Actor Rich Sommer tweets the history of Uno—recorded here in case you missed it.

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Perhaps better known for its roleplaying games, White Wolf also publishes board games and produces the EVE Online MMO. Now they’ve put the two together in EVE: Conquests. It’s a space conquest game with economic elements and despite a lack of miniature space ships, I’m highly intrigued. The game features an Action Wheel for scheduling player turns based on the time they invest invest in certain tasks. This is an approach White Wolf also included in their latest Exalted board game, and one I enjoy in other games such as Thebes.

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The recent card/word game You’ve Been Sentenced! by McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds is being transformed into a nationwide game show.

The show will involve viewers by letting them submit answers either by text message or online. The show is scheduled to begin airing in the fall.

(source)

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The Catholic institution Opus Dei – described with a certain amount of liberty in the book and movie of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code – has sued sggc Dema Games over their card game Opus Dei: Existence After Religion, citing trademark violation.

Source, which is a press release from the publisher, claims that the name “Opus Dei” was inspired by the Latin phrase “opus dei” after reading Dan Brown’s book and believing that the organization in the book was entirely fictitious. While they  eventually discovered that the organization did in fact exist, they already had the game in production and the rights to the tradmark in Denmark.

You’re welcome to read the rest of source to see if they can convince you.

(source)

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Greg Costikyan comments on how the lack of press interest in a market, such as board games, mobile games, and so on, is bad for creativity in the market: what ends up being created and marketed is all about branding, not quality. The example he gives is the endless production of crappy board game tie-ins.

Not really news, but always interesting to hear it from a video game luminary.

(article)

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Wizards of the Coast is allowing players to download a demo version of the new D&D Character Builder – even if you don’t have a subscription to D&D Insider. The demo version only supports characters from levels 1 to 3, but otherwise seems complete (except for the Windows-only part…).

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College Humor imagines the headline if board games were real.

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James Lowder follows up on his 2007 book Hobby Games: The 100 Best with his forthcoming Family Games: The 100 Best. They are both from Green Ronin Press, which has more information on each book.

Like the last book, James has assembled a vast array of top game designers to contribute their favorites and articles. There is no indication as to what the difference is between the two, although I suspect the games in this book will be of a lighter variety. Will Monopoly and Chess make it in, after having been left out of the previous book?

(source)

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Following on the heels of Playdate and Nerds @ Heart come more dating services aimed at board game geeks.

• Game Night Out started in NYC and still mainly serves the NorthEast, but is planning meetings in Chicago and Los Angeles.
• Geek 2 Geek serves all types of geeks, and has a track for board gamers. The top ten games in their members profiles include both old and new games.

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I was just at a conference where one of the lecturers told us that you can tell something about the personality of a player by watching his style when he plays Go. The audience responded that people often play games in order to exhibit personality traits that they can’t safely exhibit in real life. I thought that both points had merit.

Along comes this paper from two researchers at Birbeck College with a mathematical look at how to tell a player from his style of play in Chess.

It’s still rough work, but the results could not only be used to determine who a player is from the game transcript, but to program computers to play in a style similar to famous players.

(source)

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