I love listening/watching the videos by Tea and Games. Her enthusiasm for board games is so genuine and her joy is infectious. So when she posted her mid year Tabletop Challenge video, I was interested in playing along. Then when Kovray posted their video, I knew I had to get in on this action.
The midyear challenge has been initiated for the past 3 years by Rolling Reggie on his social media channels, so if you want to see what other creators have gotten in on this challenge, be sure to give Rolling Reggie a follow! Without further ado, let’s do this!
What is your favourite game so far this year?
Slay the Spire is the one that springs to mind. Now granted, I’ve played the living hell out of the video game, and I even played the TTS mod when STS was on crowdfunding. But actually sitting down and playing a 4 player game was probably the most fun I’ve had all year.
What is your most played game?
Technically, Solar Storm has been my most played game, but that’s just from sheer tenacity of my Board Game Arena group bashing our heads against the wall of the cooperative challenge. My most played game on the table so far in 2025 has been The Gang.
For those who haven’t played The Gang yet, it’s cooperative Poker. You deal out cards, Texas Hold’em style, and between each card reveal, you silently take chips to determine who has the best hand. When the final card is revealed, all players reveal their hands. If you managed to sort yourselves properly, you win!
It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s surprisingly engaging, and has been a hit with everyone I’ve introduced it to. I think I’m the least enthuastic amongst my friends about it, but even I still have a great time when The Gang hits the table.
What was your biggest surprise?
I think Bomb Busters was the biggest surprise. After reading the rulebook and playing the first introductory game, I was sure it was going to be Minesweeper, but boring. A baby game for babies, the options were either going to be obtuse, or obvious.
Well if it’s recent Spiel des Jahres win hadn’t convinced me, actually sitting down and playing the game turned me into a fan. I loved the experience, and I can’t wait to keep playing through the 60+ missions that come in the box.
What game’s production/art has impressed you the most?
I think most recently Vladamir Suchy’s Shipyard surprised me with its sheer amount of cardboard engineering, from assembling a crane to hold all the tiles, to stickering parts of the cardboard sprue to the player board to simulate a dual layered experience.
Beyond that, Re;Act: The Arts of War had gorgeous anime artwork and stunning acrylic standees for it’s grid based tactical duel game that left me totally charmed.
What has been your most reliable introductory board game?
Cockroach Poker has been a huge hit with me this year, and I’ve been successful in getting my aunt and cousin to sit down and enjoy a game. It’s so simple to deal out the whole deck of cards, explain the concept of lying, and then just letting the drama unfold.
What game do you want to get off of your Shelf of Shame in the second half of the year?
I have two that I’ve been been eyeing for a while now. Tragedy Looper by BakaFire is a 1 vs many scenario based deduction game that looks to be unique and exciting, but I’m just haven’t been in the mood to essentially GM a game for my friends. The other one is Argent: The Consortiumby Level 99 Games. This one is a competitive worker placement game, and the only thing holding me back from this one is its sheer complexity. At a weight of 3.77, it’s generally more than I’m willing to commit to on a Wednesday night. Perhaps when I host my annual birthday board game day I’ll break the seal on both of these games.
Which game from 10+ years ago did you discover this year?
Mountain Goats is the one that comes to mind, thanks to the new edition by AllPlay, but if we want to talk about OLD GAMES, then in Janurary I was introduced to Evo. This was a charming little dinosaur evolution game. In Evo, you spend rounds evolving a dinosaur species, roaming your tribe through the ecosystems to content with global warming and cooling. The art is whimsical and charming in the 2001 edition, and I felt like it held up surprisingly well for being published around 24 years ago.
Which anticipated releases are you most excited about for the second half of the year?
As someone who doesn’t look forward very much, this is a hard question to answer. I’m intrigued by Recall, simply to see what the designers of Revive (another one of my most played games this year) have cooked up this time. Burgle Bros. 3is somewhere on the horizon, and I implicitly trust Tim Fowers to put out great games. Vantageby Jamey Stegmier is currently delivering, and I feel the deep pangs of regret for not pre-ordering it months ago.
Bonus: What’s your personal favourite video that you’ve posted to your channel?
It’s not board game related, but I’ve been most proud of the work I put into my Final Fantasy Project, where I play through all the single player mainline Final Fantasy games. I’m almost finished playing through Final Fantasy VII, which is the first time I’ve ever even made it out of Midgar before. It’s been a fascinating journey, playing video games from 1987, and seeing how the series has evolved over each of its entries.
Board Game Geek’s game ratings are usually a pretty good barometer for measuring the general quality of a game. My tastes generally align with the wider board game community, but now and then, everyone else gets it wrong. In this list, I’m going to preset the 5 games that the BGG community seems to think are are great, but I think are subjectively awful.
1. Terraforming Mars
BGG Rank: #7 Terraforming Mars looks great on paper. You’re building a corporate engine to terraform the red planet, managing resources and planning projects in a shared environment. But in my experience, it’s a frustrating exercise in deck lottery.
The deck of cards is enormous, and your ability to draw cards is brutally limited. Earning the benefit of drawing a single card is huge, which makes it expensive, or highly sought after. This shouldn’t be that be much of a problem, except that the corporation you start the game with often suggests a strategic path, but there’s no guarantee the necessary cards to synergize with your corporation will ever show up. Even when you’re playing with the drafting variant, meaning you’ll see much more cards, you’re still at the mercy of the deck.
My other main complaint, those cards that are so hard to come by, often have prerequisites, such as needing to be played before the oxygen level crosses a certain threshold. While I love the prerequisites thematically, they can show up long after they’re playable, making your limited draw feel even more useless. I cannot tell you how often I’ve held onto a card because I’m just one tag short, only for that tag to not show up for me for the rest of the game.
Terraforming Mars has its fans, but for me, it’s a hard pass.
2. Great Western Trail
BGG Rank: #17 Alexander Pfister is a well respected designer. But I am not a fan of most of his output.
In Great Western Trail, you’re herding cows, building up your deck, and placing buildings, as you run your meeple around and around a looping trail. There’s a fair amount going on, but little of it feels satisfying. It’s a flat, emotionless grind of getting your cows to the train, and then, doing it all over again.
GWTtechnically offers variety, you can pursue getting the train father, cull the low value cows out of your deck, or focus on building the buildings. But none of those routes feel especially dynamic or interesting. It’s a slow experience that overstays its welcome, especially at higher player counts. There’s no tension, no narrative, and no reason to return to the trail.
3. Grand Austria Hotel
BGG Rank: #67 At first glance, Grand Austria Hotel is a charming euro with elegant mechanics. You’re serving guests cake, strudel, and coffee, managing getting the rooms ready, all while dealing with the emperor’s whims. But when you start playing, you’ll discover that the dice system, which controls what actions you can take, is terribly arbitrary and restrictive, and the guest market can stagnate with no good options. The limited dice pool and scarcity of room-building options can make turns feel frustratingly out of your control.
What’s even worse, massive player downtime and analysis paralysis makes Grand Austria Hotel an absolute slog at four players. You can’t even really plan for your turn, because what the dice the other players take on their turn will dramatically affect what you’ll be able to do. The snake draft at 4 players means that if you were first player in a round, every other player will take two turns until it’s your turn again. It’s just a brutal amount of downtime.
My real sour grapes come from the last time I played this with Otter. He managed to roll the benefits from completing guests into the next guest, and the next guest, and the next. He was taking turn after turn, completing objective after objective, while I struggled to get a single strudel. Absolutely frustrating.
I like the Klemmens Franz artwork, though. And seeing characters from a bunch of different board games show up as guests is a nice treat.
4. Maracaibo
BGG Rank: #77
Hey, look! Another Alexander Pfister game. I really wanted to like Maracaibo. It has a rondel system similar to GWT, multi-use cards, and a pirate theme! But I felt that the experience was bloated, convoluted, and shockingly dull.
To evoke the feeling and imagery of pirates is a disservice to the players. There’s no tension, no risk, no high-stakes raiding, nothing to make you feel like pirates had anything to do with the game. Maracaibo is a swirl of disconnected mechanisms and tracks to progress as you fly around the islands, a la Great Western Trail.
I do not understand the appeal of Maracaibo. I felt nothing but frustration while playing it. None of the theme comes through, all of the fun things on your board are covered up and need to be unlocked, ‘combat’ is just comparing a track, and the game ends up being several hours long, every single time. At the very least, I’m very thankful that one player kinda can “rush” the endgame, so I can put myself out of my misery sooner.
5. Rajas of the Ganges
BGG Rank: #160 As I’ve already said in my full review: Rajas of the Ganges is pleasant. It’s colourful and has a unique “two types of points” scoring system (at least, it was unique until Ark Nova came along and stole it). But for all its charm, there’s not that much game underneath.
Once your engine gets going, Rajas of the Ganges plays itself. Once you get your income rolling in, the best action is obvious, every time. I get frustrated with how many of the worker placement spots are “trade one dice in for two”. A net gain of one dice means you may spend a whole round of actions just gathering dice so you can actually do something meaningful. And that’s just not my idea of fun.
It’s not a bad game. It’s just kinda forgettable. And given the sheer number of stronger euro games out there, like Castles of Burgundy, Orléans, or The Voyages of Marco Polo, I’m not sure why I’d ever choose to play Rajas of the Ganges again.
It’s OK to Disagree
If you love these games, that’s fine! More power to you. But for me, these titles don’t live up to their BGG hype. Each one of these have left me either apathetic after a play, or actually downright angry. And you’re not allowed to tell me that my feelings aren’t valid.
Do you have an overrated favourite game of your own? Let me know which wildly popular game you think is kinda garbage. And now that I have all this negativity out of my system, next week I’ll be much more positive. I promise.
I often see people set up arbitrary goals for culling their board game collections. “If I haven’t played it in a year, I sell it”, is one I’ve seen a lot, and usually, I’d agree with that. Some people revel in having a shelf of shame, a list of games that they are obligated to play next. I once mentioned my shelf of dust games, the games that have gotten at least one play, but it’s been years since the last time I played it. In today’s post, I’m imploring you to keep your games. yes, it’s annoying to store a bunch of boxes that aren’t seeing a lot of play, and perhaps selling old games is what enables you to buy new ones, which is great! You should do what brings you joy! What I want to share today, is the joy that comes from introducing the games that were instrumental to your development in the hobby to someone else.
My daughter is 4 years old, and for the last year or so, we’ve spent about an hour each afternoon playing old-school Mario games together. It started one day when she was sick and laid out on the couch. Instead of putting on Bluey, I chose to play Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo Switch, because I bought the Mario 3D All-stars game while it was available. I don’t understand why Nintendo made this collection a timed exclusive, but apparently now this cartridge is selling on the after market for outrageous prices. What I find fascinating was that I bought the 3D All-stars collection in 2021, and never got around to playing it. I bought it with the intention of finally playing through Super Mario Sunshine, as I never had the opportunity to play it during the Gamecube era, but even after I got my copy of Mario 3D All-Stars, it just sat on my shelf. I considered selling it a few times, when I saw someone else list it on Marketplace for $300, but I’ve always leaned toward the idea that a game on your shelf is worth more than its resale value.
And I’m glad I never sold it. Playing Super Mario 64 was a pretty special time with my daughter. At first, she was content to just watch me play, then one day while I was getting her a snack in the kitchen, I came back to see the controller in her hands, and her running Mario around in circles. Over the next few weeks, she went from just running up and down the paths around the castles, to learning how to jump, to learning how to jump and move at the same time. It was fascinating watching her learn these mechanics. Eventually, she’d explore Peach’s Castle on her own, pick a world, and then pass me the controller for the tougher parts. I loved the joy in her face as I showed her the secrets, like the secret slide behind Peaches window, or the Snow Kingdom hidden in a wall. The way she screamed “WHAT?” when the game showed her something new, something she previously couldn’t comprehend, was a joy to behold.
Nowadays, she’s playing through whole Mario games on her own. I think Galaxy is her favourite, although she does still ask for my help on the really hard levels, or to get through the final gauntlet. She keeps restarting her save file in Mario Wonder, because she likes it better when the wonder seeds have colour, and she keeps getting all the way up to Bowser castle. Of course, she’s using the Yoshi character, who doesn’t die from the enemies on the stage, but more and more often, I’m catching her playing as Peach. She gets frustrated when she dies, but she is learning how to persevere.
Years ago, I was working as a cook, and I overheard two servers talking about a game of Catan they had recently played. I mentioned that I really liked board games too, and had just bought a couple new ones. The next morning, Ali and Mary came over, and we played Sagrada and Carcassonne. They were hooked. They continued to come over every other morning before we all went to work at the restaurant in the evening, and over the course of a few months, we played through every single board game in my entire collection. Eventually, they both moved away, and that little game group fell apart, but I still think back to it now and again. It’s a good thing I held onto some of the lighter games that my hardcore game group aren’t interested in playing very much, because those games became the catalyst for two newcomers into the hobby.
I’m not saying you need to keep every single game you buy, but consider keeping some of those games that are special to you, even if they haven’t seen a play in months, or even years. You never know when life will shift, and the right game on your shelf, the one you haven’t touched in years, might just be the reason someone else falls in love with the hobby. Because sometimes, it’s not about when you last played a game, it’s about who you might play it with next.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: nothing replaces the tactile joy of sitting at a table with your friends, shuffling cards, rolling dice, and pushing cubes. Or the sense of satisfaction you get when you make the game winning move and everyone at the table reacts to the stunning conclusion (more on that in a later post). But sometimes… sometimes… playing a board game on Board Game Arena (BGA) is just better.
Obviously, I’m not talking about every game. Some games lose their soul when you take away the physical components. But for a surprising number of my favourite games, BGA isn’t just a convenient alternative, it’s become the preferred way to play. Why? Automation. Speed. Clarity. No setup or tear down. No rules mistakes. No cheezies fingers mucking up my cards. Let me elaborate down some of the reasons why BGA elevates the game playing experience.
Why BGA Elevates Certain Games
1. Automation
Setup? Immediate. Scoring? Instant. Shuffling? Never worry about someone with sleight of hand techniques again. Have one friend who insists on rolling dice ON the board, knocking tokens around everywhere? Gone. For games where the fiddly upkeep of tracks and chits can bring your game to a crawl, BGA does the heavy lifting. Memoir ’44, for example, is notorious for its elaborate setup. On BGA, you just click “Start.” The same goes for Sushi Go, where shuffling and managing hands as you draft can slow things down IRL. What about 7 Wonders and trying to figure out how many guild cards go into age 3, or how many points you earned with 12 green science cards? Online, it’s as smooth as butter.
How do the tiles get refreshed in Applejack? Don’t know. It just happens.
2. Enforced Rules and Quick Turns
Games with short turn structures or simple mechanics absolutely shine on BGA. Sushi Go, Azul, and Can’t Stop are pick-up-and-play affairs that run lightning-fast when the platform handles the admin. Want to knock out three games under half an hour? BGA is the way to do it! The platform can also be helpful when learning a new game, from having scripted tutorials, to letting you try to click on everything and ensuring you aren’t accidentally cheating by holding extra resources when you try to undo a turn. As the rules teacher for my group, it is a nice break to have something else keep everyone else’s game in check, so I can focus on my own strategies.
3. Visual Aids and Accessibility
One of the best features of BGA is hover-over explanations. No more searching indexes and appendices for specific cards only for the index to say the exact same thing on a card. Hover over a card in Race for the Galaxy and boom, you know exactly what it does. In Castles of Burgundy, you don’t need to flip through a player aid to decode building effects, It’s all right at your fingertips.
4. Asynchronous Play = Board Games Every Day
Honestly, this is the reason I’m on Board Game Arena in the first place. I generally only have one game night a week, making the rest of the week a slog when I can’t engage with my favourite hobby. Board Game Arena lets me play board games all week long with asynchronous games. At this moment I have 9 games on the go with different groups, meaning throughout the day I get happy little emails letting me know that it’s my turn and I get a tiny board game hit throughout my day.
One of my friends really loves the asynchronous play, as it lets them sit and puzzle over the board state without other players heckling you to take your turn faster. Being a moron, I don’t benefit from this feature, but if you’re of average intelligence, perhaps this is a boon for you too.
It’s also worth mentioning that for a lot of heavy games, they don’t hit my table very often. So many complex games competing for table space with my one game night a week means that a great, but heavy game like Carnegie or Praga Caput Regni can go years between replays. But on BGA, there’s no time limit, so I’m content to take my one turn each day and still get to play with some of my favourite systems.
5. SO MANY BOARD GAMES & So Many Players
At the time of writing there are 1087 games available to play on Board Game Arena. With another 150 in alpha and at least one new game hitting the platform every week, you’ll never be wanting for games as long as you’re on the platform. Sure, specific games are missing, such as Splotter’s Food Chain Magnate(but it’s available online at Online Board Games) or Stephan Feld’s The Oracle of Delphi (available on Yucata though). As long as you’re willing to pony up the $48 (CAD) per year for the premium membership (or have a friend who’s subscribed start all your games for you), you’ll always have something new to play.
Alongside those 1,000+ board games, there are over 10,000 members connected at almost any time. Of course the players online ebbs and flows as the sun sets on the North America region, there are a lot of very active communities on BGA, offering opponents on almost any game.
Hot Picks: Games That Truly Shine on BGA
Let’s run through some specific examples where the digital version arguably outperforms the physical one.
Race for the Galaxy
Symbology cheat sheet built in.
Zero shuffle fatigue.
Games finish in under 10 minutes. Seriously.
Active player base
Ticket to Ride
Destination tickets auto-highlighted.
Instant route scoring.
Trains tracked visually and accurately.
Can’t Stop
Dice roll mechanics are 100% automated.
Just click and go. No math, no mistakes. No staring at the dice searching for something that you can use.
Memoir ’44
Setup and scenario prep handled for you.
Dice rolls animated but quick.
Great for casual or solo play without the hassle.
Azul
Fast turns, clear interface.
No need to track discarded tiles.
No cleanup afterward, redistributing tiles is instant.
Praga Caput Regni
Firehose of resources and benefits? Auto-calculated.
Notoriously long and complex games feel almost breezy when you don’t need to manage all the rules on your own.
Lost Ruins of Arnak
No more sprawling piles of resources, or trying to fit the giant board on a small table.
Resource tracking, deck management, and hover-over tooltips are a dream online.
Railroad Ink / Welcome To
Drawing and smudging your previous turns? Not a problem with you just click
Play a full game with multiple players in 10 minutes or less.
Castles of Burgundy
Full board visibility at a glance.
Hover for explanations on every building tile.
Clicking a die highlights everything you can do with that die
Pick your art version! Different players can have different art sets applied.
Feast for Odin
No more bits flying everywhere (especially if you have cats).
Pieces on your board don’t accidentally shift one space to the left because you have sausage fingers (might just be a me problem)
Great for large-table games in small-table homes.
7 Wonders Duel
BGA does all the resource calculations for you
Never be confused if a card shifts slightly in the pyramid and wonder which other cards it’s supposed to be covering up.
Final Thoughts
Look, I love my physical games. I love punching tokens from their cardboard sprues, re-boxing expansions, and pushing cubes up tracks with friends in person. Given unlimited time and money, I’d choose to play in meat space every single time, every single night. Unfortunately, I live in reality, and so given the opportunity to not spend 45 minutes setting up Carnegie, I’m going to take that chance. I love not doing math in my head every round of 7 Wonders Duel. And I especially love not sweeping up tiny cardboard chits after a cat decides the Feast for Odin board is her new bed.
So here’s my hot take: for many games, especially those with heavy setup, math, or intense iconography, BGA isn’t just a backup, it’s the proper way to play.
Try it. You might just find your favourite game plays even better when the computer handles all the boring and tedious bits.
Every few months, the conversation comes up about “Paid Reviews”, and there’s generally a thread or two that gets fairly heated at the concept that some people out there are taking money from publishers in return for a good review. I’ve already laid out my thoughts on paid reviews in my disclosure policy (spoilers, they’re bad), but there is a problem that doesn’t often get addressed during this discussion, and that’s how board game content creators should get paid?
Making content takes time, effort, and often money. Paying for equipment like lights and cameras, hosting fees, and set decorations are just some of the costs that come with trying to create board game content. Producing any kind of content takes time and effort, and I’m a firm believer in compensating people for their time and work. That said, I also realize that the mere act of interacting with publishers causes dual relationships that effect the integrity of the reviewers. So what is a content creator to do, then?
Tom Scott said in a video once that “A person’s threshold for what’s acceptable is just below whatever it is that they’re currently doing”. Some creators have no problems with taking thousands of dollars from a publisher to create sponsored content for them, and produce a ‘free’ review right alongside that sponsored content, with the only delineation between sponsored content and unsponsored content being a single line way down in the video description. Others, like So Very Wrong About Games, are very clear that they will not accept a dime from anyone in board game publishing, going as far as to say if they find out that a publisher is donating to their Pateron, they’ll refund that person every cent they’ve donated. I read a great article from Anime Herald titled “How to Get Paid to Watch Anime“, and the line “how much of your soul are you willing to part with? “Zero” isn’t an option.” rings very true here. Every method has some ethical quandaries tied to it, so the only question that remains is which of these methods are you personally comfortable with?
I’ve searched through various content creator one-pagers, websites, and brainstormed as many ways as I can think of for ways for someone to make money as a content creator. I’ve broken my findings into 3 categories, Money from Publishers, Money from Content Creators, and Money from Viewers. Take a look and let me know if there’s anything you’d add to these lists, and let me know which ones you think are acceptable or not.
Money from Viewers
I think the first way for content creators to make money is via ad revenue. Either pre/post video ads on YouTube, or banner ads and pop-ups on a website, creators can get paid by having an ad near or around their content. Unfortunately, ad revenue isn’t the cash cow you may think it is. There are tones of factors that go into how much money you can squeeze out of YouTube Ad Revenue, but a quick search estimates about $1 for every 500 – 1000 views. Now, looking at someone like The Dice Tower, they average between 1k – 6k views per video, earning between $5 – $20 per video. Also, building a business dependent on Ad Revenue is a terrible idea. It’s unreliable, inconsistent, and at any time YouTube can change the payouts, or their algorithm can just not push a particular video out to the audience. You can’t build a business on Ad Revenue.
So, other ways to get money from viewers, more directly. There’s creator merch (Board Game Hot Takes has a RedBubble store, The Nerd Shelves uses TeeSpring). Creator merch can be helpful, if people want to buy it. Some much larger creators, such as Linus Tech Tips report that 15% of their operating income comes from the merch they sell, but they also have several staff members dedicated to creating merch.
Ko-Fi, Pateron, Twitch Subs, YouTube Members are all ways to support your favourite channels, but each platform takes a cut of the cash too. Twitch takes 50%, YouTube, 30%, Ko-Fi, 5%. Each of these corporations thank you for your donations.
Some channels have had great success using referrals, either through Amazon or directly from a publisher. I think this option is most attractive to a publisher, as they only pay the creator for actual purchases that the creator generated, but they’re also a conflict of interest. Do you trust a reviewer to report on the negative aspects of a product, if they get a kickback for every sale they make?
Crowdfunding is an option for those that have a big enough fan base to warrant it. The Dice Tower, The Secret Cabal, and many others run crowdfunding campaigns every year to fund their programming. Jamie from The Secret Cabal has talked in the past about how stressful the lead up to the crowdfunding campaign is, as you really just don’t know if your fans are going to show up or not, and if they don’t, well then you gotta go and get a job!
Money from Publishers
Publishers will often collaborate with content creators to get their product out in front of a much larger, engaged audience. The “Shut Up & Sit Down Effect” has been a documented success, just like I’m sure getting a Rodney Smith “Watch it Played” video created can do wonders for getting your game out there. Now, while Rodney is the gold standard for a How-to-Play video, he’s a busy fellow, and might not take you on as a client. I’ve seen quotes from other channels saying the base price for a 15 minute video starts at $1,000, and goes up depending on the complexity. Rodney has quoted roughly 30 hours of work for a 20 minute, medium complexity game, but he also has 10 years experience creating this kind of content.
Overviews/preview videos are opinion-free content, showcasing the product, generally with many guidelines from the publisher. This is mostly for Kickstarter/crowdfunding purposes, but most creators I saw offering this service were starting at ~$250 per video
Some streamers will let you sponsor a live stream, where you need to provide a copy of your game, and pay a fee for their time. Phantom Meeple and Amanda Wong (Panda8ngel) were charging $200 USD for a 2-hour twitch stream back in 2022. Of course, Streamers are going to play the games they want to play, but how much would it cost for a publisher to “jump the queue” so to speak? One challenge here for the creators is managing burn-out. If they do a stream once a week, they have 52 streams per year. If half of those are sponsored, they have 26 streams remaining where they get to play the games they want to play.
Photography is an incredible skill, and shooting cardboard is a niche skill. Some creators offer social media posts creation. Kovray sells package deals where they will generate 5 – 10 photos of them playing a specific game per month for the publishers to use on social media, and charge $300 per month for the service with a 3-month minimum buy.
On the subject of social media, some creators will create a video ad, specifically for platforms like TikTok or Instagram, which when done right, can be much more engaging than a generic ad that most people have been conditioned to ignore.
I haven’t seen an offering for this yet, but I assume that most creators would be open to renting out ad space in their videos. Like, when someone has a Kallax of games behind them, with some boxes facing out, what would it cost to have a specific game out for a few videos?
The last idea in the getting money from publishers is to sell the games you get from the publishers after the review obligations have been fulfilled. This one seems debatable if it’s ethical or not. Kefka from No Pun Included, and many others fall on the side of “do not do this“, but I’ve asked a few non-media people about their opinions on the situation, and they don’t see a problem with it, so your mileage may vary.
Money from Content Creators
This category was the hardest to think of, and honestly, feels the most sleezy to me. Content creation should be a collaborative community, a rising tide lifts all ships situation. I don’t like the idea of trying to milk cash out of other creators, but these ideas just didn’t fit in the above category.
Some creators have a studio space that is always set up, ready for them to record. Sometimes it’s in their own home, like in the basement (The Nerd Shelves and Watch it Played), sometimes it’s a seperate location entirely (Actualol). But to offset the costs of the studio equipment, it may be worth it to rent the space out to other creators while you’re not using it. That said, a studio backdrop is fairly significant in a channels identity. Do you want someone creating very similar looking videos, or do you want to go through the effort of taking down all the set decoration each time a new renter comes in to record? It’s tough to say
Having expertise is valueable, and when someone is just getting started, they may not be so inclined to do all the research for all the various pieces of equipment that they may need. A savvy creator could build hardware packages (camera, lights, mics, everything you need to get started) and sell them as a “get started quick” package to someone who wants to build their own studio. This idea came from custom PC builders who do all the legwork of buying parts, putting the PC together, installing software, and selling the whole thing for more than they paid for it.
Lastly, again on the subject of expertise, coaching other creators. Being a source of wisdom for those starting out could be valuable. Maybe they have questions about what bitrate to stream at, or how to solve an annoying audio issue, a seasoned creator could build a consulting business to help those who need it.
In Conclusion
There is something to be said about how it feels somewhat impossible to just be an independant journalist. So many of these options, many would say are unethical or how it biases your opinions in ways that they no longer trust your reviews. For myself, as a blogger, my costs are like, $80 per year for this website. I use my phone to take pictures, and as somewhat of a tech enthuiast, I already have the computers and keyboards necessary to generate my content. But I sympthazise for those who choose to create video content, as it’s a much larger production than I need to deal with.
What do you think? Are there other ways a creator could make money that I’ve missed? Which of these options would you say are no-go? Let me know in the comments below!
Over the last 6 months, my table has been somewhat inundated with the works of Vladimír Suchý. This wasn’t entirely on purpose, but his games have just happened to come into our possession. Last night (at time of writing) I played my 5th game of his, so I felt the urge to make a quick list of the games I’ve played, and their rankings!
First, what makes a Suchý game, a Suchý game? I find that Vladimír Suchý’s key trait in the games of his that I’ve played are twofold. An interesting action selection mechanism, and a tight turn economy. Suchý games are not ones that let players take 50 turns, instead players need to figure out how to squeeze blood from a stone, where missing out on a single resource could be catastrophic to their game experience. But let’s talk about the games in detail below! As always, my top lists are completely subjective and are likely to change with time, and take this whole list with a pinch of salt as (except for Underwater Cities) I’ve only played each of these games once.
5 – Evacuation
Evacuation is a bit of a tragedy, in that I was so excited to play this game. From the first moments I saw the preview images of two planets snaked by a winding track, and heard the theme of ‘the old world is dying, players need to disassemble their engine from the old world and transport it to the new world’, I was frothing at the mouth with excitement. The mere concept of shipping goods between planets and needing to manage when to take down a fabrication plant on the old world and establish one on the new world was fascinating.
In play, however, we found that the shipping goods aspect of the game fairly dull and uninteresting. We did not play the race mode, opting to play for points instead, which may have been a folly. Evacuation plays over 4 rounds, and ships only move between planets at the end of each round. This means each ship you buy can be used twice in the game. In our experience, the old world was fairly lush with resources, so it felt more action efficient to just build new ships and send them over, leaving a graveyard of one time use rockets on the new world. The points mode lets the game go the full four rounds, and by the end of the final round, all of our productions on the new world skyrocketed, and we all pretty much completed everything that we set out to do.
That said, I really loved the asymmetric tech tree each player gets to grapple with, and there were tonnes of interesting decisions to make throughout the game. Evacuation sits at the bottom of my list, but it’s the game that I want to return to the most. I’m sure there are hidden depths for me to plumb, and it surely has the potential to rocket up this list.
4 – Pulsar 2849
Pulsar 2849 is probably the least memorable game on this list. Not to say it’s a bad game, heck, even Evacuation sitting at the bottom of the list is still a super rad game. It’s just hard to remember all the nuance that makes Pulsar 2849 special.
Pulsar 2849 is a dice drafting game where players are setting out to harness the powers of the stars. The action selection mechanism is driven entirely by dice, and there’s even a neat aspect where you need to find the median dice available, and taking dice on either side of that median has some effects.
This is the game that I remember the least well, as Pulsar 2849 has a lot going on, and it’s been a few months since I played it. I remember liking it, but not loving it (you’ll notice it didn’t make it onto my top 100 list). Pulsar 2849 is absolutely a game worth checking out if you like bigger space games with lots of decisions, and when dice power the action selection mechanism.
3 – Woodcraft
The cover of Woodcraft camouflages a complex game with a tranquil wrapper. You’d be forgiven if you saw the brightly coloured forest nymphs cheerfully toiling away at their craft in a serene forest landscape and assumed it would be a light and breezy experience.
Woodcraft’s action selection wheel is probably the most interesting of all the Suchý games I’ve played. Each action is a tile on the wheel that slides to the next quadrant each time it’s used, with the rewards for tiles left behind growing as actions move along the quadrants. It’s a great system, obviously improved upon the action selection wheel in Praga Caput Regni (which I’ll talk about very soon). The most used actions get no bonuses at all, while the ones languishing in the back can rack up some serious benefits.
The downside is that this whole game is tied to a recipe fulfillment or contract fulfillment game, which ends up being deeply unsatisfying for me. I’ve always found recipes to be inherently luck based, and can skew a tightly balanced game, as happens here. Woodcraft is an action efficiency puzzle, and it seems like one player can just luck into collecting the perfect contracts. Less actions spent acquiring the final goods to fulfill a contract can really give a player a distinct advantage.
Despite my aversion to contracts, Woodcraft is still an incredibly interesting game. Players have a ton of tools at their disposal to acquire, transform, and manipulate your resources, and the action wheel creates interesting decisions, especially when the bonus you desperately want is aligned with an action you do not need.
The last two paragraphs sound really down of Woodcraft, which is unintentional. You can also check out my first impression post of it here, where I was a lot more excited and positive.
2 – Praga Caput Regni
With an action wheel like Woodcraft, Praga Caput Regni is another action efficiency puzzle, but instead of fulfilling contracts, Praga is more of a point salad where every action you take can result in a deluge of effects and bonuses.
In Praga Caput Regni, players are in Prague, developing mines and quarries, building walls and houses, and advancing along the Kings Road to deliver the eggs needed for the Charles Bridge. There are a ton of ways to squeeze efficiencies out of every action, and plenty of opportunities to bulk up each action so it gives you more when you take that action.
Each action tile on the action wheel each contain two of the 6 actions. When you take a tile, you can choose either of the two actions depicted and preform it. If the tile was further along the wheel, you get points for taking it. If it was further back, you’ll have to pay gold for the privilege of taking that tile. Along the inside of the wheel is an additional bonus that you get when you take the tile.
By the end of the game, each action feels like a slot machine of bonuses. “I’ll take this action, which gives me two stone as a bonus, and my technology lets me earn points when the stone is my bonus, I’ll take this action, which gives me extra points because my action is upgraded, and I’ll produce gold, which also gives me two points, and egg, and another point and a stone…”. That sentence sounds crazy, but in the context of the game, it’s a pretty normal turn. The biggest downside to Praga Caput Regni is that if you make a mistake and want to undo your turn, it’s seriously onerous.
1 – Underwater Cities
Underwater Cities was my first Suchý game, and it remains my favourite. The action selection here is a mix of worker placement and hand management. Each turn, you need to play one of your workers on one of the colour coded actions around the board, and play a card. If the colour of the card matches the colour of the action, you get to do both!
Again, action efficiency at it’s finest. There are 3 eras of cards with scaling powers, and the economy grows dramatically. In the first few rounds, you’ll barely scrape a living, but by the end of the game you’ll be searching for anywhere to spend your copious amounts of loot.
I think Underwater Cities is one of Suchý’s most popular games, and for good reason. It’s a brilliant game that gives you plenty of time and actions to achieve your goals. You probably won’t achieve everything you set out to do, but you’ll likely get lots done. The puzzle in Underwater Cities is balancing expanding your underwater colonies with improving your existing infrastructure. It’s an eminently replayable game that I always enjoy going back to.
