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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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A game news round-up to kick off your weekend, starting with a surprising award winner that hits the market the same day it took home the prize:
• The winners of L'As d'Or 2011 – the game of the year awards given out at the annual Festival International des Jeux in Cannes, France – have been announced. According to Jedisjeux, Hervé Marly's Skull & Roses won the l'As d'Or – despite the game not being available for sale until the opening of this year's Festival! Clearly this game has something special going on if it's already attracted this much love. S.O.S. Octopus won in the children's category, and 7 Wonders took home the jury prize.
• Richard van Vugt at Gamepack.nl has posted his Nürnberg 2011 report, which includes overviews of upcoming releases from twenty publishers. Richard always takes nice shots at conventions, and he has additional details about Hans im Glück's Pantheon along with the awesomely bizarre cover of Queen's Paris Connection. Lots of good stuff here.
• Tric Trac has posted 125 images from the 2011 NY Toy Fair, kicking off with an unusually pensive shot of Roberto Fraga and ending with Ken crying out to the public to convince Barbie to take the stiff back as a boyfriend.
• As reported on TricTrac, French publisher Ystari Games will release a magazine focusing on its line of games, with the first issue on display at the Cannes game festival at the end of February 2011 and available in stores and via the Ystari website in April 2011.
• Valley Games reports that the new printing of Ignacy Trzewiczek's Stronghold is shipping to retailers.
• GMT Games will start shipping reprints of both Dominant Species and Battle Line the week of Feb. 28, 2011.
• Gaming site FatherGeek.com is giving away three copies of Tasty Minstrel's party game Train of Thought. Deadline for entry is March 7, 2011.
• Online gaming site Brettspielwelt will add 7 Wonders to its offerings as of February 27, 2011, according to Spielbox.
• Pearl Games is apparently distributing four new cards for its debut release Troyes at the Cannes games festival. Those who can't make the show can download an English version of the cards (PDF) and start cutting.
• Daniel Solis is trying to inspire designers to think long-term by presenting them with The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge. Here's a summary of the challenge: "The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a 'new classic', like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years." Deadline for entry is July 31, 2011.
• Abacusspiele is holding a contest for three copies of Michael Schacht's new card game Gold! To have a chance of winning, you need to figure out the best plays to make in a game situation presented by Abacus' Matthias Wagner. As an additional prize, one participant who answers correctly will receive 50 GeekGold.
• No link for this item, but Chris Comeaux passed along the following note: "This month Wired has a one pager featuring, wait for it... Dominant Species, Race for the Galaxy, and Twilight Struggle. This is noteworthy to me if only because of the games covered."
• Perhaps this is old news to y'all, but Gamification.org has a nice PDF of The Gamer Brain, a chart showing "seven types of reward centers" in the brain and how those centers related to gaming and a gamer's personality. Rob Beeson gets the credit.
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