B is for Boardgames

It's good to see that the board game industry has become successful enough to warrant a Mo Rocca feature for CBS News highlighting game play -- and GenCon one of America's largest Hobby Gaming conventions. In the piece, Rocca rightly points out that Eurogames like Settlers of Catan helped to revive the board game industry, but his focus misrepresents some of the industry. Many of the games featured in the piece aren't European games, though they are Euro Designer Game influence, instead there are a number of American games in the mix as well.

One does not expect Rocca to talk about how the bookshelf games of 3M -- in particular those of Sid Sackson -- went on to influence European game design and were partly responsible for a board game book in Europe that has lasted into the present. I would just have liked the piece to make these designer games seem a little less exotic. That is often what makes them so accessible to a wide audience.



Enough complaining though. I'm really happy with the piece as it shows a broad array of gamers who attended GenCon and makes the games it feature look fun...and that is the important thing from my gamevangelization standpoint. Rocca's doing a nice piece of gamevangelization here.

I hope some of my non-gamer friends saw it and will ask if they can come over to play a game of Power Grid or Settlers. I just might be able to talk them into playing a game of Mansions of Madness or Castle Ravenloft afterward, and once that happens...it's only two steps to D&D.