Here's a sampling of game-related material I've run across on the interwebs in the past few weeks:
▪️ For SPIEL Essen 26, fair organizer Merz Verlag will use all eight halls in Messe Essen, adding approximately 3,700 m² in floor space to what was used in 2025 for a total of 81,200 m² devoted to fair activities.
Why the expansion after adding Hall 7 in 2025? Because Merz Verlag says that many existing exhibitors want larger booths and an "impressive number of new exhibitors who have never been to SPIEL before have registered for a booth".
The fair will still be organized by categories under this new layout, and since Hall 8 was used as a waiting area for those entering the fair, "SPIEL Essen will open the North Entrance for the first time this year, which leads directly into Hall 5 and is located behind the Grugahalle. This additional entrance will not only relieve the East, West, and South entrances but also guide visitor flow more directly into Halls 5 and 4." Merz Verlag will also establish a waiting area in Hall 1A near the South entrance.
▪️ The seventh occurrence of TTOX, which describes itself as India's largest board game convention, takes place on June 19-21, 2026. Exhibitor spaces are still available at around US$270, with visitor passes in the US$8-27 range depending on how many days you want to attend.
▪️ Yahoo! Life featured the story of Tim's Playlist Music Trivia, a game created by Chris and Greg Surrett-Forgach through their company Arise Entertainment in memory of Chris' brother Tim, who took his own life in 2021. As the publisher notes, half of the profits for games sold in 2026 will go to The Trevor Project, a non-profit suicide prevention organization that provides support to LGBTQ+ youth.
▪️ In 2024, Fletcher Heisler of the YouTube channel "Everything Is Hacked" built what he calls "Taser Chess", with this being an electrified version of chess meant to shock you into avoiding bad play. Popular Science profiled Heisler in February 2026, and here's his video about the game's construction:
▪️ Kidd O'Shea at Milwaukee, Wisconsin TV station WTML profiled Ian Thompson, winner of the first-ever UNO Elite championship, which earned him a US$10,000 prize.
▪️ Given the prevalence of generative-AI activities and the backlash to same, you might not be surprised to discover that several organizations have been founded in the past couple of years to champion human intelligence, and to make their allegiance clear, they use that term in their organization's name: Human Intelligence Alliance, Human Intelligence Movement, Human Intelligence Community, and Human Intelligence with no third word.
Why I bring this up is that on February 24, 2026, the latter group issued a press release titled "First Tabletop Game Certified with Anti-AI Human Intelligence®" to champion "the first tabletop creators to verify both themselves and certify their work with patent-pending human authentication tools". Those creators are Walton Wood and Rugose Kohn, and their work is the NINJA BORG RPG, the website of which features buttons and attire featuring the Five-Finger Death Cock Clan.
I appreciate the sentiment to have work labeled as created by humans, but geez, how sad that it seems necessary. Let's reminisce about the days when we had to certify only that a painting was created by an elephant.
