Reading – Everybody Wins

Everybody Wins by James Wallis is a fantastic book for board gamer enthusiasts.

There are many board games that bear a sticker announcing it as the Game of the Year according to various publications and conventions and websites, but the SPIEL DES JAHRES is THE board game award of the year (literally, it translates to “Game of the Year”) and it has come a long way since it’s start decades ago. In that time it has had many winners, nominees, and runner ups and this book presents all of this and more. The Game of the Year prize has expanded from a single award of recognition to also offer a Children’s Game of the Year and the Connoisseur’s Game of the Year. Historically, the winner of the prestigious Spiel Des Jahres tends to be a best seller.

Though the focus is on the winners, the game mechanics, and reasons why it probably won, there is plenty of information on the games that didn’t win and an afterward that addresses the hot games that never got nominated. For a devoted board gamer, this is an impressive look at not just the mechanical crunch of a game but also the spirit of the time represented by nominated games and the ebb and flow of what was popular and why some games were likely overlooked or was a runner up (For example, the powerhouse board game of Pandemic lost out in 2009 to Dominion, but I know which game I would replay regularly).

It’s a solid tome, with each winner getting several pages of describing the game, their mechanics, and the glossy images of the game layout and the pieces. The writing is passionate and lively, not jargon filled or inaccessible to the casual reader. It could have been a far drier documentary style (as much as I love the depth of Playing at the World, it’s a scholarly history text book to read). Everybody Wins feels like a friend introducing you to their personal collection / wish list, including being critical of some games and the reasons why you will either love or hate them. This is the sort of game I’d like to have as a coffee table book for guests to thumb through and geek out as they spotted familiar games.

After reading it, I found myself with a hefty list of board games to try and track down for play though I was happy to discover how many I had already experienced.