Nominations are now open for the Play Creators Awards, taking place at the 2019 Play Creators Festival.

Celebrating the opening night of DISTOY, we’ll be uniting the toy and game industry on Tuesday, May 28th for a night of networking, boozing and quizzing at London’s Jerusalem Bar.

The grown-up games night will celebrate with a menu of Board Game Club favourites from the past five years as well as some newer titles.

We caught up with TOMY’s senior concept and design manager, Chris Huisman, to learn more about the design process behind Ritzy Rollerz, and why “the sky’s the limit” when it comes to the brand’s future.

The award, first launched in 1988, stands for International Designer and Inventor of Toys and is given as a tribute to luminaries who have made outstanding contributions to the toy industry.

As one of the industry-leaders when it comes to working with outside innovators, we caught up with Hasbro’s Senior Director of Global Product Acquisition, Rich Mazel, to discuss why he believes diversity of thought is key to unearthing creativity.

“Once again, Funko had a terrific quarter and full year, significantly exceeding our own expectations,” said Funko CEO Brian Mariotti.

“The games category is another avenue to deliver pop culture to our ever-growing fan base,” said Funko president Andrew Perlmutter.

Dobble has now sold over 1 million copies in the UK, and finished 2018 as the UK’s top selling game by value, according to NPD data.

We caught up with figures from Bang Zoom, Open 2 Design and Sweet Spot Studio Inc to learn more about how 2018 was for them and what they think of the state of play moving into this year.