Links: Lots of This and That and Some of the Other...

Links: Lots of This and That and Some of the Other...
Board Game: Mondo
• The Norwegian Årets Spill (games of the year) have been announced by Brettspillguiden.no, with Michael Schacht's Mondo taking home best family game over Fresco, Uluru, Dominion: Intrigue and Tori (which Queen Games is redeveloping and publishing as Kairo in 2012). While 7 Wonders has grabbed most of the gaming awards around the world over the past twelve months, Mondo has also done pretty well for itself, especially in northern Europe. Villkatten Master won the Årets Spill for best children's game, while Cranium Scribblish won for best party game.

• The October 2011 issue of WIN! The Games Journal, a 108-page issue "with reports on 1137 games by 689 designers from 372 companies, illustrated with images of 725 games", according to publishers Dagmar and Ferdinand de Cassan of the Österreicheischen Spiele Museum, is now available for download in both English and German.

• Designer Seth Jaffee is back for another interview by Tom Gurganus on the blog Go Forth and Game.

• Designer/publisher Byron Collins, owner of Collins Epic Wargames, LLC, details five myths about Kickstarter in his BGG blog.

Reaper Miniatures has announced a licensing deal with Playnet Inc. for the acquisition of exclusive video, computer and online gaming rights to the IP associated with two Reaper titles: CAV: Strike Operations and Reich of the Dead. (HT: David Heiligmann)

Richard Baker, the lead miniatures designer for Axis & Allies and Dungeons & Dragons, has been let go by Wizards of the Coast, as he notes on his blog at WotC. Seth Owen at Pawnderings speculates on what this change means for the future of both product lines and other releases.

• Online gaming site Yucata.de has added Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow to its offerings, albeit in beta form for now, while Boardspace.net has added Dieter Stein's Volo, which mixes elements of Hex and Lines of Action as players add birds to the birds or move birds in order to enlarge an existing flock; get all your birds together and you win.

• Steve Jackson Games has posted a list of Munchkin titles that it's going to let go out of print until at least 2013. Munchkin completionists – you have been warned!

• French website TricTrac.net notes that Identik, the 2010 As d'Or winner for game of the year, is going out of print only to return in the middle of 2012 as Duplik.

• ICv2 reports on the decline of Hasbro's stock value, pointing out that "Hasbro's games and puzzles sales have dropped 9% over the last three quarters". From the news item:

Quote:
Critics fault Hasbro's slow move into online gaming, its failure to keep its board games fresh with new games and new innovations, and the slow results from Hasbro's expanded efforts in movies and TV. Hasbro believes that the results from its Battleship movie...and from its new channel The Hub will pay off over time.
It's like a report from another world when compared to nearly every other game publisher talked about on BGG.

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