The 2018 Dice Hate Me Holiday Gift Guide

Seasons Greetings, Dear Readers, and welcome to the 8th annual Dice Hate Me Holiday Gift Guide! This year’s guide comes to you a tad late as it has been one busy season here at Dice Hate Me HQ. But there are still two full weeks and weekends before Santa drops off that copy of Fireball Island for you, I mean the kids! Ahem. I’m getting ahead of myself. Grab your Dice Hate Me mug, fill it with cocoa, and enjoy this carefully curated list of awesome treats for under the tree. Happy Holidays and Happy Gaming! Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 160 – The One About Unplugging, Again

Sometimes our gaming podcast is less about games and more about experience. We hope you’ll indulge us a bit this time around, Dear Listeners, as we chat about what it was like to attend PAX Unplugged for the second year. Yes, we talk a great deal about the amazing food in Philadelphia, we debate the greatest cheesesteak, and we gripe about metal detectors, but we also try to convey the awesomeness that surrounds a convention that is now quintessential to the hobby. We hope to see you all there next year! Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 158 – The One About The Doctor’s Advice

There are certain creative leaders in the game design hobby that pop up from time to time with interesting nuggets of wisdom – Dr. Reiner Knizia is one such creative. With over 600 games and books credited to him over his career, he definitely has the experience and chops to lay down some knowledge, and a lot of that knowledge is extraordinarily valuable. On this particular show we decided to take a couple of his more recent – and infinitely intriguing – statements and break them down for discussion. Should you file them or flush them? Come on in and find out! Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 157 – The One About Just a Little Filler

Last podcast we pulled out all the intellectual stops and dove head deep into the rabbit hole of Game Theory. Judging from the listener numbers that wasn’t exactly what all you dear listeners wanted to hear. Oh well, at least we had fun discussing it! We wanted to get deep again with a chat about rules, if they’re getting worse in board games, and what we might do to fix them, but we decided to table that one for another time, return a bit to formula, and focus on something a little less… filling. Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 155 – The One About Gen Con 2018

Welcome, dear listeners, to another podcast about the biggest show on astroturf (really) – Gen Con! Even though Gen Con has become almost nothing but business, business, business for most in the industry, it’s still a fun, amazing, and exhausting spectacle that we look forward to every year. Let us know if you have some great tales from the show, or, if  you played something awesome participating in GenCant. We’d love to talk about your adventures on the podcast! Read More  Read More

Gen Con 2018 Pictorial Recap!

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to another year of Gen Con coverage! This year’s show had record attendance, and I was just as busy as always showing off awesome games and taking meeting after meeting after meeting with designers. But I did get a chance to escape the job from time to time and check out some really cool stuff. So settle in and enjoy this brief look into the good time that is Gen Con! The first part of our trip involved a stop in Nitro, West Virginia – a five-year tradition! This year, Dan Halsted of The League of Nonsensical Gamers flew into Raleigh all the way from Copenhagen just to make the drive with us! Yes, he’s... Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 154 – The One About the Top 5 Games EVER

We love when listeners get involved with the podcast and, because of comments and feedback from all of you, this podcast was magical. We’ve revisited our favorite games of all time occasionally but never within the context of a listener-curated list. And, oh, what an incredibly varied list it was! It just goes to show that all of you love so many different games in this hobby and that, dear listeners, is a truly wonderful thing. Happy listening! Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 151 – The One About the Axis of Not Misrepresenting Your Product

When TC volunteers to handle an upcoming topic and tackle the show notes I never say no. Not only is it a welcome break for me but it’s inevitably like that ol’ box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get. This time around it ended up with all three of us talking about best and worst of game aesthetics for about an hour, but the conversation was far more engaging and encompassing than I expected. We start at the fall of the video game industry in 1983 and don’t let up until we’ve covered the latest all-flash and no-substance projects on Kickstarter. So break out your smoking jackets, it’s... Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 148: The One About Unpub 8

We travel to a lot of gaming conventions each year but none are quite as unique or as special as the Unpublished Games Festival. In this, its 8th year, Unpub has grown from a tiny gathering of game designers at the VFW Hall in Dover, Delaware, to thousands gathering to make good games better at the Hunt Valley Resort just outside Baltimore, Maryland. Unpub has been an invaluable resource for designers as playtesters pour in to play, give feedback, and improve game designs. It’s quite possible that Dice Hate Me Games wouldn’t exist without Unpub, and I can guarantee you there are more than a few excellent game titles on your shelves... Read More

The State of Games, Ep. 147: The One About the Pros and Woes of Cons

Every year we travel to Charlottesville, Va. to visit one of our favorite board game conventions, PrezCon. Although we had just as much fun as we usually do we also played fewer games, so we had the idea to extend our conversation on this podcast to talk about our feelings about other shows we attend throughout the year. Over three hours later, and completely exhausted after talks of GenCon housing woes, body odor attacks, registration nightmares at Origins and such, we realized that might have been a tad ambitious. Our mistake is your gain, though – this episode is bursting at the seams. Enjoy! Read More  Read More