Stonemaier Games’ diversification of its flagship bestseller Wingspan into a trilogy of standalone titles powered the company to record revenues of more than $25m last year – eclipsing its previous annual high from the post-Covid board game boom in 2021.
While the bulk of that lifetime figure is from 2019 release Wingspan and ‘standalone expansion’ Wingspan Asia, at about 2.6 million copies, the addition of Connie Vogelmann’s Wyrmspan in 2024 and the David Gordon and Michael O’Connell design Finspan last year have created a hefty boost for Stonemaier’s overall sales.
The latter pair now have more than 685,000 copies in circulation – a figure which already outstrips the roughly 600,000 copies of Scythe, Stonemaier’s biggest seller outside of the ‘span’ trilogy, despite that game being in print for a decade.
Speaking to BoardGameWire about the latest annual results, company co-founder Jamey Stegmaier reiterated his regular refrain that “number go up” was “simply not on our list of goals at all”, adding, “I understand that the annual revenue is an interesting number to poke at, but honestly that number could go up or down by many millions of dollars and I wouldn’t care as long as we’re bring joy to people.”
He said at the time that he had no concerns about the fall in revenue, saying, “Based on our reach and evergreen sales, I think a ‘normal’ annual revenue for us is somewhere between $15m to $20m, with the exact amount depending on when certain products ship.
“In that way, I think 2021 was an outlier (probably pandemic related) – not only was it a very strong year for Wingspan, but we also saw excellent evergreen sales for Viticulture and Scythe, and we had one of our biggest releases that year in Red Rising.”
But strong sales this year of the ‘span’ trio among a busy slate of other Stonemaier releases has pushed company revenue beyond those 2021 heights, with Stegmaier telling BoardGameWire yesterday, “After hearing from customers for a long time that they wanted the Wingspan model applied to other creatures, I’m really glad we’ve been able to serve them via Wyrmspan and Finspan.
“It also takes pressure off of Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave. Also… it gives us some wiggle room to take on riskier projects, though any game is a risk – we never really know how a game will do.”
One game which could arguably be put in that category is Stonemaier’s 2025 release Vantage – a non-campaign, open-world-style exploration game designed by Stegmaier which was in development for seven years.
Stonemaier printed 64,000 copies of Vantage last year, with Stegmaier telling BoardGameWire: “There’s no other tabletop game that does what Vantage does, so I see it hitting tabletops for years to come.”
He said, “We’re currently initiating Vantage’s fourth reprint, which is remarkable for an expensive game just eight months into its lifecycle.
“I’m so glad this labor of love from the last eight years of my life is resonating with people who want to go on an open-world, first-person adventure without the need to commit to a campaign game.
“Also, unlike all other new releases, Vantage had so much text that it didn’t have any localization partners in 2025 – they needed a lot more time, so 10,000 units of non-English versions are coming in 2026.”
Vantage, published by Stonemaier Games
He also highlighted the success of superhero-themed, tableau-building trick-taker Origin Story, which printed 33,500 copies, and added that more quick-playing, smaller-box titles are on the way from the publisher – including a more lightweight Wingspan title which the company says is playable in about 30 minutes.
Stegmaier said, “I love Origin Story, and I’m excited that we’ve packed so much game into a smaller box that you can teach and play in 45 minutes.
“I would say that’s the realm of the smaller Wingspan game we’re releasing in mid-2026, and I’m wrapping up something kind of in the same realm (in terms of size and length) for 2027.”
Going smaller still, Stonemaier’s 18-card co-operative micro-game Smitten and its sequel also performed well last year, Stegmaier said, with the number of copies printed up 23,000 compared to 2024.
He said, “These are both very small, very humble games that serve well as add-ons, stocking stuffers, and suitcase inclusions for travel. I’m honestly kind of surprised they’ve sold so well, given how different they are from our core offerings.
“That said, they offer more of a trickle of sales through any sales partner – a dozen here each month to distributors, a dozen there to retailers, a few dozen on our webstores.”
Stegmaier added, “The one product for which we probably over-forecasted was Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy. It has sold very well (over 60,000 units for an expansion is remarkable), but I think we probably could have made 75,000 units and later reprinted 25,000 instead of printing 100,000 up front.
“Stamp Swap has done fine [BGW note: 34,000 copies printed in its 2024 release year, but none in 2025], but I think it’s indicative that it’s more difficult than ever for a good game to break through.”
Cards from 2025 Stonemaier release Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy
Stegmaier has been at the vocal forefront of the board game industry’s fight against volatile US tariff policy since President Trump’s inauguration last January, which has seen several board game businessesshutter their operations, lay off staff and hike the prices of their games to cover the unexpected costs.
He said in a blog post at the time, “Every day for the last ten months, I’ve lived in fear that the executive branch of my own country would raise our import taxes to an extreme level that would significantly damage Stonemaier Games and the thousands of small businesses seeking to serve their US customers, retailers, and employees.
“So when the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the tariff taxes and the way they were implemented were unconstitutional, I had a huge sense of relief. Relief that small businesses can no longer be used as pawns in a global game. Relief that the whim of one person can no longer effectively change the landed cost of our product from $10 to $25.
“Yes, there are still legal ways for the executive branch to impose tariff taxes. They seem really passionate about making small businesses in the US pay more taxes. But these methods have limits: For example, the new tariff tax is 15% (that’s the max it can be), and it needs congressional approval to extend beyond 150 days.
“In the immediate future, I don’t think we’ll see much of an impact on prices, as anything in stock in the US already had its tariff tax paid when it entered the country (if it was manufactured elsewhere). My perception is that many businesses avoided raising prices and instead just ate the extra costs (that’s what we did; we did not increase any prices).
“There is also the possibility of tariff tax refunds. To date, Stonemaier Games has paid just under $300,000 in tariff taxes to the US government. I’m not counting on getting any of that back – it will be nice if we do, and I hope that other businesses do, but the level of uncertainty isn’t something for which we can plan.
“My hope, as always, is that what happens next will help me best serve my coworkers, our independent contractors and partners, and our customers in the US and around the world (consumers, retailers, and distributors). I wish the same for all other small businesses.”
Stegmaier told BoardGameWire that he was “really excited” about the company’s 2026 line-up, which kicked off with the Wingspan Americas and Viticulture: Bordeaux expansions, and also includes a two-player Scythe vs Expeditions duelling game which expands both those titles as well as working as a standalone design.
He said, “I’m excited for the opportunity to serve fans through expansions for Wingspan, Viticulture, Finspan, Scythe, and Expeditions, along with the new Euphoria board.
“The main challenge is communicating what makes these products unique and special. For the first time in a while (since Apiary, as I recall), we’ll have a new game in our original sweet spot of mid-weight euro games – that’s the Smoking Bones game in Q4.”
Stonemaier Lifetime and 2025 Sales
Wingspan & Wingspan Asia: 2,639,429 lifetime units, up 229,686 compared to 2024
Wyrmspan: 451,994 units +148,598
Finspan: 233,584 units (new release)
Vantage: 64,000 units (new release)
Scythe: 601,102 units +41,500
Origin Story: 33,500 units (new release)
Tokaido: 29,500 units (new release)
Tokaido Duo: 27,834 units (new release)
Smitten & Smitten 2: 38,000 units +23,000
Apiary: 55,004 units +8,500
Viticulture: 273,584 units +6,750
Rolling Realms & Rolling Realms Redux: 62,000 units +6,000
Tapestry: 91,650 units +4,000
Between Two Castles: (58,000 units) received an Essential Edition in 2025 – 8,000 copies made, about 5,000 sold
Games which did not receive new printings in 2025:
France’s highest-profile board game prize, the As d’Or, has unveiled Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini’s Toy Battle as the winner of its main award for 2026.
The family weight, toy-themed wargame fought off competition from Flip 7 and Rebirth to scoop this year’s prize, while Stefan Feld design Civolution won out against Arcs and Ants to win the expert game award.
This year’s As d’Or saw a significant change to its rules, with organisers requiring entries to name artists on the game boxes for first time.
Paul Mafayon was the artist for Toy Battle, while Civolution was illustrated by Dennis Lohausen, Zenith by Xavier Gueniffey Durin and Mooki Island by Mélanie Bardin, also known as Seppyo.
The award, which traces its history back to 1988, has required entries to show designer names on their game boxes for several years, in addition to requirements for the game to be published in French and available in the French market during the preceding year.
A statement from Philippe Mouret and Julia Marcelin, both heads of studio at Toy Battle publisher Asmodee, said “Tonight’s recognition first belongs to the authors and illustrator whose talent and vision brought Toy Battle to life.
“We also want to thank all the teams involved for their dedication, as well as the Festival’s jury for this distinction. This award is a wonderful acknowledgment of the creativity and vitality of today’s tabletop industry.”
It added, “It also reflects the current trend: playing games as a couple, and smaller-format games are appealing to the public, and publishers are offering more and more of them.”
Viking-themed card shedding game Odin won last year’s As d’Or, while city-building eurogame Kutná Hora triumphed in the Expert Game category at the 2025 awards, Operation Noisettes won the children’s game prize, and Behind scooped the “Initié” award – which targets regular board game players ready for more challenging mechanisms.
The As d’Or was launched 38 years ago to highlight the best games available at France’s Festival International des Jeux in Cannes. The award was merged with the Jeu de l’Année in 2005.
More than 100,000 people attended this year’s FIJ between February 25 and March 1, down on the record 110,000 admissions across the five-day event last year.
The 2026 As d’Or Awards
As d’Or
Winner: Toy Battle, designed by Alessandro Zucchini and Paolo Mori, published by Repos (Asmodee) Flip 7, Eric Olsen – Catch Up Games Rebirth, Reiner Knizia – Lucky Duck Games and Mighty Boards
As d’Or-Jeu de l’Année – Enfant / Children
Winner: Mooki Island, Florian Sirieix – Le Scorpion Masqué Archeo, Thomas Favrelière, Adrien Pédron – Gigamic The Twisted Spooky Night, Wolfgang Dirscherl, Wolfgang Lehmann – Drei Magier Spiele
As d’Or-Jeu de l’Année – Initié / Intermediate
Winner: Zenith, Grégory Grard, Mathieu Roussel – PlayPunk First Rat, Gabriele Ausiello, Virginio Gigli – Pegasus Spiele Take Time Alexi Piovesan, Julien Prothière – Libellud
As d’Or-Jeu de l’Année – Expert / Expert Game
The supreme discipline for all strategists and frequent players.
Winner: Civolution, Stefan Feld–Grail Games, Deep Print Games Arcs, Cole Wehrle – Leder Games Ants, Renato Ciervo, Andrea Robbiani – Cranio Creations and Intrafin
Board game, TCG and comics distribution major Universal Distribution has agreed an exclusive deal with Dice Throne to become the sole distributor of the company’s products in the US and Canada.
Dice Throne games and add-on packs have previously been distributed by companies including Universal and ACD Distribution, as well as Alliance Game Distributors, which Universal acquired in May last year.
The dice and card-focused combat game has become a crowdfunding heavyweight following its original $180,000 Kickstarter project from Mind Bottling Games in 2018, going on to raise almost $13m across a string of subsequent campaigns.
Universal said the exclusive distribution deal “marks a significant step in supporting Dice Throne’s expanding presence in retail stores, especially as the brand continues to grow its Organized Play program and introduce new product formats designed to increase accessibility and drive community engagement”.
Dice Throne’s Organized Play program is designed to help stores build consistent communities and host recurring events, with kits on offer including promo items, prize support and products needed to run casual or competitive play.
The publisher has also recently introduced a new single hero pack format, with the aim of offering a lower entry point for new players and flexibility for collectors and Organized Play participants.
Dice Throne CEO Casey Sershon, who took on the top role at the company at the start of last year, said, “We are excited to partner with Universal Distribution as our exclusive distributor in the US and Canada.
“Their expertise and strong retail network will help bring Dice Throne to even more players across North America.”
The long-running Cardboard Edison Award, which aims to celebrate the best in unpublished board game designs, has revealed its latest finalists after whittling them down from a record-breaking 396 entries.
This year’s 20 finalists include a magnet-based vertical castle-building game, a medium-weight strategy title centred around wedding planning, and a Persian folklore-themed action selection design which sees players use astrolabes to read stars and hunt demons.
Cardboard Edison’s annual entry numbers have soared since the first competition attracted 109 designs in 2016 – almost doubling to 192 within the next two years, and more than doubling between the pandemic year of 2020 and this year’s contest.
Part of that growth has been down to the competition’s growing pedigree of winners that have gone on to be published by well-known studios.
They include Winter, published by Devir, Castell from Renegade Game Studios and Umbra Via from Pandasaurus Games, as well as 2023 champion Diatoms, which followed a successful Kickstarter campaign with retail publication by 25th Century Games in partnership with Ludoliminal.
Still from the pitch video for StrongHolds by Nelson de Castro, one of this year’s Cardboard Edison Award finalists
The rising numbers of entries has also been boosted by the international growth of the award, which attracted submissions from designers in 34 different countries this year.
Just over half of the submissions were from the US, about 8% from Australia, 6% from Canada and 4% from the UK, with “a decent number” from Germany, Spain, New Zealand and The Netherlands.
Cardboard Edison was launched in 2012 as a board game design studio and hub, which has since expanded from a well-read industry blog into a vast repository of information for board game designers.
Suzanne Zinsli, who created the award a decade ago with the help of fellow Cardboard Edison founder Chris Zinsli, told BoardGameWire it was “crazy” how it had grown globally, adding that she was “humbled that people from so many different countries trust us with their games and want our feedback”.
She said one of the major challenges around the award’s rapid growth was bringing in enough judges to properly assess the rising numbers of entries.
Zinsli said, “Honestly, finding enough people to judge all the entries has probably been the toughest part of running the Cardboard Edison Award every year.
Cardboard Edison co-founder Suzanne Zinsli
“It’s a big ask, and we’re very particular about who we invite. We want judges we can trust to be objective, provide great feedback, and who have the experience to back it up.
“That was our biggest hurdle this year, but it actually worked out great. We had enough judges, they were almost all able to hit their targets, and it ended up being one of our smoother years overall.”
When asked if any particular trends or themes were noticeable among this year’s cohort of entries, Zinsli told BoardGameWire, “I definitely noticed a few! For mechanisms, I saw several trick-taking legacy games, which is so cool. I love trick-taking and I like legacy games, so seeing them paired together felt brilliant.
“I was excited when I saw the first one, then I saw a second, and then a third! It’s something I haven’t really seen in the past, and now suddenly there were at least three entries, and there might have been more, since I only personally judged about 60 games. I love it – I’m totally here for it.
“As for themes, I wouldn’t say there was one ‘big’ topic, but I saw a lot of games that felt very personal, things based on the designers’ own lives or lifestyles.
“It felt like more games than ever had a message to send or a story to tell. It was really nice to get a glimpse into the designers’ lives and see what’s important to them through their work.”
The 2026 Cardboard Edison Award is its second since the organiser revealed it was changing its judging process, after a backlash over a colonisation-themed winner from 2024.
Suzanne and Chris Zinsli said it “became clear there was a blind spot in our judging process” after the response to the prize being given to Crowded Frontier, which was themed around the rush to colonise the American West.
Speaking to BoardGameWire this week about the impact of those changes, Suzanne Zinsli said, “I’m going to cautiously say I think the changes have helped, since we didn’t see any similar issues last year.
“As for the future, I’m sure things will continue to evolve. There’s nothing on the books right now, but as the industry and society change, we want to keep up.
“I’m also realistic, and I’m sure we’ll mess something up again at some point. But when we do, we’ll course-correct. We’re ready to change as needed.”
Still from the pitch video for Braggin’ Wranglers by Luke Wolyncewicz, one of this year’s Cardboard Edison Award finalists
In terms of advice for potential future applicants, Zinsli told BoardGameWire, “If I had to pick one thing to focus on: have your game blind (or unguided) playtested.
“Every year, I read rulebooks where I simply can’t figure out how to play. That really hurts your chances! You might have a fantastic game, but if I can’t play it without you there to teach me, I’ll never know how good it is.
“On the flip side, the biggest thing to avoid is ignoring the three-minute video limit. We ask for three minutes, but we often get videos that are seven, 10, or even 20 minutes long. Also, don’t send us a video from five years ago.
“If the video hasn’t changed in five years, it makes me think the game hasn’t made any progress either. We want to see the current version of your work!”
This year’s finalists will now enter a second round of judging in order to crown the winner, with a champion usually announced in May of each year.
The game, designed by former Ravensburger game development intern Sammy Salkind, puts players in the shoes of startup founders battling to build their internet startups during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.
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Cardboard Edison finalists 2026:
Astrolabe by Yasaman Farazan 2-5 players 45-90 minutes Players are exorcists in a Persian folklore world, using astrolabes to read the stars, hunt demons, and bind them into artifacts. Each round, players secretly rotate their astrolabe to choose an action, a number, and a time of day, then reveal and resolve actions in ascending order. Pitch video
Black Ruth of Dogtown by Keith DeViere Donaldson 1-4 players 30 minutes Black Ruth of Dogtown is a procedural oracle system driven by a circular mancala drafting mechanism, where players construct a three-by-three grid to optimize set collection and speculative scoring in service of a final narrative divination resolution. Pitch video
Braggin’ Wranglers by Luke Wolyncewicz 2-8 players 15 minutes Braggin’ Wranglers sees players catching animals to score points using a unique adjustable lasso—but there’s a twist! Turn order is decided by your lasso size, which you secretly set at the start of each round! Pitch video
Catacombes de Paris by Nicholas Henning 2-5 players 70-110 minutes In Catacombes de Paris, players take on the solemn duty of transporting the remains of millions through the bustling streets of 18th-century Paris to build their personal ossuary in the famed Catacombs. This highly thematic experience combines a strategic pick-up-and-deliver system with an engaging polyomino mini-game for building out your ossuary board. Pitch video
Deductive Seasoning by Eric Ledger 2-5 players 20-40 minutes Deductive Seasoning is a family-friendly deduction card game where you are a food scientist who has concocted a dish using a secret ingredient from the Periodic Table of Flavor. You must figure out other players’ secret ingredient through careful play and observation. Pitch video
Goa Kranti by Andy Desa 2-4 players 60-90 minutes A cooperative game about an overlooked chapter in history: Goa’s struggle for independence from Portugal (1932-1961). Players embody historical freedom fighters choosing between violent resistance and peaceful satyagraha. Core mechanisms include push-your-luck resource gathering, deck improvement, and bag-building for a pivotal mid-game check when India gains independence. Pitch video
Hatchlings by Alan Leduc 2-5 players 30 minutes You’re a Nature Spirit with one job. Get your baby sea turtles out of their comfortable nest, across the beach, and into the water where they belong, thus earning praise from Mother Nature. It would be easy if it weren’t for the relentless bully Steven Seagull and the other Spirits competing for glory. Pitch video
Hybrid Hijinks by Jena Keesee 3-5 players 60 minutes A competitive game, creating hybrid creatures and utilizing variable, configurable player powers to impress visitors and earn the most approval for shifting prowess. Pitch video
Ladybugs by Michael Posada 1-4 players 30 minutes Push your luck by rolling dice that represent a colony of ladybugs flying over a field of flowers. Your rolls determine which flowers you add to your garden, which scoring conditions you unlock, and how many points you earn. Pitch video
Limelight by Cameron Fleming 3-6 players 45 minutes Limelight is a push-your-luck deckbuilder about staging a Broadway show. Over three Acts, you’ll audition talent, hire crew, and rehearse your show, trying to achieve the perfect mix of cards on Opening Night. Pitch video
Match Patch by Jack Rosen 3-5 players 20 minutes Match Patch is a game about the benefits of farming using companion planting methods. Mechanically, it is a card-matching race game where players try to diversify their harvested crops. Pitch video
Midnight Spawn by Jayson Farrell 1-4 players 60 minutes Midnight Spawn is a game about the mysterious and incredible deep sea. In this game you’re a researcher in your deep-submergence vehicle, or DSV. You’ll discover strange creatures and observe them eat or move other creatures, manipulating the shared board. You can also upgrade your DSV with tech cards or boost your score with research cards. Pitch video
Moonforge by Pawel Owsianka 1-4 players 90 minutes In Moonforge, players command large space facilities capable of capturing asteroids, extracting valuable resources (energy, metal and minerals), and upgrading their operations with new modules and functions. Resources can be sold for currency points, while depleted asteroids contribute material toward the creation of a new moon. Pitch video
PiramiDuel by Guillermo Viciano 2 players 20-30 minutes A game for two players where you will explore Ancient Egypt, fighting to claim the most influential pyramids. Pitch video
Possessions by Dan Nichols 2-4 players 60-90 minutes Possessions is a competitive strategy game where you play as ghosts with one hour to finish your unfinished business and fulfill your final wishes. As the clock ticks down, strive to get the most value from your secret ambitions by possessing your family’s last living heirs. Pitch video
StrongHolds by Nelson de Castro 2 players 40-60 minutes StrongHolds is a competitive castle-building game featuring magnetic tiles that allow players to build vertically unlike any other game. Harness your creativity and vision as a Medieval Architect, while sabotaging your opponent by tossing and sliding siege tiles to topple their progress. Pitch video
The Leftovers by Larry Ted McBride 2-4 players 25 minutes The Leftovers is a cooperative trick-taking game of community deck-building, resource management, strategy, and story. With your party of magical foodfolk, you will work together to complete objectives and avoid vicious food fiends as you explore the abandoned halls of the Enchanted Ladle. Pitch video
The Roots of All Evil by Dean Burry 2-4 players 15-20 minutes Be the first animal cultist to summon the tree demon Blackthorn by creating ever-expanding rings of root cards in which to place your sacred offerings. Pitch video
The Wedding Planner by Jose Lema 2-4 players 60-90 minutes You just got engaged! Now you have 12 months to plan the wedding of your dreams. The Wedding Planner is a medium-weight strategy game that captures the authentic pressure of the process: an overwhelming workload, finite resources, and the constant tension between vision and reality. Pitch video
Wunderkammer by Rosco Schock 2-4 players 45 minutes Wunderkammer is a set collection style game with a unique simultaneous silent auction acquisition mechanism. Each curiosity that you collect also has two attributes so the scoring of your collection is scored in each dimension. Pitch video
Cardboard Alchemy has taken the next step in its rapid expansion by shifting to distribute its own games into retail, powered by the evergreen success of its dragon-themed design Flamecraft.
More than 400,000 copies of the worker placement game have now been sold, company co-founder Peter Vaughan told BoardGameWire, creating an early smash hit which has underpinned Cardboard Alchemy’s growth since the game’s $2m Kickstarter campaign five years ago.
Vaughan said Flamecraft “and the fans that love it” had been a “game changer” for the company, allowing it to quickly expand from its original two-person team of Vaughan and fellow co-founder Brad Brooks, and paving the way for subsequent successful releases such as Andromeda’s Edge and Critter Kitchen.
He said, “We knew soon after the first crowdfunding campaign that this game would be an evergreen game in our line. At that point, we committed to making more promos, an expansion, merchandise that our fans wanted, and have started work on a standalone sequel game, FlameBound.”
The publisher has decided to make the two-player travel-friendly title its first to be self-released and distributed into retail, ending a five-year partnership with Lucky Duck Games and its worldwide localization and licensing division GPN.
Flamecraft Duals || Kickstarter image
The new system sees it enter a partner programme with publisher Allplay, in which Cardboard Alchemy will handle and manage its own retail sales, distribution, conventions and localization, with the latter providing global warehouses, pledge management and e-commerce services.
Vaughan said, “We are excited that retailers can get access to our games and other publishers’ games in one hub, for optimum savings”, adding: “The biggest challenges so far are the ramp up of logistics, operations and sales responsibilities.
“This can be a tough task for a mostly creative team, but we have the players in place and have taken our time to implement this stage.
“We know there will be many things to learn along the way for our small company, but we feel our great games will continue to thrive in retail environments.”
Part of Cardboard Alchemy’s expansion to direct retail has included the recent hire of Patrick Fitzgibbon as hobby retail manager, following seven years of sales at companies including Genius Games, Elf Creek Games, Greater than Games and, most recently, Quartermaster Logistics.
The team also includes Nicole Cutler, who joined the business as director of operations at the end of 2024 after several years working on production and logistics at Arcane Wonders and Pandasaurus Games.
Cutler said that demand for Flamecraft Duals had “far exceeded even our expectations” ahead of its official January 28 release date, with the company moving forward with a third print run of the game before it was even available in wider retail.
That confidence was partly inspired by Cardboard Alchemy’s picking up a big early win in the mass market, with the company agreeing a deal with retail giant Barnes & Noble to get the game on its shelves from early last month.
Vaughan told BoardGameWire, “It is a thrill to see our third title in Barnes & Noble. There has been such a growing diversity of games carried by this strong player in the mass market space.
“Flamecraft and Critter Kitchen are on the shelves at B&N and it seemed a natural fit to add Flamecraft Duals to the party.
“We are honored that Barnes & Noble would commit so early to Flamecraft Duals, and place it prominently in their stores to start the year.”
For global distribution, Vaughan said, “Cardboard Alchemy localized our games previously via the Global Publishing Network, a part of Lucky Duck Games.
“We are thankful for that network, as it has placed Flamecraft in 25-plus languages, Critter Kitchen in a ‘baker’s dozen’ of regions and Andromeda’s Edge in 11 languages so far.
“We now look to work with these publishers directly and invite more partnerships worldwide to distribute our titles.”
Those partners will include existing Cardboard Alchemy collaborator CrowD Games, which previously localised Flamecraft into Russian via GPN, and will now do so for Andromeda’s Edge, Critter Kitchen and Flamecraft Duals.
Manny Vega design Flamecraft, published by Cardboard Alchemy
Like many overnight successes, Cardboard Alchemy’s was actually multiple years in the making. The company was launched by Vaughan and Brooks in 2020 after years of collaboration between the pair across Vaughan’s indie design and development studio Squirmy Beast and Dwellings of Eldervale publisher Breaking Games.
Squirmy Beast partnered with Breaking Games to publish Letter Tycoon in 2015 – with Vaughan providing some of the artwork – and a year later Vaughan joined Breaking as director of development, overseeing games including Brooks’ Rise of Tribes.
Cardboard Alchemy’s first Kickstarter, for Mission Catastrophe in 2020, raised just over $100,000, before the success of the Flamecraft campaign a year later catapulted the company into ongoing success.
The publisher’s next planned Kickstarter will see it crank up the complexity compared to its Flamecraft titles, with the launch of a campaign for Brooks’ co-design Whisperwood, a bag-building heavy strategy game, later this spring.
That game has been co-designed by Asking for Trobils designers Erin McDonald and Cardboard Alchemy developer Christian Strain, the latter of whom also co-designed the solo mode for Critter Kitchen.
Vaughan said, “We’ll be planning over-the-top production (as usual), bringing everything we know about game production to date to the forefront of crowdfunding.”
Asmodee posted record sales of €524m during the last quarter of 2025 despite a slump in its US performance, with trading card game earnings in Europe acting as a driving force for the business.
The board game giant’s overall net sales jumped 22.2% across October to December 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, with the performance of products it distributes for other companies surging more than 50%.
Net sales for games published by Asmodee itself fell almost 13% year-on-year in the quarter, however, weighed down by US net sales slumping 23% to €70.4m.
That drop saw the US fall behind both France and the UK in Q3 in terms of the company’s highest-performing countries for net sales, with France surging 47% year-on-year to over €111m, and the UK growing 41% to €82.7m.
The US had previously outperformed all other countries for Q3 net sales for at least the past two years, Asmodee’s quarterly sales results show. Prior to that, individual country data for Asmodee was not publicly released while under former owner Embracer Group.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler said in the company’s latest quarterly report that successful TCG releases in Europe across Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering and One Piece had driven the record Q3 results.
He added that lower sell-in to larger retailer for some of its own products had contributed to the sinking US result in Q3, despite saying that “overall consumer demand on our products remained stable”.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler
The company’ chief financial officer, Andrea Gasperini, added in the company’s Q3 earnings call that “unfavorable FX exchange rate exposure since the beginning of the year” was also to blame, as was a “normalising” of the performance of Asmodee’s own TCG Star Wars Unlimited compared to its launch year of 2024.
Koegler added during the Q3 earnings call, “Let’s remember also that the beginning of the year has been quite shaken up in everybody’s supply strategies – ours, the retailers – by the various announcements on the tariffs. And I think that it has been a constantly evolving situation where I’m quite proud of how the teams reacted.
“Once we’ve said that, of course, let’s not underestimate the impact of foreign exchange, which is quite material in the decrease. And secondly, what’s important to look at beyond our own sell-in performance, which is what we sell to retailers, is the sell-out.
“As I did say we have, since the beginning of the year, overperformed the market, and even in Q3 it was a quarter for the Christmas period that was very much focused on lower price point products. We captured very strong growth with Exploding Kittens and did have some headwinds on higher price point products.
“But I would say in the grand scheme of things: first of all, it’s fine, our portfolio is diversified, and secondly, it’s limited to the US, so we should expect some better trends in the future.”
When asked in the Q3 earnings call how confident he was in Asmodee’s own studios’ ability to return to growth, Koegler said, “Yes, we had some negative developments on the games, but if you look at the sellout, which is the sales to consumers in the US, for instance, the market was relatively flat, and our sellout was in line with this, which means that we still have positive outlooks for the future.
“Our performance was impacted, especially by, I would say, some inventory positions and retailers’ purchase strategies. Now, if we look forward, first of all, the vast majority of our revenue is coming from existing titles. That’s the first thing that’s important, and we are constantly working on engaging consumers on those.
“You saw the recent announcements on Catan and Ticket to Ride with Netflix, all of this with the objective to further increase brand awareness and visibility, and in the future, generate additional sales.
“If we look at some of the products we’re looking forward to in terms of new releases for next year, we have announced the new LEGO game in the Ninjago franchise being released the same time as the Ninjago anniversary.
“We have Azul Kids coming out. We have Dino Picnic, we have the future sets of Star Wars Unlimited. We have a refresh of Ticket to Ride Europe. So I would say that it will be still an active year.
“What’s important, if you look back at the historical performance of Asmodee, is that some years it’s strongly driven by trading cards, and in the other years, usually when trading cards are less strong, you have a relay that’s coming from board games.”
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler was asked during the company’s quarterly results presentation whether the company was ready to make “more meaningful” acquisitions rather than small bolt-on deals.
He said, “Without being specific, the activity in the pipeline is in accordance with our plan. The smaller acquisitions are faster. IP acquisitions and asset deals are faster to execute. I’m satisfied.”
Board game crowdfunding major CMON has continued its battle to recover from heavy losses by selling Sheriff of Nottingham to Asmodee – its third IP sale to the company in the past eight months.
The bluffing and set collection game will become part of the Z-Man Games studio, a spokesperson for Asmodee told BoardGameWire, joining titles including Pandemic, Citadels and Love Letter.
CMON bought Sheriff of Nottingham from Brazilian publisher Galapagos Jogos in 2016 following the success of the English version of the game, published by Arcane Wonders two years earlier as the first game in the Dice Tower Essentials line – games Dice Tower founder Tom Vasel “personally loves and believes should be an essential part of any gamer’s collection”.
CMON announced towards the end of last month that more IP sales could be on the way, alongside making an apology for delays to its outstanding crowdfunds – some of which are now running almost two years beyond initial delivery estimates.
More details on the effectiveness of CMON’s fight to stem its losses should become clear by the end of next month, with the publisher required by Hong Kong stock exchange rules to submit its annual results by that date.
Asmodee’s reignited acquisitions strategy, meanwhile, has so far been limited to the three IP purchases from CMON – a far cry from the explosive growth the company undertook after being bought by private equity firm Eurazeo in 2014.
Its previous buying spree saw it acquire more than 40 companies and IPs, including over 20 game studios such as Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Lookout Games, Catan Studio and Z-Man Games.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler was asked during the company’s quarterly results presentation yesterday whether the company was ready to make “more meaningful” acquisitions rather than small bolt-on deals.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler
He said, “Without being specific, the activity in the pipeline is in accordance with our plan. The smaller acquisitions are faster. IP acquisitions and asset deals are faster to execute. I’m satisfied.”
He added in response to a later question about Asmodee’s acquisition plans, “Our M&A engine is nicely running up. I will not comment on specific ongoing projects, but as I did say, I’m satisfied with what we have in the workings.
“What we’re looking for, as you asked, is in priority studios and intellectual properties, because we already have a very strong distribution reach. And then maybe to complement some distribution reach here and there, depending on the strategic advantages this would provide us in specific territories.
“But again, I think the priority is on IPs and creative capabilities, which is what we have been delivering up until now.”
Speaking on the Sheriff of Nottingham acquisitions, an Asmodee spokesperson told BoardGameWire, “Sheriff of Nottingham is a well-established evergreen card game centered on bluffing, negotiation, and high player interaction.
“We believe this game will be complementing and strengthening our existing portfolio within our social playtype, a category that is growing.”
Ryan Dancey, a more than 30-year veteran of the tabletop gaming industry, has lost his COO job at publisher Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) a day after saying AI could generate game ideas as good as his company’s titles Tiny Towns and Cubitos.
Much of the ire was directed at Dancey’s response to a post comment which argued that “AI wouldn’t come up with Tiny Towns or Flip Seven or Cubitos because it doesn’t understand the human element of fun”.
Dancey posted in reply, “I have zero reason to believe that an AI couldn’t ‘come up with Tiny Towns or Flip Seven or Cubitos’. I can prompt any of several AIs RIGHT NOW [Dancey’s emphasis] and get ideas for games as good as those.
“The gaming industry doesn’t exist because humans create otherwise unobtainable ideas. It exists because many many previous games exist, feed into the minds of designers, who produce new variants on those themes. People then apply risk capital against those ideas to see if there’s a product market fit. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there is not. (In fact, much more often than not).”
“Extremely occasionally (twice in my lifetime: D&D and Magic: the Gathering) a human has produced an all new form of gaming entertainment. Those moments are so rare and incandescent that they echo across decades.
“Game publishing isn’t an industry of unique special ideas. It’s an industry about execution, marketing, and attention to detail. All things AIs are great at.”
Alderac CEO John Zinser, who has led the Space Base and Love Letter publisher for three decades, moved quickly to distance the company from Dancey’s comments, posting on BlueSky yesterday, “I want to be clear where I stand. For 30+ years, AEG has worked with human designers to bring games to life.
“That creative partnership, the collaboration, the shared spark, is what makes tabletop special. That is not changing.”
Several hours later, Zinser confirmed in a Facebook post that Dancey and AEG had “parted ways” after more than a decade.
Zinser said, “This is not an easy post to write. Ryan is my best friend and has been a significant part of AEG’s story, and I am personally grateful for the years of work, passion, and intensity he brought to the company. We have built a lot together.
“As AEG moves into its next chapter, leadership alignment and clarity matter more than ever. This transition reflects that reality.
“Our commitment to our designers, partners, retailers, and players remains unchanged. We will continue building great games through collaboration, creativity, and trust.
“I expect Ryan will have much success in whatever he builds next.”
BoardGameWire contacted Zinser to ask for further comment on the situation, its affect on AEG, the company’s plans to recruit a replacement, and for Zinser’s take on Dancey’s achievements during his decade at the business, but is yet to receive a reply.
“This tide is, in my opinion, only running one way, and AEG is going to have to fight hard to hold it’s [sic] position.”
Former Alderac COO Ryan Dancey
Dancey, however, provided an extensive response to BoardGameWire’s questions, including denying that he believed AI could “come up with Tiny Towns or Flip 7 or Cubitos” – instead emphasising that he was speaking about the technology being able to produce “ideas” rather than completed designs.
He told BoardGameWire, “I am not saying that an AI could turn over a finished game design ready for publication. I’m not even saying that an AI could produce work ripe enough to be pitched to a publisher. But the idea that it could not be used to generate ideas on the level as those embodied by those three games is already demonstrably false (in my opinion).
“This language ‘come up with’ is pretty nonspecific and I understand people who chose to take it at its most extreme level even though that was not my intent. I could have done a better job of being more explicit about the level of work I think an AI can do.”
Dancey added that he had contacted Tiny Towns designer Peter McPherson and Cubitos creator John D Clair in the wake of his comments discussing their games, saying, “Among other things I told them: ‘I don’t think AI is capable of doing your jobs, I would much rather work you with than a robot, I think you’re both top-tier designers that I feel privileged to work with, and I apologize if you found anything in my remarks to be hurtful’.
“I don’t have a working relationship with [Flip 7 designer Eric Olsen], but I would say the same to him if I did.”
Tiny Towns: Villagers || Photo Credit: AEG
Commenting on his suggestion in the LinkedIn post that all current board game design is based on designers taking existing games and producing variants on those themes, Dancey said, “Everything we do as humans is derived from experience. All art is derived. We all stand on the shoulders of every generation who went before us.
“Specifically I wrote: ‘The gaming industry doesn’t exist because humans create otherwise unobtainable ideas. It exists because many many previous games exist, feed into the minds of designers, who produce new variants on those themes’.
“I stand by that statement. It seems axiomatic to me.
“The game industry is overflowing with great ideas for games. We don’t lack for ideas. The hard part is deciding which great ideas can be commercialized, and how to do that. The incredible skill that someone like Pete or John brings is knowing how to evolve ‘a good idea’ into a ‘great game’.”
No AI at AEG
Dancey also told BoardGameWire that AEG’s leadership team made a policy decision “several years ago” not to use generative AI in its products or its “creative pipeline”.
He said, “I supported that decision – it was a consensus. I believed then and I believe now that it’s not appropriate to use AI in those ways in tabletop games.
“Since then I have been responsible for developing and adding language to our boilerplate contracts with people who freelance for AEG, who develop for AEG and who create artwork for AEG which specifically prohibits them from using generative AI in their work without permission, which AEG does not provide, and that specifies pretty harsh penalties for failure to comply with those policies.
“I fully support the inclusion of that language in our contracts. I took the initiative to write that language and I took the initiative to enforce its inclusion.
“We have already had pushback from creative workers who don’t like the harsh penalties. We’ve had pushback from people who want to water down their affirmative responsibility to ensure that they and anyone they’re working with or subcontracting work to adheres to this policy.
“This tide is, in my opinion, only running one way, and AEG is going to have to fight hard to hold it’s [sic] position.”
He continued, “I am not championing the use of generative AI in the gaming industry to design, develop or illustrate games. I believe we must talk about the real abilities of this technology, honestly, so that we can think about the impacts it will have on our lives.
“Making decisions to use it, how to use it, how to restrict it, and how to enforce those decisions is something that every publisher in the industry should already have done and should be revisiting on a regular basis.
“The time for these conversations is now. Not next year. Now.”
“I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t [work with AI]… my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me “so what’s the deal with AI?” and getting an answer that doesn’t do justice to what’s actually happening. I keep giving them the polite version. The cocktail-party version. Because the honest version sounds like I’ve lost my mind. And for a while, I told myself that was a good enough reason to keep what’s truly happening to myself. But the gap between what I’ve been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big. The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy.”
Dancey told BoardGameWire, “I believe I am in touch with enough of this tech and have done enough research to feel the same as author Matt Schumer. I feel like I have an obligation to discuss this technology as widely and as honestly as possible. If I do not, I am doing harm to those I care about.
“I’m sorry if having this conversation makes people uncomfortable. I know there are people who want it to go away, or believe it’s unfixably tainted by the unethical circumstances of its birth. I know that there are people who want to have a fight about this and want to use proxies if they have to (which is what I feel has happened in this particular case). But I still feel compelled to speak. If I do not, I will go insane.
“I’m incredibly sad that this episode has resulted in my separation from AEG, a company I have worked with for more than 10 years. And I’m really frustrated and hurt that it’s happening because of something people think I said, not something I actually said.”
Wider Issue
Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave, the co-founder of non-profit support organisation the Tabletop Game Designers Association, dismissed Dancey’s suggestion that AI could generate ideas for games such as Tiny Towns and Cubitos.
TTGDA co-founder Elizabeth Hargrave
She told BoardGameWire, “I absolutely do not think AI could be prompted to come up with even the basic idea for those games, let alone a fully fleshed out ruleset for them. For fun, I’ve prompted several different options for ideas for Wingspan cards and not one of them has given me an actionable idea.
“I had a friend who ran a rulebook through AI for proofreading and it hallucinated that people needed to shout ‘bingo’. Apparently that’s AI’s conception of board games right now.”
She added, “Designers do pull from existing games but when it’s done well it’s because those existing mechanisms serve some original idea, and then they’re remixed so thoroughly with other mechanisms and with the subject matter that it feels new.
“Sanibel has pieces of Tokaido and Tetris and many tile-laying games. But it wasn’t a prompt of ‘I’m going to remix these games’. It was ‘what would work well in service of this idea that I have?’.
“That requires understanding how games actually feel when you play them, and anticipating how different pieces can fit together.”
Hargrave said that the TTGDA board had been discussing the use of AI in board game design, adding that it was “a conversation we need to have with our membership”.
She said, “We’re working on a model contract to offer to our members right now, and that will offer a clause that designers can request that will require publishers not to use AI in their final product. A lot of contracts ask us to certify that a board game design is our own, and not plagiarized.
“It’s my opinion that using AI in a final product goes against that, because it’s using a machine that’s built entirely on plagiarism.”
Hargrave added, “I do see people using AI for things like generating a bunch of placeholder names in a prototype. They’re often clunky options but they do the job when you know everything will change 50 times before you’re done anyway. I’m not aware of anyone who has successfully actually gotten good, original ideas for mechanisms from AI.
“What I wish we were talking about is how AI could be built to help designers run models of their games repeatedly to catch weird edge cases or broken strategies. I wish someone would build that tool instead of the language models that just focus on advanced auto-complete.
“This would never replace actual playtesting with humans for psychology and actual fun, but it might save me some repetitions.”
Previous apology
Dancey’s exit from Alderac comes three years after he publicly apologised for saying that male board game designers vastly outnumber women because “females are socialized in the West to avoid situations where they’re subjected to fairly harsh criticism of their abilities and creative ideas”.
He had made those comments on Twitter in response to a thread from Elizabeth Hargrave, who had presented data criticising the structural issues in board gaming which had seen so few women nominated for the Spiel des Jahres prize – widely considered the biggest award in board gaming.
Dancey’s comment in the thread included him saying, “Males are socialized to take the punches and keep moving forward. Getting across the gap is how you turn someone into a ‘real game designer’ who gets paid for their work and who makes designs that are attractive to publishers.”
In addition to saying the post “doesn’t reflect my views and it certainly doesn’t reflect the views of the company I work for”, Dancey outlined “concrete steps” he said AEG would be taking “to do better in this regard”, and called on readers to “check back with me in a year and hold me accountable”.
When BoardGameWire contacted Dancey on the anniversary of the apology for an update, he said, “When I’m ready to speak more on this topic I’ll do it on X as a followup to that original post.”
No follow-up to that original post from Dancey appears to exist.
Update 19/2/26: Dancey contacted BoardGameWire to say that he wrote a follow-up to the original post on Twitter in May of 2024, but deleted some of his Twitter posts when he stopped using the site in November of that year.That response no longer exists online following Dancey’s deletion of it, but a full version of the text has now been included at the end of this article.
Dancey’s career in the tabletop space dates back more than 30 years, when he was part of the team developing the Legend of the Five Rings TCG.
In 1997 he helped negotiate Wizards of the Coast’s takeover of the bankruptcy-threatened Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR, becoming head of D&D following the deal.
Dancey also previously worked as chief marketing officer for CCP Games, the Icelandic video game producer of space sandbox MMO Eve Online, following its acquisition of roleplaying game and book publisher White Wolf Publishing in 2006.
He was also the CEO of Goblinworks, the company behind development of a massively multiplayer online game based on Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG, between 2011 and 2015.
That title raised about $1.4m across a pair of Kickstarter campaigns, but after Dancey left for “personal reasons” all but three of the company’s staff were almost immediately laid off, with then-Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens saying “delays in getting the game to market coupled with some anticipated funding falling through have left us about 75% short of the money we need to finish the game”.
Dancey told BoardGameWire yesterday that he did not have any specific plans for the future following his departure from AEG.
—
Update 19/2/26:Ryan Dancey’s now deleted Twitter post from May 2024, a year after his apology for saying that male board game designers vastly outnumber women because “females are socialized in the West to avoid situations where they’re subjected to fairly harsh criticism of their abilities and creative ideas”:
Last year I hastily wrote out some thoughts about the challenges that women face in succeeding as game designers and the hurdles they face moving past the pitch process and getting their games published. I managed to pretty thoroughly mangle my thoughts, anger a lot of people, and disrupt that dialog. I was clumsy in my writing, and poorly communicated what I wanted to express. In the aftermath I apologized, and I said I would return to the topic after a year spent in reflection and in working on these issues.
This is that update.
Since I joined AEG as a full time staff member in 2016 one of the things I have been working on is improving the diversity of our staff. From 2016 into the pandemic, we had fairly low staff turnover. During that time the most significant staff change was the addition of a VP of Sales & Marketing, who is a woman, but we parted ways with her in 2019. During the pandemic we had no significant staff changes.
Currently of 13 full time staff at AEG, five are women. Of the most recent hires since 2021, four of five hires have been women. Of the departures since 2021, none have been women. Since 2023 we have hired one person into a full time staff role, and that person is a woman. As we turned the calendar page to 2024, we promoted Adelheid Zimmerman to our Leadership team. This five person team sets overall direction for the company, and reviews and approves things like the schedule of new product releases, budgets, staff compensation and hiring and separations, etc.
We continue to struggle with racial and ethnic diversity and are also concerned about our internal and external connections with all people who might feel marginalized or face obstacles in the profession of game publishing. This is a significant problem that our Leadership team has discussed at length and it is an area where we need to show improvement.
AEG affirmatively seeks to diversify its workplace by providing opportunities to candidates who identify with underrepresented groups and we provide a pathway through our application process for candidates who may have experience and backgrounds that bypass some of the requirements in our job postings.
I am confident that we will continue to become a more diverse employer over time.
Our pipeline for new products has mostly been closed over this period. We have a backlog of amazing games in development and have not been actively pursuing new pitches in the way that we did earlier in the decade and before the pandemic. Much of the new work we have been pursuing has involved designers already working with us on previous products. This has significantly curtailed our footprint in the spaces where designers interface with publishers as a part of the pitch process. We did take a few outside pitches this year including several from designers who don’t identify as male, but none of those pitches progressed to an option or offer.
In 2023 and 2024 AEG released four all new games: Rolling Heights, Number Drop, Shake that City and Waffle Time. We have two more games that are just now going into wide release: Let’s Go! To Japan and Undergrove. Of those games Undergrove which was co-designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and Mark Wootton is the only game in that list designed by a woman.
We have been trying to find proactive ways to connect with people who have been working on diversity initiatives in the industry. It’s been a good year for forward momentum in this area. Organizations like the Tabletop Game Designers Association will hopefully gain traction and AEG intends to provide support when they are ready to connect with the publisher tier. We have also connected with and provided support to the Rose Gauntlet Foundation.
We have plans to directly contact some of the communities which have self-organized for groups that are underrepresented in the design pipeline and establish a system by which we can both provide opportunities for constructive feedback (both directions) and hear pitches from designers in those communities who feel they are ready to make them. We’re hopeful that this will result in some games in development coming from those communities for publication in the latter half of this decade.
We have done some work behind the scenes providing counsel and advice to a number of women and BIPOC individuals who have approached us seeking insights about the industry and when possible we’ve been happy to provide as much assistance as we can. These kinds of interactions are usually confidential and we respect the secure nature of these relationships; if you or someone you know would like to engage with us confidentially and ask for our thoughts about how the industry works, have us make introductions to our network of contacts, share some of our quantitative information or get our perspective on the current state of the industry please feel free to reach out to anyone on the AEG team.
I believe that the design pipeline is unbalanced and the predominant cohort of designers who succeed in finding a partner to get their games into print are stereotypically middle aged white men. Over the more than thirty years I have been a gaming industry professional this has improved and not remained static but a lot of work remains to be done. My personal opinion is that the biggest obstacle to a more representative market of designers begins upstream of the pitch meeting. I think that like AEG, most of our peers are very receptive to the idea of working with designers who are not middle aged white men. The challenge all publishers face is increasing the quantity and quality of pitches that we are receiving from designers from a wider demographic base.
We need to see more designers get past their first design efforts even if those efforts don’t result in a published game. It’s possible that a person’s first design is a winner but It is much more common that it often takes several swings before a designer makes a winning design idea. One thing I think a lot about is how to help people get over that first hurdle of rejection, recycle, and come back with a better second (third, fourth, etc.) effort. Game design is an inherently and intensely personal creative effort and nobody likes the feeling of being told their ideas aren’t good enough or marketable enough. I wish I had better answers for how to support people going through the transition from someone with good ideas about games to someone who is a professional game designer. This is a subject I think about often and am very interested in having more dialog about to craft viable ideas.
As a publisher that mostly publishes games from outside designers, we have a responsibility to try to find designers who are not a part of that traditional cohort of white male designers. We believe making connections with as diverse a community of designers as possible is likely to result in enabling us to publish games that don’t feel like iterations on older game tropes and inject new ideas and new voices that hopefully will connect with an ever wider audience.
At our leadership summit at the end of January this year our team recommitted ourselves to the goal of widening our reach when prospecting for new game pitches. When we’re ready to re-open our pitch pipeline we plan to be more actively visible in the spaces where we believe we can find and connect with an ever more diverse designer community. Coincidentally and beneficially it appears the industry is self-generating many new venues where these connections may occur and we’re going to seek to take advantage of those opportunities.
Another part of that is finding ways to support people at the beginning of their design careers, when they are making their first forays into the business of game design. We continue to research and evaluate opportunities AEG may be able to assist with in this area, but progress so far has been slow other than relationship building with individuals.
We’d like to find ways to engage at a systems level, so we can multiply our investment of time and resources to reach many people at the same time. This is a tough nut to crack, but we’ll continue to work on it.
Diversity is both an objective and a set of values. I’m proud to work for a company that has embraced the challenge of being a part of the change that the industry needs and is experiencing and I’m happy that we are on a path of continuous improvement in this area that is generating results.
I would like to thank all the people who helped me craft this message. Those people included AEG staff members and people in our larger stakeholder community. Your feedback was invaluable.
For various reasons mostly related to current ownership of this platform, I don’t interact much on X any longer but since this was the place where the initial interactions which triggered this response occurred I felt it appropriate to post this message here. I would be happy to respond to anyone who wishes to have a dialog about any of the issues raised in this message; the best way to reach me is via email at rsdancey at gmail dot com.
Asmodee‘s push to get its best-known board games turned into films and television shows continues, with streaming giant Netflix picking up exclusive global rights for screen-based adaptations of the huge-selling Ticket to Ride series.
The deal, which covers “scripted and unscripted projects” across film, television series, and other formats, comes four months after Asmodee agreed a similar deal with Netflix for screen adaptations of its fellow bestseller Catan – a 45 million-selling title which has already successfully broken out from the hobby board gaming space and into wider pop culture.
The company added that the Ticket to Ride deal reinforces it strategy to “broaden the reach of its tabletop games IPs, from the gaming tables around the world to millions of screens”.
Alan R Moon, the designer of the 20-million-selling Ticket to Ride series, will be an executive producer on Netflix’s planned titles as part of the partnership agreement.
He said, “Just when I thought life couldn’t get more exciting, Ticket to Ride is teaming up with Netflix. I can’t wait to help bring these exciting projects to the millions of fans of the game.”
Details of the upcoming film’s plot are yet to be revealed, although the game itself does feature a storyline at the beginning of the rulebook which may provide clues to the movie’s direction.
That story involves several friends meeting each year to celebrate the anniversary of Phileas Fogg’s successful trip around the world in 80 days – and agreeing a $1m wager in their 1900 gathering to see which of them can travel by rail to the most cities in North America within seven days.
Netflix first teamed up with Asmodee in 2022, when the board game giant worked in the other direction to create a trio of titles based on Netflix shows Squid Game, Stranger Things and Ozark.
Those games have been followed by a Bridgerton-themed version of Love Letter, while Netflix brought Asmodee’s creations to screens for the first time in 2024 with French film Family Pack, which is based on the Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow card game.
That movie has a 38% audience rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, however, and other tabletop-based films from the last couple of decades have experienced very mixed success.
Hasbro’s 2008 deal with Universal Pictures to make a series of films based on the company’s toy and game brands ended two years early, after 2012 release Battleship bombed at the box office.
Netflix’s other adaptations of tabletop and video game titles in recent years have included an adult animated fantasy comedy based on Asmodee-owned Exploding Kittens, as well as adaptations of Arcane and Castlevania and upcoming series based on Assassin’s Creed and Monopoly – the latter of which is a live-action competition.
That deal sees Catan introduce “interactive concourse activations” at some of the Timberwolves home games this season, with Asmodee saying the move would give fans the opportunity to “test their strategy, challenge friends, and take home exclusive Catan giveaways and prizes”.
Asmodee is set to reveal its latest quarterly earnings tomorrow, covering the final three months of 2026 – including the hugely-important Christmas period.
Kosmos, the German publisher of board games including Catan and the Exit series, has taken full ownership of distribution arm Thames & Kosmos UK amid the retirement of the latter’s founding directors Stephen O’Connor and Joanna Drage.
O’Connor and Drage launched the business as Science Shop in 2009, with Kosmos making the company a subsidiary by buying an 80% stake four years later.
The deal makes T&K UK the German company’s first wholly-owned foreign subsidiary. Kosmos currently has another foreign branch in the USA, named Thames & Kosmos.
Kosmos said in a press release that the buyout of the UK operation was part of the company “consistently pursuing its internationalisation strategy and further expanding its international activities”.
It added that the British market remains “a key component” of Kosmos’ international growth strategy.
Emma Hanlon – T&K UK’s first employee who has been with the business 12 years – and Andrew Morris have taken over as managing directors of the subsidiary.
Kosmos managing director Thilan Tran said, “Stephen O’Connor and Joanna Drage built and successfully led Thames & Kosmos UK with entrepreneurial vision, high personal integrity, and great dedication.
“They have sustainably established the Kosmos brand in the United Kingdom and thus made a significant contribution to the international development of our company. We thank them very much for this achievement and the many years of trusting collaboration.”
Fellow Kosmos managing director Matthias Kienzle, who runs the company in a dual leadership role with Tran, added, “With the new ownership structure and the newly formed management team, we aim to further scale and continuously expand our international sales activities.
“Our focus is on further market penetration of existing product categories and the development of additional growth potential.”
Last year Heiko Windfelder, the Kosmos board game lead who played a key role building up brands including Catan and the Exit family of games, retired after 30 years at the company – making Tran and Kienzle joint leaders of the business.
Two years earlier long-time managing director Michael Fleissner retired, handing over operational management of the German company to Windfelder, Tran and Kienzle.
W Eric Martin from Board Game Beat reported last week that Kosmos’ board game releases this year are set to include Bernhard Weber design Temple Twist, and Happy Holiday by Matthew Dunstan and Brett J Gilbert.
Kosmos is also celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Exit series of games, which have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide across more than 50 titles.
New Exit releases this year will include a young children-focused Puzzle Fun in the Sea title and a Fourth Wing game based on the Empyrean novels by Rebecca Yarros, while the company will also be sending an armoured truck around Germany in which players can solve Exit puzzles.
Kosmos’ Exit-themed armoured truck, which will tour Germany this year
Root publisher Leder Games has named its solo game design specialist Liz Davidson as the company’s new creative director, a month after former incumbent Cole Wehrle left to launch new board game studio Buried Giant.
Davidson’s non-Leder design work to date comprises Night Witches, a solitaire or two-player coop game about female Soviet bomber pilots flying harassment missions on the Eastern Front during the second world war, and Queen of Spies, a solitaire story-driven game of espionage missions set in occupied Belgium during World War I.
Both of those titles were designed alongside Undaunted co-creator David Thompson.
Davidson is also the host of award-winning podcastBeyond Solitaire, which has put out 225 episodes across 12 seasons exploring gaming history, historical games and their cultural significance with a string of guest interviewees.
Leder Games founder Patrick Leder told BoardGameWire, “When we hired Liz as our solo games specialist, I knew we were getting someone special: a designer, educator, and storyteller all in one. Beyond her work at the studio, Liz has designed Night Witches and Queen of Spies independently, and she’s spent years podcasting and immersing herself in the industry.
“Liz has a unique creative vision, with a talent for understanding what makes a game resonate with players. She shares my passion for cooperative games, which is an area I’ve wanted Leder Games to explore for a number of years. She’s earned the trust and respect of everyone on the team, as well as our audience.
“In her new role, she’ll be helping to shape the creative direction of Leder Games going forward, as well as lending her editorial eye to rulebooks and game boards. And without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that her work on solo games is far from over. I’m thrilled to have her leading on that front.”
Davidson added, “My job at Leder Games is the best I have ever had, and I am very excited to help the creative team keep doing what we do best – designing and developing great games.
“I’ll have more specifics soon, but for now, I can say that we are looking at some cool projects and that there is a lot to look forward to.”
Leder has also brought in Tyler Exsted as a game developer in the wake of losing multiple staff members to Buried Giant, including Root, Arcs and Oath designer Cole Wehrle, Leder’s long-time lead artist Kyle Ferrin and the company’s former director of operations Ted Caya, who left in December along with his design for the Leder’s now axed Kickstarter Take.
Other Leder staff who have moved across to Buried Giant include Josh Yearsley, who designed the most recent Root expansion Homeland, senior graphic designer Pati Hyun, event coordinator and community manager Matt Martens and graphic designer Megan Ganey.
The exodus left Leder with a design and development team comprising Patrick Leder – the co-creator of its debut release Vast: The Crystal Caverns and co-designer of multiple Root expansions – Davidson, and Nick Brachmann, who has worked on expansions for Root, Ahoy and Fort.
Patrick Leder said of Exsted’s hire, “I’m really excited to welcome Tyler to the team. Finding developers who share our love of meaningful, story-driven experiences is always a joy, and Tyler definitely understands the Leder Games vision.
“He’s done great work previously with Studio Midhall, and he’s been a regular at our testing nights in the studio. With over 400 games of Root under his belt, he’s right up there with some of our core creative staff in terms of deep knowledge of our games.
“Since coming onboard, Tyler’s already been a huge help working alongside the creative team on a wide array of prototypes for our line-up of future games.
“He’s also getting up to speed on our Discord community and will be stepping in to handle Root questions there. I can’t wait to see what he brings to the table.”
Leder has yet to comment on how the significant changes at the company will affect its 2026 release slate, which was due to kick off with a crowdfunding campaign for Take before the project’s surprise cancellation amid Caya’s exit.
The publisher agreed to sell well-known designs Arcs and Oath to Buried Giant as part of the shake-up, while keeping hold of its huge-selling star title Root, a game which despite its complexity has broken out of the hobby game bubble and onto the shelves of major retailers such as Walmart and Target.
Board game crowdfunding major CMON has secured new capital for game development thanks to a successful share sale, which values the business at more than $7.5m.
The much-needed capital raise is the latest move by CMON as it continues its attempt to recover from massive losses racked up over the past two years.
CMON said in a stock exchange filing that more than half of the HK$9.4m ($1.2m) proceeds would go towards game development, including prototype design, content development and artwork creation, while another HK$2.35m would be used for marketing and events, including participation in trade fairs and promotional campaigns.
CMON announced towards the end of last month that more IP sales could be on the way, alongside making an apology for delays to its outstanding crowdfunds – some of which are now running almost two years beyond initial delivery estimates.
The company’s remaining significant IP includes the Massive Darkness series, with the most recent installment, Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, completing a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year – a figure which rose to more than $3.7m including late pledges.
More details about CMON’s current financial situation are set to be unveiled by the end of next month, with the publisher required by Hong Kong stock exchange rules to submit its annual results by that date.
The company announced last July that rather than focusing on large scale, miniatures heavy crowdfunding campaigns, it had pivoted to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, which it showed off at the Spiel Essen game fair last October.
Veteran toy and game maker Hasbro‘s increasing reliance on Magic: The Gathering’s runaway success continued last year, with the trading card game’s revenue soaring 59% to mark its strongest annual performance yet.
Hasbro saw its overall revenue rise almost 14% last year to $4.7bn, driven by record 45% growth in its Magic, D&D and digital gaming division Wizards of the Coast.
“Wizards was a standout, anchored by record Magic revenue”, said Hasbro CFO and COO Gina Goetter, who added in an earnings call following the company’s 2025 financial results reveal that Wizards “remains our primary growth engine”.
Magic’s record-breaking year was capped off by a storming fourth quarter, which saw revenues from the game up 141% compared to Q4 2024 on the strength of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Final Fantasy releases.
Wizards’ revenue increased 45% to almost $2.2bn across all of 2025, with operating profit of just over $1bn – while Magic’s revenue grew nearly 60% across 2025 powered by Universes Beyond sets, as well as “ongoing strength in backlist and Secret Lair”, Hasbro said.
The stellar performance of Wizards, and Magic in particular, is in stark contrast to Hasbro’s consumer products segment – which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.
That segment saw revenues drop 4% last year “amongst macro and retailer volatility brought on by tariff announcements in Q2”.
Goetter said Hasbro expects Wizards to deliver mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2026, “supported by a healthy release cadence and continued engagement across the Magic ecosystem”, while Hasbro as a wider business is expecting revenue growth of 3% to 5% this year.
Speaking about expectations for Magic’s continued success in 2026 Hasbro CEO and director Chris Cocks told the earnings call, “I think it really comes down to several growth vectors. The first one is distribution growth.
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks
“We’re seeing meaningful growth in our Wizards Play Network. That was up 20% last year. We think it’s going to be up double digits this year again. We’re seeing incremental distribution as the brand expands and the player base expands. So I think mass market and non-WPN-based distribution growth exceeded last year WPN growth and will exceed it again this year.
“Player growth has been robust. I think the organized play metrics we’re giving you are just kind of hardcore or core player growth, the people who play in stores. Our metrics for non… kind of ‘hardcore’ players are a little more loose, but we think that those are growing well in excess of that 20%. And importantly, as we’re bringing on new kind of casual fans or new to MAGIC fans and collectors, they are sticking around. And you’re seeing that evidenced in robust backlist and higher organized play participation.
“So what we’re seeing going on with Magic is a virtuous cycle of there’s more places to buy, there’s more people playing. They’re engaging longer and sticking around. And that just leads to increased set over set performance like we’re seeing with Lorwyn. And we see that continuing into 2026.
“Not to mention, we’ve got a stacked lineup of partners. You’ve got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hobbit, Marvel Super Heroes and Star Trek plus some real fan-favorite sets like Lorwyn and Strixhaven on tap for this year.”
Hasbro’s annual results reveal came the same day it announced it had signed a multi-year licensing partnership to make it “the global primary toy licensee for the world of Harry Potter” and the upcoming HBO series.
That partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Product begins in 2027, covering “dolls, role play, action figures & collectibles, interactive plush, board games and more”, Hasbro said.
But the Harry Potter franchise won’t yet be making its way to Magic, according to the Wizards of the Coast community team, who posted to Reddit to say, “The Magic Multiverse has its own school of Magic at Strixhaven with plenty of secrets still to explore. Our Universes Beyond roadmap currently doesn’t have us visiting any others.”
Harry Potter-related deals have come under fire from parts of the board game hobby in the last year due to ongoing anti-trans campaigning from the character’s creator, JK Rowling.
CGE has since apologised “unreservedly” for failing to take into account how “the harmful views of the story’s creator have escalated into harmful actions”, and committed to donating 100% of the game’s profits to appropriate charities.
Last month Upper Deck, the publisher of the Legendary series of deck-building board games, was urged by the Tabletop Game Designers Association not to create a Harry Potter-based tabletop title, after the company announced a deal for the “coveted” Harry Potter licence.
Upper Deck said on January 7 that it would begin creating collectibles for the Harry Potter franchise, starting with two sets of trading cards due for release later this year, adding that it was “excited to bring its iconic brands and flagship products to the world of Harry Potter”.
Following the TTGDA plea and rising numbers of comments across Upper Deck’s social media calling out the decision, the publisher made a single-sentence response on BlueSky and a BGG thread saying “Upper Deck has no plans to produce Harry Potter games at this time”.
Rodney Smith, the founder and host of board game ‘how to play’ video giant Watch It Played, has accused long-time site colleague Chaz Marler of misleading advertisers on the latter’s Game Night Picks YouTube channel by paying to boost viewer numbers on its videos.
A detailed report distributed by Smith to board game publishers yesterday said Marler had used YouTube advertising to boost views on Game Night Picks – formerly known as Pair of Dice Paradise – in November and December last year, with typical viewers per video rising from the low thousands to an average of 36,700 across those months.
While that might seem ideal for publisher advertisers, Smith added that Game Night Picks had establised a ‘per view’ fee structure early last year – and said more than 90% of viewers in November and December left the videos within the first minute, well short of the point at which publisher advertising was shown.
A graph distributed by Rodney Smith showing the fall in viewership over time for an unspecified YouTube video, which he said made use of YouTube Advertising to boost viewer numbers
Smith said in the report, “Despite the sudden influx of 145,300 subscribers, the behind-the-scenes analytics (which only those with access to the YouTube account can see) showed that traffic ‘from subscribers’ did not change in any perceptible way.
“If even 1% of the new subscribers had returned to watch future videos with some regularity, traffic ‘from subscribers’ would have increased by roughly 1,453, but there was no noticeable change. It suggests that you can pay to have the ‘YouTube Advertising’ feature provide you with subscribers and/or views, but it cannot make those subscribers (or viewers) engage with your content.”
He added, “Would a publisher agree to pay a ‘per view’ fee if they knew only 3% to 6% of the viewers were still watching a video by the time their ad aired?
“It would seem that this advertising model can only be effective if the publisher remains unaware of the underlying data (which only the channel owner has access to) – I also had access to it, due to our working relationship.”
Data from social media analytics website SocialBlade, showing the surge in subscribers for Board Game Picks in the last two months of 2025
Smith said that after he noticed the change in analytics he approached Marler in December, telling him he believed the latter was “engaged in a deceptive practice” – and was told some publishers who bought ads in November and December had been issued discounts of ‘half or more’.
“He expressed that providing discounts to publishers would fix what he was doing, but it was clear in my mind that discounting unethical practices do not make them ethical.”
Smith continued in his written report, “I assured [Marler] that his activities would be discovered due to the overt and unnatural viewer and subscriber growth he had obtained through ‘YouTube Advertising’.
“Once uncovered, publishers might reasonably (but incorrectly) assume I was also engaged in this practice due to his six-year association with Watch It Played. They might reasonably assume I’d instructed him on how to do it.
“Although I have never engaged in any of these activities personally, his actions threatened to undermine the relationships and trust I have cultivated with publishers and viewers over the past 15 years – risking irreparable damage to my career and reputation.”
Chaz Marler hosting one of the videos on his Game Night Picks YouTube channel
Marler confirmed to BoardGameWire yesterday that he had made use of YouTube’s built-in promotions tools in November for Game Night Picks “to see how it works”, but added that the tool “didn’t produce the results I was looking for, in terms of viewership quality or sustainability” and was no longer being used by the site.
Update 10/2/26: Rodney Smith contacted BoardGameWire in the wake of reading Marler’s response here to add the following statement:
“The owner of Game Night Picks first used the YouTube Advertising feature in August, and then again in October. One would reasonably presume that the first and second time a tool like this is used, a creator would be paying close attention to the effects of how it works – especially as they are paying to influence the final resulting views.
“In November, the owner of Game Night Picks started using the YouTube Advertising feature again, but this time did not stop. It was used on each of the following 19 videos one, after the other. Each showing the same relative viewer retention within the document I shared, and this article.
“As I said to him in December: after three or four, or maybe five of these videos, the pattern was clear. Why continue the ‘experiment’ 15 more times (which does not include the experiments in August and October)? To my mind, he had lost plausible deniability about the effects of this tool after the fifth attempt. And I would say that’s being generous.
“I would want to remind readers, the issue is not that the tool was used. The document I presented was to show how ‘in combination’ with the YouTube advertising tool, the lack of information the publishers had, and the fee structure, unethical and legal implications were introduced.”
Update ends
Marler would not comment on the accusation he had willingly engaged in unethical behaviour towards advertisers, or say whether he had properly reimbursed advertisers featured on Game Night Picks during the period in question after the issue was raised with him by Smith.
Marler did tell BoardGameWire, “While I’m not going to detail specific invoices here, I can say that each invoice and project has always been taken on a case-by-case basis.
“That same approach was applied to the invoices incurred during the time in question. It would gain a channel nothing to overcharge clients, especially in an industry as intimate as ours.”
He said that while he had stopped using YouTube advertising, “if a solution does become available that benefits the sponsors, viewers, and the channel, while removing ambiguity, I think that would be worth looking into. The trick would be accomplishing that, while also ensuring clarity and transparency for all parties.”
He added, “I don’t think that anyone is making the case that investing in promotion in-and-of itself is unacceptable. The objective, as with any endeavor, is to set expectations and responsibly provide value to those you’re serving (including both viewers and sponsors).”
When asked what changes Marler planned to make to Game Night Picks, and how it offers advertising to publishers, he said, “Part of the plan is to continue communicating as openly as possible to sponsors, colleagues, and viewers. For example, in late November, a newsletter was sent to all the sponsors I work with informing them of the surge in viewership numbers that was being experienced.
“Subsequent newsletters have outlined updates to the way sponsorships are billed, to accommodate when experiencing lower overall viewer retention due to any reason.
“The channel’s ‘Video Services’ document, which is provided to sponsors, was also updated during that time to restate this updated policy. That policy is also included in cold-call and follow-up emails related to advertising that are sent out.
“The cornerstone of any collaboration process is communication and mutually setting expectations between colleagues, viewers, and sponsors. That has been the focus since the sponsorship system was launched, and it will continue to be, into the future.”
He did not respond to BoardGameWire’s request to see copies of those sponsor-focused newsletters or the channel’s ‘video services’ document.
Marler also runs the website TableTop Media Makers, which says it aims to handle the “sponsorship grunt-work” of running a board game-focused YouTube channel by “securing sponsorships, tracking down ad assets, writing ad copy, reporting video views, billing advertisers, and managing the financials”.
Further Fallout
Watch It Played, which was launched by Smith in 2011, has grown to become the hobby’s biggest YouTube channel for videos explaining how to play specific games, with more than 413,000 subscribers.
The vast majority of its videos up to 2020 were fronted by Smith, with support from members of his family, and Pep MacDonald also involved in making instructional and gameplay videos for the site between 2015 and 2019.
A slew of new faces began appearing on the site from 2020, however, as Smith expanded its scope to include content such as news roundups and top ten lists.
Smith announced seven days ago during a Marler-fronted video on Watch It Played that the site would return to a solo operation exclusively focused on tutorial videos – without offering an explanation as to why – with the rest of its hosts leaving to continue at their other respective outlets.
They include Marler, Deming and Jude, as well as Monique Macasaet and Naveen Sharma from board game playthrough and review YouTube channel Before You Play.
Of those, Deming and Jude also both appear on Game Night Picks videos – but Smith said in his statement, “I have no reason to believe any of the other people appearing in Game Night Picks videos have knowledge of the underlying data that would demonstrate how these inflated channel numbers were gained, nor would I imagine they know the full extent of the advertising practices the owner of Game Night Picks is using.
“Unless they chose to share it, only the YouTube channel owner would have access to that data.”
He added, “I also do not believe this is a widespread problem in the board game media community. I do not want the actions taken by the owner of Game Night Picks to reflect on other media creators who have grown their channels organically through the creative work they have published.”
Smith also spoke on yesterday’s video about his decision to pare back the site to a solo operation, saying, “This whole situation brought me to another hard-learned realization. I’m just not comfortable having my channel, and my reputation, entangled in the decisions other people might decide to make.
“Again, I have no reason to doubt the character of Matthew, Paula, Monique or Naveen – quite the opposite.
“But I would have said the same about the person who did engage in unethical behaviour that we’re now discussing. I imagine you can appreciate, my trust has been a bit shaken.
“I don’t want what has happened to make me cynical, and I would like to believe I could revisit collaborations in the future. But you’ll likely understand if I would just like Watch It Played to go back to being fully my responsibility, and not tied to the actions of anyone else.”
British board game publisher Alley Cat Games has triumphed in this year’s Diamant d’Or – a prize focused on championing heavier eurogames – after pivoting its strategy several years ago to experiment with crowdfunding more complex designs.
The Toni López-designed dice manipulation game fought off big name titles including Galactic Cruise and Luthier to win the 2026 Diamant d’Or, which was created more than a decade ago to celebrate complex euros the organisers felt were being overlooked by more mainstream board game awards.
Richard Breese’s latest design in his Key series, Keyside, took second place in this year award, while Ants, an ant colony expansion title from frequent Diamant d’Or finalist Cranio Creations, came third.
Speaking to BoardGameWire, Alley Cat Games director Caezar Al-Jassar said the team was “ecstatic” with the win, adding, “we have worked hard for three years to bring Ada’s Dream to gamers and have been blown away by the positive response from our backers and supporters”.
He said, “Ada’s Dream is the most complex game we’ve ever produced. A few years ago we noticed that the trend for Kickstarter games was leaning to heavier and more complex games than we were producing, and so we pivoted to explore creating more games like this.
“This meant a lot of extra work to produce the final game and we are incredibly pleased to see that work has paid off, and that Ada is being celebrated by the Diamant d’Or committee.”
The Diamant d’Or win comes just under a year after Alley Cat announced during its Kickstarter campaign for Baghdad that it would cease producing retail editions of its crowdfunded titles “for the foreseeable future”, amid rising competition on shop shelves and uncertainty around US tariffs.
A statement from the company at the time said,” It is getting harder for Kickstarter games to succeed, both on Kickstarter and in particular at retail stores after the campaign.
“This, coupled with rising costs and the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, has led us to look at ways of streamlining the business to ensure that we don’t have so much money tied up in stock. We’d much rather invest this money in making more great games!”
Al-Jassar told BoardGameWire, “Considering that these titles are more expensive to produce, ship, and store than smaller more retail friendly games, we kept the decision to move away from retail distribution of our Kickstarter games.”
A small number of copies of Ada’s Dream were briefly available through the Alley Cat website from February 5, but those available to US and European customers have already sold out.
Al-Jassar said, “The initial webstore sales were some stock not needed for fulfilment. However, as there are still backers that did not complete their Pledge Managers, we will be keeping a supply in storage until a set number of months after the end of fulfilment to ensure all backers have the opportunity to receive their copy.
“Regarding future plans for Ada’s Dream, we won’t be producing a print run for retail distribution but may have some more copies available once enough time has passed after fulfilment, and are exploring a future Kickstarter campaign with an expansion and reprint that we hope to launch in early 2027.”
The 2026 Diamant d’Or
WINNER: Ada’s Dream, designed by Toni López (Published by Alley Cat Games)
Second place:Keyside, by Richard Breese and David Turczi (HUCH!, R&D Games)
Third place:Ants, by Renato Ciervo and Andrea Robbiani (Cranio Creations)
Other finalists:
Galactic Cruise, by TK King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin Thompson (Kinson Key Games)
Luthier, by Dave Beck and Abe Burson (Paverson Games)
Philarmonix, by Faris Suhaimi (Archona Games)
Recall, by Helge Meissner, Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kjetil Svendsen and Anna Wermlund (Alion – by Dr Ø)
After being catapulted into the board game industry limelight following the success of Pandemic in 2008, Matt Leacock has scored ongoing success through titles such as the Forbidden series, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic legacy titles and his Kennerspiel-winning climate-change co-design Daybreak. In this in-depth interview he spoke with BoardGameWire about how the industry has changed for designers over the last quarter of a century, how working with developers can best help a design to sing, and why fighting for designer rights is among his most important jobs in 2026.
BoardGameWire: It’s almost 20 years since Pandemic was first published. What do you think have been the biggest changes for board game designers, specifically, within that time?
Matt Leacock: Oh, let’s see. So a few things. There’s just so much more competition out there, so much more product. I think when I started it was a lot easier to get noticed. I mean, when I think back to 2000 when I really got started, and went to Spiel [Essen] and sold my little racing game, I didn’t need to have a whole lot, and the production value didn’t have to be that great. And it was just easier to get noticed, people would stop by.
And now, if I were to do the same thing, I’d get laughed out of the hall because, you know, I’d be competing with thousands of other products. But on the flip side I think there’s a lot more support for new designers, up and coming designers. I look at all the cons that have Protospiel events, and Unpub, and see a network of a lot of people who are helping each other out and kind of helping to pull each other up and share best practices and so on. So yeah, I guess I see some easier things and some harder things at the same time.
Do you think you were fortunate in terms of when you happened to start pitching designs, and began going to places like Spiel and shopping designs around?
Well, I do think it was easier to get noticed – but that said, the product still needed to be really good. So it took a long time: many, many years, before I had something that was, I think, worthy of being published. Like, I don’t even know how many years. I started working on my first design in college, and I spent, like ten years on it, and then it came out in 2000 and it was fine. And then it took another eight years before Pandemic came out. So yeah, it was perhaps easier to get noticed, but you still needed to have a something worth being played, and I think that’s still true.
How do you think Pandemic’s success changed your career path and choices – and is there anything you think didn’t change about how you were approaching being a game designer?
I mean, it changed everything. I was a hobbyist, and then I was somebody kind of doing it as a side gig a bit. And then Pandemic took off, and it just allowed me to step away from my day job and change careers completely – and that was not something I had planned on doing. It was just this wonderful opportunity. It did take a while, though. The game came out in 2008 and I started working full time 2014, so it took about six years before I was comfortable enough to switch.
And is that a factor of having to wait until it’s financially viable? What was it that persuaded you it was okay to take the jump?
Yeah. So I’m living in the San Francisco Bay area, like, in the heart of Silicon Valley, so the cost of living here is not low – and I’ve got two kids to put through college. And you’re basically getting paid a paycheck four times a year, and you don’t know what it’s going to be. So it took many quarters, years of seeing that this title was an evergreen and was going to be able to help meet the bills and so on. And once we saw that, then we were able to kind of shift.
How much of your design work in recent years is you going out and pitching to publishers, and how much is publishers coming to you?
Oh, yeah, the last few years, it’s been much more… I’m just really lucky in that I’m able to kind of pick and choose projects, and most of them are publishers coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for something’. A lot of the work that I’m doing is expanding existing worlds that I’ve already built, whether it’s the Forbidden stuff or the Pandemic stuff.
So I’m lucky in that I’ve kind of got those two different playgrounds to play in already, but there’s very little of me, like, inventing from a totally blank sheet of paper. It’s generally someone pitching an idea – occasionally, like with Daybreak, I did have an idea, but then I also ran into another colleague, or someone who would become a colleague, and we worked on it together. And we had a publisher lined up maybe halfway through the process – much earlier than typical.
So I do like to have a relationship with a publisher fairly early on, and often it’s through a pitch. So I’m not doing a whole lot of cold calls or cold pitches.
Matt Leacock stands on a copy of Pandemic Legacy || Photo Credit: Douglas Morse
You’ve worked with quite a few major and smaller publishers over the years. How consistent is what publishers ask of you, in terms of initial design and development and final production, and do you think any of those approaches work better than others?
Yeah, I would say that it is all over the board. So a case in point: I worked with Studio Big Games, Z-Man – part of Asmodee – on Fate of the Fellowship. And that was just a really tight collaboration, with in-house development, creative direction, art direction, sculpting, you name it, down the line – a really great, expanded professional team. I worked with Kevin Ellenburg on development there, and he devoted almost a year to internal development, really working with me to refine the systems in that game, so it was really polished by the time we were done.
Other companies, it’s like one person, and they’re going to hire out and build a virtual team for any given project, and so you’ve got a collection of people that are kind of thrown together. And that’s not to say that people aren’t excellent, it’s just that it’s a very different experience and much more hands on. Although I would say that whether it’s a really big publisher with an internal team, or a smaller one with a virtual team that’s kind of brought together in real time, I’m pretty involved all the way down – like specifying when, you know, an apostrophe isn’t curly [laughs] – I’m looking at all the details there.
But it is a very different experience working with the bigger ones, the more established ones, and the smaller ones, which are scrappy – you have a little bit more control, I would say, in the smaller ones sometimes, because there’s just nobody else: someone’s got to step up and do the work. But I do really love working with teams of people who are far, far better than me. And sometimes that’s not always the case.
Are there ever any challenges where you’ve got your vision for how the game should be, but a developer comes in and says, ‘Well, that’s fine, but maybe we should tweak this and that’. Are there ever any hard lines from you: ‘no, this must stay the same’?
I can only point to one where I was frustrated, and it was probably my least successful game, where my vision for the way the components would work was very different from the way the publisher approached things. They were coming at it from a pure cost perspective, and I was looking at it and going: ‘This is going to go nowhere with this kind of level of quality’. I think they were just trying to market it based on the idea that it was inexpensive. And I’m like, ‘Well, this is just not gonna work’.
That was the only time really – I think I’ve been really happy across the board, very lucky across the board that the teams I’ve worked with have been really professional and brought a lot of value to it.
Well flipping that around then, I guess, what makes a developer especially effective to work with? When you sit down with a developer, when do you find yourself going: ‘Oh, yeah, that’s great. That’s really helpful’.
Yeah, I respond really well when things are data driven, like when they can point to playtests and say, ‘hey, you know what – these people are having these experiences’. It’s not just solutions. So I like to see data, sort of in context of play, from real humans. And then I like to see a tremendous amount of attention to detail tracking things down. I love it when people are brutally honest, but I also like things when they’re packaged up with, you know, soft communication – so it’s a little easier to swallow the pill [laughs].
That kind of package: really great insights, really good attention to detail, all founded on facts from real world play tests that are communicated well and tracked down – that’s what I’m looking for.
Can you think of anything specific in terms of, say, Fate of the Fellowship, that got changed through development that you hadn’t considered? Where you were suddenly like, ‘No, this is, this is a really good idea, actually, this does make sense’?
Yeah, I would say that there’s just thousands of micro decisions. When you’re looking at 13 characters, and 14 events, and 24 different objective cards, there’s just a tremendous amount of interactions. And you don’t want to be dealt the character and go like, ‘Oh, darn, I got that character’. You know? That they’re either less interesting, or perceived to be less powerful. So around the edges a lot of the characters got minor tweaks, or they might get a third, tertiary ability that doesn’t even get played sometimes in the game, but is a nice thing to have, and it has a little thematic twist. Some of the things Kevin cooked up really added a little roundness to characters and made them more interesting.
Components from the Fate of the Fellowship board game
What does your own design slate look like in 2026? I think flickering stars is on BGG, but I haven’t seen anything else. Are we just getting the one this year?
[Laughs] I mean, like, knock [on] wood! That product’s been delayed a lot, so I needed to check with the publisher and find out what’s going on. My greatest hope is that it comes out this year. There are – let’s see, I’m looking over the whiteboard right now – at least one other product coming out in the Fall. I’ll set expectations for maybe two, and then I’ve got others in the pipeline.
I’m slowing down a little bit. The kids are out of the house, I’m enjoying travel more. So the whiteboard was full of games the past few years, and I’m just kind of letting that shrink a bit. But I will say I’m working on at least one legacy game with Rob Daviau. That’s been a lot of fun.
Flickering Stars looks to me like a bit of a departure from a lot of the stuff you’ve designed elsewise – and I do apologise, I don’t know much about it. So is this one that’s been bubbling around for a while now?
Oh, like eight to ten years. I’m not kidding! And [co-designer Josh Cappel] worked on this before I did for like, a couple of years. So it is, I think, easily the longest development time of any product I’ve ever worked on. This is also my kids’ favorite game. It’s a dexterity game where you’re flicking little spaceships across the table, and it plays a little bit like a miniatures game without the fiddly bits. Where you put your tokens on the table: position really matters, there’s a lot of strategy, but it comes off and looks like a pretty lightweight, easy to learn thing.
The challenge with these things is that it requires a lot of specification around the plastic components. There’s actually spaceships in here that will launch a projectile, another one that rolls a large steel ball across the table – really fun stuff. And you look at it, and you’re like, ‘I know how to play that’! [laughs] And it plays pretty fast, so it’s a really great package. It’s all done, as far as I can tell, they just need to print it and get it into distribution.
Why has it taken so long, do you think? Was this something that you showed to multiple different publishers over time?
It’s been a combination of all sorts of factors. I mean, I don’t know where to begin. It did see different publishers, and sort of went on a journey there. It found a home with Friendly Skeleton, formerly Deep Water, where they just adored the game – really saw the vision, were all in, and were great partners to do the product design etc. But then we had Covid in there, we had the tariffs, there was some restructuring with that company – it’s just a whole string of things. So we’ll see how it plays out.
You’re currently secretary of the Tabletop Game Designers Association – why is an organisation like that important within the modern board game profession?
Oh my gosh, it’s so important! If it did nothing other than contract review, it would still be very important. Game designers are vulnerable folks, right? We work with much larger publishers who have a lot more power in the relationship in many cases, a lot more leverage. I think, like for book authors or any creatives, musicians, etc, it helps if we can band together and look out for each other.
And so this organization provides all sorts of services for its members. I think one of the most important is contract review, where you can you can send in contracts, get them reviewed and make sure that you’re agreeing to terms that are fair and the industry standards: you’re not stepping on landmines and so on. But we also have a really active Discord community where you can talk with each other, you can share playtesting tips, network. It’s just a great place to connect with other people in the field.
So I was a member of SAZ – I’m not even going to pretend to say I know how to pronounce it – the German equivalent of the TTGDA, for probably about 10 years now, and joined them just for very similar reasons. But TTGDA is here in the States. It’s very present. We’re trying to meet up with people in various conferences and to provide lesson services for people within the field. I think it’s a really good bargain too! I mean, you’re paying about 100 bucks for a year, and legal fees just alone would be much higher than that.
So I jumped on it – when Geoff [Engelstein] announced that he was putting it together, I’m like, ‘That’s such a great idea’. And then he invited me to serve on the board, so I leapt on that.
The home page of the Tabletop Game Designers Association
Geoff is obviously a heavyweight within the board games industry. [TTGDA co-founder] Elizabeth Hargrave too, as well yourself. How important is having that kind of heft in the association, in terms of being able to talk to publishers on behalf of new designers, perhaps who don’t have that track record within the industry?
Yeah, I think it does matter to have some bigger names on there. I know that SAZ in Germany was actually headed by Alan Moon for a while, which is odd, him living in the States, but his name caught my attention for that. And similarly, I know Geoff has done just great work in the industry here, and I really wanted to help support him.
If you could change one standard practice in, for example, designer/publisher contracts or workflows, what do you think itwould be?
Honestly? I kind of wish they were just a little bit more Lego-like, so you could just run through a checklist and go: ‘covered, covered, covered’. You can do it right now. It’s just the language across all the different contracts is presented differently. One of the contracts I had was a modified comic book contract that had been modified and modified, modified and modified over years and years, to suit the requirements for game designers. But it was just so weird – it was this weird Frankenstein’s monster that I had to go through and really kind of try to suss out the language in. And it’s difficult to know what’s missing, so you really do have to run through a checklist. So this is something we’re working on at TTGDA, just having a more standardized contract.
I have seen some that actually pull the terms out to the front so you get, like, a summary sheet, and then you see the boilerplate in the back, and it’s a lot easier to understand.
Here’s a very personal annoyance that I have: it’s really hard for me to get designer copies a lot of the time. I don’t know why this is with companies, but, like, I would like to get the product at least as soon as the public does. And sometimes it’s months before I get my stuff [laughs] It’s really rough. I would like to see it and play it and have it!
Matt, what you need to do is become an influencer, start a YouTube channel, and you can get those games immediately.
[Laughs] I guess so, maybe I could talk about it more that way: I’d like to support the game, but I need a copy first.
That is crazy, isn’t it? You’d think they’d be all about giving you a copy, because you’re in a prime position to promote the game and be excited about it, right?
And it’s not due to any kind of ill will or anything like that. It’s just, like, internal processes are sometimes screwy. And yeah, it’s not always the case. It’s just it’s especially jarring when it happens.
The sort of contract work you’re doing with TTGDA must be useful to some publishers as well, right, for similar reasons? I’m sure some publishers come to the contract side of things and they’re like, ‘man, we don’t know what we’re doing – I guess we just repurpose this comics contract?’, or try and come up with something that has a lot of legalese in, which feels like it covers them?
I would think it would be very, very useful. I think awareness needs to be higher, though – I’m not sure enough publishers are doing that. Because it’s there, you can take an off-the-shelf contract that we’ve got and then modify and suit your needs. And the way it’s set up is, like I said, very Lego-like – you can put together the different sections together and assemble one if you want to.
But, yeah, I think too many are just very green and just take a shot in the dark and hope for the best, and we see some really, really incredibly bad contracts. I can’t speak to this nearly as well as, say, Geoff and Elizabeth, who head up that side of the house. I’m sure they could tell you some really, really great stories.
I’ve been trying to get something lined up with both of them for a while now – I will absolutely try and make that happen this year. I wanted to ask: what’s something publishers should stop expecting designers to do, or to do for free?
I think you see this more with smaller ones, where I’m just asked to wear lots and lots of hats, whether it’s doing the final edit on the rule books or… I think we see this less now, but I was aghast in the past, when my prototype art was used, actually in the final product. Like, I’m responsible for the game design!
I would like there to be some sort of development support. Like, with Pandemic I had zero development support – it was published basically as I handed it over. [Z-Man Games founder Zev Shlasinger] was a one-person shop, and he did give one request, which was to have a few more roles in the box. But it was basically just like, you had to wear a lot of hats: creative director, art director, final proofer, all these different things. And I think it’s important for publishers to realize that we have a certain limited amount of time, and our role is game design. We still want the product to be as good as it can be. We’re probably the strongest advocates for that, and so we’ll step up and fill in gaps, because we want the final product to be really, really good, and it’s our name on the front of the box. So we need to do that, but there’s a certain limit.
So I guess one of my pet peeves is when I’m essentially asked to be the creative director, and I would like there to be someone else, even if it’s just a graphic designer who’s keeping an eye out and taking on that role. Maybe they have that formal role of creative director, but someone who’s, like, really responsible for the product at the publisher and not expecting the game designer to take on that role.
Do you think that’s improved, generally? Or do you think it’s improved for Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, more perhaps than for other people?
[Laughs] I don’t know, I really don’t know. I’ve got my own limited, narrow, viewpoint of the relationships I’ve got with the publishers I have, and I gotta say for the most part it’s been really, really good. And so I think it just stands out sometimes when you’re like, ‘oh, wow, it’s not always like that’, right? And I think the reality of it is, it’s a tough business, and if you’re a small company it’s difficult to hire a creative director, and you’ve got this game designer here who can take on that role. And I care about this stuff, so I’m gonna step up! I don’t want to blow this out of proportion, but it’s an annoyance sometimes. I think the products are so much better when you get someone looking within the company, ensuring that you know this thing’s gonna be really, really great.
So: if you were starting out as a first time designer today, what pieces of advice would you give yourself in order to sort of stand out and, like, build it up to a professional career?
I think a lot of it is the stuff that I’ve I had to learn on my own, and I’m not sure hearing it would really help. I would just have to do it. I fall into a lot of traps where I spend too much time trying to make the prototypes look good rather than play well, and I continue to do that [laughs]. So again, I could tell myself not to do that, but it’s something I just have to continually work at, because just many, many iterations with lots and lots of people are where you kind of get to quality.
And really, the play is the thing, that’s what matters in the long run. You can have a big hit that does well once and then goes out of print, but if you want that longevity, the play has really got to be in the game, and you’re only going to get that if you’re really iterating and working really hard and showing it to lots of people.
So I would probably just reinforce those lessons that I’ve learned myself, and I would hear them and agree with them, and then I wouldn’t do them [laughs].
You’re not the first person that I’ve talked to about this, and I’ve heard that before. You have people saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like. You just got to get it on the table…’
I mean that’s not true – it does matter what looks like! [laughs] But there is a limit. I have a tendency to pull out the laser cutter – because it’s fun to make stuff look really good! And it’s also a great way to procrastinate on the hard work of making difficult decisions and trade offs and, like, killing your darlings and all that kind of stuff, which is just not fun a lot of times. Or killing the project, you know! I’d rather make it look better and see if it plays again [laughs].
There must be some positive element beyond procrastinating to it as well, though, because otherwise you wouldn’t keep doing it! There must be some element of: it’s time with the game, crafting it and thinking about the vision. And perhaps by sitting with it and crafting it in this way, maybe that gives you the brain space to put it in different directions?
That is 100% true. And so I’m understating: investing too much time in making it look good is obviously a problem, but it does mean that you’re spending a lot of time with the components and the game on the table. It’s just you’re not, like, running the engine: you’re waxing the car. You’re not in it test driving it, you know, and banging it into other things to see if the roll bars are going to hold up, right? But that’s painful work sometimes. And it’s, you know – it’s more fun to polish the car [laughs].
2025 was obviously really volatile for many publishers, and presumably for designers too, given tariff changes and general worries about the economy, and how much money people have to spend on things like games. How much of that filtered through to you as a designer, or to other designers that you were speaking to last year?
Yeah, from what I hear it’s been pretty rough. You hear about the different companies going out of business, sometimes you hear about designers not being paid on time. Delays, and just the length of time seems to just be longer in general – so development times have kind of stretched out on my end. Games that have been promised to release in a certain year, that year slips more often than not now. So that’s a thing.
It was difficult to keep, specifically, Fate of the Fellowship, in stock. It’s been nice that there’s been so much demand, but it would be better if we could have them on the store shelves. I think more than anything it’s been the delays. And I would think that – and this is speculating on my part – I would think that publishers are gonna be less likely to want to take certain risks given how volatile things are, so maybe relying on lines that are more well established, rather than swinging for the fences with something really risky.
Presumably you’ve been speaking to publishers towards the end of the last year and already this year – do you get a sense of how are they approaching things for 2026? Like, are there different strategies at play and desires for particular types of game, or ‘size of box’ game – are you seeing those sort of discussions happening?
Most of what I could share would be second-hand, just reading online how people are more open to card games and so on that have a lower cost of goods, just because of the tariffs and so on. But I haven’t really had those conversations myself so much, with the projects I’m working on.
You talk about riskier games, and publishers maybe battening down the hatches and sticking to their knitting in terms of what’s been successful previously. Where would something like Daybreak sit? Because I think if you if you’d asked a couple of years ago ‘will this game be hugely successful?’, I think there’d be plenty of people who would have said, ‘well, possibly not’ – it’s a strong issues-focused, cooperative game, and perhaps doesn’t fit in the traditional mould of a modern eurogame. Obviously it was very good, and hugely successful! Do you think it would be more difficult to “pitch a Daybreak”, something a bit left-field, today?
Yeah, hard to say. I mean, [co-designer Matteo Menapace] and I were thinking it would be a tough thing to find a publisher, to some extent from the beginning, just given that it’s, you know, ‘let’s play a fun game about climate change’. It’s not necessarily something people are gonna want to sign up for, but at the same time there are a lot of eco-focused games, games about nature and ecology and so on. Wingspan really showed everyone that there’s a market for this kind of thing.
I think of [Daybreak] as a kind of a special case. We had the game, and they were looking for that game, and we just met up, and everything was great. So it’s difficult to know how that would have done back then, if we hadn’t found that relationship. And that’s as it was, much less with what we’re seeing now. Hard to say.
Daybreak / e-Mission designers Matt Leacock (left) and Matteo Menapace (right), flanking Schmidt Spiele editors Bastian Herfurth and Anatol Dündar
What design trends do you think are being overused right now, and which areas do you think are perhaps a little under explored?
Well, I don’t like to chase trends, so I think if your hot new idea is maybe a trick taker, you might be a little late to the party [laughs] There are so many of those. That said, there’s a huge built-in audience for those, and they’re really inexpensive to make. So, you know – I don’t want to dissuade anybody from chasing their dream, but I also don’t think you want to be chasing a trend that we’re actually seeing in the marketplace, given that it takes one to three years to get something out on the on the market.
Under-explored? Oh, God, I don’t know. That’s always the question, right?
Is it space-based flicking games?
[Laughs] 100% yeah, you really need to fill in your portfolio there. So many publishers don’t have a dexterity game. Here’s this wonderful game! Yeah. I’m not really sure. I’ll pretend that I know exactly what it is, and I’m not going to share it with you. [laughs]
Very wise, very sage! I do think more publishers should do dexterity games. I know perhaps it’s a difficult fit for their existing portfolio or style, but I play loads of dexterity games, they’re great, and it’s always fun, even if you’re bad at it.
Exactly, you can always blame your skill at flicking, not your strategy.
Are there any games in the past year or so that you’ve been particularly impressed with from a design point of view, where you’ve played it and thought, ‘oh yeah, that’s really craftily done’?
I’m perennially impressed and just blown away by [Reiner] Knizia’s work. The reworking of Beowulf that he did – and didn’t seem to go over well in the market – into Ego has been really amazing. He’s got three games with… I think it’s Bitewing: Ego, Silos and Orbit, and they’re all good, but I think Ego’s really something special. It’s got this great exploration into risk, and pushing your luck, and sunk cost and all this kind of thing – with really fun bits. Plays pretty snappily, and I think it’s just stellar design work.
And then I shelled out for the version of Quest for El Dorado, the international version with that art, and still adore that game. So those two just stand out in my mind. And a lot of the work by John D Clair, I think has been really fantastic. Those are the standouts for me.
Are there any mechanics you now actively avoid because of lessons learned from earlier titles?
[Laughs] No, I think mechanics are just, like, the tools you have in the shop. For me, it’s just all about: what is the game trying to do? And those are just the nuts and bolts that that you use to create those exciting changes in the game, to light up people’s brains. So I can’t think of anything specifically.
Well let me rephrase it then: is there any game you made previously where you thought: ‘I will never do that again’, for whatever reason?
Matt Leacock’s design Era: Medieval Age
Yeah, I would say that some of the dice games that I did, like Roll Through the Ages and Chariot Race, I think were fine for the time – but the downtime in those is just too high. I don’t think people have the patience for that sort of thing. So that would be something I would avoid. I think I would avoid games that just have a tremendous amount of plastic in them, for environmental reasons. So like, I’m looking at Era going, ‘Wow, that is a lot of plastic’. I have a follow up for that game that’s unpublished right now, and I don’t know what I’d ever do with it, because it just requires a metric ton of plastic. So I’m like ‘I don’t want to do that’ [laughs]. So those are considerations, not really mechanisms, so much.
Is there a structural issue in the board game industry now that you think needs fixing, but just isn’t getting discussed, or rarely gets discussed?
Oh, you’ve given me such a great platform for this, and I don’t really have a specific bone to pick right now [laughs]. There probably is. I mean, I’m concerned about the way that creatives are compensated, whether they’re illustrators in the wake of AI, or game designers just not knowing better and signing up for really bad contracts with exploitative publishers – or publishers that are just trying to make ends meet, and finding ways to whittle around the edges.
Has that been a big thing with within TTGDA? Members bringing you concerns about AI, especially on the art side of things?
I think there have been some discussions. I try not to get too heavily involved in them, because they tend to devolve into… it’s hard to change people’s minds online. I would say that the consensus is pretty much that it’s okay to use AI stuff for prototyping, but never in a final product, – at least our collective seems to have that mindset, I think? And even if you’re doing it in a prototype, there… I think I would just say some embarrassment about it. I’ve used AI in prototype art, and I don’t feel great about it, because I know it’s operating on the work of other people that’s been uncompensated. So I will probably think pretty heavily about whether it’s worth the squeeze there. If I can find other ways to do it, I think [it] would be do better.
It does seem to be creeping into more and more games. I don’t think many of the really big publishers have committed to using it yet, but we’re seeing it creeping in with some of the smaller publishers and individual creators. Is there some sort of inevitability about this?
I don’t think anything is inevitable here. I think as consumers we can say, ‘hey, we don’t stand for that sort of thing’. I’ve been kind of disappointed looking at the Terraforming Mars product line, and that publisher Fryx Games has just kind of embraced it unapologetically. And I’m like – I’m not gonna work with that publisher.
I feel like maybe there’s a certain justice element there that just really rubs me the wrong way. And if, as consumers and designers and media, we try to stand up for creators rights, then we can steer things a certain way. I still hold out a lot of hope for that, and I don’t think anything about it is inevitable.
European board game distributor and fulfillment company Meeples Group is continuing its rapid expansion since its launch operating out of attic five years ago, with a move to a huge new warehouse in the wake of soaring numbers of orders last year.
Company co-founder Floris Toorenburg told BoardGameWire the company handled 14-times the number of orders in December 2025 that it did 12 months earlier, and estimated the business will ship about 118,000 packages and pallets this year across e-commerce fulfillment, crowdfunding fulfillment and its own sales channels.
Toorenburg said the business had “exploded in a positive way” since the summer of 2024, bolstering its clientele by signing deals with publishers including Steamforged Games, Academy Games, Magpie Games, Arcane Wonders and IV Studio.
He said, “I think in 2025 we managed to get our company out of the start-up phase and into the scale-up phase. We still have many things to improve, and we keep expanding our team with valuable members that add value to both our clients and our company.
“We feel we are now a settled company within the board game industry, and people know how to find us. For me personally, the most exciting thing in 2025 was the release of our own distribution platform. On this platform we have connected publishers with retailers, while we still take charge of the infrastructure, shipping, and payments. Our publishers can upload their own products on the platform, track their sales live, and decide on their own how to market them and how to price them.
“All retailers can see the products of the publishers and the contact details of the publishers. This way, they can order from all our partner publishers in smaller quantities, while if they would like to buy in bigger quantities, they can still reach out to the publisher to make a purchase directly at the publisher instead of through us. When this happens, we just ship it out and all parties win.
“What makes the platform even more special is that we give a referral code to all our publishers. If they share this with retailers and the retailers order with that code, the publisher gets rewarded with a 5% cashback on the total order value for as long as the retailer uses this code.
“With this concept, our local publishers from, for example, Latvia can promote brands of all other small publishers and big publishers next to selling their own products and earn a little bit on the side. The reward is then given from our commission on the sale as a thank you.”
Toorenburg added that the Netherlands-based business was currently looking into a ‘test case’ operation in Canada, beginning with Terraria from recent new client Paper Fort Games, and was also exploring setting up a consolidation warehouse in China together with an unnamed partner from the industry and long-time partner Maersk, the Denmark-based shipping giant.
Meeples Group co-founder Floris Toorenburg
He said the China-based space would allow the company to consolidate all freight for its publishers, “which will create a lot of extra value and lower freight prices”.
Toorenburg added, “Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the scaling that is needed for our growth. We started our company without any external investments and are still doing it on our own. Because of this, we need to be careful while building our team and be smart when hiring and expanding it.
“From our warehouse department, the scaling is going very well, but in our office department this has been a bit more of a struggle to find the right personnel that fit our company’s standards. We are really happy that our team is forming a more stable base now, but this has definitely been a challenge and will continue to be a challenge as long as we grow the way we are growing.
“The positive thing is that we feel our office and operations team will be fully thriving by April 2026, with some really good new people on board. This, in combination with some new innovations that we will be launching soon, will create the base where we can speed up our growth and create stability at the same time.”
Toorenburg told BoardGameWire that volatility around last year’s US tariff war with China saw rising publisher attention focused on the EU market, and “somewhat less” of a focus on the US.
But he added, “Now, after a year, we see that the market has cooled down and that publishers are planning ahead again.
“Based on our understanding, tariffs are currently around 30% on the production price. When comparing this to the VAT system in, for example, The Netherlands, which applies 21% on the total order value, it remains a relatively manageable cost.
“With proper planning, including thoughtful pricing strategies, this can be effectively incorporated into the overall business model and still result in a healthy and sustainable business case.”
Toorenburg said, “There are two risks that can happen and that we are cautious about. One of them is that we need to keep up with the scaling. If we can’t keep up the pace, both on our systems side and on the personnel side, it will be a very challenging year. This is the biggest focus that both my co-founder, Rients-Auke [Rienstra], and I have.
“Next to that, we do have some concerns regarding the geopolitical situation in the world. We feel that tensions are increasing quickly and that economic instability is growing. We already saw this reflected in the difference between the dollar and the euro in 2025.
“If these tensions continue to increase, it is difficult to predict what the impact will be on a hobby-driven market such as the board game industry. Unfortunately, this is not something we have under our control, and we hope that the global situation will stabilize again in the near future.”
Less is more for French board game publisher Super Meeple, which says its strategy of keeping a tight rein on the number of complex titles it releases each year is paying off in an industry rife with overproduction.
Super Meeple, which releases its own designs as well as localising major titles such as Ark Nova and Gaia Project, says it is planning a “downward trend” for the number of games it releases each year in order to help each title stand out in an increasingly competitive market.
The publisher said that of the nine games it released last year, excluding expansions and sequels, only one was a “failure” – civilization builder Beyond the Horizon, the follow-up to Dennis K Chan’s highly regarded 2020 release Beyond the Sun.
It added that its biggest success of 2025 was “undoubtedly” fantasy animal reserve game Wondrous Creatures, while the rest of its releases were “in line with our overall expectations”.
Wondrous Creatures || Photo Credit: Bad Comet
The company said in an annual review post on Facebook, “Everything mentioned here is obviously based on our experience, and perhaps others have a different perspective, but the observation is pretty much the same everywhere, namely that overproduction automatically leads to a decrease in the percentage of successful games.
“We are mostly responsible for overproduction: from authors who want to be signed to buyers who want something new, not to mention publishers who need to produce and shops/distributors who need to meet buyer demand.
“Some can afford to be less involved in this overproduction, with a few games in their catalogue that are huge successes. Of course, they are more relaxed and can afford to slow down their releases.
“However, this foundation is generally, if not always, supported by family games; games with ‘infinite’ sales potential. Unfortunately, this is not the case for us, except perhaps for Kronologic and Expeditions.
“But the pool of buyers for big games is very limited, and even if it were to grow each year (which we hope it will!), it would still be insufficient to keep a company running. Nevertheless, we are aware of this overproduction and try to limit the number of releases as much as possible.
“Excluding expansions, we released seven games in 2024 and nine in 2025. We plan to release nine in 2026, as we do not want to exceed ten per year, two in edition and seven or eight in localisation.
“The trend will be downward as much as possible, working as hard as we can on each game and crossing our fingers that they will be successful.”
Super Meeple added that while it was fortunate to have games that always sell well, such as its lighter range of Kronologic murder mystery titles and zoo-building heavyweight Ark Nova, it was seeing a slight slowdown in what it called ‘long sellers’, big sellers such as Gaia Project, Trickerion and Obsession which it described as “pillars” of its catalogue.
Kronologic: Paris 1920, from Super Meeple and Origames
It said, “We still intend to keep them available in our catalogue, as new players of slightly heavier games like these need to know about them!”
The new system for some of Super Meeple’s expert titles involves running more pre-orders on its own site for those games, which it says could increase its margin to up to €20 per game.
It also hoped to “strengthen engagement” with retailers by allowing them to pre-order during a commitment period defined by the distributor, with any remaining games sold through its own online store or other online marketplaces and unavailable for restocking by shops.
Super Meeple said that Galactic Cruise, the first and only game to go through that system last year, sold out of all 3,000 copies – 300 through web pre-orders, 600 to partners outside France and the remaining 2,100 to stores.
It said, “This is obviously excellent news and proves that the vast majority of shops have understood our philosophy and made a greater commitment, so… thank you!
“This scenario will undoubtedly not be repeated for every game, but this initial success shows that the solution can work.”
The publisher said it planned to repeat the process this year for its localisation of World Order, the follow up to multi-award-winning economic class warfare simulator Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory.
Super Meeple’s other releases this year are set to include Tikal Legend, Mythologies, Revenant, Life of Amazonia and Ayar, and the third instalment of Kronologic, Babylon 2500.
Sam Healey, the veteran Dice Tower reviewer who has contributed to the channel for much of the last 20 years, has resigned after comments he made blaming Alex Pretti and Renee Good for their deaths at the hands of ICE agents began to impact the company’s annual crowdfunding pledge drive.
Healey posted on Facebook and in the comments section of the Dice Tower’s Gamefound campaign yesterday to say he was stepping down from his paid, part-time role at the business, adding that site founder Tom Vasel was “not putting me up to this”.
He said, “I do not want my friends to suffer any longer. Those of you who have cancelled your support because of my presence can feel free to back them once again. They deserve it, and you know it.
“They provide so much content, and they do a great job with everything from daily content creation to putting on no less than three conventions and a cruise each year.
“They deserve your support and with me now out of the way, you should absolutely give it to them without reservation.”
Sam Healey’s full resignation statement from his Facebook page
After sharing a post from American political commentator Armstrong Williams which questioned the judgement of Pretti carrying a concealed firearm at the protest, even though he was legally allowed to do so, Healey began responding to multiple commenters who disagreed with that view.
Replying to one comment which read, “The real issue is ICE executing American citizens on the streets”, Healey responded, “Frankly, the real issue is American citizens being told that it’s okay to illegally impede and/or obstruct legal law enforcement operations because the federal agents aren’t law enforcement officers. That’s the real problem.”
He continued, “We agree that they were needlessly shot. We disagree with where the blame and guilt lie. These two people should not have put themselves into these situations. They are tragic deaths, make no mistake about that. They could have been prevented by better choices.”
Responding to a separate comment accusing him of victim blaming, Healey wrote, “This isn’t victim blaming. I’m simply stating [Pretti] shouldn’t have been there in the first place, nor should the lady have been that he felt the need to protect.
“He made the choice to go into a volatile situation while carrying, posturing himself against law enforcement officers. From a basic conceal-carry course point of view, he screwed up. That’s not victim blaming, that’s the honest truth. We are ultimately responsible for what we choose to do.”
Many of those comments threatened to cancel or hold back support for the pledge drive until the Dice Tower took action over Healey’s public statements, which led to a pushback from other commenters supporting the Dice Tower in not addressing the situation.
The Dice Tower has not made a public statement about Healey’s views, or his resignation. When BoardGameWire contacted Tom Vasel for comment on the situation, a statement on Healey’s time with the Dice Tower, and his decision to leave, he responded, “I don’t give statements about how I deal with my employees. The situation has been dealt with.”
Long-time Contributor
Healey first appeared on the Dice Tower podcast almost exactly 20 years ago, becoming a co-host for about 100 episodes before stepping back from that role in 2009.
He began working full time at the Dice Tower in 2015 across reviews, live-plays and top ten list creation, before leaving four years later for personal reasons which required him to relocate.
He rejoined the Dice Tower part time in 2024 after the company’s pledge drive that year included his return as a late-announcement $380,000 stretch goal, which the crowdfund managed to beat by $767.
This year’s pledge drive has just passed $281,000 with about 12 hours of the campaign left to run, having cleared its $275,000 goal overnight.
Header image from the Dice Tower’s 2026 Pledge Drive, showing the total raised with 12 hours of the campaign remaining
The Dice Tower uses proceeds from its annual crowdfunding drive to pay its ten full-time employees and five part-time staff, saying it gets the majority of its funding each year from the campaign. It also brings in some money from its Patreon, and is currently sponsored by companies including Allplay and Board Game Bliss.
The reviews giant, which has more than 350,000 subscribers on YouTube and has published over 26,000 videos on the site, has been running an annual crowdfund since 2013 – with its debut campaign bringing in just over $69,000 from about 1,400 backers.
Dollars raised through the annual campaign grew steadily for a decade to reach a high of $410,000 in 2023, but fell to about $380,000 the following year and $350,000 in 2025.
Dollars raised by the Dice Tower’s annual pledge drive. 2026 figures are unfinalised, with 12 hours of the campaign left to run.
Backer numbers have also been falling since a high of nearly 8,500 in 2021, and last year had dropped to more than 40% from that peak to 4,880.
Backer numbers for the Dice Tower’s annual pledge drive. 2026 figures are unfinalised, with 12 hours of the campaign left to run.
Just over 3,640 backers have supported the campaign so far this year, with 12 hours of the crowdfund remaining. The company is using Gamefound for the crowdfund for the second year in a row, having previously run all of its campaigns on Kickstarter barring a single year on Indiegogo in 2017.
Update 31/1/26: The 2026 pledge drive closed on just over $305,000, down 13% on last year and its lowest level since 2019, while supporter numbers fell 18% to 3,999–the smallest number of backers in more than a decade.
The Dice Tower has said it plans to use some of the proceeds from this year’s pledge drive to give its employees a cost-of-living raise and improve the lighting and audio across its three studios.
Writing in a community note on the Dice Tower’s YouTube channel on January 28, company founder Tom Vasel listed the goals of the site as being to promote board games, to entertain, to inform and to support the team’s families.
He said, “We are a gaming channel, and my goal is to keep it that way. We aren’t a political, religious, philosophical, or any other type of channel.
“Talk to me in person, and I have thoughts and opinions on many subjects. But that’s not what we want on the Dice Tower channel – we want it to be singularly about gaming.
“Each year when we run our campaign, there is a lot of negative comments that levied at us. This isn’t a “real job”/we were unfair to a game/we are in the pocket of publishers, etc. Despite I feel that our work stands on its own.
“I am proud of what we’ve done, and while we are indeed imperfect people, I believe we’ve created a YouTube channel, podcast, and conventions that are fun and safe for the entire family.
“I look back at where we started twenty years ago, and I hope you can see more improvements and ways we get better.”
France’s highest-profile board game prize, the As d’Or, has updated its rules for 2026 to ensure that artist names must appear on a game box in order for designs to be eligible for the award.
The award, which traces its history back to 1988, has required entries to show designer names on their game boxes for several years, in addition to requirements for the game to be published in French and available in the French market during the preceding year.
Board game designers and artists are frequently namechecked on box covers in the current hobby – a far cry from the time of the “coaster proclamation” in 1988, when 13 designers – including El Grande and Tikal creator Wolfgang Kramer – signed a beer mat at the Nuremberg toy fair vowing that none of them would give their games to a company without their names being written on the box.
Exceptions to that have long existed at the mass-market end of the hobby – but further cases have begun to appear in recent years, some due to the use of AI generated images in titles, and others due to stylistic choices by publishers.
Viking-themed card shedding game Odin won last year’s As d’Or, while city-building eurogame Kutná Hora triumphed in the Expert Game category at the 2025 awards, Operation Noisettes won the children’s game prize, and Behind scooped the “Initié” award – which targets regular board game players ready for more challenging mechanisms.
The 2024 winner was also a small-box card game, Trio, potentially giving Flip 7 a boost in this year’s contest.
It added, “It also reflects the current trend: playing games as a couple, and smaller-format games are appealing to the public, and publishers are offering more and more of them.”
The As d’Or traces its history back to 1988, when it was launched to highlight the best games available at France’s Festival International des Jeux in Cannes. The award was merged with the Jeu de l’Année in 2005.
This year’s winners are due to be announced on February 26 during the annual Festival International des Jeux in Cannes.
Last year’s FIJ had a record 110,000 admissions across the five-day event, with 60,000 sq m of exhibition space – up a third compared to 2024.
Anmelden
