On May 22nd, the entire Pegasus Spiele team gathered in the conference room with Dorfromantik – The Board Game designers Michael Palm and Lukas Zach, as well as the Toukana Interactive team via videochat, for the annual event. Together, we watched Harald Schrapers and Christoph Schlewinski, chairmen of the Spiel des Jahres jury, announce the nominees for Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year), Kennerspiel des Jahres (Core Game of the Year) and Kinderspiel des Jahres (Children’s Game of the Year).
We are delighted that the Spiel des Jahres jury selected two of our games: Dorfromantik – The Board Game as one of three nominated for Spiel des Jahres, and KuZOOkA as a recommended title in the same category. If you ever wondered what happens at a company after being nominated for the world’s most prestigious jury prize for board games, then you are in the right place!
As soon as the announcement is over, everyone becomes a busy bee. Let’s start with the marketing team. After the first news wave (writing press releases, newsletters and social media postings), we begin preparing for the announcement of the winner of Spiel des Jahres. This exciting event consists of two parts. First, there is a press conference where the nominated games are presented and the winners announced. Second, the board game publishers are invited to present their games to the press, conduct interviews and take pictures. For that purpose, we build small presentation booths.
Here are some examples from our past:
In 2017, Kingdomino won Spiel des Jahres, so we produced a large carpet with artwork from the game and rented a fancy chair from a local theatre’s pool of props to represent the King’s throne. Our partner Blue Orange brought a royal cloak and a crown, to complete the display.
Magic Maze was nominated in 2017 as well. Because the family game is set in a magical shopping mall, we used shelves with ‘magical utensils’ as background decorations, and printed huge mall tiles to make it possible to play the first scenario in this life-sized version.
While adults are fine with a conversation, a press event, and taking pictures, we need to offer special entertainment for children. For Fabulantica (nominated for Kinderspiel des Jahres 2019), we created an XXL version of the game and prepared a photo wall with the djinn from the game. Children (and adults) could stick their faces through the hole in the middle and pretend to be the djinn for a picture. Julia from the Pegasus Spiele team brought a polaroid camera, so kids could leave with their photograph in hand. We also brought temporary tattoos that the children were super excited by, with some asking to have the “tattoo spells” cast on them, over their whole arms!
Of course, our marketing team is not the only group that is hard at work preparing for these announcements. The sales team has their hands full communicating with retailers who want to place their orders. Copies of a nominated title practically fly out of the Pegasus Spiele warehouse, and we also rush to produce more copies—with the nomination logo on it, of course.
As you may know, we sell Pegasus Spiele products in addition to games from other publishers. Therefore, our purchase department checks whether we already sell the other nominated candidates or whether we would like to do so in the future. You will find nominees from our own portfolio and from other publishers in our online shop.
At the same time, we are already planning further into the future. Shortly after the announcement of the awards, we usually order another print run. Of course, there are two possible outcomes after a game is nominated: either it wins an award, or it does not. In the first case, we must quickly prepare new printing files that include the Spiel des Jahres winner logo, and we often order loads of copies. In the latter case, we order a smaller number of copies and the nominated logo remains in place.
The Spiel des Jahres award is also significant for production. A nomination can increase the sales of a game many times over, but a winning title can see its sales explode! Either way, the annual Spiel des Jahres is a celebration of the very best gaming experiences of the year and helps introduce wonderful games to even more players around the world. Which Spiel des Jahres games from the past or from this year’s nominations have you played? Perhaps it is time to discover a new favorite game!
We look forward to the Spiel des Jahres announcements on July 16, 2023 in Berlin and hope you keep your fingers crossed for Dorfromantik – The Board Game!
Do you have questions, comments or suggestions? We look forward to your opinions on the current blog post to blog@pegasus.de
