Should you be looking for weekend reading — well, Sunday reading at this point — about board games and the industry, here are few suggestions:
▪️ Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries has opened applications for Indie Games Night Market, an event on December 5, 2026 during PAX Unplugged that allows independent creators to sell their games directly to individuals. If you have a design you think you'd like to present in this venue, you can apply for what will likely be 25 available spaces. The deadline for submission is August 1, 2026.
▪️ On Rascal, Khee Hoon Chan highlights RPG creators and individuals within game companies that will not attend Gen Con 2026. An excerpt:
"I would love to go to a lot of American conventions again," said MÖRK BORG designer Johan Nohr, in response to a Bluesky thread on attending Gen Con 2026. "That's where my audience, a lot of my friends and collaborators are and I really, really like hanging out there. But there is no way I'm flying to the states right now. When shit is sorted I'll reconsider, but right now that door is closed." This was echoed by other designers in the same thread, all of whom also shared their reluctance to face a more fascist and militarized version of the US Department of Homeland Security (under which ICE presides).
I heard similar comments from board game creators and publishers at Spielwarenmesse in January 2026 and via email in the months since — and news of international travelers being detained or denied entry ahead of the 2026 World Cup isn't likely to quell anyone's concerns.
▪️ Designer Bruno Faidutti ponders the topic of "too many games", using a scattershot approach in his writing that hits why this might be happening, what results from this behavior, and so on. An excerpt:
There are more or less 2.5 times more games published now than ten years ago. In the same ten years, the market volume has also grown, but less so, having more or less doubled. If we spread the effect of the covid years, the market has grown by 7% every year when the number of games has grown by 10%. The numbers are impressive, but the gap means that, while boardgames have certainly become more popular, life is not necessarily easier for designers, publishers and other boardgame professionals.
As might be expected, Faidutti points out that gamers also complain about too many games hitting the market, even though these games are "on average, better than the ones we were creating twenty years ago".
My solution to this "problem" has been to realize that it's okay to say "That game sounds cool" and leave it at that. No sense trying to get everything to the table as that would lead to unsatisfying playing experiences, racing from one game to another with no chance to discover all that a game has to offer.
▪️ On BoardGameWire, Mike Didymus-True profiles the hybrid physical and digital game console maker Board, which has raised US$35 million in funding since its launch in October 2025.
Has anyone tried this US$400 device and can offer feedback on it? I don't see the appeal given that it comes with only seven games — several of which seem to be knock-offs of existing games — with other games selling for US$35-45. Maybe I'm just channeling my old-school nature of not wanting to download material that will disappear when the device goes kaput.
▪️ On July 1, 2026, Nicole and Guy Mullarkey will launch what they describe as "Australasia's first board game hotel experience", with Blue Mountains Board Game Retreat — located in Blackheath, New South Wales, Australia — featuring 1,300+ games and room for up to twelve travelers.
▪️ In mid-May 2026, Tanner Yarro, founder of Yarro Studios, which has crowdfunded a variety of game accessories, detailed the problems it had with fulfillment company The Block Logistics. An excerpt:
Six months in, we had paid Block roughly $1.5 million and fulfillment wasn't close to done. We ran our own projection on what it would cost to finish — about another $300,000. That would put us $600K over the original budget, but we were learning the real cost of this in real time, so we accepted it and pushed Block to finish.
When we told Block our number and asked them to wrap it up, they came back with a different one. They said the finishing cost would be $500,000. A few weeks later, after we told them we were going to come pick up our own product and finish fulfillment ourselves, the number went to $700,000. Then to $1 million. The faster we pushed for the end, the bigger the bill got.
In the same period, the actual shipping work was a fraction of what Block had promised. Between mid-November 2025 and mid-January 2026, Block moved roughly 800 orders. Eight weeks. That's about 100 orders per week — against 2,500 per week Block had promised in writing.
