Zenobia Award

The name of this relatively new award is based on...

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Thanks for bringing the Awards under a wider audience. The good news is that one of the finalists has already successfully converted via Kickstarter. Dutch Resistance: Orange Shall Overcome! found almost 700 backers.

Then again, this is one of the most conventional games in the list. I hope the other games see daylight as well. I would appreciate if TWBG kept us up to date on developments that they get to know of.

I wasn't sure where else to mention it, so here goes: I heard about the Zenobia Awards about a week after I stumbled across the Kickstarter for Where Is Home, Truly. It was intended to be a game highlighting Southeast Asian refugee crises that seems to have been axed by an NGO right out of the gate. Just seemed weird, as otherwise it sounded like it could have been a Zenobia contender.

An update from a contestant, but not winner.

Some of these may land at education publishers, which I'm of multiple minds about.

Gary Sax wrote: Some of these may land at education publishers, which I'm of multiple minds about.

I'm curious to hear your concerns on this front. Are you unsure about the utility of games as a pedagogical device?

I'm not a heavy historical gamer but I have learned things superficially via exposure to historical games. Even basic stuff like the title of events in CDGs have lead me to google things and the games themselves have been useful in evoking a feeling or highlighting the tradeoffs between different factions but I've never walked away thinking that I've played through a proper run through of history that would replace a good book. I see games as useful for adding an emotional layer to history that's otherwise harder to convey through text alone but with emotion (and well, history) comes the problem of bias and context.

I guess it depends what we mean by educational games. I think educational games have a long history of being much less interested in the game than heavy handedly focusing on "teaching," which is usually not mechanical but just words on cards, rulebooks, etc. I find games very educational when they teach using the mechanics.

But I don't know anything about this publisher. Could be fine!

mailchi.mp/658c301947b8/april-19-update-...igital-sale-and-more

Just wanted to bring to everyone's attention that GMT is P500ing a coop game on indigenous resistance that was in the Zenobia contest---Borikén