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Winning game designer banned from future Spiel des Jahres events for anti-Israel symbol.
Board gaming is a much bigger hobby than it used to be. The Spiel des Jahres award was created in 1978 to highlight family-friendly games, and I played some of the early winners (Rummikub (1980) and Scotland Yard (1983))--but it was 1995's winner, The Settlers of Catan, that really changed the face of board gaming in the United States. As an established presence in the European market, the Spiel des Jahres evolved from a simple trade award to the gold standard for "must have" games. Like most at-home hobbies, board gaming also got a bump from the COVID pandemic--but more broadly, the nerdification of American culture has fed board gaming in much the way it has fed video gaming, comic books, and other IP-adjacent hobbies.
These days there are three "Spiel des Jahres" awards--the children's award, the regular award, and the "complex game" award. This year's "complex" winner was Daybreak, "a cooperative game about stopping climate change." The creator, Matteo Menapace, presumably wrote his own bio, though I don't know that for certain:
Anyway, Matteo reportedly wore a pin or sticker or something looking approximately like this onto the award ceremony stage. The announcement describes this as
Predictably, a reddit post in the most popular board game sub refers to it as a "pro-Palestine" sticker rather than an "anti-Israel" sticker. These days the line between those things can seem pretty thin, or so it seems to me. The commentary is predictable enough... I suppose in this case I would say that it seems like the political symbol in question "deliberately skirts the border of comprehensibility." Matteo is clearly an activist, who was doing activist things. The Spiel des Jahres people are clearly on board with the DEI rhetoric, and employ it in this announcement, so this may be one of those "leopards at my face" moments, too. But I don't know what Matteo's nationality is (Google suggests maybe he's an Italian living in the UK?), and Germany has some fairly strict anti-semitism laws for, you know, historical reasons, so there may be a culture gap issue here as well.
Ugh. /r/boardgames (and boardgamegeek, the largest dedicated hobby site for boardgaming), and the boardgaming hobby in general, are emblematic of my growing disgust with leftist politics. boardgamegeek hasn't quite gone as far as RPGnet (which famously explicitly banned any support for Trump on its discussion forums), but they have moderators who openly declare that their "political" forum is a leftist space. Anything right of AOC has to be expressed in the most tepid terms, and expect to get dogpiled with impunity, while any degree of heat in response will get you banned. Boardgamers are the fucking worst. (I can say this, I'm a boardgamer. Although I'm a dirty hex-and-counter wargamer, and only old white supremacist men play those.)
Anyway, a watermelon has been a Palestinian symbol for a while now, and I'm actually a little surprised that Matteo got this much heat for a relatively innocuous pin, especially given that Israel/Palestine remains a kind of third rail in boardgaming, as in most other liberal spaces, because of the intersection of leftist Palestine supporters and Jewish gamers. It suppose it is because the award is German and Germans are extra-sensitive to anti-semitism complaints.
I am willing to extend someone enough charity to accept that "Pro-Palestine" does not necessarily mean "Anti-Israel" (in the sense of "wants Israel destroyed'), let alone "anti-Semitic." Pro-Palestine right now is basically the BLM movement of 23-24. A lot of leftists' support really doesn't go any deeper than "Israelis are bombing children, this is very sad." That said, you often don't have to peel back a pro-Palestine activist's views very deeply to find a seething hatred of Israel, and possibly of Jews.
I've recently played some hex and counter wargames, albeit computer ones. Unity of Command 2, to be specific. But I am looking for something a little less like an elaborate chess puzzle, and not weirdly AAA-game expensive. Do you have anything you'd recommend?
Huge range. What kind of games do you like? Quick 1-2 hour games, or monster campaigns? Napoleonic, World War II, space?
The Command and Colors system is a pretty good entry level system.
My personal preference is World War II, though I also like ancients and sci-fi; not so much Napoleonic or Civil War (which are also hugely popular genres). Some old favorites are the Avalon Hill classics like PanzerBlitz and Starship Troopers. For the truly dedicated there is Starfleet Battles and Advanced Squad Leader, but those are basically lifestyle games.
Axis & Allies has many, many versions from mini-games to long campaigns with online versions.
GMT has a very wide range, and Space Empires 4x is a very approachable alternative to SFB (and you can play it on BoardGameArena).
One of my favorites is Empire of the Sun. The full campaign game is a long slog (12+ hours if you are playing face to face), but there are several minigames that are much easier to play.
Most heavy wargames have Vassal modules so they're easy to play online and/or asynchronously.
I think I was a bit unclear. In this case I was asking about computer games, not board games. Though I'll definitely look at some of these anyway.
Ah, sorry, I mostly play cardboard. But boardgamearena and Vassal do give you computer options if you want human opponents.
I've been told World of Warships is very good, though I haven't tried it.
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Space Empires 4x is legit great. It's been years since I last played it, but the last time I did I played a fairly small scenario with a buddy of mine. I had horrible luck exploring my system, and he was raking in extra production points of colonies well before I found a single one. So I invested heavily in speed and initiative tech, and harassed the fuck out of him. Constantly parked my weakest units over his planets to block their production, and then ran them away when he was forced to respond. I made up for my terrible luck by stealing the initiative, and I took it pretty far.
Unfortunately my friend has really bad analysis paralysis, and around 2 AM I just couldn't possibly play any longer. My first serious competitive fleet rolled off the assembly line, and we staged one last battle where all the dice split in his favor and I was left with nothing but smoking wreckage. We called the game for him then. But man, that first part of the game I really fucking enjoyed. If we had kept going, I may have pulled it off since at that point I had been fucking with economy so long, I had actually leapfrogged him despite starting in such an inferior position.
Talon is also pretty good - it's basically the tactical-level expansion for SE4x (and, honestly, a better version of SFB).
The same developer who put SE4X on boardgamearena also had a prototype for Talon, but unfortunately, there wasn't enough interest and he gave up.
Yeah, I own a first edition copy of Talon I've yet to crack open. It's on my pile of shame.
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I have a few favorites that may or may not have digital implementations.
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