Tabletop gaming trade organisation GAMA has opened nominations for its 2027 Power Retail Awards, inviting gamers and industry professionals from around the world to spotlight stores and cafés they believe represent the industry’s best.

The annual awards, which have now been running for 17 years, aim to act as a showcase and celebration of business practices, community-building and operational innovations that other hobby retailers can learn from.

More than 750 retailers were submitted for inclusion in last year’s awards, with nominations coming from Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) customers before being voted on by a GAMA committee of retailers and emeritus ‘team retail’ members.

The awards cover four categories: Retailer of the Year, Innovation in Games (Retail), Outstanding Contribution to Games Industry (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design, with winners of each receiving a one year GAMA membership, recognition in its online database and in the Spring issue of its Around the Table magazine.

That prize was reduced by GAMA last year, with retailer of the year having also previously receiving $1,000 and the other category winners $500 each.

Any tabletop retail business can be nominated regardless of country or GAMA membership status, although US-based businesses have heavily dominated the awards since they were launched in 2010, picking up 50 out of the 63 wins to date.

That total does not include the 2021 Retailer of the Year award, which was presented to every GAMA retailer member at the time to recognise and celebrate them having survived the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arizona-based Silver Dragon Games scooped Retailer of the Year in the 2026 awards, adding to the Innovation In Games (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design titles it won at the same awards in 2024.

They were joined this year by Illinois-based Fantasy Books and Games, which won the Innovation in Games (Retail) award, Minnesota’s The Gamers Den, which sealed Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry (Retail), and Wisconsin-based Oddwillow’s Game Haven, which won Outstanding Store Design.

UK retailer Eclectic Games remains the only non-US winner in the past two award cycles, having scooped Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry in 2025, while Mexico City-based La Piramide is the only store from outside of the US, Canada or the UK to win an award, which it claimed during the inaugural contest in 2010.

Nominations are open to stores that have been operating for at least one full year, while previous winners cannot win the same category twice.

Anyone interested in nominating an outstanding hobby retailer can do so here.

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Editor’s note: GAMA is one of the sponsors of the BoardGameWire newsletter

Tabletop gaming industry association GAMA has hired Kevin Ronnebaum as its senior marketing and communications director – making him the trade body’s sixth communications lead since mid-2020.

Ronnebaum joins GAMA after almost three decades working across creative, marketing and communications roles, most recently at non-profits including Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland, Make-A-Wish, A Kid Again and Maryhaven.

His hire comes at a pivotal time for GAMA, which has followed several years of booming post-Covid growth by implementing a plan to become the “epicenter” of the global tabletop gaming industry.

The past 12 months has not been without challenges for the association, however, including losing long-serving executive director John Stacy last October, contending with the fallout from Donald Trump’s volatile tariff policy, and falling foul of a series of incidents which have caused dents to its reputation.

Speaking to BoardGameWire in May, newly-elected GAMA president Meredith Placko said putting proactive structures in place to keep GAMA from “stepping in the mud all the time” was one of her priorities – adding that being on top of communication was essential to that process.

That focus on communication was echoed by GAMA’s interim executive director and COO Melinda Prickett, who reached out to Ronnebaum after having previously hired him while she was COO of Girl Scouts of Ohio Heartland.

She told BoardGameWire Ronnebaum stood out from a strong pool of candidates due to his “rare combination of strategic vision and operational excellence”, adding that GAMA was excited about “his ability to strengthen our communications strategy and amplify the value we deliver to our members and the broader community”.

Prickett added, “GAMA is currently in an important foundation-building chapter, and our communications priorities reflect that. We are focused on increasing both the consistency and effectiveness of our communications across all audiences.

“What’s working well is the passion and engagement of our members. There is tremendous enthusiasm for the work we do and the future of the tabletop gaming industry. Our opportunity is to build upon that foundation by creating greater clarity, consistency, and connection in how we communicate our mission, value, programs, and advocacy efforts.

“As we continue to grow, our focus is on developing a more strategic, integrated communications approach that strengthens member engagement, enhances transparency, and ensures stakeholders clearly understand the impact and value of GAMA throughout the year.”

Ronnebaum told BoardGameWire his initial priorities included strengthening GAMA’s overarching brand, increasing awareness of flagship events including Origins Game Fair and GAMA Expo, and more clearly communicating the value of GAMA membership and the association’s industry support services.

He said, “My goal [is] to help others connect socially and flourish through inspired creativity. It’s everywhere, all the time with this group. We have an awesome opportunity to bring value, share messaging that can build confidence in a startup, an artist, a creator, or a player.”

Ronnebaum added, “Ask a small business or startup that has worked with us, and they will tell you that we helped them immensely. Why? Because we care deeply about the industry and we have expertise that can help others thrive in an exciting and unique setting.”

He said, “At GAMA, we have a great story to tell, we just have to get better at telling it”, adding: “The industry needs GAMA, GAMA needs the industry, and we are here to help it thrive.”

Ronnebaum’s hire marks a continuation of high turnover at the top of GAMA’s comms department, with former incumbent Eric Francis having only joined the organisation 12 months ago.

His predecessor Amy Lowe spent just six months as marketing and communications manager, before a resignation which saw her accuse GAMA of “rampant gatekeeping”, “toxic leadership” and disrespecting its members.

Those hires followed the role being occupied by Mike Boseak, Rachel Blaske and Danni Loe since mid-2020, and mean the organisation has now had six comms heads in as many years.

Eric Francis, who spoke to BoardGameWire after announcing he was leaving GAMA in April, remained full of praise for the organisation – saying his own exit to join software networking company Megaport essentially came down to pay, which he described as “the Achilles heel of any nonprofit career”.

He said, “I worked at GAMA for about a year and it’s left a huge impression upon me. Tabletop nerds are my people, and like so many of us in the hobby I had thought it would be cool to work in the industry.

“Well, it turns out it was every better than I could’ve imagined. GAMA is a great organization, and one that faces significant challenges given that it’s a small team with a limited budget working all-out to serve a global industry that has to deal with logistical, manufacturing, commerce, and (increasingly) political policy challenges.

“I’m pretty sure that, with rare exceptions, our members and the broader tabletop industry have no idea how many irons GAMA’s staff has in the fire, how many balls they keep in the air, and how many hours they put in on a given day, month, or year.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever truly be done with GAMA, even if I no longer work there. Once I have my feet under me at the new job I’ll join a committee and otherwise support GAMA’s work; I’m also signed up for the convention support team at Origins 2026. There’s a lot to be done, and I intend to help in the doing.”

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The Diana Jones Award committee has picked a trio of TTRPG creators as the latest winners of its emerging designer program, who will each receive a $6,500 prize package that includes an all-expenses trip to Gen Con.

Glaiza Champion, J Strautman and Kodi Gonzaga will also receive one-year memberships to trade bodies GAMA and the Tabletop Game Designers Association through the award, as well as prizes including prototyping credit at The Game Crafter, an online badge to Protospiel and a game demo spot on Gen Con TV.

The emerging designer program, now in its sixth year, seeks to amplify the voices of up-and-coming tabletop creators, with a particular focus on designers from marginalized communities.

Filipino-American designer Glaiza Champion describes themself as a ‘third-culture’ kid whose experiences span Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines and Korea.

Champion is a game designer, writer, performer, podcaster and variety streamer, whose work is rooted in tabletop roleplaying games and storytelling – with designs to date including Beef, Missing Month and Meet Your GelCub.

Toronto-based RPG designer J Strautman, who also works under the name Yes No Goodbye, combines game design with a career as a professional musician.

Strautman has released the GM-less zine-sized RPGs Contact and Insatiable Cravings, and in 2025 co-released A Fool’s Errand through Planet Arcana Games.

Alongside their design work, Strautman tours internationally as a professional bass player, and co-hosted, and scored and edited the tarot-infused science fantasy actual play podcast Planet Arcana.

Los Angeles-based designer Kodi Gonzaga began designing games in 2018, and has since created a growing catalogue of tabletop RPGs including Extra Ordinary, Misfits & Mayhem SRD, Down the Road Through the End of the World, Voxinn: A Firebrands Hack and In This Echoing World.

Gonzaga is also a creative writer, actual play performer, Big Bad Con POC Scholar and former IGDN convention coordinator.

Other finalists in this year’s competition included Wyrmspan and Apiary designer Connie Vogelmann, Cretaceous Rails designer Ann Journey, and Elijah Djan – the co-creator of FinMaster, a game designed to help teach families about investing and enable positive discussions about money.

Also making the list of finalists this year was board game designer Gene Koo, who works to promote tabletop game designers based in the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Last year’s emerging designer program winners were High Tide designer Marceline Leiman, Ashraf Braden, Elliot Davis and Lyla McBeath Fujiwara.

Speaking to BoardGameWire after being selected last year, Leiman said the award had enabled her to attend Gen Con at a time when financial pressures and industry uncertainty would otherwise have made the trip impossible.

“Gen Con is an incredibly important convention for freelance designers to get their work noticed and signed,” Leiman said. “This amazing opportunity for underrepresented and underprivileged folks represents a great step in equalizing this dream of a creative field for all.”

The Diana Jones emerging designer award program was launched in 2021, with Jeeyon Shim picking up the inaugural award.

The emerging designer program is part of the wider Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, which was founded and first awarded in 2001.

That award is presented to the person, product, company, event, movement, concept or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its committee, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year – and is traditionally hugely wide-ranging in its choice of candidates.

Previous winners across the award’s 22-year run have included Blood Rage designer Eric Lang, Nigerian games industry publisher and evangelist NIBCARD, and the entire ‘actual play’ movement of people livestreaming and podcasting roleplaying games.

Last year’s Excellence in Gaming award was deemed a tie between author Rose Estes and the climate action-themed board game Daybreak, designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace.

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Editor’s note: GAMA is one of the sponsors of the BoardGameWire newsletter

Newly-elected GAMA president Meredith Placko says the tabletop trade organisation must stop being reactionary, improve how it communicates with members, and focus on collecting meaningful industry data as it continues to navigate a turbulent couple of years.

GAMA has experienced explosive growth since the pandemic, with surging attendances at its annual GAMA Expo trade show and a broadening of its membership to include designers, manufacturers, media and events organisers, in addition to its long-time core of publishers, retailers and wholesalers.

But the organisation has been dealing with challenges too, including losing long-serving executive director John Stacy last October – just three weeks after unveiling ambitious plans to become the “epicenter” of the global tabletop gaming industry.

GAMA has also recently faced budgetary issues, had to contend with the fallout from Donald Trump’s volatile tariff policy, and has fallen foul of a series of gaffes and other incidents which have caused dents to its reputation.

Last month GAMA‘s board of directors had to apologise for some of its elected leaders being “rude and disrespectful” during a “heated” annual general meeting.

That apology came just a few days after GAMA unveiled its latest slate of 120 nominees for its annual Origins Awards prize – and immediately came under fire for failing to mention any of the games’ designers for the third year in a row.

Speaking to BoardGameWire in her first long-form interview since being elected last month, Placko said putting proactive structures in place to keep GAMA from “stepping in the mud all the time” was one of her priorities.

She said, “We need to stop being reactionary. We need to start looking ahead, we need to think before we speak.

“…it’s easy, avoidable issues that if we just put a bit more forethought into it, we can overcome them and they won’t even become an issue. And I think a lot of that has to do with making sure you have the right people in the right places to communicate better.

“I will say this: GAMA’s not done a great job of communicating to its membership. And I really want to appreciate the work that has been done in the last year on the GAMA staff side, where they’ve retooled the newsletter, and they’re trying to get ahead of everything.

“I think that’s great, And I think the conversations that we’re having behind the scenes between board members and with our acting executive director is being on top of that communication.

“And that’s going to be really key because it’ll kind of keep us from stepping in the mud all the time or being late to the game, like with the tariff news last year.”

Part of that looking ahead involves GAMA’s first-ever ten-year plan, which was unveiled to much fanfare last October by former executive director John Stacy and Placko’s predecessor as president, Nicole Brady.

That array of plans included boosting GAMA’s membership within both hobby games and the mass market, expanding itself from being US-centric into a true global organisation, shifting its finances away from the current heavy reliance on the annual GAMA Expo and Origins shows, and leading the conversation on sustainability within the industry.

Advocacy and brand protection were also one of its near-term priorities – underscored by the organisation’s recent intensive lobbying and awareness efforts around the impact on the industry of US tariffs.

But with the figureheads of that plan both gone from their positions, where does the future lie for GAMA’s Vision 2035?

Placko told BoardGameWire, “I think most of it is there, it’s going to stay – I think it’s just going to be the order of which we tackle things.

“…we need to not be reactionary as an organization. We need to stop waiting for something to happen to then react to it. So we need to kind of maybe do a little bit more forward thinking about what are going to be the pressing matters.

“So advocacy, which was on the later half of that ten-year plan, that’s actually should be something that we start building into the core of our organization sooner.”

She added, “I’m going to be starting an advocacy committee for us to start looking at how to educate our members on being advocates for themselves and looking at opportunities that we can maybe work alongside other trade organizations or industry and other impact groups to do more lobbying efforts and have a say.

“Because really, as we saw this last year, tariffs decimated so many of our members. And that is something that we need to be on the forefront of… I know some people are like, ‘Oh, what can GAMA do? You guys are small potatoes’, but it’s having that voice, it’s having the impact.

“It’s at least having the information ready for people, so they know what’s going on and can make informed decisions.”

Tariffs have impacted GAMA as an institution beyond just the need to lobby on behalf of its membership. Placko told BoardGameWire that the organisation had seen an uptick in turnover of members over the last year, and said she believed tariffs and wider economic instability were to blame.

But she added, “One of the things that I want to see is more hard data on member retention, like: who is staying, who is going, why are they leaving? Unfortunately in the last year, due to tariffs levied in America, companies are having to close down.

“People are going to have to make these harder decisions. You know, can they afford to be part of a trade organization? Are they even around to still be part of that trade organization?

“I will say: membership numbers are up, which is great all around. All membership groups saw a nice bump this year for membership, but we did lose people. And actually one of the big things I want to work with the whole board, the membership, the GAMA staff is: why are those people leaving? Where are they going? What’s happening to them?

“Because one of my core beliefs of a trade organization is that we need to be more involved in sort of this data gathering and sharing.

“I’ve been involved in [other] trade organizations and it’s very key to me that the trade organization is able to provide me with actionable accurate data that can help make informed decisions as businesses move forward.

“And I think a key part of that is just knowing: what is the state of our industry? What is going on with people? What is going on with companies? Where can we as a trade organization also step up and help them, like with advocacy?”

Despite membership numbers continuing to grow, GAMA has also faced headwinds for its finances over the last couple of years – a situation that has delayed its hiring of a new permanent executive director to replace John Stacy.

Tax data provided to BoardGameWire by the organisation showed net revenues of just $17,500 on a total revenue of about $1.4m in 2024 – well down on the almost $409,000 net revenue recorded the prior year, on overall revenues of almost $1.5m.

The documents show salaries rose about $782,000 in 2023 to almost $960,000 the following year, while ‘other expenses’ was up from $302,000 to about $426,000 in the same period.

Placko said, “Our finances have been… not in the best place. And back in the fall, John Stacy hired this amazing operations officer, Melinda Prickett, and she has been taking a look at our finances and how GAMA runs everything, and just laying out a plan, working on stabilizing us and getting us to a point that when we bring in an executive director, they won’t be walking into a messy situation.”

She added, “Some of the things were just, like, tracking spending and where that money was going. And I’ll say this: as an organization, we haven’t raised fees, we haven’t raised booth costs in a while.

“And while everything else is getting more expensive, what we were taking in was not covering everything that we were doing. So there were a lot of hard conversations about where cuts needed to be made.

“We’re currently spinning up conversations. We have a membership dues committee that started, that’s going to be looking at if we need to raise dues and how much.”

She continued, It’s great that we’re able to offer what we can for the limited amount of buy-in from memberships. But, you know, if that money is not covering everything, we have to make hard decisions.

“But it’s improved. I’ll say that… there are just changes we’ve made, and things aren’t bad or scary.”

Speaking of her decision to run for GAMA president, Placko said, “I’ve been vice president. I’ve been on the board for only a year. It was interesting for someone new to the governance side of the organization to even make a play for an officer role like I did when I started.

“But it’s not like I’m lacking experience on non-profits and for-profit boards, and the reason I ran for [the GAMA board] to begin with is that there were just some core governance changes that I wanted to see.

“I quickly learned – and I think a lot of people don’t realize – that our board is governance and not operational. And what I saw was, from the outside, it looked like the board was maybe very involved in the day-to-day operations of GAMA, where it shouldn’t be.”

She added, “Nicole Brady did a fantastic job the last two years, bringing GAMA out of a really messy place and into a more stable place.

“But what I wanted to see, and what I kind of pitched to my fellow board members, was that I really believe that we need to be more of a working board where we’re all working together, that not one single person or a handful of individuals are leading things.

“And sometimes maybe the perception was that way. I want to be very clear: I’m not saying it was that way, just the perception. And communication is key.”

“…I think that the board deserves to know a lot more of what’s going on, and have more of a say in what is being said to the executive director. And I don’t want to be like, ‘oh, I ran on transparency’ – but I really did. I ran on that. I felt that us as a board needed to have more open communication with the executive director… and be able to have a more open working relationship.”

Placko continued, “I think there’s been a misconception that the president of the board leads the vision of GAMA and the board, and that shouldn’t be the case.

“As a board, we are 12 individuals who need to come together and have a shared vision. I kind of see my role as president as maybe the person who helps conduct those conversations, keep them on track, and help silo them to where we’re all on the same page by making compromises and such.

“But that doesn’t mean that I myself don’t have personal things that I think we need to update and change.”

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