Welcome to 2013 everyone! We hope that you’ve all recovered from your holidays and New Year’s festivities!
The Cardboard Republic is back from vacation and looking forward to a game-filled year. We have a lot in store in the coming weeks, and we’re going to start the new calendar off with what we feel are industry prospects on the horizon in 2013. Read on to check our predictions for what the new year will bring to board/card/tabletop gaming.
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- Co-op, co-op, co-op! 2012 saw a huge uptick in cooperative games, and we expect the trend to last through 2013. Particularly, keep your eyes out for team-based co-op games.
- Simultaneous action. We’ve started to see a few of these games trickling into the market, and the it’s likely to continue. Games in which all players act at the same time (e.g, you roll your dice at the same time as the person next to you) might just be analogue gaming’s response to the instant gratification of our modern age, but we think this mechanic is an interesting one. We hope to see more of it in the coming year.
- Magic: The Gathering’s 20th Anniversary is almost upon us, and we’re expecting something big from Wizard’s of the Coast. We’ll let you know when they announce their plans.
- Living Card Games just won’t die. I mean, we like them. We really do. But they’re everywhere now, and it seems like a new one is announced every week. Fantasy Flight may own the term “LCG”, but that isn’t stopping other companies from coming up with their own versions of modular card expansion games. We don’t see this dying out any time soon, either.
- More Kickstarters! Crowd-sourcing really came into its own in 2012, and the fruits of its labor have just started to hit the market. 2013 should see a wide range of crowd-sourced games on the shelves. We’ll see how they stack up against their more traditional competition.
We’ll be keeping an eye on these trends (and more). Either way, this looks to be a great year for gaming!
Erin Ryan is a regular contributor to the site. Do you have any predictions for 2013? Feel free to share them with us over on our forums!