Game of the year 2023
Winner: Dorfromantik: The Board Game
Other nominees:
Recomendations:
Kenner game of the year 2023
Winner: Challengers!
Other nominees:
Recommendations:
Children’s game of the year 2023
Winner: Mysterium Kids
Other nominees:
Recomendations:
Spiel des Jahres are without a doubt the most important boardgaming awards. They have a GIGANTIC impact in game sales. Huge.
I wish they had an actual “advanced” category, with heavier games. Their advanced cateogory is honestly a joke.
I guess my question is, why would they need to expand? The reason SdJ is so big is because you can hand off the nominations and winner to a generic family in Europe and they go “ok, this is what to play at the holiday season” which is why one of the criteria is “it’s widely available in Germany.” Heavy games aren’t going to have that fit that purpose, and the Jogo de Ano already sort of covers that niche if you’re just looking for casual recommendations.
Their current “advanced” category is often redundant, in my personal opinion. The winner of the “advanced” category is lighter than ticket to ride.
Jogo do Ano is an amazing award (my favorite, in fact) but it doesn’t have nearly the same exposure or impact as SdJ.
I can understand that stance. I think what SdJ represents doesn’t really equate to “this is the best game” so much as “this is a game that you should pick up and play over Christmas” because of the criteria that is involved in selection. That’s why it has such sway in sales; because you have a bunch of families who are looking for a TtR level game and they run out and buy it for the rest of the year accordingly. Their advanced category is effectively “ok, you’ve already played a couple of boardgames, now here is the next level” which is still a far cry from Terra Mystica. How decipherable the rulebook is, stages at which planning for turns is done, all of that is criteria but on a culturally oriented level for just German families, not an abstract one for connoisseurs (ala BGG).
Something a friend of mine in Germany told me; you see more people playing boardgames, but a reduction in percentage of “heavy gamers” (which is an amorphous metric anyway once we cross cultures). SdJ meets their needs because that’s what the populace by and large needs an award for (compared to heavy gamers who do their own research). That’s why I also look at the Jogo; it’s going to look at what Americans would consider “heavy” games.