Board games trade organisation GAMA is offering $1,000 grants and peer mentoring to new board game publishers and retailers from under-represented communities.
Hobby games trade body GAMA has looked into scrapping the planned move of its annual trade show to Kentucky in the wake of anti-LGBTQ laws passed by the state - but said the $1.8m cancellation cost would have a "lethal impact" on the organisation.
A record number of people descended on tabletop gaming trade show GAMA Expo last week, although the number of retailers attending the event is still below pre-Covid levels, ICV2 reports.
Meredith Placko, the CEO of veteran tabletop game publisher Steve Jackson Games, has resigned from the company two years after taking over the role.
The American Tabletop Awards, an awards scheme launched six years ago with the aim of being the US equivalent of Germany's Spiel des Jahres, has revealed its 2025 winners.
Board game companies across the industry are bracing for price hikes, job losses and the potential shuttering of their businesses after US President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping import tariffs targeting countries across the world yesterday.
The Origins Awards, one of board gaming's longest-running prizes voted on by industry professionals, has picked out a huge slate of 120 nominees for its 2024 competition - which coincides with the 50th anniversary of its namesake gaming convention.
Board game publishers already battling the financial fallout of Donald Trump's trade war are now facing an even more volatile future, after the US President doubled the country's tariffs on Chinese imports to 20% and brought in 25% tariffs for goods from Canada and Mexico.
The board game industry has been awash with discussion about the potentially crippling effect of tariffs for several months now, with publishers, distributors and manufacturers all scrabbling to prepare for a leap in the cost of importing games to the US. Chief among the issues is the uncertainty surrounding the situation - tariffs of up to 100% on imports from China, where the vast majority of board games are made, were being talked about by then President-elect Donald Trump last November, stoking fears of a “great collapse” of the US board game industry. So far those tariffs have only reached 10%, but ongoing sabre-rattling from Trump and tit-for-tat tariffs on US goods introduced by China have created an unpredictable trading environment. In this article for BoardGameWire, Robert Geistlinger, president of US board game major Arcane Wonders, explains how even a 10% tariff rate will have an outsized effect on publishers already working on razor-thin margins.
Another strong year for the board game industry, which has now grown to about €13bn, nears its end, with all eyes turning to the opportunities and challenges presented by 2025. In this article Cedric Delobelle, co-founder of one of BoardGameWire's sponsors All About Games Consulting, looks ahead to what US tariffs might mean for the industry, and reflects on the successes and difficulties encountered in 2024.
