Links: Final Tales of the Arabian Nights, and The Impact of Counterfeit Games

• In March 2021, Z-Man Games' Head of Studio Steve Kimball announced the end of the company's "Euro Classics" game line that (to date) consisted of new editions of Reiner Knizia designs.

On May 28, 2021, Kimball did another lap on the same course, announcing a final (small?) English-language printing of Tales of the Arabian Nights that will mostly be sold only through the publisher's online store, with Kimball's reminiscing and announcement sandwiching designer Eric Goldberg's history of the game in a suitably Arabian Nights-like fashion.

Kimball notes that this edition of the game is happening only thanks to a bump in the road to a rebooted version of the game with another publisher, with Goldberg hinting that perhaps this new edition will be based on the Arthurian legends. Check out the post for yourself if you want to try to read those tea leaves.

• In July 2020, designer Isaac Childres was profiled in the "news" section of Purdue University's website, Childres having gotten his degree there in physics and astronomy. An excerpt: "Isaac Childres graduated with a doctorate in physics in 2014 but his career route took an unusual turn. While working on his doctoral thesis, 'Effects of energetic irradiation on materials and devices based on graphene and topological insulators,' Childres was also working on a side project."

Another game-related excerpt:

Quote:

When asked if Childres plans to work with physics in the future, he says, "this chapter in my life has ended." But when asked if there may ever be a physics based board game, the story is just beginning.

"Last year, I started working on an independent project to publish that was loosely based on physics," says Childres. "It has a more sci-fi premise where lab workers work together to open a parallel universe. In this game, you'd work with your mirror self to close the rift and then write an academic paper. It is in the works but there's not a lot of time to put into it right now. I plan to revisit it next year."

• In March 2021, Ian Williams at VICE interviewed designer Francesco Nepitello about the second edition of The One Ring RPG, which Swedish publisher Free League funded on Kickstarter and which is due out near the end of 2021.

• In January 2021, Variety reported that the Hasbro board game Risk "will be getting a TV adaptation as part of a multi-year television deal between the board game, toys and media behemoth's entertainment studio and Beau Willimon and Jordan Tappis' Westward."

• Australian game blog Next Player has interviewed four publishers — FryxGames, Pandasaurus Games, Steve Jackson Games, and Bézier Games — for two articles about counterfeit games, with the first on the impact of counterfeit games on the hobby and the second on what individuals can do about them.

I've spoken with a few publishers about this topic over the past few years, and their comments mirror the ones in this article. The main problems related to counterfeit games are twofold and intertwined: lost sales and loss of buyer confidence. The problem with lost sales is direct and obvious — money that would have gone to the legitimate publisher of a game instead goes to someone else.

The loss of buyer confidence relates to someone receiving a poorly produced version of a game, then swearing off items from the publisher and slamming the game in reviews, while not realizing that they have a counterfeit. This problem is more nebulous, yet possibly more damaging long term because a review like this one of Splendor on Amazon will stick around for years, making every single reader of it question whether they should purchase the game at all.