Asmodee: The Other Creature that Ate the (Gaming) World

Some years ago, I wrote an article about how Hasbro had gobbled up the entire gaming world. It’s ten years later and Hasbro is not just sitting pretty atop their piles of toys and games, but considering a merger to turn them into a truly terrifying megacorp. Hasbro’s games division is just a quarter of their entire business, but in recent years it’s managed to scrape by with $1.2 or $1.3 billion in sales. I think it’s safe to assume that they still own the vast majority of the gaming market, with everything from Monopoly  to Magic: The Gathering in their portfolio. And, I think their massive size continues to damage their less popular brands, including my beloved Dungeons & Dragons, which is being starved to death, one product-less month at a time.

But what about the other elephant in the room? What about Asmodee? What about the company who was one called Asmodée Editions and before that Idéojeux before they gave up the Francophilian accent. What about the publisher that began life as Siroz (cirrhosis) Productions, best known in the US as the original creator of the In Nomine RPG? Since their 2013 sale to Eurozao, they’ve gone on an impressive shopping spree, picking up publishing houses throughout the United States and beyond.

Do we have the next Hasbro on our hands, the next company to eat the gaming world? Continue reading

Atlas Games: Mapping Out 18 Years in the Industry

Not for KnucklebonesAs I wrote in my reprint of “Role-Playing Games: A Primer”, in late 2007 Knucklebones magazines commissioned two articles for their May 2008 magazine that they never published due to closing up shop. Which is fine, it happens; I’ve had much larger commissions end up in limbo due to a company floundering. What was less cool was that they convinced me not to seek alternate publication for those articles for a year and a half, by which time they were so stale that they were no longer a priority for me.

For me this was especially heartbreaking for this article, on Atlas Game, because it represented not just an article, but an article about a company I liked, where they’d made the effort to support me in its writing, and where its publication could have given them some nice attention.

Well, I’m not sure how relevant it is any more, but here’s what Atlas Games looked like at the end of 2007. If the focus of this article is a little wonky, that’s because some boxed text has been incorporated (more or less) into the main flow. Since writing this original article I’ve also written a roleplaying-focused history of Atlas, which appears in Designers & Dragons: The ’90s (2014). —SA, 7/1/18


Atlas Games: Mapping Out 18 Years in the Industry

In the late 1980s John Nephew of Northfield, Minnesota bought a photocopy machine. It was for Lion Rampant — a small roleplaying company that Nephew was then working for. As is typical for tiny publishers of its sort, Lion Rampant couldn’t afford the equipment itself, so Nephew stepped up. Continue reading

He’s Z-Man: Catching Up with Zev Shlasinger and Z-Man Games

Knucklebones: November 2007This is a reprint of an article written in June 2007 for first publication in the November 2007 issue of the now-defunct Knucklebones magazine. Because of its origins, this article is more introductory and (hopefully) more polished than many of my online writings. Despite the original source of this article, this blog is in no way associated with Jones Publishing or Knucklebones Magazine.

November 2007 was also the first month that Knucklebones opted to accept two different articles for me; the other was an article on pirate games, which was featured on the cover. I wrote it a few weeks earlier, in May.


Z-Man Games has been publishing games for eight years, but with their early focus on collectible card games and roleplaying games, many board game players didn’t know about them. That should now be changing, because in 2005 Z-Man Games burst onto the board game scene with a collection of high-quality Eurogames and American originals.

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Six Degrees: The Second Edition

Based upon the hypothesis that game design is a particularly collaborative type of creativity, this February I posted an article I dubbed Six Degrees of Collaboration wherein I showed the interconnectivity of the game design world based upon who had done full-fledged collaborations with whom.

I was quick to discover that the center of my chart was Bruno Faidutti, a French game designer who had done work not with just other French designers, but also Americans, Germans, and Italians. He was the lynchpin that hung the whole world of game design together.

Since then I’ve been occasionally expanding and tweaking my chart, as interest and knowledge strike me. Bruno Faidutti’s central role hasn’t changed much. His 10 connections on the previous chart have expanded to 11 connections in this chart plus a pseudo-connection. However I’ve been able to fill in much of the periphery, discovering entire new game companies who connect back to Faidutti.

In the process I also learned a bit more about collaboration …

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Upcoming Companies, Part Two: Face 2 Face, Jolly Roger, Your Move

Last week I started a series on up-and-coming game companies who are producing some interesting games this year, and who may well be some of the notable movers and shakers in the American market in the years to come.

This week I’m presenting the second half of that series, with spotlights on Face 2 Face, Jolly Roger, and Your Move. In each case I’ve gotten some comments and thoughts from the game publishers as well.

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Upcoming Companies, Part One: Atlas, Cafe, Cheapass

Early this month I talked about Hasbro, the megagoliath that has eaten the gaming world, sucking up an amazing 80% of the tabletop game trade. As I said in that article, they have the ability to do a lot of damage to our industry. But, for now at least, there’s room for the smaller guys to get into the biz.

This week I want to turn that around, and talk about some of the up-and-coming game companies. These guys aren’t necessarily small (though none are huge), and they aren’t necessarily new (though some are). Instead, they’re companies that are working on publishing new sorts of games — either because they’re just getting into the biz or because they’re dramatically changing their focus.

Together these companies offer an insight into trends at the opposite side of the gaming industry from Hasbro: the companies who may be on the list of notable publishers in our niche in a few years.

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The Italian Design Scene, Part Two: The Reference

Eurogames have gotten a lot more Italian in the last few years, and that’s formed the basis of a spotlight on Italian game design this week and last.

Last week I started things off with an analysis, talking about style of design and the connectivity of the designers. This week I’ve put together a reference, listing Italian game awards and Italian game companies … plus a fun geographical listing of Italian-themed games, whether they’re Italian-designed or not.

Again, thanks to Andrea Ligabue for comments. He gave me the most help in this part of the article, in the section on Italian game companies. Also, thanks to everyone who offered comments on the first article, especially Andrea Angiolino, Frank Branham, Bruno Faidutti, Paolo Mori, and Angelo Porazzi. You all helped to make this second part better researched and more comprehensive.

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The Year in Review: 2005

Another year is behind us, and as January slowly dawns over the horizon of the twenty-first century, our ever-human instinct is to look back and reflect upon what the previous year brought.

It was, in general, a year of growth and change for the gaming industry. I’m not convinced that any true classics were produced last year. I think that Caylus will ultimately prove too long to support its continued rating as a top-10 game. However, there were a decent number of good, gamer’s games which I’m happy to own and which will continue to occasionally hit tabletop for many years.

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