Sheffield Homes, a Sheffield council organization that administers 42,000 council houses (originally built by the UK government at below market rate), is being accused of “deceit” for creating a board game to help illustrate to the lay person budget challenges faced by the organization.

The game apparently gave tenants who played the game simplistic choices regarding how money is spent on administration, thereby influencing support for certain budget options for the coming year. Members of the scrutiny board refused to play the game after they discovered that the figures in the game came from the actual budget, and were not made up as they had been led to believe.

Hey, scrutiny board: I believe they call this “marketing”.

(source)

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4kids just posted dismal quarterly results (source) so it can’t help that it’s Chaotic beverages, which are soft drinks themed in the Chaotic world, have all been recalled in Canada.

The ingredients are not listed as safe for children, and some contain excessively high levels of colors or vitamins.

(source)

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Traveller continues to branch out as Mongoose delivers Strontium Dog. This next setting book adapts the British science fiction comic series about a mutant bounty hunter in a post-nuclear holocaust world. Strontium Dog includes rules for rating character mutations on a scale of light, moderate, radical, severe, and shambolic.

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In Psychology Today, Dr Kathleen Kara Fitzpatrick, a specialist in eating disorders, used the Wisconsin card sorting task to evaluate and begin treatment for patients with anorexia.

The task is an inductive matching game where the rules change in the middle and the players have to figure out the new rules through trial and error. Anorexic patients have a harder time changing their play patterns, even when it is no longer working.

(source)

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thru-the-portal, launching January 2010, will be a quarterly digital magazine targeted at the social gaming community. The magazine will be covering board games, card games, miniatures, RPGs, LARPing, and MMORPGs. There will be reviews, game news, articles, and special features, along with a once-a-year printer edition.

The great part is that the digital magazine will be free and it’s encouraged to help distribute it through your own websites, etc…

Right now they’re setting up by finding contributors, advertisers, and retailers. More info can be found at thru-the-portal.com.

It’s refreshing to see a new magazine come into play, and I wish them the best with their effort. I’ll be looking forward to January to see how well things pan out.

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Presentations by White Wolf at the recent International Camarilla Conclave revealed some interesting information about the future direction of the company. Describing White Wolf’s new vision, Greg Fountain said, “We want to stop administrating play patterns and start assisting them.” To that end, Shane DeFreest, Marketing Manager for the World of Darkness, explained that the company intends to free up the Camarilla, so that the fan club can choose its own direction—including the ability to run LARPs in the Old World of Darkness if that’s what participants want!

Focusing on the future of tabletop RPGs, Ryan Dancey said that the company is committed to PDF electronic documents as the standard method for distributing White Wolf products. Additionally, the company has established a partnership with Lone Wolf Development to develop a new generation of electronic tools for telling, managing, and recording chronicles.

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The Independant, a UK new site, has released a list of their top 50 favorite board games. Unfortunately each of the 50 is on it’s own page, so you have to keep clicking the “next” button to traverse it. The good thing is that each game has a brief blurb about the game, a link where you can buy the game, and how much the game costs.

There’s a lot of games on this list I haven’t heard of, or I think are just terrible, but there’s also a lot of pretty good games on the list. Either way, a list is a list, and you may just find something new to try after checking it out.

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Surprisingly, most people don’t know that Games Workshop puts out a series of limited special every November in preparation for the holiday shopping season. These releases are usually outstanding deals that are offered on a first come, first serve basis (and can be a bit tricky to get outside of a GW store). The kind folks at Bell of Lost Souls have generously ferreted out this year’s specials and listed them:

• Fortress of Redemption – an awesome set of buildings from the recent Planetstrike releases
• Imperial Warzone – a $750 monstrosity that includes GW’s gameboard a ton of buildings and terrain (this is a full table for playing Planetstrike essentially)
• Ork Megaforce – about 1200 points of Orks by my estimate
• Space Marine Megaforce – about 1200 points of Space Marines
• Game Board Extension – the first extensions to GW’s terrific modular game board
• Empire Brigade – a playable army of Empire (maybe 1500 points in the brigades – my Fantasy is a bit rusty)
• Orcs & Goblins Brigade – a playable army of Orcs & Goblins
• Mega Paintset – one of every color, a bunch of brushes, some flock and glue

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Package Right Corporation has purchased manufacturer Rolco Games from its parent company, Rolco, Inc. Package Right is already a major U.S. producer of board games and puzzles. Rolco Games makes plastic parts, such as spinners, chips, dice, and pawns. According to a statement from the company, the burdens of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) were a key factor driving the transaction.

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Inside Tuscon Business and The Arizona Republic pimp Ruckus in articles that read like press releases for the game. (source, source)

Newsday pimps Bridge. (source)

Malaysia’s The Star pimps the local Malaysia game Catur Bistari. (source)

The Independent had a nice article about Essen Spiel last week and continues this week with a list of the “50 best board games”. While a few decent ones made the list (Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Blokus), most are mainstream games, trashy ones at that, and some so trashy that one suspects that these were simply the first games that the writer found on his first adult visit to a local toy store. Some commenters are already questioning the list. (source)

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