I'm a Prophet

At the end of 2006, I made ten predictions about what will happen with board games in 2007. To no surprise, I was right about all of them, with only minor correction.

For item 2, people finally got the idea that single-player versions of board games on computers is not where it's at. Multi-player versions finally came around, and are doing nicely.

For item 6, I think Settlers of Catan is finally starting to make a few ripples, twelve years after its initial release. I would put the number of people who know about it at 0.5% now, rather than 0.1%.

And for item 10, I was surprised to see half a dozen mainstream articles actually pick some better board games this year, rather than the same old tired picks from last generation.

Rachel's Back

My wife is back in Israel for a three week winter break. Yeehaw! Expect some 2 and 3 player Puerto Rico game reports.

Gone Gone Gaming

Gone Gaming, a cooperative blog I helped launch two and a half years ago, is shutting down. Not too surprising, as the output has been slowly decreasing over time. Still, they always manage to produce some fine writing.

Thankfully, the remaining writers are merging their talents into Board Game News.

I've been asked to write a last article for them. Trying to think up something.

Game News

Some of those people who try to produce their own board games actually have some success, such as this man who created a game called Things... 128,000 sales by an independent in a few year is pretty impressive. Now he's selling out to Hasbro. I'm not entirely sure why.

Kotaku reviews Blokus for the PSP, and finds that it added some surprising and annoying theme to the otherwise wonderful abstract game.

NikDaum plays Heroscape and lists a number of Settlers of Catan variants he created.

The Chattanooga Times gives its board game recommendations, and quotes Entrepreneur.com as having board game industry statistics holding steady at around 800 million dollars. I couldn't find this information on Entrepreneur.com . Anyone?

Yehuda