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

Can’t We All Just Get Along: Cooperative Gaming

Knucklebones: Final IssueThis is a reprint of an article written in October, 2007 for first publication in the March 2008 issue of Knucklebones magazine; it was the final issue. 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.

Since I wrote this article, I’ve spent much more time extensively analyzing co-op games. A series of co-op interviews talks with designers from the genre while a partial history of the genre begins to trace its evolution. I’ve also co-authored a complete but unpublished book on cooperative design with my friend Christopher Allen, which I hope will see print in 2015.


Most games are about competition. However, in the last twenty years, a small but increasing number of games have instead focused on the opposite type of gameplay: cooperation. There’s still competition in these games, but instead of working against each other, players tend to work against the game system (sometimes embodied by a singular player). They must either achieve victory together or else fall down ignobly to defeat.

Because of this unique cooperative play style, these games allow for a degree of socialization that’s unprecedented in most strategic games. Players talk together about the best way to overcome the challenges that they face. They pool their thoughts, their strategies, and sometimes even their resources in order to try and reach a shared victory.

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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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