Right now over at Geekdo the BGG Wargamers’ Award processes has  started up.  This is a new, unofficial, BGG award that hopes to:

• To promote wargames at large
• To recognize quality wargames valued by the BGG community
• To showcase what are wargames to non wargamers
• To present a good selection of wargames produced in 2008 to people curious about wargames.

Voting has opened to any Geekdo user with an avatar or geekbadge.  The list of nominees is as follows:

No Retreat!
Combat Commander: Pacific
The Devil’s Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen
World at War: Blood and Bridges
Birds of Prey: Air Combat in the Jet Age
Barbarossa: Kiev to Rostov
Pursuit of Glory
Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! – Russia 1941-1942
Hold The Line
Panzer Grenadier: Elsenborn Ridge
Lock ‘n Load: A Day of Heroes
Unhappy King Charles!
FAB: The Bulge
Warriors of God
Down In Flames – Aces High
Fields of Fire
Kutuzov
Manoeuvre
Texas Glory: 1835 – 36

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Back in March, I didn’t count Farmville as one of the top 25 board and card games on Facebook. Maybe that was an oversight. Is Farmville a board game?

Farmville is the number one game (period) on Facebook, with over 65 million players: 30 million regularly play every month, 11 million play every day.

Farmville is a civilization building game centered around your farm patch. Plant available seeds, wait the required time, harvest the crops. Don’t wait too long or the crops will wilt. Simple premise, tons of little touches, such as rare seeds, avatars, neighboring plots, and so on.

Zynga’s games may all be electronic social games, but they’re also all board and card games, with a dose of real time added to keep players involved and on their toes. And they’re hiring for dozens of open positions, including a game designer.

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The Learning Key is a small woman-run business that designs tools for other businesses to help them with “soft skills”, which includes effective communication skills.

Games are a prominent part of their product catalog and include:

• Interpra Cards:40 cards that “create an environment for metaphorical learning and concrete applications to the workplace”. $30 for one, $80 for all three different types.
• Wi$eMoney: “banking, investing, credit and financing, safety and identity protection, planning and budgeting, and financial responsibility”. $400
• Picture That: I think it’s a series of RPG scenarios, but it’s billed as “an alternative to role playing”, so I’m not exactly sure. Requires Interpra Cards to play. $50
• The Pharm Game: A roll-and-move trivia card game about the complexities of creating pharmaceuticals. $2,500 – yes, you read that right. There’s an online Flash demo with sample questions.
• Matching Meanings: Banking and finance cards comes in two types of decks: $65 for one, $100 for both decks. Pharmaceutical and medical cards come in four types, at $100 a pop.
• Big Buck$$: A roll-and-move banking trivia game about the complexities of the banking industry.  $2,500 – yes, you read that right.
• ¢en$ability: A game about financial sense, created for the National Foundation for Debt Management in Clearwater, Florida. No sale price listed.
• GMP Works: Roll-and-move trivia refresher GMP training on specific subparts of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or for a complete GMP overview. $2,500, online demo
• Partnering Success, the Challenge: Roll-and-move trivia insights into partnering and outsourcing. $1,400 for the first 20 players, $75/player thereafter (that’s a first for a board game, as far as I know), online demo
• Making Your Number$: Roll-and-move trivia learn to be a consultive sales staff. $2,400 for 20 players, $125/player therafter, online demo
• The House That Cards Built: A card game simulation of change management, and dealing with its effects. $80

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