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As July limps to a close, we have survived a stupendous heatwave, and Gen Con is nearly here. The Q2 reports are arriving, starting with the biggest of all: Hasbro. Dungeons & Dragons continues to grow, but the star of the show is Wizards of the Coast’s other big property: Magic: The Gathering. Hasbro intends…
Read More 22–28 July 2019: Q2 Reports, Accessibility, D&D Beyond Elections
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It has been another quiet week as Gen Con slowly, inexorably approaches. For that reason, it’s probably a good illustration of what ‘normal’ looks like for the industry right now: a growing market, a ton of new product announcements, a convention scandal, a notable TV adaptation, traditionalists getting miffed about female dwarves, gaming celebrities, and…
Read More 15–21 July 2019: Crowdfunding Growth; Diana Jones Awards; Female Dwarves
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Featured Image: Cover Art for Demigods by Jason Mills. Artist: Minerva Fox We’re in that eye of the storm before Gen Con, and this week is a fairly quiet one — apart, of course, from Twitter. The Twitter debates we’ve noticed this week have been around two particular articles: Bloomberg on the subject of professional…
Read More 8–14 July 2019: Paid Gaming; LGBT Representation; Awards Season
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Well, we’re back, and this is a bumper, two-week special issue. Twice the news! Twice the Kickstarters! Three times the speculation! This one’s a political edition: controversy around a game writers views on race science; a biting article on the racism of Orcs in D&D; the suspension of tariffs on RPGs; and cyberpunk as (IMHO…
Read More 24 June–7 July 2019: Race, Orcs, Hasbro, 80s Nostalgia
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This week, we’re talking business: with calls for better rates for freelancers and controversial company board meetings being our biggest stories. There’s a gorgeous interview with DIE writer, Kieron Gillen about writing a critique of roleplaying games during their zenith. We’ve also got Acquisitions Incorporated, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, body horror, French revolutionaries, and lots of…
Read More 17–23 June 2019: Fair Pay; Board Meetings; A Wish for a Queer History
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And 2019 has passed the halfway mark! This week’s update includes a number of moving pieces on gaming and the games industry, including a moving tribute to the late James Mathe, and Jim Zub’s reflections on how gaming shaped his life. This weekend past saw the Origins Game Fair, and with it the Origins Awards.…
Read More 10–16 June 2019: Origins Awards; Free RPG Day; RPGs Shape Us
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Well, it’s another week, and oh, boy, is it an exciting one for the computer RPG fans! Mindflayers! Keanu Reeves! Another Vampire: The Masquerade game, or wait, is this one of the ones we’ve spoken about before honestly I can’t tell any more there are approximately three thousand now! We can see some industry booms…
Read More 3–9 June 2019: Baldur’s Gate 3; Keanu Reeves; Yet more VampireWelcome to Pride month, everybody! From our queer hearts to yours, we hope you have a safe and happy one. This past weekend was the UK Games Expo, the largest gaming convention in the UK. Unfortunately, the big news coming out of the con is an incident involving distressing content in one of the con…
Read More 27 May–2 June 2019: UK Games Expo; Unsafe Gaming; RPGs on screenThis week has been a quiet one on all fronts after last week’s flurry of new game announcements. The Dragonborn is coming to the tabletop as Modiphius announces an Elder Scrolls miniatures game. Paradox Interactive talks about the controversy of Vampire: The Masquerade, and how they’re planning to avoid it in future. And we get…
Read More 20–26 May 2019: The Vampire controversy; Stephen Colbert; Fus Ro Dah
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Since early 2018, the United States has been in the grips of a trade war with China. A series of escalating tariff increases on imports between the two countries has hit both hard, along with the global economy. After a short truce, negotiations appear to have failed, and President Donald J. Trump has announced plans…
Read More The US-China trade war, the cost of paper, and the economics behind roleplaying games