So... I've been approached to write reviews

I really have no previous context for writing board game reviews beyond the occasional compulsion to write something for an underdog or misunderstood board game and posting it on BGG. I've recently been asked if I would be interested in writing reviews for a site "long term", mostly based on my Shadows of Malice review, and I'm wondering what questions I should be asking. I'm also curious to hear any general advice any veteran reviewers might have concerning the gradual effects of writing out of obligation about something you normally do as an entertaining pass-time. I do enjoy writing about board games. I just have no idea what to expect when it comes to reviewing them for a site. Any words of wisdom and/or advice are welcome.

Unless you have aspirations to get paid for it, don't.

#1. Unless you have a deep and compelling urge to write something every week, DON'T ACCEPT.
#2. Unless you have a very wide-open schedule that will allow you 3 hours a week to write, DON'T ACCEPT.
#3. Unless you want to have hundreds of people tell you you're wrong and call you a cunt in passive-aggressive ways, DON'T ACCEPT.
#4. Unless there's a paycheck, or the realistic prospect of a paycheck down the road, DON'T ACCEPT.

All you'll do is get someone else traffic and it doesn't buy you anything. Do your own blog if you want, at your leisure and on your schedule, and then get with some other bigger sites and blogs to re-post your musings. Anything else is madness.

Some things to consider:
- Once you're "a reviewer", people will start calling you a "reviewer". I'm very uncomfortable with that, personally, because the totality of my soul and character shouldn't be defined by a single word. People treat you differently. Many with an abundance of jealousy and disdain, others with skepticism.
- You have to play a lot of games, and I mean a LOT LOT LOT of games. If you can't do that, you're going to be unsuccessful.
- It's one thing to write when you want to, it's another to write when you HAVE to. The pressure to write on someone else's timeline is akin to trying to pee while sneezing...you want to, you really want to, but you just get some mental blockade that won't let you.
- There's almost no upside. Sure, you get free games and shit, but you have tax liabilities (if you are honest) for one, and quite honestly, it will take you 3 full plays to "understand" a game enough to write about it and not sound like some asswipe reading from the rulebook, plus at least 2-3 hours to formulate what you want to say, then another hour to second guess yourself and edit, and then a final hour to go back through and clean up the edits you just made. So, you're making like 6 bucks an hour when you consider the game's value at around $50.00 US, and that's not including play time.

TL;DR: It's mostly a thankless job, and writing under pressure isn't as much fun as doing it because you simply want a creative outlet.

I always impressed by the reviewers who can keep it going over the years as most suffer burn out at some point. If they are not paying you id be wary of the offer.

Its worth asking what kinds of games coverage they want (what sort of games), who they think their readership is, how many words they expect per article, whether they are only interested in the newest latest games, and how much editorial control you have over your works.

The real trap is that you will end up being asked to write about games, and you may not own the ones they want you to write about. If they can't procure a review copy, you're literally buying shit to write about. It's a total net loss.

Hi Frohike, I got a similar offer a couple years ago and said no. The main reason I said no is cuz I didn't want to have the pressure of a schedule. I like writing when I feel like it.

Do you like writing? If you do, then it's worth exploring. Here are the questions to ask:

- How often do I have to provide reviews?
- Do I get to choose games to review or am I told what to review?
- Do I have to buy the games myself?
- What is the target demographic I am writing to?
- What editorial guidelines blanket the articles on your site? (colourful language or clean, humorous or all-biz...)

Overall, I think you should do it. It's a fun experience and I used to love writing for magazines and websites back when I was a much more active gamer. It kept me tied closely to the games and especially the community. If after 3-4 months, you think it's not fun, you just bow out, no big deal.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. It seems I have some thinking to do. I'll keep you posted if anything comes of it.

One more thing:

Everything you have ever said publicly (in writing) will be scrutinized, analyzed, and you will be held to account for it, so be sure that....
- You are 100% sure you understand the game and its merits/mistakes
- You are subjective enough to be able to retort, "It is and/or was my opinion, not an objective statement of some sort of ultimate truth."
- You never mark a game as "previously owned" on BGG so that people can't nitpick about games you've traded away after praising.
- You are prepared to vigorously defend that which you've written.

In a hobby where the core defining characteristic of 90% of adherents is "desperate need to be both RIGHT and HEARD", you will be inundated by fuckers who "know better" and who, if challenged, will make it their personal mission to troll your BGG threads, blog, etc for the sole purpose of proving how large their micropenis is, in the mental sense.

Why we do this, I will never understand.

Superfly, I have never seen this better stated and also appreciate the math you provided. Please do a calculation on those consuming
the reviews and what price they pay in terms of opportunity cost to not make a mistake on a $50 purchase.

Certainly, to do reviews for financial gain is a loss all the way around, it seems to me that the best reviews are done out the love for the hobby
and the willingness to share one's experience with a game.

It seems to me one's time is better spent on the creative process of design itself instead of feeding off someone elses creativity for your own profit.

Well, I'd argue that there's plenty of guys who make a living at it. Tom Vasel is the most obvious, and you have to think that there's a shitload of money going his way. He does those paid previews for KS stuff, which is $2,000 minimum (I have a friend who does this and gave me pricing), and he owns Orlando Gaming Corporation LLC, the entity that runs Dice Tower Con. So, he took writing game reviews and made it into several businesses. Good on him, says I.

I think Lone Voice is right. Pete, you're adopting a view of the industry that basically means "the terrorists have won." You can't let the noise drown out those that will be reached by someone like Frohike's reviews and that would appreciate it. He's not writing enemy location intelligence reports to Drone HQ at the Pentagon or anything. He doesn't need to have this insane standard of excellence where saying something wrong about a board game gets him burned at the stake. He should approach this casually and not worry about haters or noise.

I had some South American guy ream me out for an online tournament report I posted once cuz he thought I had cheated. I didn't let it bother me. At the next convention some dad brought his really young boy to meet me cuz he said his son was a big fan of my articles. I wanted to write forever after that.

...but I felt bad in retrospect about the time I talked about accidentally sitting on some semen at the Chicago airport bathroom.

Interesting. That $2,000 is actually a pretty cheap price for a commercial when you consider the size of Tom's flock.

I'm not that concerned with internet vitriol, scrutiny, arguing, etc. That's par for the course in any form of culture writing or product reviews. My main concern is being able to generate content on a consistent enough basis, depending on the publication schedules. Still no word back since the initial approach, so I'm in a holding pattern for now.

Barney: No, I'm saying the terrorists have won at all. I'm saying that people are fucking cunts, who feel entitled to your time and passion but will go miles out of their way to shit on your doorstep for the crime of merely disagreeing with their position. It's utterly insane. I wasn't prepared for it when I started doing this, and I just want Frohike to know that this phenomenon exists, and to steel his nerves for the shitstorm that writing reviews can produce.

Let me give a little history lesson from my perspective as a "seasoned professional" spewer of bullshit about boardgames: I got BanneD from BGG and am basically universally reviled thanks to my website, and the fucked up part is that I did it for what I believe is the ultimate altruism: to drown out the voices of the shills and payola-mongers with a louder voice containing lots of cursing and hyperbole. That, and most people suck at writing things that are fun to read, so I wanted to do something that wasn't seen a lot: write reviews that inform and entertain, with an emphasis on the latter.

The way I calculated it, if you say "cunt" a lot and make lots of rape jokes, people KNOW that the publishers don't want to be associated with you, and they KNOW that while you might get the occasional review copy, you will be 100% unbiased because, basically, you have zero impetus to lie. It seems like I'm just this crazy fuck out spewing hate and whatever but people don't know what I do for a living or what kind of a person I am, so they have no idea that everything I did for the first 2 years was calculated and done for a specific purpose. We want to tell the truth as we see it, and I personally wanted to try to drown out the see of wannabe fuckers who are looking for nerd fame and free shit for the low, low cost of their soul.

So, I set up the Circus to be unbiased and the only way I could figure to do that with a high level of certainty was to remove my own biases and use the group's viewpoint (The Hive Mind!) and polling scores to write about games. We've never taken money from anyone, ever, we've never done advertising, and we give away 80+% of the games I've gotten for free. The other 20% is sold to fund buying games we've been requested to review and to cover my costs (which has never happened). Just last month I gave away two of them, in fact. Next week I'll probably give away Homeland. This is all so that we don't just talk about not being bought, we SHOW that we're not for sale. That's why the Circus is how it is.

Did I piss people off? Yep. Fuck'em. They didn't pay for shit, they can always change the channel, so as far as I'm concerned, the sea of haterade out there can go slide backwards down a hill of stiff cocks. I do what I do for me, and for them, whether they like it or not. Truth be told, I've gotten 10 times the positive feedback as negative over the years, but you tend to remember the guy who calls you a misogynistic cancer who should just die (read: Loter) over the guy who said, "Thanks for saving me 50$". Anyhow, enough about the Circus.

My point isn't to NOT WRITE, it's DON'T WRITE FOR SOMEONE ELSE. Do it because you love it. Do it because you want to be a positive force in the world. As much rape-joking as I've done, how many people didn't buy into some shill's line of bullshit and drop their kids' lunch money on their addiction because some pseudo-famous shitheel told them to? Be that guy. Be a positive force in a sea of shills. And do it on your schedule, on your time, because when you're under the gun and you're short on time, your quality of writing will invariably suffer, and you will not be happy with what you wrote. Then, when you become disenchanted, you'll quit, and never write again. That's too heavy a price. Just get on Wordpress or something, GoDaddy something, and do your own thing so it's yours and on your schedule. That's my 2 cents.

I don't necessarily agree with all of the advice here, although I think it's coming from a good place. Most of what everyone is saying is kind of broad in scope while the advice that will help you most depends more on the venue you would be writing for.

For instance, when I started writing for 2d6.org, there was no set schedule. I could review as often or as little as I wanted. They got me one or two review copies, but mostly I built up my own library of early reviews based on what I already owned and once I had content to reference as an established quality, I started requesting my own review copies. I did it because after a few years off I wanted to start writing again. Going with an established site gives you the oomph to request review copies. If you go with your own blog you will have a much harder time getting review copies.

So my main point is, if the site trying to pick you up doesn't have a lot of requirements or baggage then it may be something to consider. Don't expect a ton of benefit (getting paid to write in this field seems very difficult), but you should be able to get review copies once you've written for awhile if the site you're a part of generates decent traffic.

That's pretty much the setup at the site I'm thinking about. I've asked for some more information, particularly about their expectations as far as frequency or schedules but the impression I'm getting so far is favorable. I think it'll be a good context to motivate me to write more regularly, which is something I think my writing needs at this point. I've done the "writing when I'm inspired" thing, and it quickly stagnates into indolence. I go through very long periods of complete non-productivity, not from some sense of artistic processing but due to sheer laziness. It's time to form better habits.

Thanks for advice, everyone.