We’ve reached the end of the second week here at The Opinionated Gamers. The demand for writing slots has increased to the point where we’re starting to publish almost every day now! In case you might have missed something, here’s what we focused on this past week:
- Monday – Joe Huber’s essay on Playing Games Faster
- Tuesday – Matt Carlson’s review of new games for the iPhone/iPad
- Wednesday – Liga’s interview with Leo Colovini
- Thursday – Doug Garrett’s review of Asara
- Friday – Frank Branham’s review of Earth Reborn
- Saturday – Greg Schloesser’s review of Desperados
This week also featured the first of our Gaming Puzzle Days (with both a Guzzle and a Puzzle). In addition, some regular features, Board2Pieces and the Average Gamer Project, continue on.
Previous weekly recaps can be seen here…
So, I think that these first two weeks are a pretty good representation of what we’re trying to bring you here. About half of the pieces have been game reviews while the other posts have been a nice mix of interviews, first impressions of games and other thoughtful essays on gaming. And, while most of us here focus on “Euro-games”, we certainly play just about everything – and we will continue to talk about whatever sorts of games that we come across! If you’d rather leave your comments privately – contact us here.
At this point, I think it’s a good time to ask you, the reader, if you have any comments about the blog — what you like and dislike? How have you liked the format of the Opinionated Gamers? Is there anything that we could do better? Topics or games you’d like us to cover? Have you been able to access the site? If you read by RSS, drop us a note to let us know – we don’t have a great way to see how many readers get us via feed only.
Well, back to work managing the blog – next week will be another full week here with reviews planned of 2 significant Essen releases and lots more!
Thanks again for reading,
Dale Yu
— editor of the Opinionated Gamers
Very nice! I especially liked Leo’s interview.
Between this site and the News feed at BGG my wishlist is rapidly growing again – this will likely impact my wallet soon. Keep it coming.
It’s worth every penny! I can pick and choose articles to read, so the volume suits me fine. The writing’s good on the ones I do read. I still don’t get into Board 2 Pieces. Too much text for the comic format for me. Just goes to show you can’t please everyone all the time. But with your other offerings, you’ve got something for me, too. Keep up the good work!
I forgot to mention: I read via Google Reader (rss), but will come to the site to read and comment on some articles.
I really like what I have seen so far. The extra opinions at the bottom of each review is a great features. But I noticed after the first one, that not as many people have been contributing opinions. I think it is worth waiting for more people to form an opinion about a game rather that trying to get the first article out.
Using the rating system of the site:
Like it.
I enjoyed Joe Huber’s article about playing games faster. There are some very useful tips. I like these articles which are about boardgaming in general but not about any specific game, especially when they share some useful tips or some new perspective that I have not thought about before. This article reminds me of those articles that used to be posted at the Games Journal. That said, it can also be a risk to turn this into something regular, lest it becomes writing for the sake of writing.
The other thing I like a lot is how multiple writers share their views and ratings about the same game. In particular views different from the main review writer are informative and interesting.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing pretty much everything right so far. Having other contributers add their opinions at the bottom of a review is just brilliant (even if it is sorta stolen from Spielbox), and I love the mix of people you have involved. And like Hiew said, I really enjoy the meta-gaming articles, probably even better than the reviews. Your RSS feed is also great since I do most of my web reading via Google reader.
Keep it coming!
So far excellent!
It would be great to see more nationalities among the contributors. More is better!
A specific suggestion for selection of future games for review:
It would be nice if each game met at least one of these categories:
1) New game (the # of ratings on BGG hasn’t started to flatten)
2) Not-so-new game that the reviewer really likes
Problem with choosing a game that doesn’t either of those criteria is that there is a near infinite number of such games. And what purpose do they serve? If a game has been around a while, and people passed on it, a review won’t change anything. So for games that are not new, I would suggest sticking with games that the reviewer likes, with the goal of helping people find worthy games they may have missed. Of course the counter opinions could be contrary, which is more than fine. But as much as I like and respect Greg, I’m look at the Desperados review as being a well-written review, but not that useful… today.
In other words, I would like the reviews to affect my game buying decisions, and I generally buy two categories of game: 1) new games, possibly without the benefit of heavy numbers of BGG ratings/reviews, and 2) older games that somehow convince me based on trusted recommendations. Saying old games are bad doesn’t really affect me one way or the other.
Great! Different enough from other sites to warrant subscribing, lots of good content. I’m an RSS subscriber
Wow! I just read the reviews on Magnum Sal and Nuremberc and found the format incredibly helpful. It’s great to have several opinions gathered together, and interesting to see, just in two reviews, how each person seems to focus on certain things. This is a great start, and I’m looking forward to visiting often.