Catan follows Netflix deal with Minnesota Timberwolves partnership
Asmodee has unveiled its second surprise partnership for flagship title Catan in as many weeks, this time teaming up with a major professional sports franchise for the first time in the form of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. The deal will…
Designer/Publisher Diary: Forests of Pangaia, or A Kickstarter Journey
by Thomas Franken The process of transforming an idea into reality is wonderful and scary at the same time. It’s a dream that’s always on the verge of turning into a nightmare — and sometimes it does. When I embarked…
Open Channels FM: Why Simplicity Matters in Website Analytics
Website analytics are an essential part of running any site, but many people get lost in complicated dashboards and too many choices. It might seem easy to just pick the free tool everyone uses, but often these platforms cater to…
Matt: Jetpack Saves
Mia Elvasia has a great article about how they realized they were spending $635/yr across various plugins to get things that Jetpack offered bundled and often free. Save money! Jetpack is frequently overlooked as one of the most underappreciated plugins…
Sold out Spiel Essen reaches record 220,000 attendance, new ticketing strategy boosts Sunday footfall
The world’s biggest board game fair, Spiel Essen, secured a record-breaking 220,000 attendance this year after expanding into a seventh massive hall – while the decision to scrap four-day passes secured a hefty boost to visitor numbers on its often quieter…
Want More Sales or Signups? I Tried 11 Best Conversion Optimization Tools
“Why aren’t people buying?” That’s the question that kept me up at night when I first started my online business. My WordPress website looked good, traffic was coming in, but I wasn’t getting a lot of conversions. It wasn’t until…
Got Five? I’ll Give You a Clue about Blue Orange’s 2026 Games
by W. Eric Martin At SPIEL Essen 25, the European branch of Blue Orange Games gave me an overview of recent and upcoming game releases, with Got Five! — due out in March 2026 — being a Yoann Levet deduction…
Matt: Chop Wood, Carry Water
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. Kyle Kowalski has an amazing blog post exploring many aspects of this Zen Kōan, including some diversions into David Foster Wallace’s legendary commencement speech, This is Water. Sorry,…
Designer Diary: First-Class Letters, or Alphabetical Challenge, Finding Game’s Home, Minimal Rules
by Peter Hayward The more I design, the fewer rules I put into my games. Every time I playtest a game (mine or someone else’s), the first instinct is to solve a problem (any problem!) by adding a rule. If…
Matt: Creed Update
This week, the Automattic Creed received its first-ever update, which I’ll describe as a minor point upgrade. This is the sentence before and after. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal…
