The Crew on Analysis Paralysis

And the Spiel des Jahres 2020 goes to… Part 4!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:42:00 +0300

After months of waiting, we finally know what games won this year’s Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres! Without further ado, I’ll present the winners along with a comment on how the predictions went.

Spiel des Jahres 2020

Pictures

Reading through the comments on the interweb most players seem surprised about the winner of the red meeple. Not me! It was on my list from the very beginning as probably the strongest contender. Despite nominating the fairly complex My City and Nova Luna along with Pictures, in the end the jury went – again – for the super simple and approachable game.

Inevitable, there are those who complain that one year after Just One there’s yet another party game taking home the main award. I really think the BoardGameGeek crowd needs to rethink their definition of a party (and probably why they’re never invited to any). Not every “light” game is automatically a party game, and I believe neither this nor last year’s winner would be considered party games by the average gamer. At the end of the day, if you’re hanging out on board gaming sites all day long, you’re not the target audience of Spiel des Jahres. The award is meant to guide people who might purchase one game a year to have a good time with a quick and approachable experience.

By all accounts, Pictures seems to fit that description perfectly, so I say congratulations to Daniela and Christian Stöhr for winning the most prestigious award in board gaming with their first (or second) design!

Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Unlike the winner of the red meeple, virtually everybody agreed that The Crew will win an award, though not necessarily which one. I’ve discussed at length in the previous articles why I agree with the jury’s classification of The Crew as a Kennerspiel.

One last thing to mention is that The Crew’s predictable win wasn’t down to a lack of competition. By all accounts, both Cartographers and King’s Dilemma are highly regarded and would have deserved the award. As gamers, we can be excited that it’s not only the quantity of games being released that’s rising, but also the quality, throughout the spectrum.

Conclusion

The jury explicitly pointed out the quality of this year’s games in all of this hobby’s facets. When you look back through the different games discussed in this series, I’m sure you’ll agree with them, and it’ll get you excited for all the games yet to be published.

I certainly had a ton of fun reading reviews, following discussions, crunching numbers, and distilling everything into my predictions. The outcome makes me quite proud and I’m already thinking about next year’s awards, so be sure to check back in for Spiel des Jahres 2021!

And the Spiel des Jahres 2020 goes to… Part 3!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 10:15:00 +0300

Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres winners are due to be announced on Monday, July 20. I promised last time I’d be back with more detailed analyses and predictions. So here we go!

Out of hundreds of games published in 2019 and 2020, the jury selected a total of fifteen games they recommend, six of which they nominated for the two main awards. But who is the favourite? Who is the dark horse? Let’s find out!

Spiel or Kennerspiel?

One of the main conclusions of my original article was that Spiel des Jahres winners tend to be ever lighter and faster. Concretely, no red meeple was pinned on a game whose complexity exceeded 2 on BoardGameGeek’s complexity scale (medium light) since 2012, so I drew a hard line and claimed that no game would be nominated if it broke that pattern.

I was wrong.

Out of the six nominees, four could have been nominated for either award. Jury member Udo Bartsch wrote an interesting article explaining why the jury decided one way or another. I think the main takeaway is that BGG’s complexity rating is just too crude a measure. To their credit, they admit as much and only make a half-hearted attempt in defining what they even mean by weight or complexity. In essence, the tension lies between how hard it is to learn a game vs how hard it is to master it.¹ The ancient game of Go provides an excellent example: while the rules are very quickly explained, playing the game well easily fills a lifetime. Consequently, the complexity ratings spread over the whole scale from 1 through 5.

Back in 2020, we still are no closer to quantifying what games qualify for Spiel des Jahres or Kennerspiel. According to Udo Bartsch, it’s about the barrier that needs to be taken to immerse oneself in the experience. It’s about that Aha! moment when the penny finally drops and the game behind all the cardboard shines through. I’m not sure we’ll ever find an objective measure for that.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres

I already introduced the nominees in the previous article, along with their characteristics and a brief assessment of their respective chances of winning an award, so here I’ll focus on the pros and cons why that game might win the red meeple.

My City

Pros

Reiner Knizia is en vogue again.
Legacy / campaign format allows players to ease into the experience.
Highest average rating on BGG (7.55).
Has been consistently highly recommended to the S_d_J bot

Cons

Still very complex (2.14) for a Spiel des Jahres.
That’s it, really…

Nova Luna

Pros

Uwe Rosenberg has always been en vogue.
The fan favourite so far with the highest geek rating (6.34) and leading in this poll.

Cons

Fairly abstract.
On the heavy side of Spiel des Jahres.

Pictures

Pros

Super simple and quick.
Typical Spiel des Jahres material.
Highly recommended to the S_d_J bot sometimes – the recommendations tend to be rather volatile.

Cons

With Just One we had a somewhat similar winner last year.
In its simplicity, it might not have the same staying power as the other nominees.

Who will win?

Honestly, the numbers don’t yield any clear favourite. If I had to make a guess, I’d still put my money on the quick and simple Pictures ahead of the legacy game My City, with the abstract Nova Luna further behind. But overall, the field really seems open. We’ll know more on Monday!

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres

Same procedure, let’s assess each game’s chances of winning the award!

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

Pros

Roll and write games have been on the rise for some time, with Qwixx and That’s Pretty Clever receiving nominations.
The highest rated game in the Recommend.Games ranking.

Cons

It might not have enough meat for a Kennerspiel in the end.
While there are lots of positive opinions, none seem to be excited.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Pros

Already on its way into the BGG top 100 (#124 at the time of writing).
Consistently and by far the highest recommendation to the S_d_J bot.
Runaway leader in the poll I quoted above.

Cons

Too obvious choice?

King’s Dilemma

Pros

Probably the most innovative game on the list with lots of hype from the community.
Highest average rating on BGG (8.12).

Cons

Can you imagine a game about intrigue and backstabbing being played around the Christmas tree?
Very lowly ranked in the recommendations for the S_d_J bot.

Who will win?

Hands down, The Crew is the high favourite, and any other outcome would be a big surprise. This game seems to appeal to reviewers, the community, and the wider market alike. Cartographers just doesn’t have the same pull, and King’s Dilemma seems too specific for an award that’s supposed to reach hundreds of thousands of German average gamers.

I hope you’re as excited as I am about Monday’s announcements. We’ll be back with the final conclusions for Spiel des Jahres 2020!

This is one of the many things the BoardGameGeek competitor Board Game Atlas gets right: they measure both learning and strategy complexity. ↩︎

And the Spiel des Jahres 2020 goes to… Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Thu, 21 May 2020 18:31:00 +0300

With Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations out (setting aside the Kinderspiel again), it’s time to look at the nominees and to check how I did in my predictions.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres

As every year, the jury nominated three games for the main award, one of which will receive the red meeple in July. In addition to that, there are six games the jury recommends. Do these games match the criteria I stipulated last time? Let’s see!

My City

First off, congratulation to Reiner Knizia for the third Spiel nomination in four years! Looks like he shows no sign of slowing down…

This title completely slipped under my radar. Not like it wasn’t on my mind (sure, anyone can claim that), but its complexity is rated at 2.44, heavier than any of the three Kennerspiel nominees. Granted, there aren’t all that many votes for many of the nominees yet (9 in this particular case), but even with wider opinions, it seems unlikely to end up under the magical mark of 2 I drew as a hard line for Spiel des Jahres.

Of course, the jury just doesn’t take to BoardGameGeek to classify a game for either Spiel or Kennerspiel, but of course draws their own conclusions. Still, it’s a notable outlier. How come?

The best explaination I’ve got is the game’s legacy / campaign format. The advantage this genre has is that it can build up its narrative and unfold the rules as the players progress. This can significantly improve a game’s accessibility, which of course is the real feature the jury is after.

Nova Luna

This one was on my shortlist, albeit for Kennerspiel. Its complexity is just short of 2, so it did technically meet that criterion, but the jury’s draw towards the very light games put Nova Luna rather outside the sphere of Spiel des Jahres for me. Further, the maximum playing time is stated at 60 minutes, another break of pattern. As I mentioned before, the jury hates to be predictable…

Pictures

The one nominee for the main award I got dead right. Everything about this game looks and feels like a typical Spiel des Jahres. For these reasons and the rather unusual competitors, Pictures should be an early favourite to take home the coveted red meeple.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

In addition to the three nominees, there’s also six games on the jury’s long list or recommendation list.

Colour Brain: One of those latecomers to Germany, it doesn’t seem to have had an impact outside of it either…
The Fox in the Forest: Another latecomer, yet I’m annoyed at myself for missing it since there’s been some excellent reviews by jury members. The only two-player-game mentioned, as expected.
Draftosaurus: As predicted recommended, but not nominated.
Little Town: Another latecomer, another game above the medium light complexity. Maybe the jury does want to highlight more complex games this year, who knows…
Kitchen Rush: I called this one, but again for the wrong award due to its complexity. I’ll admit I was a little surprised to see it on the list in the end as there were some pretty negative reviews by some jury members.
Spicy: What’s going on with this game’s complexity rating? Is it an easy to learn, hard to master situation that makes this a light game for two thirds, and a heavy game for the other third of the players? Or is it trolling?

How good were the predictions?

Time to compare the predictions with reality! As mentioned, I called two out of three nominations, though one for the wrong award. Depending on how strict you are, this makes for a 50% or even 66% success rate, which I am really proud of, given the jury’s infamous unpredictability.

However, when looking at the long list of nominations plus recommendations, I only called four out of its nine titles (two of them on the wrong list). I’ll try better next year…

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres

Again, there’s three nominations, along with three recommendations, so we’ll take a look at each of them.

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

Another correctly called, but incorrectly classified. I very much had Cartographers as “probably nominated, but dunno what list”, so it ended up nominated for Kennerspiel. I cannot offer any insights as to why it is a Kennerspiel with a complexity of 1.9, while Nova Luna at 2.0 and My City at 2.4 are on the Spiel list.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

While I was confident about the nomination for this one, I had some doubts about the classification as Kennerspiel. Its complexity says so, but then again this metric doesn’t seem to predict the jury’s classification very well. Also, as a campaign game it can ease the player into the game (cf My City), and traditional trick-taking games are very common in Germany, the land of Skat and Doppelkopf, so I might have been wrong again. As it stands, The Crew seems to be the favourite to win Kennerspiel des Jahres.

King’s Dilemma

I’ll be honest, I’m probably more excited about this nomination that any other, and the community seems to agree, judging by their reactions. I kinda excluded King’s Dilemma for no good reason other than having a high age recommendation (and even higher when asking the community). It’s great to see a more demanding game on the list, but I will say that the jury nominated (relative) heavyweights like Heaven & Ale and Terraforming Mars in the past, but didn’t give them the award in the end, so I’d think this one will be an also-ran as well.

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

There’s three more games that didn’t make the cut, but that received a recommendation.

Paladins of the West Kingdom: I was confident that this one would receive a recommendation because of Udo Bartsch’s glowing review, but also confident it’s too complex for a nomination.
Res Arcana: One of the hottest candidate, no surprise to see it on the list.
Underwater Cities: This one slipped under my radar as a release from the previous year. Also pretty heavy, so a recommendation is the best possible outcome.

How good were the predictions?

I was pretty happy about my predictions for Spiel des Jahres, I am very happy with how the Kennerspiel des Jahres turned out. Of the six title on the long list, I missed only one, and I (pretty much) called all three nominations, even though one on the wrong list, and one for a recommendation, not nomination. Still, this is a good outcome, both for my predictions, and for the hobby gaming in general because I think the jury made a fine selection of games that showcase so much of what games have to offer to new players.

This concludes the discussion of this year’s nominations for Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope so did you. I’ll be back in July with more detailed analyses of the nominees and predictions for the winners!