US - Creative Strategy Director - Edge Studio / Asmodee North America
US - HR Communications Specialist - Asmodee North America
US - Chief Operating Officer - BackerKit
US - Game Line Director - Stars of Akarios - Open Owl Studios
US - International B2B Sales - Corvus Belli
US - Content Specialist- TikTok - DSS Games
UK - Copy Editor, Marketing - Games Workshop
UK - Citadel Miniatures Designer - Games Workshop
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