July 2021 update: Upcoming events!
Greetings from sweltering Silver Spring, where it’s 95°F (35°C) as I write this. It definitely feels like I’m living inside the climate change game that I playtested last week. In this newsletter:
Upcoming events
Game updates (and playtesting!)
Interviews I’ve done recently
Critter of the month: Eastern Hercules Beetle
Upcoming Events
It’s been so long since I’ve had anything to put in an upcoming events section!
August 4: I’m giving an online keynote at the GENeration Analog digital conference, run by Game in Lab and the journal Analog Game Studies. As of right now my talk is called called “Things I want to know: a ludological research agenda focused on diversity.” The conference is August 4-5; my talk is at 7pm eastern on August 4. Register for free here.
September 18: I’m planning to be at the pop-up Gen Con event at Labyrinth Games here in Washington, DC. Register here.
Game Updates
Tussie Mussie
The Tussie Mussie expansion broke a record for the biggest first day for a Button Shy Kickstarter, and it’s their second biggest campaign overall! Thanks everybody. If you missed it, you can preorder here.
Wingspan
I’m finally playtesting the next Wingspan expansion. If you’re local (to Silver Spring, MD), and like to spend a lot of time talking about what you like and don’t like about a game, sign up for my new playtesting list and hopefully we can figure something out. Even if you think you’re already on my radar, it’s super helpful if you fill out this form.
I don’t have any plans for online playtesting. (It’s a real drag with text on cards.) If you’re not local, but you’re a big Stonemaier fan, you can apply to be a Stonemaier Ambassador and indicate that you’re interested in playtesting.
Also:
Wingspan was just named as a finalist for the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.
The award-winning webcomic xkcd has done a couple of comics recently about board games. In this one, if you look closely, you can tell one of the game boxes is Wingspan. (People have pegged some of the others as Mall Madness, Pandemic, Wits & Wagers, Obsession, and Medium.)
Stonemaier Games is continuing to work on a big box that should hold all existing and future expansions. Check out the latest version and give some feedback!
Talks, Interviews, etc.
I did a Design Notes episode with Ben Maddox on the Dice Tower. I love this series (and the interviews on his 5 Games for Doomsday podcast).
I was on Jen Louden’s Create Out Loud podcast. And now I have really been enjoying listening to other episodes of Create Out Loud about different people’s creative processes. (She starts with Anne Lamott!)
Critter of the Month: Eastern Hercules Beetle
I’m taking a break from talking about birds this time because I remain absolutely flabbergasted about this beetle. Someone found it on a mushroom walk in Rock Creek Park that I was co-leading with the Mycological Association of Washington DC. It’s an Eastern Hercules beetle (Dynastes tityus), and I feel like the picture barely even does justice to how absolutely giant it was. This article says they can be as long as 7 inches! It’s native to this area, but no one on our walk had seen one before — nor had the ranger that we gave it to. Hopefully they’ll display it in the Rock Creek Nature Center, and lots of other people will get to be amazed by this tropical-looking critter that was living within the city limits of Washington, DC.
May your labors be considerably easier than those of Hercules,
❤️
Elizabeth