One of the things that I regularly remark upon as if it were an uncontroversial truism is that we are all engaged in a ‘luxury hobby’. When giving seminars and presentations I often talk about a few representative games and give their price-tags. Pandemic? RRP of £30. Ticket to Ride? …
Category: Editorial
The Bloom’s Taxonomy of Boardgame Reviews
Anyone who has been involved in education for any length of time probably knows of Bloom’s Taxonomy, even if they’re not familiar with its origin or history. As a way of systemising learning it has burrowed its way into the root and trunk of educational systems around the world. Despite…
Pauline’s Tabletop Scotland 2018 Diary (part two)
This is the second part of my diary of Tabletop Scotland 2018. You can find the first part here and it’d be a good idea to read that first because we’re going to leap right back into it! The Seminar… By this point it was around 2:40pm and we had…
Pauline’s Tabletop Scotland 2018 Diary (part one)
I was looking forward to Tabletop Scotland as it had the potential to fill a gap that existed in our part of the country. We need things to take out minds off the grim state of the world in which we live – all those wildling attacks for example and…
Tabletop Scotland – Michael’s 2018 Review
I was expecting Tabletop Scotland to be a good event. I wasn’t really expecting it to suddenly leapfrog to the top of my, admittedly modest, convention hitlist. That’s what happened though. We found an event small enough to be welcoming, yet large enough to be exciting. A programme of events…
How do we make accessibility sexy?
Accessibility has an image problem, and it’s perhaps the biggest barrier to progress that hasn’t been seriously confronted by those of us working within the field. We all know it, but it’s the uncomfortable kind of knowledge that just makes things harder when we confront it. It’s so much easier…
Some Honest Reflections on Patreon
I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so anxious as when I pressed the button on launching our Patreon. Job interviews don’t phase me. My PhD Viva was a source of some temporary butterflies but was pretty much fine. Buying a house and getting six figures in debt was a…
Our Advice for UKGE 2018
The UK Games Expo is coming up very soon. Our experiences with it last year were mixed, but overall it was more of a hit than a miss. We’re making plans this year to try and ensure that the baseline level of fun we have is much higher. We learned…
We’ve launched our Patreon!
You can’t possibly miss it because it’s plastered all over the right hand side of every post now… but we just started up our Patreon and BOY AM I ANXIOUS ABOUT IT. This is the first time I’ve ever gone to the community to help fund anything I have ever…
The New Board Game Journalism (with apologies to Kieron Gillen)
An occasional topic of conversation with which I engage on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms relates to the norms of journalism in game related spaces – specifically, what I’ve come to think of as the New Board Game Journalism. All apologies to Kieron Gillen for that, because I undoubtedly massacre…
The Ethics of Affiliation
I think… I think… this might be my last post on the ethics of reviewing for a while. Those of you who read the site regularly will be aware this is a topic I discuss a lot. I can’t help it – much as with my borderline obsession with the…
The Inevitability of Favourable Board Game Coverage
One of the points I made in the last editorial was that, generally speaking, people that run board game blogs and sites are somewhat loathe to publish negative reviews. That’s not a universal trait and in many respects it depends on just how prolific an outlet’s output can be. The…
The Ethical Compromises of Paid Reviews
In a previous editorial I spoke a bit about the biases of review copies and how the semi-financial relationship implied by their presence actually does likely introduce a number of biases into coverage. Generally though I tend to assume that in this environment – where a largely unremunerated hobbyist ‘press’…
Acquisitions & Consumption – You’re Welcome in this Hobby
Imagine this. You’re a new gamer getting into the hobby for the first time. You don’t really know where to start but you know a few things. You know about Boardgamegeek. You know about Reddit. You know that people talk about boardgames on Twitter and other social media platforms. You’re…
The Biases of Review Copies
Let’s talk about review copies since it’s one of those topics that consistently bobs up to the surface of the reviewer community like a dead rat in a sewer overflow. Note here that I’m not going to talk about the emergent trend of ‘payment for reviews’ – that is a…
The Computer Games Journal – Special Issue on Accessibility in Gaming Call for Papers
Hello! The Computer Games Journal is a Springer academic journal focused on – as you might expect – computer games. They are doing a special issue in early 2018 on the topic of accessibility in games and that is awesome. There is a guest editor for this, and spoiler alert, it…
The Myth of the Objective Review
People often ask for people to give an objective review of the games they cover. ‘Less opinion, more fact’, they demand. So let’s talk about the objective review; the objective review in the context of criticism; and why an objective review is an impossible ask in any discipline where it…
Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2017
The last time Global Accessibility Awareness Day came around Meeple Like Us was a mere six or so weeks old. We were still very much finding our feet as a blog – a process which is still ongoing. However, it was obvious quite early on that we had found something…
UK Games Expo 2017
Are you heading to the UK Games Expo this year? If you answered yes, then you might find us there! Myself and Mrs Meeple will be wandering around, looking lost and aimless, as we face a new and unfamiliar environment. This is, for both of us, our first gaming convention. Wheeeeeee! …
A Year of Meeple Centred Design – Talking about You and Me, and the Games People Play
One year ago today, I decided it was time to start a blog on board-game accessibility. I didn’t really think that was a thing anyone might find interesting – I just thought it was a thing I would enjoy writing. I’d been gradually getting into board-games for years…