The Kanga Awards, A new initiative to acknowledge, champion and award Australian involvement in tabletop games!
The booming Australian Board game and Tabletop markets can’t be stopped. There are hundreds of Australians in game design, art and design, publishing, game development and art direction. The Kanga Awards were set up to recognize the achievements of Australians within the tabletop games industry.
Several content creators including myself, got together to discuss why Australia doesn’t have an tabletop games industry award. After much research, we only found one award for Australian games. There were only games from the Big Publishers and seemed to include games from the last several years, including one from 4 years ago. They didn’t included the ever growing Kickstarter and independent markets.
So the Kanga Awards were created!
For more information, how to enter or to just get involved head over to The Kanga Facebook page or download the Kanga Guide which has all the rules and judging criteria of the awards
About the Board and Tabletop Game Boom
Before we introduce the judges, lets have a quick look at the numbers of what is causing the boom in the Industry, Kickstarter.
Kickstarter has almost single handedly created this boom in the Board game and Tabletop market. In 2017 alone, 6,951 games were put on Kickstarter; with 3,981 of those games being funded. That number does include both board and tabletop games, and videos games.
The split between the 2 might actually surprise you. 729 of the 6,951 games placed on Kickstarter were Video games. That is it! Just over 10% and even more crazy is over 50% of those video games didn’t meet their funding goals.
Games as a whole, represented 26% of all the money pledged in 2017, and makes up 15% of all the funded projects on Kickstarter. To put this in dollars and cents, the total amount of money pledged to Game Category in 2017 was $162,613,701 USD ($215,640,402 AUD) with less than $20 million of that being for video game projects.
Kickstarter has almost single handedly created this boom in the Board game and Tabletop market. In 2017 alone, 6,951 games were put on Kickstarter; with 3,981 of those games being funded. That number does include both board and tabletop games, and videos games.
The split between the 2 might actually surprise you. 729 of the 6,951 games placed on Kickstarter were Video games. That is it! Just over 10% and even more crazy is over 50% of those video games didn’t meet their funding goals.
Games as a whole, represented 26% of all the money pledged in 2017, and makes up 15% of all the funded projects on Kickstarter. To put this in dollars and cents, the total amount of money pledged to Game Category in 2017 was $162,613,701 USD ($215,640,402 AUD) with less than $20 million of that being for video game projects.
*All information above was taken from ICO Partner Report. They converted all projects earning from their original currency to USD for their audience.
Meet the Judges:
The Judges are representatives of various Australian Tabletop media and bring with them a wealth of Tabletop knowledge and experience. (You may even recognize the last Judge and outlet)
Matthew Lee
Matthew has been the editor of The Campaigner, a tabletop lifestyle magazine and website, since it launched in 2012. The publication explores tabletop from both the community and industry perspectives, with a strong focus on educating readers about creative processes and the intent of creators.
Garth Gray
Garth has been heavily involved in tabletop gaming since 2008 and has been part of the Dice Men Cometh podcast for the last four years. The podcast has allowed him to play and review a wide range of games from all over the world.
Garth has appeared on tabletop panels, a variety of tabletop podcasts and featured in The Campaigner Magazine with his fellow Dice Men. He is passionate about seeing Australian games take their place in people’s homes and on the world stage.
Mark Rickards
Mark has been around for many, many years and for most of those has been involved in some form of tabletop gaming. A member of BGG since 2005; he was a founding committee member of the Hobart Game Society, as well as being half of the original Dice Men Cometh team. As a founder of Australia’s leading tabletop gaming podcast. He has a strong desire to see Australians recognised on the world stage for their efforts.
Leon Cannan
Leon Cannan, as well as being a metal head, a comic guru and pro-wresting nerd is one third of Australia’s leading tabletop podcast, The Dice Men Cometh. Not content with that, he also founded the Silver Bullet Society; a gaming club dedicated to running massive werewolf events including the recent Tasmanian Championships.
When Leon is interested in something, he is all in. Having just played D&D for the first time, he now owns almost all of it and is part of at least 4 continuing campaigns. In his spare time he loves his wife and his cats, not always in that order.
Ella Ampongan
Ella is the co-founder of World of Women, an international community created to support and encourage women in the gaming industry. Through her work, she wants to promote diversity and inclusivity in gaming.
Angelus Morningstar
Angelus is a Sydney-based gamer for the last 15 years. His passion has lead him to publishing an RPG, consulting on games, and has run a review website for the last two years featuring content from a range of queer gamers.
Angelus comes to the tabletop world from a roleplaying background. As such, he favours games that show unique high concepts or engaging themes. However, he also enjoys complexity of gameplay and indulges in heavy Euros. He is always on the look out for that hidden gem; the obscure game that missed the hype but has a unique quality.
Dez Maggs
Dez has been a board game reviewer for the last 4 years; but been rolling dice ever since he can remember. Dez Currently write for gotogame.temp927.kinsta.cloud and is their Lead Board Game Reviewer. He also run a small podcast on the Boomer Radio Network called ‘Rapid Reviews with Dez’ and he spends more time on Kickstarter than most.
Dez has worked hard in the International Market to bring Australia his insight on the biggest Kickstarter games around the world. In turn, highlight and educating developers on the growing Australian market.
