Jean-Baptiste Piggin, writing for Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reports that the consensus at a meeting on the first day of the Nurnberg Toy Festival is that board games are doing well and video games aren’t. Actually, Jean-Baptiste mostly quotes Richard Gottleib, who organizes the meeting every year. (source)

Meanwhile in Germany, Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, profiles Schmidt Spiele and other board game publishers:

One other interesting conference I missed yesterday is The Art History of Games, currently underway at Georgia Tech, a conference on art in games (video and other).

NPD reports that 2009 toy sales were down 0.8%, but board games were up (once again) 1%. Electronics fell 17%. (source)

Matthew Engel, writing for The Daily Mail, tries to understand grasp Scrabble geeks. (source)

And the irrepressible XKCD on strip games: