What do the game of the year nominees and highly recommended say about direction of game design?

Having recently bought 7 Wonders, I am in awe of the elegance, depth, and balance in that thirty minute game.

At a first glance you might think a dumbing down for mass market, but I suspect it represents a trend in elegance and science in design with the lessons learned from the billions of dollar video game market getting the A game out of board games.

Difficulty is also deceptive, and a single number is inadequate. What's needed is an ease of use score and a score representing upside challenge. And if reviewers also gave games an "end game" tactical flavor, that would be sweet. A number of easy to play games get challenging as record keeping, calculating games, ewww. Some turn into RPS, others degenerate to dice offs because the optimal strategy caps too early in the curve. Tactical, strategic with some head games is the holy grail I look for.

It may say something about where the SdJ is going, but I doubt it says terribly much about where "game design" is going in general. For one thing, there is of course the Kennerspiel des Jahres. For another, there is no rule that says that the composition of the SdJ shortlist dictates what games an individual designer is permitted to work on in the comfort of his own home.

I was using hyperbole.
I guess it's just personal tastes of mine in a way. I find a lot of people that game are only interested in light games that play fast and don't have much depth to them. I'm not advocating for games to have to go back to the complexity of Avalon Hill games, but I would like to see more of a focus on games that aren't so casual, fast, and lacking in depth. I'd like to see more games like Mage Knight. But games like Mage Knight unfortunately aren't very popular with most gamers.

By "new lows" (hyperbole) what I mean is that it seems people overly simplify games in order to appeal to the changing temperament of gamers. They try to make every game like Dominion, 7 wonders, etc.

"Are you going to say that Hanabi, Dominion, and Ticket to Ride are lows in gaming? "
Never played Hanabi. Dominion is great (though dry after awhile without expansions), but I don't want to see every game light as Dominion. Ticket to Ride I completely hate, that game is sooo boring it's just draw, draw, draw and the theme is really lame too imo.

Let's not talk about the "best" properties of a game as if there's some one-size-fits-all perfection to be attained here. The "best" type of game will always depend on the context -- who are you playing with, how long have you got, how much alcohol have you all had, etc.

The spectrum of available games is very broad, which is great, precisely because sometimes there's 6 dedicated wargamers in an attic for a whole weekend, sometimes there's a few kids who need to be entertained for half an hour at the family gathering, and sometimes you're in the pub with your mates and you like to keep your hands busy while talking. All we designers need to do is make a decision on who our target audience is. We can make that as narrow or as broad as we want.

The Spiel Des Jahres is very explicitly a family game award, so don't take it as an indicator of board game design as a whole. If you're playing with more avid board gamers, the Kennersspiel Des Jahres is probably more for you.

So yes, if you want to win a SdJ, you should probably be making under-an-hour family-friendly games. But you don't have to. We can design any game we want, and if only a niche group of gamers enjoy it, that's absolutely fine.

Hendrix,
I agree with you for the most part BUT
a lot of the time some designers limit their game with its depth/complexity/play time in a false bid to try to appeal to casual gamers and, in effect, sacrifice the spirit and feel of their game.
So yes, it is VERY important to know what type of game your's is about and also your audience.
Making a game with a light theme that appeals to casuals yet then it has very deep and complex gameplay is not a good idea; just as it is to have a game that has a dense and mature theme to have too light of rules.
A lot of the casual crowd and attitude comes out and they try to trash talk games that aren't rules light and short length and they act like the only games that matter are those types. But not all of us gamers want every game to be short, rules light, and casual.

Look at the world of video games for example. Resident Evil started off as a pure survival horror series that was quite scary and tough. But as time has gone on the people who make Resident Evil want to try to attract more gamers to their game; they look at how massive the Call of Duty playerbase is. Call of Duty players and games have a totally different mindset than Resident Evil does. So what did they do? They made Resident Evil 6 and tried to casualize it so much and focus so much on action over horror in order to try to appeal to Call of Duty type of players that they ended up sacrificing the spirit of their game and they alienated their core player base. So what they ended up making a game that was only lukewarm to the Call of Duty type of people and repelled their core fans.
So too is it with board games where designers limit themselves and how great their games could be by trying to appeal to players that would only feel lukewarm about their game to begin with.

In short, what I'm saying is not every game has to be 7 wonders, dominion , or ticket to ride even if a lot of casual gamers think that every game that isn't as short as those games isn't worthy of attention or being designed.
There's a place for both casual and heavy games, I enjoy both of them personally.

I think that the point about it being a family games award is key, but I think that the award is also conditional on the simple theme of rules elegance.

Elegance in programming is using as little code as possible to complete the same function. If you can have few rules, but create a game that is enjoyable, your game has elegance.

However, many programs aren't "elegant", and have lots of rules about them, but provide a more powerful application. Microsoft Excel comes to mind. Similarly, a game like "Power Grid", with as many rules as it has, provides a very enjoyable strategic experience, but the ratio of rules to fun is more slanted towards rules than, say, "Love Letter"

That's my $.02

Very light, relatively short playtime, family-friendly... weren't these always the criteria for the "Spiel des Jahres"-award? (with only few exceptions)

Before the "Kinderspiel des Jahres"-subcategory existed, even kid's games won it. Like "Enchanted Forest" in 1982 or "Top Secret Spies" in 1986.

There were some exceptions, but these were just exceptions. "Spiel des Jahres" always adressed casual gamers as well as non-gamers. I can't see any "direction". In fact, I find this award quite consistant over the more than 30 years it exists.

I still stick behind what I said about "new lows" because it's pretty much true. A lot of games compromise themselves to try to appeal to people that don't really give a shit about games to begin with or treat it only as a party type of game or to try to appeal to "the wife" who would really rather be doing something else than playing boardgames.
My point is, know your core audience and base the complexity on what you're trying to do with theme; don't sacrifice your art to try to appeal to people that don't really care about it

A) 9 times out 10 it is indeed "the wife", go look on BGG there are TONS of threads about guys going on about "how can I get my girlfriend/wife into games?" , in fact isn't there a whole forum dedicated just to that on there?
Don't get me wrong though. I'm not saying that that's always the case or to stereotype everybody. It's just a generalization.
But I'll keep in mind your advice for the future

B) No, they do play them. When their friends and/or partner introduces it to them mainly. Some designers, it seems, try to keep that in mind and limit their game's design by keeping in mind those players.

C) If the core audience is indeed for a casual base then there is no shame at all in making a casual, quick, easy game. If you make a game about a light theme such as bumblebees then you have to keep in mind it will mainly attract casual players; you shouldn't have a theme like that game and then make it into a really deep game like Mage Knight. That would be the reverse problem of "dumbing down" a game, that problem would be "making it too complex."
"or because we want to make sure that ALL PEOPLE can enjoy this hobby we love?"
People have different tastes and likes, everyone deserves to have games out there that appeal to them. Games shouldn't be made to try to appeal to some nonexistent universal standard is what I'm saying. It feels to me there is a definite trend going on where people think a game is bad if it lasts for over an hour in length or if it's not as simple as Dominion or 7 Wonders

The "Spiel des Jahres"-award always was for families and non- or casual gamers.
The very first winner (in 1979) was "Hare & Tortoise", which has a BGG-weight of 1.27!

The games always had to have relatively short playing times, had to be suitable for at least 4 players and had to be very easy to understand. There were some exceptions to this - but these were exceptions.
And since they introduced "Kennerspiel des Jahres", they found a bit more back to these roots.

It seems that there are some misunderstandings about this since the award became more popular in other countries.

Here you can find an interview with Tom Felber about the award and its meaning: http://tandgcon.com/business-of-play/an-interview-with-tom-felber-jury-c...