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

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.

Justin Hoeger in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette pimps Small World. (source)

The Galesburg Register Mail pimps Magic the Gathering. (source)

CNN pimps Farmville and Zynga’s other online board and social games. (source)

The Dorset Echo pimps Title Chase, a football management game. (source)

Wired pimps Werewolf and its popularity in Silicon Valley. (source)

Evil Mad Scientist takes the game Blip and physically dissects the innards to see what makes it tick. It was a mechanical marvel. (source)

Games include The Food Fighters, Beat It (use your body to make music), and Kribopolis (find the hidden clues in the city to track down the criminal, the video takes about a minute before it becomes interesting). You can follow the links to the blogs of all the participants.

The next clip, while not game related, is Boing-Boing worthy:

Disclosure: The company gave me one miniature in a sealed pack, which my daughter quickly confiscated.

Flipoutz are 1 inch metal coins that are worn five-at-at-time in special rubber bracelets. So far, there are about 70 different coin designs with cute pictures and positive slogans aimed at tweens. But here’s the really interesting part… The coins are easily removed and are meant to be traded. Each has a unique serial number on the back. With that serial number, kids can go to the Flipoutz web site, register the coin, and then follow it as its traded around. This adds elements of social networking and exploration, and potentially allows kids to experience relationships between people from different places and backgrounds as the coins travel around.

Of course, this social networking aspect depends a lot on wide distribution. That’s still being worked on. The Flipoutz team is currently running a community design-a-coin contest and developing a treasure hunt game to emphasize the combination of physical trading and virtual networking.

Disclosure: I was so excited by the concept that I registered a few related internet domain names. Maybe a special Flipoutz blog is in the works.

Upcoming. You know you want it. This game will somehow allow you to play with all three board games together. ‘Nuff said. (source)

Meanwhile, the next Twilight Scene-It? Deluxe will also include clips from all three movies. (source)

(hat tip)

Gigantic Mechanic makes city-wide augmented reality games. Gigaputt, for instance, is an IPhone golf game that turns any location into a 3-hole mini-golf game. Swing your Iphone and watch your golf ball sail down the city streets.

They are one of the founders and producers of New York’s Come Out & Play Festival.

The 2010 Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards were handed out in a ceremony Saturday night coinciding with the launch of New York Toy Fair. The TOTY Awards are selected by vote of the Toy Industry Association membership.

Bakugan took home the Boy Toy of the Year prize for the 7-in-1 Maxus Dragonoid, as well as the award for Property of the Year. We’ve written before about the success of Bakugan.

Game of the Year, which covers both tabletop and electronic games, went to the Sort It Out! board game by University Games. Sort It Out! is a trivia game that challenges players to sort five items in the order requested—for example, the following in order of heaviest to lightest weight:

• Elephant daily poo
• 3 standard house bricks
• Blue whale tongue
• Whole domestic cat
• 4WD Jeep Grand Cherokee

In the immortal words of the great Dave Barry, wouldn’t “Whole Domestic Cat” be a great name for a rock band?

Steve Peek of University Games With the Company's TOTY Award