▪️ On Reddit, the user Diirge started a thread titled "Played a life size Pandemic game in my driveway tonight" and accompanied it with this image:
Diirge, who's real name is Justin, noted that he bought this set "from a fellow gamer who couldn't find space for it in her apartment anymore". I reached out for details, and Justin said that the game board — which is made of interlocking foam tiles — is 22 x 30 feet, with the cubes being cut from foam. The cards aren't to scale with the game board, but you couldn't hold them if they were, so that's understandable.
Justin says the original owner spent US$2,000 on this set, and it comes with accessories for the player roles.
▪️ On May 11, 2026, BoardGameGeek announced the winners of the 20th annual Golden Geek Awards, with Jon Perry's Hot Streak winning light game of the year (and party GOTY), Matt Leacock's The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship winning medium GOTY (and co-operative and thematic GOTY), and Galactic Cruise from T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, and Koltin Thompson winning heavy GOTY.
Follow the link to check out the winners in all fifteen categories.
▪️ On May 12, 2026, the UK Games Expo announced its Judges' Choice Awards for 2026, with winners being named in twenty(!) categories. The shortlist revealed earlier shows the three nominees in each category, so you can examine all sixty listings should you wish to be overwhelmed by too much of a good thing.
▪️ On April 23, 2026, Hasbro released preliminary financial results for Q1 2026, with estimated revenue of US$970-985 million, which would be 9-11% higher than in 2025, and with operating profit of US$235-245 million, which would be 38-44% higher than in 2025. The company's press release credits "growth behind continued strength in MAGIC: THE GATHERING".
I'll note that Hasbro has shed 10% of its employees in each of the past two years, and in the 1990s Hasbro had nearly three times as many employees as it did at the end of 2025 (13,000 vs. 4,520).
▪️ Wargamer talks with Paul Alexander Butler, manager and owner of Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie, Maryland, about the latest addition to his store: the Dark Crystal prop from the Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, for which he paid an undisclosed amount likely to be in the tens of thousands of U.S. dollars.
In the article, Butler says, "With the rise of e-commerce, bricks-and-mortar retail needs not only an excellent selection and customer service, but also needs to create a real experience for shoppers. We've built a space that feels like the place where magic happens, and that's not something you can get from buying your games from the internet."
▪️ Comedian Grant Lyon of Grant's Game Recs has launched a series of videos titled "It's All Funny & Games". New episodes will be released on the first and third Wednesdays of a month, with ten episodes constituting the first season.
"I bring professional comedians into a TV studio to play a board game with me," says Lyon, "It's full of silliness, strategy, and a bunch of trash talking." The first episode features Danny Jolles, Leah Rudick, Logan Guntzelman, Bruce Gray, and Lyon playing That Escalated Quickly.
▪️ In an April 2026 article in Complex, Holly Riordan speaks with Andrew Braund, who is covering the costs of his wedding through the sale of three Pokémon cards that he found in his attic.
▪️ In Smithsonian, Kunjal Bastola details the history of Twister in an article packed with an astounding quantity of advertisements.
▪️ At the 2024 Games Developers Conference, designer James Sheahan gave an hour-long talk about his efforts to convert the Fallout video game series into Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, which debuted from Modiphius Entertainment in 2018.
Following that talk, book publisher Taylor & Francis approached him about writing a book on the topic, and as of May 14, 2026 The Game Designer’s Guide to Creating Licensed Tabletop Games is available as a paperback and ebook. Sheahan told me, "While it is about converting licences, it contains a lot of information and insight relevant to any game designing. As Fallout has been my main experience, I use that as a running example throughout the book, but I do mention other licences, including other games I have worked on."
