Sign in

Kevin Hovdestad

@hovdestad.ca
1.9K followers 426 following 597 posts

Director, Brand Development at CATAN Studio

PostsRepliesMedia
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 17/07/2026
I thought Amsterdam was finally going to be the first place we had gone for work I wouldn’t see a friend, but of course @bmkibler.bsky.social and @goberthicks.bsky.social are here. My “I see a friend everywhere we go on Earth” streak remains undefeated.
Me and Brian!Selfie in front of the MagicCon Amsterdam banner
010
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 21/05/2026
Local chain called Vern's, looks like this:
the apparently horrifying Saskatchewan pizza
300
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 13/05/2026
I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m NOT KIDDING
120
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 20/01/2026
Incredibly excited that we're announcing the first project I've been involved with end to end today - CATAN On the Road! It's a faithful reimagining of the game you know and love, now as a fast-paced card game you can enjoy anywhere and everywhere. On the Road launches April 3!
Picture of the new CATAN On the Road packaging
0226
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 29/12/2025
Kids got new iPads for Christmas, and I need @shappy.bsky.social and @johnathan.bsky.social to know that some of their amazing @rawsignal.ca stickers finally found good homes.
Six year old showing off her iPad case, freshly adorned with new stickers.
160
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 03/11/2025
Crunch is ready to play CATAN!
141
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 03/11/2025
Sometimes, we come up with partnership ideas that are a slam dunk. Trading w̶o̶o̶d̶ timber for s̶h̶e̶e̶p̶ wolves. www.nba.com/timberwolves...
a banner showing the Minnesota Timberwolves and CATAN logos
391
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 27/10/2025
Hell of a month. Canada to the US to Australia back to the US to Mexico back to the US to Germany back to Canada. Announced our Netflix deal, set a new CATAN world record for largest game… …and we’re not done yet. Excited to sleep in my own bed and give my family a month’s backlog of hugs, though.
PCH bar in San FranciscoView of MelbourneEntering MexicoCATAN world record successfully broken!
150
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 04/09/2025
Excited to finally be able to reveal that next week, @catan.com will be the FIRST EVER board game to be featured on Twitch Plays! A custom Board Game Arena integration will enable Twitch viewers to participate in games of CATAN with a STACKED roster of talent. www.aboutschwab.com/newsroom/sto...
Image announcing Twitch Plays CATAN, taking place September 9 and 10 on twitch.tv, sponsored by Charles Schwab.
050
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 25/07/2025
Having a blast in New Orleans. Heading to LA tomorrow before heading to Gen Con on Monday! ✈️ If you’re coming to Gen Con and want to meet up, let me know!
Team CATAN on the hot streets of New Orleans!
080
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 10/07/2025
Sansa, a long-haired miniature dachshund Arya, who is a cat
010
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 01/06/2025
Spent an awesome week with Team CATAN in Germany and had a blast at my first ever UK Games Expo! I’m very ready to see my own bed after four weeks on the road, though.
Dinner at a German winery with the CATAN folks!Castle in GermanyIt’s sheepier on the insideleft is the way
070
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 12/05/2025
Closing the books on a fantastic PAX East. It was a week of catching up with old friends, making new ones, and getting to show the new sixth edition of CATAN to thousands of attendees. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, said hi, or attended my panel. I hope you all had as good a time as I did!
Setting up several heckin CATAN gamesA panel full of fantastic people with surprisingly plausible hot takesPokémon hat selfie at the CATAN boothManzi in Baldur’s Gate 3 cosplay!
030
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 09/05/2025
First half of PAX East complete! Come say hi at the CATAN booth this weekend if I haven’t seen you.
Group dinner selfiepanel speaker selfieFriends!Friends!
000
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 09/05/2025
Panel time!
several fuckin’ nerds
050
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 29/04/2025
Okay, well, I travel a lot for work now (attached is my work travel in the last 10 months) - I currently travel with hardsided suitcases from Away (www.awaytravel.com/en-ca/collec...), but my replacement pick is a Briggs & Riley (briggs-riley.ca/products/glo...) I haven't justified yet.
Screenshot from the Flighty app, showing that I've been on 45 flights totaling 77,114 km spanning 5 days, 5 hours in the air - all since late June of 2024.
000
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 28/04/2025
Reminds me instantly and forever of this:
two magazine covers comparing Hugh Jackman’s presentation for a men’s magazine (shirtless, overly muscular) vs. a women’s magazine (smiling, wearing a simple long sleeve shirt)
0526
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 12/04/2025
Same same
HOT POT HOT POT
000
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/04/2025
But the thing I’m most humbled by is this - by the time I joined this team, the game was already release approved. The team *reopened the finished game files* past internal deadlines to include me in the credits. This is how you know people care deeply about their craft and colleagues.
Some of the new CATAN 6E game credits.
080
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/04/2025
I’m genuinely excited to get to set this up and play with family and friends. It’s been a treat to see the overwhelmingly positive reaction everyone has had when I’ve gotten to show them the finished product.
New CATAN game fully set up.
130
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/04/2025
Every single game component has been reimagined. The new art is beautiful. Immense thought went into every detail.
New CATAN game components.
120
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/04/2025
So much love from our entire team went into this project over multiple years of development to get this into players’ hands today.
Opened box of CATAN.
110
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/04/2025
So, there’s obviously a lot of other stuff going on, but today was also the official release of CATAN 6th Edition. It’s an amazing accomplishment from an equally amazing team.
Photo of the exterior of the new CATAN box.
1154
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 18/03/2025
The whole @catan.com team is overjoyed to have made the @fastcompany.com Most Innovative Companies list for 2025 in the corporate social responsibility category! Our work on CATAN - New Energies was honored alongside other incredible companies doing amazing stuff: www.fastcompany.com/91269270/cor...
Fast Company Most Innovative Companies 2025
062
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 05/03/2025
Canada goose poised to beat a bald eagle’s ass
0398
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 01/02/2025
You ever read a block of text that might change you forever?
That’s what politics is — the way we distribute pain. It’s not a sport or a fraternity or a game. It’s how we determine who gets medication and who dies young, who learns in a class of twenty kids and who learns in a class of thirty, whose school has a counselor that’s trained to look for signs of sexual abuse and who doesn’t.
160
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 01/02/2025
Kevin-coded characters
Barney StinsonTed LassoJake PeraltaBandit Heeler
041
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 19/01/2025
meme showing Neopets as a tiny domino eventually toppling modern democracy as a huge domino
010
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 16/01/2025
whole ass generation of us that are actually, unironically, not funnily at all exactly like this
two people both looking at computers; next to one it says, "Tired of looking at BAD SCREEN" and next to the other it says, "Can't wait to get home and look at GOOD SCREEN" - all of which is the learned helplessness of a generation incapable of making effective choices about the ways in which they spend their time. You know - you KNOW! - that you are being manipulated by systems designed in a lab to screw up your ability to regulate your own consumption or behavior, and instead of ever stopping to interrogate your intentions, you just move aimlessly from one screen to the next, annoyed by the interruptions of an actual existence that surround you. Millions of years of evolution to bring us to the peak of conceivable existence and instead of experiencing the life all of that produced for you to live, you're watching another fucking Instagram Reel. Now you're reading this! Go touch grass. Hell, don't just touch it - pick it up. Observe it. Study it. SMELL IT. Allow the enduring complexity of the boundless number of things you cannot and will not ever know or understand to wash over you as you come to terms with the reality that there are things about the single blade of grass betwixt your fingers that confound you in ways you don't even realize you aren't aware of. That's not existential dread - that's the joyous freedom of separating your incessant need for control and learned helplessness from the fundamental truth of existence. You are not a machine built to optimize or be optimized, and this experience has value you cannot measure or weigh or monetize. Now you're alive. What you do next is up to you. Become ungovernable.
0455
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 13/01/2025
Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy
Hey, it looks like you’re waiting for ideal conditions to do that thing you’ve been wanting to do. Need I remind you that ideal conditions do not exist and will never happen?

🔵 I’m aware
🔵 Wow, rude
030
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 12/01/2025
three pillows, one just happens to look like a dog…
060
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 07/01/2025
Exciting day as we announce the sixth edition of CATAN for its 30th anniversary! While the game you know and love remains the same, it has vibrant new art and a bunch of quality of life improvements. As a bonus, we got to give Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills a sneak peek before Christmas.
The new cover art for CATAN sixth edition.A sample setup of the new CATAN showing the new game board art, card art, game pieces, and card tray.A photo of me in the Buffalo Bills training facility shaking hands with Josh Allen while Dawson Knox, Spencer Brown, and Dalton Kincaid look on.The CATAN team giving four Buffalo Bills players each a board game carrying bag (full of goodies) emblazoned with the CATAN sixth edition logo symbol.
33112
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 19/12/2024
I keep this pic in my “in case of reply guy break glass” folder and I bestow it unto you
same picture, but Dr. Manhattan is minecrafting a dude with “you have to take MY wild interpretation of your post very seriously!!!!!” on him, with no in big letters just above the good doctor’s blue tushy
020
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 09/12/2024
PAX Unplugged was lovely. Thank you to everyone who came by to ask about our newest games, and all of the friends old and new who just wanted to say hi and have a drink!
two dudes at a barthree friends posing with a silly CATAN sheeptwo different dudes at a different bar
230
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 06/12/2024
Working PAX Unplugged this weekend! Come say hi at the CATAN booth, or hit me up to hang out while I’m in Philly.
questionable selfie
091
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 23/11/2024
Sansa hopes you have a good weekend.
Miniature dachshund sitting on stairs
0230
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 19/11/2024
I would like to apply for premium gold select status
miniature dachshund asleep on the couchminiature dachshund peeking out from under a blanketminiature dachshund laying on stairsminiature dachshund in dog bed
130
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 14/11/2024
I didn't really need further convincing, but this sealed the deal.
030
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 27/10/2024
Sansa will only sleep on the stairs so she can survey her kingdom from above
Our miniature long-haired dachshund, Sansa, laying on a staircase (notably, instead of on her dog beds, or the couch, or…)
120
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 17/10/2024
dog tax Sansa has free access to many memory foam dog beds and a sectional that would drive JD Vance wild, but she instead chooses to lay here on the stairs so she can survey her territory Mufasa style
miniature red-haired dachshund that is committed to laying on stiff, unpleasant stairs instead of soft, comfortable couch
080
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 17/10/2024
Welcome to the good site. I'm Kevin, and I run marketing and communications for CATAN (wood for sheep, you know the drill). Previously (still, sort of?) an indie game dev, past history at Blizzard and in and around esports of many flavors.
Photo of me and a CATAN fan in a cosplay dress at Gen Con 2024.
190
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 25/09/2024
The death penalty was last used in Canada in 1962, although it wasn't officially abolished until 1976 (and, for military offences, until the absurdly later 1999). This is the company America keeps in using it. Unfathomable to me, and knowing everyone involved asked for it not to happen is worse.
A map showing the countries that used the death penalty consistently from 2018 to 2022, including the US, Iraq, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Egypt, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Vietnam.
130
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 24/09/2024
If you haven't done this already, today is a good day to do so.
Kevin Hovdestad
Freedom From the Torment Nexus, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
Free
https://twitter.com/settings/deactivate
1155
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 04/09/2024
The number of milquetoast companies posting their jobs as “Remote” because they know it draws more eyeballs/applicants but then saying some version of, “lol j/k, please live close enough to our office to smell what’s in the microwave” says an awful lot about where we’re headed these next few years.
Job posting note that contradicts itself, saying, “This is a remote position; however, candidates must reside in the [REDACTED] region - you must be within an hour commute from [REDACTED].”
34313
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 22/07/2024
Today’s theme was “things that have never happened before and went surprisingly better than expected.” Which, you know, the obvious one (🥥), but we also took the kids to their first ever movie (Inside Out 2), and they had a blast.
050
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 24/06/2024
Today was a good day, because today was my first day on the job in my new role as the Director, Brand Development at CATAN Studio! As penance for jobposting, here’s me sitting on one of their sheep.
1100
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 23/04/2024
120
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 13/02/2024
How I look to Gen Z
030
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 07/02/2024
030
Kevin Hovdestad @hovdestad.ca · 11/01/2024
too tired to even really give brain space to AI stupidity any more but all it ever reminds me of is this
Calvin and Hobbes comic. Calvin's mom asks him to get into the bathtub. He says, "I obey the letter of the law, if not the spirit." From downstairs, his mom yells, "LET'S HEAR SOME WATER RUNNING!" Calvin gets out of the tub, still fully clothed and dirty, saying, "...Nuts."
140