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Tabletop game reviews enjoyed lately thread
I just finished the article and that was one compelling pitch for Sleeping Gods, moreso than his actual review.
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I think this is actually a good review, if I'm being brutally honest I prefer the new dude to Quinns and Matt, but part of that is our taste is much more aligned. Congrats to Charlest for the shout out at the end!
I was reading a little about what a good SUSD review means, apparently it is an appreciable sales bump. The leder folks on their Discord were intimating it means a lot for the possibility of an expansion and sales:
Joshua Yearsley — Today at 1:03 PM
We're seeing the effect already. I probably can't talk specifics. :slight_smile:
Ask Cole and Patrick in the next designer chat. :smile:
Patrick Leder also mentioned a sales surge on twitter associated.
Good companion piece for our previews thread.
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- Andi Lennon
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sornars wrote: Dan is on a roll, he has another excellent essay about "othering" in board games for his Patreon subscribers that went live yesterday. It contrasts A Study in Emerald and AuZtralia by Martin Wallace and their approach to making it more palatable to do the horrendous by making the baddies aliens/elder gods.
I just finished the article and that was one compelling pitch for Sleeping Gods, moreso than his actual review.
AuZtralia was always.... interesting... to me because there was a suggestion - denied from memory - that this brooding evil in the interior that the settlers are trying to deal with has to read as an indigenous presence. It might have even been Dan who noted it in his review, I can't remember.
I'm currently reading the book that A Study In Emerald is based on (not the Neil Gaiman one, the history of the anarchist diaspora), and, I mean, cthuly-whatsit as a metaphor for autocratic aristocracy, I'm down with (the only cthylu-thingo game I'll happily play for that reason), but the AuZtralia vibe seemed a bit off.
Cheers for the heads up, at any rate. Might have to slip Dan a few bucks!
*****
It's crazy to me that SUSD have this acknowledged effect now. I genuinely thought Rahdo or Vasel would have a much larger reach that would make a difference; I guess they more or less provide a baseline these days that is pretty wide.
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Usually you can't find a game immediately after a positive SUSD review.
I do think that Oath review is great. It uses the visual medium well and Tom's enthusiasm is infectious.
What I appreciate about both SUSD and NPI is the amount of thought and analysis they attempt compared to the typical video review. I often disagree with conclusions from both of them, but they're still interesting pieces of media to consume and usually worth watching.
Also, I definitely appreciate the shout out. I frankly don't get great traffic to my site and I noticed a huge bump yesterday. When I saw it was coming from YouTube I was confused and finally figured it out. It was very kind of Tom/SUSD mentioning both Dan and my articles.
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- hotseatgames
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hotseatgames wrote: I can confirm that when SUSD plays your game totally wrong on twitch and trashes it, it does not help sales.
This was agony. And lest you speak up, this wasn't like "they got this one small rule wrong" or whatever. I hate that pedantic critique of every person creating content. This was legitimate disaster level fuck-up.
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charlest wrote: What I appreciate about both SUSD and NPI is the amount of thought and analysis they attempt compared to the typical video review. I often disagree with conclusions from both of them, but they're still interesting pieces of media to consume and usually worth watching.
It is such an interesting relationship with their content. Tom brings someone on board who I actually share game taste with. Quinns I, at best, overlap only a little bit in taste and I am often actively repulsed by the games Matt Lees tends to like. I think their content is usually pretty solid, but our tastes have historically been so disastrously out of synch that it's kind of a fascinating reminder of how different people are in their reaction to games... in good faith.
I'm repeating myself from two years ago or something, but I've been here forever.
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- Jackwraith
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This game is so painfully forgettable thematically I'm always blown away with how well regarded it is by reviewers I like.
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sornars wrote: Dan is on a roll, he has another excellent essay about "othering" in board games for his Patreon subscribers that went live yesterday. It contrasts A Study in Emerald and AuZtralia by Martin Wallace and their approach to making it more palatable to do the horrendous by making the baddies aliens/elder gods.
I just finished the article and that was one compelling pitch for Sleeping Gods, moreso than his actual review.
spacebiff.com/2021/08/12/greenwashing-history/
Dan's article mentioned above just went public and I thought it was worth re-sharing here.
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- Erik Twice
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Boardgames are very much in that stage where bad guys get a pass but only if they lose at the end or aren't really bad or whatever. It's still controversial to play as historical bad guys, or show sex or just to treat games like one would other art forms. For example, a significant part of the talk about colonialism, including the recent article on The Atlantic seems to oppose the subject matter as a whole.
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Because we just want a little fun when we sit down for a game, designers are more eager to elide and ignore the less savory elements of popular historical settings or more challenging themes. Then, because the designers are putting more thought into mechanisms and balance for the fun and treating setting and theme as secondary concerns, it’s hard to analyze and critique their works like we would a Jonathan Franzen or Kathryn Bigelow. Instead people can only look at their settings and can only say “Colonialism bad. Sexism bad. Nazi Germany and Confederacy bad.” I can’t disagree, but it’s a boring analysis. Not that the vast majority of of designers are offering something meatier with which to engage.
Meltwater and The Cost are a vein of games that if not art, definitely offer a statement that one can agree or disagree with and critique in a more substantial way. Amabel Holland’s This Guilty Land and The Vote, too, but it sounds like playing the bad guys in them isn’t that much fun mechanically in addition to being pretty terrible in the setting.
I hope the hobby matures to make more room and attention for games like these. Board games aren’t well suited to tell a Tristram Shandy, but by putting people in charge of systems, they are ripe for economic and political analysis.
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