Links: Revisit the 1970s, Explore the Metaverse, and Vote for Game of the Year

• Have you voted for the 2022 Toy of the Year awards? The winners will be announced at a ceremony the evening before NY Toy Fair 2022 opens.

In addition to voting in the "Game of the Year" category, you might consider looking over the "Grown-Up Toy of the Year" category as it includes an EXIT: The Game bundle from KOSMOS and The Goonies: Never Say Die from Funko Games.

• Speaking of "game of the year", on Opinionated Gamers, Larry Levy and others are looking back fifty years to reminisce on iconic games released between 1970 and 1973, including PanzerBlitz, UNO, Mastermind, Othello, Boggle, Quebec 1759, and Hare & Tortoise.

• Want to apply for the position of "game rules specialist" for Fantasy Flight Games? You can do so here. [Update: The job link was removed after I scheduled this post, so never mind!]

• On December 17, 2021, Spielwarenmesse announced that the Toy Fair scheduled for Feb. 2-6, 2022 would still proceed as planned — assuming that nothing major changes in the next six weeks, of course. From the press release:

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The rules continue to allow events and focus on boosters rather than testing. [Fifteen] days after having received a third vaccination, participants will no longer be required to get tested if the event is still subject to 2G+ requirements in February — which otherwise means the organisers would only be able to grant access to those who were previously considered fully vaccinated or recently recovered and can produce evidence of a recent negative antigen test.

• You have perhaps seen news announcements or pie-in-the-sky, self-serving presentations from Facebook about the metaverse — but did you know that the term "Metaverse" is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games and has been so since 1997, with SJG having filed for that trademark in 1993?

As owner/designer Steve Jackson wrote in a Dec. 19, 2021 Illuminator post:

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Many years ago, we claimed the site metaverse.net and registered the trademark for games. Though we are not known primarily as a digital game company, we do have a number of entries in that field, and that's where you can see a guide to them all.

If all the new foofaraw about "metaverses" drives some more traffic our way, we'll take it. More players, yay!

• Designer Jennifer Schlickbernd posted a video detailing her early days in the hobby playing games online on a 100 baud modem and playing Diplomacy and Nuclear War at conventions in the early 1980s: