Spiel des Huh?

In 1996 the Spiel des Jahres nominees included El Grande (winner), Get the Goods, Mu & Mehr and Carabande.

One year later, Bohnanza, Expedition, Lowenherz and the Settlers of Catan Card Game were in the hunt.

Elfenland (winner), Basari, Caesar & Cleopatra, Durch die Wuste, Euphrat & Tigris, Gipf and Die Macher were all in the race in 1998. My god, look at those titles! Only as I'm sitting here typing this do I realize that three of my top ten games of all time were released and nominated for Spiel des Jahres '98. Whew!

Let's look at the list for 2006:

• Aqua Romana (Queen Games)
• Blue Moon City (Kosmos)
• Just 4 Fun (Kosmos)
• Seeräuber (Queen Games)
• Thurn und Taxis (Hans im Glück)

I've heard of Aqua Romana, but it hasn't delivered enough buzz to inspire me to play it. That's not a knock against the game. I don't know anything about it.

I avoided Blue Moon City because I wasn't exactly knocked out by the cardgame bearing the same name. I've recently learned that the games are alike in title only, so I'll be needing to give BMC a try. Besides, Chris Farrell gives it high praise, and that's good enough for me. Chris is one of the few voices in the game community who could have convinced me to give Beowulf a second chance. I haven't done so, yet, but I haven't sold it away, either.

Just 4 Fun? Horrible, horrible name. Unfortunately, that's all I know about it.

Seerauber? Never heard of it. Of course, that's not meant to be an indictment against it. I guess I'm just not getting around.

Finally, there's Thurn und Taxis, the little game that could. Living under the shadow of Caylus all these months can't have been easy, but if all goes as planned, it should have the last laugh. I didn't find it to be particularly compelling, but I'm having a bad year.

So, where is all of this leading? I suppose I have to admit that, for the first time since I became a Eurogamer back in 1996, I could really care less who wins the Spiel des Jahres this year.

And it bothers me that I don't care.

It's not the jury's fault. 2005 was not a great year. It pains me to say this, but they're just not making them like they used to. We're seeing alot of recycled mechanics and systems. The fresh ideas that turned me on only ten short years ago have become stale and tired. I have to ask you Eurogames, "What have you done for me lately?"

I have many friends who have huge game collections. Due to the understandable desire to play the latest and newest titles, many quality games get precious little table time before the next new batch comes along. Sometimes we kiddingly suggest how nice it would be if the game companies would stop printing games for a year or two so we could catch up. To those friends, I would suggest that it's happening now. The games that are coming out today are not the ones we'll be talking about tomorrow. We're in a holding pattern, churning out the same basic games until some worthy design team can make us gasp and exclaim, "Wow, I didn't know a game could do that!"

You can't blame the game companies. They have to publish something. They can't just say, "Well, we couldn't find any monumental advances in game design, so we're going to take the year off." They have to publish what they think will make money, and their only indicators are what has sold well in the past. So you end up getting expansions, rethemed Knizias, or the latest Frankenstein's monster (Carcassonne meets Settlers meets Bohnanza...).

So who do we blame?

I think we have to start with the designers. Naturally, I will include myself, although in the scheme of things I'm still learning to crawl. Without naming names or going into details, I've found myself scratching my head when reading the rules to many new games. In many cases I've felt like the designer has settled for something much less than he or she had the ability to deliver. I think to myself, "Wow, if I had designed this, I wouldn't be very excited about showing it to a publisher."

But these games get sold and published. Every time I see one I'm tempted to pull out my bottom shelf prototypes. These are prototypes that work properly, are more-than-slightly derivative, and have absolutely no zing!

zing (n): That undefinable (!) quality in a new game that makes your heart pump just a little bit faster.

You know zing when you feel it. It makes you sit up in your chair and smile. It makes you excited about playing a game a second time, even before you've played it once. You know it's going to be that good. Zing has balls enough to say, "Look I know you've already got three hundred games in your closet, but there ain't nothing like me!"

Yes, as a new designer, I've designed many a zing-free game. And some might argue that I've even got one or two published.

Getting back to the topic at hand, how many of these current SdJ nominees have that zing? Well, given that I've only played one of them, I can't fairly say. I can tell you that my hopes are not high.

I hope I'm wrong.