• Imperial Steam from designer Alexander Huemer and publisher Capstone Games has won the 2022 Jogo do Ano, Portugal’s game of the year award, beating out the other nominees: Ark Nova, Coffee Traders, Golem, and Messina 1347.
If you’re curious about Imperial Steam, Candice Harris covered the game in depth in December 2021.
• The value of Hasbro stock fell in mid-November after Bank of America analyst Jason Haas downgraded the stock twice from “buy” to “underperform”. From CNBC: “The move comes after BofA conducted what it calls a ‘deep dive’ on Hasbro’s Magic: The Gathering trading card game business. BofA said Hasbro has been overprinting cards and destroying the long-term value of the business.”
John Ballard at The Motley Fool had a longer article on Hasbro’s status, noting that “Magic is estimated to make up over a third of the company’s adjusted operating profit, so if sales were to fall, it would be problematic for Hasbro’s business. The analyst cited feedback from players and store owners who said Hasbro is over-distributing cards to drive up sales, but this could backfire in the long run if players grow tired of chasing down more and more cards.”
• The 2022 CATAN World Championship takes place November 18-20 in Valletta, Malta, with 87 contestants from 48 countries participating in the event. The CATAN World Championship is normally held every two years, but the 2020 event was cancelled due to a worldwide sheep shortage. The CATAN website will livestream from the event starting on November 20.
• In August 2022, Charlie Hall of Polygon interviewed Jonathan Ritter-Roderick of Lay Waste Games, who had just been promoted within Kickstarter to senior outreach lead for tabletop. An excerpt:
• SPIEL ’22 hosted a panel to discuss various crises in the game industry, such as raw material shortages, supply chain issues, energy costs, and so on. The guests were Frank Jaeger, who handles product development for manufacturer Ludo Fact; Udo Fischer, sales director for Asmodee GmbH; and Matthias Nagy of Frosted Games and Deep Print Games. (The discussion is in German, but you can probably set subtitles to the language of your choice.)
