Brand New Games is a startup game publisher. Soon to be followed by two more, the company’s first game is Nay-Jay. It’s a fast-paced game of simultaneous card play, similar to other speed card games, but where players can build the central piles up or down, as well as change a pile’s color with a wild-card. Cycliste will be a strategic card game about bicycle racing and Bones of Ascension will be a fantasy-battle-themed strategic dice game.

Brand New Games was formed by a group of friends in Mapleton, Utah but its president, lead designer, and energetic spokeswoman is Naomi Tripi. In her own words:

I wanted to become a game publisher not only because I love games personally, but I love creating things. To have something in your head that is just a thought, an idea that you have is one thing, to actually see your idea take physical form and become an object that anyone can see and interact with is thrilling for me. So far, game publishing has worked out better than I had ever imagined.

On how it feels to present one’s design to the public at-large, Naomi says:

I get nervous sometimes, I hope people will enjoy the games, but I know that not everyone can like every game. Most of the time I’m just excited to share a new way to have fun with other people who share my appreciation for games. The first time I taught Bones of Ascension to a play-testing group my hands were shaking because I was so nervous, but after the first few minutes of game-play the nervousness was replaced by a kind of euphoria. It is just so rewarding to see people enjoying something that you created.

So far, accepting the public’s reaction to my games has been really easy because the feedback has been so positive. The harshest things anyone has said about Nay-Jay are “this game won’t appeal to serious gamers” and “It’s just like Nertz”. But this game isn’t targeting serious gamers, and I fully acknowledge Nay-Jay’s similarities to Nertz and Speed. It is a different game, but yes it is similar, so I took no offense to those comments.

Brand New Games is attacking the market with gusto. The company runs frequent in-store demos, crowned a 2010 Nay-Jay World Champion at the recent SaltCON in Salt Lake City, and is planning various additional events for Origins, Gen Con, and local shopping malls.

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Marcelo Figueroa discusses his ideas on how to start a game company.

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Mary Couzin is the brains and muscle behind the fastest-growing and perhaps most important game convention in the United States, the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, aka CHI-TAG. There are long-established trade fairs for toys and games, such as the ones in New York or Dallas, as well as player conventions for hobby games, such as Gen-Con and Origins. What there wasn’t, until Mary came along, is an American game fair – classics, mainstream, and hobby – for families, such as the one held yearly in Essen.

Mary started out as a game designer. Through the course of marketing her own games, she met other lone designers who were reinventing the wheel in terms of finding suppliers, dealing with contracts, and trying to market their games, and whose power as individuals was rather weak. She formed Discover Games in 1997 as a cooperative project to collect the wisdom of these designers and to market the group’s games as a group. Rio Grande Games and R&R Games are sample companies that got their start through Discover Games.

Mary drew her inspiration for CHI-TAG from Essen, which she attended in 2000. She spent a few years trying to build up support in the gaming community. Early support came from Rio Grande Games, R&R Games, and Out of the Box Publishing (a Chicago-based company), who formed the core of her first event in 2003.

The 2009 fair had 11,000 visitors, support from major game industry players such as Hasbro, celebrity guests such as Daryl Hannah (pimping her line of board games), and important people you’ve never heard of, such as Reuben Klamer, the inventor of Hasbro’s edition of The Game of Life. The fair also had sit downs with the publishers, toy and game awards, and a whole lot of family-friendly entertainment.

In person, Mary is amazingly sweet and charming. Yet beneath that sweetness and charm lies the determination to forge a national convention out of nothing that now has major entertainment players (yeah, bigger than Hasbro or Mattel) coming to her to find out how they can participate.

She has also founded initiatives for games in education.

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

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With a license from World Wildlife Fund, and 5 percent of sales going to that conservation organization, Terra-Toys has launched a line of traditional games and puzzles featuring threatened habitats. The products are made in China but certified from sustainable resources by the Forrest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Congo Basin Chess

Panda Tumblin’ Tower

Birds of the Amazon Backgammon

Cheetah Dominoes

Elephant & Tiger Checkers

Madagascar 4-in-a-Row

Borneo & Sumatra Ludo

Salamanders & Ladders

Crane Pick-Up Sticks

Amur Chinese Checkers

Turtle Tic-Tac-Toe

Animal Playing Cards

Polar Bear Labyrinth

8-in-1 Games Compendium (includes: chess, checkers, backgammon, ludo, pick-up sticks, salamanders & ladders, playing cards)

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Solomon Islands: Policeman jailed for indecent assault on nine-year old girl last year. He used a card game and candy to lure her. (source)

Clinton, SC: One man shoots another who won’t pay at a card game. (source)

Spartanburg, SC: Two men rob a house card game. (source)

Fort Wayne, IN: The management of The Poker Palace, which was allegedly running card games for charity, was actually taking all of the money for themselves. (source)

El Paso, TX: Attempted drug smuggling inside a Chess board. (source)

Sacramento, CA: Attempted drug smuggling inside a Dominoes case. (source)

Chicago: One man stabs another to death at a card game. (source)

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Singapore parents are suddenly unhappy about gambling related board games being sold in Toys R Us. (source)

I’ve noticed that the media tends to push dice and gambling activities as fun activities for children on the one hand, and dangerous corruption on the other.

Also in Singapore, parents are not happy about an organized Mahjong tournament at Singapore Management University. (source)

In Singapore, Mahjong is often played as a gambling game.

Long Island Republican lawmaker wants to enact a ban on selling drinking related board games to minors. (source)

Really? Proprietary drinking-themed board games sold at Toys R Us is why children drink? Really?

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Playroom Entertainment’s new products for 2010 also include:

Wild Horses—After rolling multicolored dice, be the first to grab the card with a horse of matching color. Has 6 year old girls written all over it.

Halli Galli—Put down a card with 1-5 colorful fruit. Be the first to ring the bell if five of the same fruit are showing on the table. Previously published by several other companies.

Rock the Beat—Cards that assign players individual hand gestures to do while keeping up with the table’s rhythm. Guided “We Will Rock You” game for tweens.

Scary Tales—Big Bad Wolf vs. Cinderella and Prince Charming vs. Hansel expansions.

The Magic Labyrinth—Players attempt to navigate a maze hidden under under the board using magnetic pieces and their memory. Previously published in Germany and winner of the 2009 Spiel des Jahres Children’s Game of the Year. At the same time frustrating and addictive.

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Discovery Bay Games is in expansion mode with a couple of dozen new products planned for 2010, and some significant new licenses. The company is launching a line for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Among puzzles and flash cards is a package of traditional card games—Crazy Eights, Hearts, Old Maid, Go Fish. There will also be a School of Rock board game based on the original school rather than the movie. In it, kids collect cards to put together a band.

Not all Discovery Bay’s games are meant for children. The Saturday Night Live Game is a mix of trivia and interactive challenges drawn from four show eras (70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s). In Trash, players must guess the names of famous people and fictional characters from items in their garbage cans.

Famous Last Lines, from celebrity designers Daryl Hannah and Hilary Shepard, asks players to remember (or invent) last lines of movies. Also from the same pair, Call It is a memory game that involves matching symbols to categories, like fruit, animals, or sports.

Bizzare World: The Game is inspired by Andrew Zimmern’s Bizzare Foods show on the Travel Channel. It’s a trivia game focused on odd customs, rituals, and delicacies from around the globe.

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Game board – A design patent for a game board from Alcan Global Pharmaceutical Packaging Inc. Sheesh, leave it to a pharmaceutical company to think it needs to patent a game board.

Game of chance and system and method for playing games of chance – Talks about making Bingo to be more like Keno, with multiple winners and different levels of playing, but sounds more like an alternative method of drawing a lottery sweepstakes. By GameLogic.

Method and apparatus for conducting a game of chance – Also by GameLogic, and also about lotteries. Buy a ticket and see if you’ve won online.

21 to the river – By Hands Down Gaming. Casinos and players are resistant to new games, so they offer a game of Blackjack, where your bust card is then used in a game of poker.

Method of conducting a wagering game – A continuation of an abandoned 2003 patent. The patent lists lots of problems with Texas Hold’em (too hard for dealers to recognize the winning hands, too many betting opportunities, etc.) and proposes Texas Hold’em with one less card.

Closable-type game board box for strategic word pattern engagement – The game “Word Battle” by Milner Benedict. It’s a Battleship like word game, of which he cites precedences, but his game is for multiple players.

Game and the method of playing the game – A game called Urban Excursion, by Russell B. Williams. More information here.

Love the vague and uninformed description of prior art:

Various games which relate to learning experiences particularly associated with travel and adapted for educational purposes are well known. By having participants engage in the playing of such games, information regarding a specific geographical area, the particular sights or points of interest located therein, culture and the like can be taught in a pleasureful, interactive and entertaining manner. The prior art known to Applicant in this area includes a game wherein players move along alternate routes and using alternate modes of transportation between cities within the continental United States, a game which simulates the flow of traffic through a community, a game which simulates the movements of trucks across the United States, a game which teaches the players about the world’s geography or geography of a specific region of the world, and the like. Typically such games involve a board game apparatus wherein players move along routes defined on the board and are required to avoid hazards, obey traffic signs and rules, are required to learn about a specific location and then answer questions about the location and the like.

None of the prior art known to Applicant provides a game which may be interactively engaged in by a plurality of players directly within a pre-selected geographic area such as a metropolitan area, by utilizing a board which is representative of a predetermined area, or by utilization of computer-generated graphics as may be desired.

Religious game – This game:

Poker game with dealer disqualifying hand – Dealer gets two hands, and discards the first if it exceeds a specific value.

Hard pass craps wager – A Craps variant, where you win if you roll the same doubles twice before rolling a seven.

Object, image data, image data transmission method, card, game mat, card game system, image analysis device, and image analysis method – By Sony. Looks like Eye of Judgment, and specifies reading 2D codes embedded on cards when placed onto a grid.

Set of seven chess pieces – A design patent:

Method of playing a pursuit board game – A roll-and-move game. Assignee wants to include strategy in the game, rather than produce a game simply relying on luck. So a) the object of player two is to land on player 1 before player 1 reaches the end of the race, and b) each player can decide whether to move forward or backward on each move.

Die-rolling device and game – By Mattel. A continuance of a 2005 patent, which was a continuance of a 2002 patent. A board game with a magic 8-ball device.

Card game with fixed rules – A poker game where the first “decisions” are dictated by rules. In other cases, the player may be given a specific set of advice. It appears to be some kind of simplified version of poker for new players.

Numeric guessing game – A game by Bernard Seal, citing Wits & Wagers, Fast Figure, and Intensity as prior art. The questions are like Wits & Wagers, and players have to have the closest guess.

Method of playing a poker-type bonus – A side poker game triggered by certain events in a Texas Hold’em game.

Travel game – By Mattel. Travel games, such as Othello, in a thermos-shaped mug.

Casino-type wagering game based on card color – Essentially, using cards as roulette.

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WebMD disses “card and block games” in favor of the Wii in helping stroke victims to rehabilitate strength and motor skills. Duh. (source)

Asheville Citizen-Times pimps local Blitzkrieg Games store and many modern board games. (source)

The East Central Indiana Star press pimps old fashioned board games. (source)

The Times Online is late to the party by pimping Silicon Valley’s love of The Settlers of Catan. (source)

Canadian researchers indicate that achieving flow in Poker may help reduce stress. (source) I find that hard to believe.

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