I posted my first game review to this site 10 years ago today. It was a review of Hare & Tortoise, the first entry in my 36-part series revisiting the Spiel des Jahres winners. Each entry featured not only a gameplay overview and review, but also a chronicle of the game’s rise and impact. The series had a decent readership (and generated a lot of fun online discussion), and when I finished publishing it months later, I ended up hanging around and becoming one of the regular writers. 

Ten years has flown by. I no longer write as much as I used to, since for the past few years, I’ve focused more on designing games. But in a span of a few short years, I wrote more than 300 game reviews, dozens of convention reports, and numerous articles. I ended not only writing for this site, but for the now-defunct Counter Magazine, and for the also-defunct Gamers Alliance.

This is my reflection on ten years of being an opinionated gamers, along with a few fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Even my fellow OG writers likely don’t know some of these stories. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this and reflecting on my time writing here, but this is a deviation from our normal content. 

Most importantly, thanks for reading my ramblings this past decade. I’ve always been amazed by how many people opened the links to my random musings. Being an OG writer has been one of the highlights of my gaming hobby, and I don’t know that I would have done it for so long if it weren’t for the commentary and encouragement I’ve received over the years. 

An Unusual Beginning

This site had dozens of writers when I joined, and most of them had known each other for years. That wasn’t the case with me. When I started writing here, I literally knew none of the other writers; I had never met any of them. I had also never published a game review. 

After I had finished sketching out the SdJ series, I was looking for a place to publish it. I walked down the hall of my office (yes, at my real place of work, my day job) and was talking to my friend and co-worker Jeff Lingwall. We were both fans of the site. Jeff suggested I reach out to see if OG would publish the series. I did, and to my amazement, Dale Yu responded. Jeff himself would also eventually become one of the site’s writers.  

It was a moment of great joy for me — I’ve thanked Dale numerous times over the years for answering that email — but I still have to stand out as one of the unlikeliest possible adds to the OG. Writing here has led to numerous friendships across the gaming community and opened several doors, so I’m very grateful for the gifts that have flowed from that quickly-drafted email I sent in April 2015. 

A Few Productive Years

Nobody will ever match the enormous productivity of this site’s editor, Dale Yu. I’ve long suspected Dale of being the most productive written reviewer in the world, and he’s certainly among the most-read. I never came close, but at my peak, I was nonetheless writing a full-sized review or article about once every four or five days, and during major conventions, once each day. In the end, I wrote more than 300 posts for the OG, plus I was a regular contributor to other outlets. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it, but I’m glad I did, since the process of writing so much about games would later inform my ability to design games.

A few friends of mine also joined the site as writers. I’ve already mentioned Jeff, but my friend Brandon Kempf also started writing at my encouragement. Brandon himself become one of the most productive and read writers in the site’s history. A couple more of my friends joined the listserv behind the scenes.

Comically, flipping back through my reviews, I haven’t touched some of them since I wrote the review, even for games I liked. One of the hard parts of being a reviewer is playing a game enough times to feel like I could write about it. Often times, I suppose, that number corresponds with how many times I want to play it.

Little Controversy, Except That One Time 

I generally avoided controversy over the past decade, which I take pride in. But there is one notable exception, namely a piece I wrote with Jeff wherein we expressed skepticism of game quality on Kickstarter. That piece received a larger — and more raucous — reception than anybody anticipated. At the peak, it was getting thousands of hits per hour. People on social media were so angry that they were posting details of our personal lives, our CVs, etc. Yes, we got doxxed over a board game article, something I didn’t think was possible. 

When the dust settled, it was the most read article ever in the history of the site, though a few reviews have since passed it in view count.

I recently re-read the article. I won’t speak for Jeff, but I stand by every word. 

Trick-Taking, Trick-Taking, and More Trick-Taking

I’ve been very vocal over the years that this site and its writers are the group most responsible for trick-taking’s rise in popularity in the English-speaking world. Few outlets have covered trick-taking games as thoroughly as we have, for as long as we have.

One of the most remarkable moments I’ve had as a writer was a dinner with Sai Beppu and Trick Kuma, who told me over dinner that when they were first getting into trick-taking (and when it was really taking off in Japan), one of their mains sources of information was my many trick-taking musings. To think that I had impacted the scene in Japan that so many of us admire was a joy to hear. 

But I owe credit to my fellow writers here. Joe, Lorna, Eric Martin, and others introduced to me to Japanese imports. And that style of making games influenced my own designs.

A Jaded Enthusiast

Behind the scenes here at OG, we have a large spreadsheet for rating games that come out at Essen each year. I’m almost always one of highest raters, if not the highest. There’s no double that I’ve become more jaded over the years, but I’ve never quite become as jaded as the other authors. In short, I simply rate games higher than my fellow OG writers.

The behind the scenes ratings have, at times, led me to question whether many of the writers here even like games. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Joe and Dan!) But what happens more often (usually in person) is that folks say I like everything. 

Guilty. To me, nearly all games are designed to be fun, and most of them are. If left to my own devices on how to rate games, I would probably judge them more innovation, which I hold in much her esteem.

But as I said, I’ve certainly become more jaded over the years. But that, I think, centers more around my views of the quality of innovation in games (which has slowed over the past decade) rather than my assessment of how fun games are (which is as high as ever).  

Concluding Remarks

One of the reasons I was so proud to join this merry band of writers was because of the enormous contributions this group has made to the gaming hobby. I’ve always felt honored to be a part of this club. One reason I was so delighted to publish my SdJ series here a decade ago was because I knew how much the OGers would contribute to the histories I was writing. That proved true. But in the past decade, members of this group have helped me on so many writing projects. And beyond that, they’ve also been amazing playtesters of my designs, great friends at conventions, and an endless source of recommendations for great games.

Thanks, fellow OGers, for a great decade. Here’s to ten more years!