Spiel des Jahres 2024

The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced! This year’s show was… even longer… 😅 After last year I’ve hoped for a snappier show – instead it was further extended. As much as I appreciate the jury’s work (which I’ve expressed at length), the stage isn’t where they shine, so I don’t understand why we need two awkward hours of their presence. It’s understandable they want to highlight various aspects of board gaming and their activities, since those are the only two hours of attention they get all year, but just as an endless recommendation list would water down the award, the rule in showbiz is to make every minute count. [Read More]

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 21, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024. We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards. I’ve been doing this for four years now and I’ve called seven out of the eight winners correctly. No reason to rest on any laurels – there’s another batch of awards coming up, and this year might be the closest race yet! [Read More]

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 21. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score. [Read More]

Spiel des Jahres 2024 is around the corner! As in the previous four years, I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations) and the shortlist (aka nominations) when the jury announces their picks on June 11th. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, but I’ve added something new this year: I tried to track the jury members’ reviews of all eligible1 games, in particular when they publish scores (such as in the magazine Spielbox), and fed those into the predictions. [Read More]