Before purchasing a game or even when I'm just window shopping, I like to know if the game I am looking at has won an award. Here's the list of awards that I like to reference:
I like the Spiel De Jahres award the best and have found myself collecting the awarded games. The German Spiel des Jahres is perhaps the world's most prestigious game award. Consider it the Oscar of this hobby. They try and focus on games that would be great for families - fun, relatively light, and not too long. Right up my alley!
Spiel De Jahres: The Spiel De Jahres official website is all in German, so I compiled a list of past award winners on Board Games 4 Chics for you to check out. I like to reference the list of winners from Wikipedia or Fun Again Games. The Spiel De Jahres also recognizes good children's games by awarding them the Kinderspiel.
GAMES Magazine: A good mix of nonelectronic and electronic games. The winners are often times different than the Speil De Jahres, but still has good suggestions and crictiques.
International Gamers Award: These guys judge based on three different types of criteria. 1- General Stragey for multi players, 2- Two player games and 3- Historical Simulation Game or Wargames (Not my favorite, but fun for the guys.) Another good mix of recommended games.
Mensa Select: These winners are good for the mind. The American Mensa selects usually 5 games to be recommend through its Mind Games competition.
