News & Week In Review - Demon Possession & BGG, AI Production Updates & More!!

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Hey, I'm Alex from the Board Game Co, and this is the news and week in review where we dive into a variety of news events, the videos of the week, the topics, all those things. Topics, I haven't done topics in a long time.

[00:00:08]Although Although this week it is going to be a slightly different format than the regular week in review anyways. I won't have all the regular sections of the videos covered and all that. Well, we'll get into it. I will be talking about news because for better or for worse, mostly for worse, it's to be frank, it's good for clicks and views and engagement, but I wish the drama didn't exist. But we do have dramatic news, we have regular news, we have interesting news, and less interesting news. There's like two mini dramas going on this week, which is more than the usual. Usually it's like one a week. And And the fact that there's usually one a week is a problem unto itself. Anyways, uh links and timestamps to everything relevant down below before we dive into the video. And a And note a note a note a note to our channel sponsor. All Play is a channel sponsor. If you go to All Play right now, right now they're doing something new actually. They have a table drop. They're doing these kind of mini batches of like boutique tables that are not really like custom to your needs, but they're having their table makers explore various table designs and then put out little batches. I believe there's 20 available of the current table. You can go ahead and check that out uh at allplay.com. Just click on tables and it's the first thing that'll pop up. There's only 20 available. Uh so so so act quickly because I don't know how fast those 20 go. I don't know if they're all sold out already or not. We shall see. I hope they're not all sold out cuz I have another video going up Monday that's going to shout them out too. So um whatever. I guess I hope they are sold out for better better for them. Anyways, with that, let's go ahead and dive into the news. Let's start off with things that are a little on the tamer side and work our way up to the um the drama. From there, starting off, we have Sentinels of the Multiverse.

[00:01:34]Sentinels of the Multiverse is back. I don't remember if I if I talked about this. This was from last week. I don't remember if I did talk about it or not though. But basically Greater Than Games is back in the hands of founders Christopher Badell, Paul Bender, has multiple games in development. So basically the people behind Greater Than Games, if you may have seen this, Handelabra Games picked up the Sentinels of the Multiverse license. They don't plan on getting into board games themselves, but they do have a team of people that will be getting into board games specifically and notably the team behind Greater Than Games in general.

[00:01:59]So, they are back in their different form under the different titles and things, but producing some of the same games. I still don't know where Spirit Island ended up, and I hope it ends up somewhere fun, because that is a game that deserves to live on. In less exciting news, we have Osprey Games basically saying that they are getting rid of their board game division. Osprey is getting rid of the board game side of things, which is a sad It's sad for a variety of reasons. It's sad whenever someone like stops doing something cool, but it's also sad because it always makes me wonder like, "Okay, were the board games not profitable enough?"

[00:02:27]Like, Osprey has a lot of successful games under their belts, or at least what I thought were successful games.

[00:02:32]Maybe not successful enough, and maybe it's the state of the world and tariffs and all those things going on in the board game space that make this just like There are companies that that that go away with the lot of like, you know, undelivered stuff, and there's companies that just stop making things. Every time a company says, "It's just not worth us being in the space." Even things like when CoolStuffInc stopped selling board games, that was like a weirdly pivotal moment, but it's it's a reminder of that every single time you think a board game is too expensive, every single time you think that a publisher is asking too much money and it's not worth it, there's also people that are just saying, "Hey, there's not enough money in this space for us to be here. We are going to leave." Hopefully doing so without having undelivered games, but you never really know which way those things go. And then we have Dire Wolf, Capstone, and Chaosium signing on with Asmodee. These are three companies that they are signing on with distribution with Asmodee. Asmodee, speaking of which, is a perfect segue to our next article over on BoardGameWire over here.

[00:03:22]We have Asmodee basically annual revenue surges to 1.68 billion. Their their their revenue is increasing, but the sales of their own board games is actually falling. Their their distribution at this point accounts for, I believe, 73% of their total revenue. I think that was a 72%. So close. 72% of their total revenue, up up from 63% in the prior financial year. Basically, distribution is doing very well for Asmodee, even as the sales of their own games are falling a little. Make no mistake, they are doing great. Speaking of doing great, they They some of their publishers that are going to be picked to be making Lord of the Rings games, which was interesting to me because I didn't see one in this article that I'm not sure how that works. But let's go ahead and get into it. Basically, they revealed the first layer of partner companies. This is a article they talked about a while ago. Board to My had an interview before with Luke Peachsmith from Asmodee talking about how they're trying to manage the licensing and making sure people actually can get their hands on the license. They announced that a few people, Grand Gamers Guild as well as Stone Blade Entertainment as well as Play to See, have all been selected by Asmodee to produce new Lord of the Rings games. I knew about Stone Blade Entertainment.

[00:04:23]They already have a upcoming Ascension Lord of the Rings game. I don't know what Grand Gamers Guild or Play to See is doing, but I noticed that it did not mention Restoration Games who I thought were doing a Lord of the Rings game. I thought they were, but they're not on the list, so I'm not entirely sure how that works. I think I think like the King's Lama, isn't that a Lord of the Rings game? Did I misunderstand that?

[00:04:42]I'm not entirely sure, but either way, that's something that will be coming up, and so that is what we have as far as um you know, over here, Lord of the Rings games and Asmodee and all that. Which brings us to the drama pieces of the week. We'll start off with the mini drama, the one that you are less likely to have heard of, but certainly does exist. Where uh basically on Six Siege over here from Steamforged Games, they produced an update over on their page saying, "Hey, Six Siege is in development, and here are the photos."

[00:05:04]And people quickly pointed out that that is a map, a board, a player board the size of a pallet that looks wrong.

[00:05:12]Further closer inspection showed that these pictures are definitely AI photos with the typical things you'd call artifacts like little blips as far as like the way that like that is not a normal you know, little map squiggle over here.

[00:05:23]This whole thing it looks very AI generated. And that caused a lot of stir and ruckus because not only is it a problem to begin with, it also of course raises the question of why did you do that? Is actual production underway?

[00:05:35]What is the story with this game? This cursed game from Mythic Games and now Steamforged Games, what is going on with it? Steamforged Games did very quickly respond in the comments saying, "Hey, these are provided by our our our our the the the publisher not publisher.

[00:05:49]They're They're provided by the uh production um and effectively saying these weren't from us. Uh they're provided to us. We didn't look closely enough. We're looking into it." Now, obviously, you have to play the game of, "Well, what's going on here? Who to believe?"

[00:06:00]Uh I I I mean, I am biased here. I am friends with a lot of people at Steamforged Games and I think they are very good people. I think but more importantly, by the way, more importantly, I think if you created these AI photos, you would realize how bad they looked. Like, they're getting flak for not looking at them and seeing the issues before sharing them with the community. That is That's a reasonable thing to get flak for. Also, I know that it's very easy to get the photo, not look, and pass it on. It is very easy to do that thing. Should you? No, but it's very easy. It would be far stupider, in my opinion, I can't I'm not saying they didn't do it, but it'd be far stupider to generate an AI photo and not realize that the thing you generated looks so horrifically bad and inaccurate. I think that is something that is more likely to happen on the production side than the people who actually know the game. So, I'm I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt primarily because I think they are not that stupid to have generated this.

[00:06:51]Oversight and not looking closely enough, unfortunately, that's that's something that happens. It shouldn't, but it happens. Um but I'm giving them credit for their intelligence on this one. They did post a follow-up. I'm not saying what happened. I don't know what happened. I'm just saying my opinion.

[00:07:03]They did post a follow-up date, a message to our community, going into a bit more detail. We should have closer.

[00:07:07]We didn't. Like, that's on us. It's easy to just get into the They have lots of games in development. It's easy to see photos, send them on, and not really analyze each one, although I but guarantee you they will be looking more closely in the future. And then sharing uh production photos and all those things that are likely not AI doctored.

[00:07:22]I assume that it would be very very stupid at this point to uh put together an AI photo knowing that people are going to be looking like hawks at these photos. That's kind of where things are.

[00:07:30]It definitely does not look good and um I guarantee you uh I guarantee you that that on all sides, no one's really happy with how this played out. Which brings us to our larger drama of the week. And I don't know how much I'm going to be going into this. There's an article on BoardGameGeek Wire, but I'll be covering this as well as, you know, past that.

[00:07:46]Basically, BoardGameGeek fires veteran advertising manager for rejecting campaign due to first-hand experiences of demonic possession. Again, Mike from BoardGameGeek Wire, if you're watching this video, I the titles of your articles are so long. They They're trying to capture every single possible aspect that will hook you in. Like, that that you wanted to have the first-hand experiences of demonic possession in that title because it's so much more juicy. It really pulls people in. I understand that this is I just hate the long titles. I hate them. They're too long. Anyways, what actually happened over here? Let's go ahead and shut this down and just talk about what happened.

[00:08:17]Overboard BoardGameGeek, they fired their their advertising manager, who I believe has been with them since 2007.

[00:08:23]So, 19 years this person has been with them. And the reason they fired them is a board game that's actually currently live on Gamefound right now. I think it's called What was it? "Possess Me, Satan" or whatever it is. It's a demon-themed game about possession. So, they they reached out to the advertising manager to run ads. And at first they didn't get a reply. And so, they reached out again. At which point they got a reply effectively saying, you can look all this up, by the way. You can check out the board the the the BoardGameGeek Wire article. There'll be links to everything. But effectively, the the short version of the response was, "Hey, I've been mulling this over trying to figure out how to deal with this, but we don't we I we can't run this ad. I can't bring it to me to do so. The demonic possession is real. I have personally like been involved in helping rescue people from demons. And it's a real thing that people struggle with, and I can't in good conscience share this. And in reality, you probably shouldn't even have this game. I mean, you probably shouldn't be considering making this game because it's a real thing that affects many people.

[00:09:14]Good luck and hope you understand."

[00:09:15]That's not word for word, but that's a general paraphrasing of what was said.

[00:09:19]Again, you can look up the actual screenshots of all of this.

[00:09:22]That resulted in him sharing it to Reddit, which resulted in very quickly things blowing up, which resulted in BoardGameGeek very quickly Octavian, one of the mods on BoardGameGeek, basically saying, "Hey, this is obviously not in alignment with Well, they said two things. The first he said the ad would have been rejected anyway, although he did correct that later.

[00:09:38]but he said that regardless of whether he'd be ejected or not, the way this is handled is completely not okay and is, you know, we're going to have to let him know that this is not something that can be done in the future. That's not relevant cuz like two or three hours later, Aldie, the owner of BoardGameGeek, announced that he had been let go. Now, keep in mind, by the way, cuz there is a hunt for blood in this one. Keep in mind that someone who has been with the company for 19 years being let go within a matter of 6 hours is incredibly quick decision-making on BoardGameGeek. And the reason I say this is because love or hate BoardGameGeek, there's a lot of people that love them, there's a lot of people that hate them, they are getting it from both sides in this one. And I always have such a sympathy, you know, we're going to go on a tangent in this video. We're going to do a tangent up here. Enjoy. This is your topic of the week. There's a tangent going on. You can never make everyone happy in life. And the problem is you always have a mob of pitchforks of people on all sides who are unhappy with the way you are tackling a situation. And realistically, you should take into account all sources of feedback to kind of check yourself, but you also have to learn to tune out the mob because you cannot make everyone happy and you should not try to make everyone happy. I say this because BoardGameGeek, by all accounts, by so many people, are considered to be an incredible left-wing compa- company that are censoring every single possible allegiance of anything leaning slightly to the right is censored and there's no room for, you know, good Christians or Republicans. There's no room for that at all. That's the general like perception of people that BoardGameGeek is a friend to everyone on the left and has no patience for everyone on the right. The reason that's relevant to what I'm about to say next is in this giant thread on BoardGameGeek, there's people like calling up BoardGameGeek, how can you harbor people like this? I should have known, you know, my money's going towards people. I don't even know what kind of, you know, viewpoints you have in life. The fact that you didn't fire him in 2 seconds tells us everything you need to know. The fact that you're not like there's people who are upset and out for blood and calling up BoardGameGeek on so many things because they're not left-wing enough.

[00:11:24]Which is to me is a crazy concept because everyone on the right hates BoardGameGeek. This is the same thing I talked about when DiceTower was going through the whole thing with Sam Healey.

[00:11:31]I talked about this as well, where a lot of people were sitting there more on the left calling out the Dice Tower and calling for blood and action and all those things. Meanwhile, there's people on the right going ahead and saying that Tom is a enemy to the church and a terrible person and has has fallen in with the left and is bending over backwards to appease people. No matter what happens, you cannot make people happy in life. I just this past week, a more more tangent and I apologize to the person who commented this if you're watching this. Just this past week, I did a video on Terraforming Mars and I had someone basically saying, "Hey, unless you" and they they they took it back a little bit, I'll explain in a second. They said, "Unless you um post a follow-up video going into the issues with the uh the the the trans the transphobia, the racism, and the Nazi Party, I'm not familiar with all of them. I know about the transphobia part, I don't know about the racism or the Nazi Party. I haven't looked into it enough. But basically, if you don't talk about all these things regarding the the Frixos team, I'm going to unsubscribe from your channel." And like again, it's that aspect. And again, I replied to them saying, "Hey, I I engage in conversation. I don't engage in you know, do this or I'm gone." Then then leave, by all means. Like I I'm just that's not a conversation. And they they they apologized and retracted and rephrased what they were trying to convey, which I totally get. I might say or do things that make myself a channel you don't want to watch and I get that.

[00:12:41]I do, but like we have to dial it down.

[00:12:43]We really have to dial down the extent to which we immediately are out for blood in so many capacities. Again, BoardGameGeek, by all accounts, is a friend to to to the left and to to to to being inclusive and to being mindful of people and to not in any And they can't make everyone happy. They just can't. It is what it is. This is a bit of a segue, a bit of a tangent. This is not intended. The article is that, "Hey, BoardGameGeek advertising manager for 19 years tells someone we're not going to run your ads because of my own issues with Christianity and Satan and demonic possession." And BoardGameGeek fired him. That's the very short version of this. And I think that's an appropriate course of action. I say this as someone who has talked with their advertising manager, been friendly with the advertising manager, and And seems like a good guy. I knew none of this other stuff and and I'm sure this is the tricky part of life. I'm sure he is still a good guy who happens to be making in what I would consider a very poor decision in terms of the lines of these types of things. And I think good people, and this is where again I would I will get flak for this statement, I think good people can harbor views that are not great. I once upon a time I probably still harbor views that are not great. But for sure, you fast you rewind myself 10 years and I I think 10 years ago I was a good person that harbored views that I would not agree with today.

[00:13:56]I I still think I was a good person, but I think we are all a product of our environment and we all have to figure out we all have to figure out life. And and and it is it is okay to condemn viewpoints. It is okay to condemn actions, but it's also okay to understand that the person behind those viewpoints and actions is not necessarily a bad person. They might well be a misguided person. And who's to really say who's right and wrong in this world anyway? We're all just kind of assuming that we are right. I'm not defending his viewpoints to be very clear. I'm defending the idea of like this this this witch hunt that some times happens that I I am totally against. Totally against the witch hunts of it all. I do think he should have been fired by the way. That's like I I I think that the extent of of the decisions he made show such poor judgment that while I feel bad that he is fired, I think that is a correct reaction on the half of Board Game Geek.

[00:14:41]I think sometimes people do things that are so stupid you can't afford to have them as an employee regardless of whether their intent was good and regardless of how nice of a person they might be outside of these things. I feel at this point in the video I've said so many things that will possibly be triggering to different sides of the political spectrum for any number of different things I said. But hey, hopefully hopefully it doesn't go so south for me.

[00:15:02]Uh that's kind of the news part of things, which brings us to the rest of the week in review, which is not really going to be the usual format of the rest of the week in review. Normally at this point I launched into the videos of the week, the games we covered, all of that.

[00:15:11]I'm not doing that. Honestly, if not for the news piece this week, I wasn't sure if I was going to do a week in review because my week is going to be crazy. Um I just this past week or two weeks ago I was Was two weeks ago? Is it has been that long? Yeah, 2 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago was my my It was my son's bar mitzvah. My whole family was in for that. Then we had a friend come in for a week, which, you know, took up a lot of time and playing games, taking a week off, which was very nice, very rewarding. Then next week I'm going to UKGE. By the way, for the record, I rarely ever actually take off take off.

[00:15:39]I'm almost always working. My life is fun and games, but it's always work fun and games. But I actually took off a week. Even in that week, I still took multiple meetings because it is what it is. But I took off a week. It's very exciting for me. I didn't do that. I combined my my son's bar mitzvah and a friend coming in, family and friends and all that, and just took off a week of work, which is so nice. Then I have to get back to work, which is less nice. I like work. I just I just have to catch up to it all. This week I'm leaving in a few days to UKGE, UK Games Expo. I'll be flying internationally to over there.

[00:16:05]I'm leaving either I think I'm leaving Wednesday morning. I should probably double check my flight, but I'm leaving Wednesday morning for that. After UKG, I'm going straight to Poland to Wrocław, where the Gamefound headquarters is, because I go there like once a year to touch base with the team, have meetings, all those things, just like rub shoulders with people. I mean, I rub shoulders with them at conventions, but it's good to see people. It's good to be there. Plus, I mean, pierogies. Have you had Polish pierogies? Oh my gosh, that's That's worth the flight alone. It's not.

[00:16:26]Nothing's worth international travel, but it is It is a nice compensation prize for international travel. From there, I'll be at Wrocław for a few days, which means I'm basically going to be international for a week and a half, and then back home, which means the next week and a half to 2 weeks, I don't know what the video schedule will be. I do have a bunch of videos lined up, and I always have videos. I've talked about this before, but I always have videos in the queue. I have like, I think 52 videos currently in the queue. And I'm always mindful that if 14 videos go up a week, I have to film 14 videos a week.

[00:16:54]And usually I'm pretty pace on pace with that. Sometimes I have less travel and I'm able to get ahead of the curve. At the highest point, I've had like 70 videos lined up. At the lowest point, I've had like 40. But I always have videos lined up. But I also like to give myself grace. Every video that doesn't go up in a day is one less video I have to film. So, I don't know the schedule for the next week and a half. What I do know is I have a lot of fun videos coming up.

[00:17:14]I have on Monday, by the way, you should enjoy this. On Monday, I'll have a video talking about the 10 outstanding Seamon campaigns, ranking the ranking them in the order that I most want them personally, cuz I think it's a fun video. It's good for views, it's good for engagement, and it's good to remind myself that some of these games I may never see, but I hope to see them. I also did that as an idea. The idea for that I had cuz I just did a 10 upcoming campaigns that I'm most excited for, and then I wasn't sure how to include some of the Seamon ones because one of the Seamon ones was like this is a past campaign, but it made me think of that.

[00:17:41]It made me want to do that video. Point is, I have a bunch of videos going up this coming week. I I but I I past this coming week, I just don't know how the next week and a half will play out.

[00:17:50]There might be several days without videos. It might be an entirely normal schedule over the next 3 days cuz I have like 3 days before I have to leave. Over the next 3 days, I'll be taking a look at my calendar and deciding. But if videos aren't there, I'm fine. It's great. This past week when my friend was here, I took off like I think there were 3 days in a row with no videos. Maybe it was only 2 days, I don't remember. But like somebody commented like, "Hey, like it was weird that you were gone cuz you're usually not just disappearing for 2 to 3 days." But I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to I'm going to enjoy myself. I'm not going to focus about getting every single video live."

[00:18:17]Again, I still took like three videos three meetings that week and filmed like three or four videos, but like I was able to dial it down. And and dialing it down sometimes is important, especially when I have things going on like this.

[00:18:27]So that's kind of this this is like a little bit of your news and week review.

[00:18:30]Aside from games being played, I have a lot of games I want to play. I just don't have them all. I have Kingdom's Crossing from Pandasaurus that just showed up. Just learned the rules for that. Hope to be having into that one soon. I'm still trying to get into Lands of Ever Shade, but again, this past week was a bunch of campaign games I need to finish through some of those things. But Lands of Ever Shade, I'm so looking forward to. Definitely check out Oh my gosh.

[00:18:47]Oh my gosh. I'm Um uh Mark Dainty. It's a best with one, I can't remember. I can't remember Mark Dainty's channel. Um which is I'm blanking on the board game name, but he just did a review of uh Lands of Ever Shade that I definitely recommend checking out. It also made me debate whether I will or won't get rid of Dragon Eclipse because he said Dragon Eclipse was one of the top 10 favorite board game experiences he has had. That made me want to play it. It's still here on the shelf right now. I've just been debating entering of it. My My currently painting the miniatures, and I do want to play it. I just I want to play everything. I want to do everything. We don't have time for everything. I just started playing Expedition 33. This video is all over the place. I just started playing Expedition 33, and oh my gosh, I am loving it. I didn't think I would, but I I I like it looks like not the kind of game experience that's like a quick time action. I get I like the the fighting from Spider-Man. I don't want this like quick time events, but it works. It works really well, at least so far. Now, granted, I'm only like 3 hours into it, and I will say the difference between 3 hours of gameplay and 20 hours of gameplay is very much where the question is. Is it still fun 20 hours in? But honestly, I want to play it right when I'm done with this video, and I can't because I have to do things. And that makes me upset. So, I will have to deal with trying to play Lands of Havoc Shape, trying to play Expedition 33, trying to film all the videos, which I do enjoy. I have so many I haven't done uh Druids of Idora. I have a review coming for Druids of Idora. Dice Tower gave it like sixes and sevens. Shame on the Dice Tower. I don't not actually shame on the Dice Tower. Druids of Idora, I have found, is a very divisive game. Like on their Thinker Themer's side, it goes in number one game of their year last year, or I I think specifically uh one of their one of theirs uh Amy's uh game uh last year. But um what's it called? What am I saying? Um I'm saying that uh Druids of Idora Druids of Idora has been a very divisive game that some people have loved, and some people have been very medium on. I am loving it. It is a five out of five.

[00:20:27]I'll tell you that right now. The review has not come, but I've saved you the time. I love Druids of Idora. If you want to see the review, you can watch that, but I haven't even filmed the review, but I want to. I want to do so much.

[00:20:36]I want to do so much.

[00:20:38]I wish I had more time in the day. Every day. I wish I had more time in the week, more time in the year. I There's so many things that are worth doing in life, and there's not enough time to do them all.

[00:20:48]With that, I'll go ahead and end this week in review. I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Until next time, I hope you have a good one.