Merry Merry Christmas! SU&SD Newsletter #40
Added 2022-06-22 17:34:29 +0000 UTCMatt: And that’s all the 2019 she wrote! If you’re a seasoned reader of the Shut Up & Sit Down newsletter, thank you once again from all of us for the ongoing support - it really means so much to be able to continue to do such a wonderful, silly job. If you’re a brand new donor this year, then welcome! We like to use this as a place to update you all on what we’ve been up to, what we’re planning, and a tiny window into how we’re all feeling. So buckle up and get yourself a hot tea - this newsletter is a REAL CHUNKY FELLA.
First, we wanted to take this opportunity to specifically thank all of our donors from the bottom of our hearts for enabling us to run the SU&SD intern program. 2018 was a year of change, and we wanted to make 2019 a year of growth and rediscovery, and thanks to you it was!
Quinns: After receiving over 250 applications we were able to extend paid opportunities to Kylie, Ben, Tom, Ava, and Josh - in addition to a couple of other people we’re hoping to work with in the new year. After being given the opportunity to refine our craft over years, it’s been hugely rewarding to pass on some of these skills and insights to a bunch of clearly very talented people.
Matt: And honestly, it’s been a real learning curve for us as well! Team SU&SD has traditionally been peers working together, and while Quinns has dealt with freelancers for years, neither of us had much experience when it comes to being actual managers. I think we definitely under-estimated the time commitment of training people up, as well as sorting all the admin and scheduling that comes with having additional heads. It has absolutely been one of the most rewarding things we’ve done in the history of SU&SD, but if at times this year it seemed like we were a little frazzled and exhausted? That’s because we absolutely were!
Quinns: Oh gosh, yes we were. But if you personally didn’t notice, then we’ll take that as a compliment. It’s safe to say we really slogged away this year, putting the extra time in to ensure that even though our workload had increased, the quality and quantity of our work didn’t suffer. We did have to put our board game streaming on ice - which we weren’t thrilled about - but we put out more videos in 2019 than we’ve ever achieved in the history of the site. And whoa mamma, I think some of them were REAL GOOD!
Twilightin' In the Big Imperium
Our day-long stream of Twilight Imperium was a technical tour-de-force and featured an actual, real lion*.
Canadian Flickin' Discs
We finally covered the world’s greatest dexterity game, Crokinole! Mainly because it sounded a bit like "chronicle", but still.
Let me watch this video, thanks.
KLASKIN' IN THE USA
Behold, our ongoing mission to review a game in less than five minutes. It is possible? I don’t think it’s possible.
The Oink Megamix
Oink Oink! We reviewed a whopping 10 games in just over 20 minutes! We'll be sure to do another of these in the future.
SU&SD Review Dune
Matt: Possibly the sharpest gem of the show this year, smashing my love of elaborate lighting techniques against his willingness to wear a wetsuit and let me pour cold water down his neck. Also, it turns out I was born to be a worm? Sorry mum.
Quinns: Here’s some behind the scenes trivia for you- besides me being too hot, wearing that wetsuit all day was completely fine, but then in the days that followed my legs EXPLODED in a constellation of spots.
Oh boy, I'd like to watch this video
Matt: I’d also be remiss not to mention the Quacks review which saw us - genuinely stupidly - firing a paint cannon directly into my face, and how could we skip over Card Games That Don’t Suck? Sexing up the 52 card deck like nobody’s business. We’ve never done a better job at ensuring that top-tier fun is affordable to everybody.
Oh! And whilst it’s literally the opposite of “free”, we were really happy with the chunky expansion for Monikers we designed. If you missed the Kickstarter you can find it on Amazon here.
Quinns: As the year came to a close we decided to double down on video reviews, keeping up a momentum that ended with TWO VIDEOS IN ONE WEEK, an amount previously thought impossible by scientists. This focus did come at the cost of other stuff, though, and we hope that podcastle fans will be relieved to hear that the podcast will be back on track from January next year.
Matt: 2020 is looking exciting for us - Ava Foxfort’s application to the intern program led us to hire them as our news editor and a regular columnist, which I think we can all agree has been a wonderful addition. Getting to work this year with Chris & Anni was such a tremendous joy - two extreme talents who contributed heavily towards making our Twitch streams a genuine delight.
Many of you were gutted to see these live streams disappear, and I can only assure you that I’m personally more gutted about it than anyone! They proved unsustainable for a bunch of dull reasons, and I’m actively looking into ways we can bring them back in the future, or at least do something similar. The venn diagram of heavy streaming equipment and Quinns and me living in different cities makes it a puzzle that’s tricky to crack - but stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!
Matt: For now, though, we’ll be sipping an extremely tiny sherry and going back over the body of work we’ve put out this year with the help of our interns, and thinking about how we might continue to work with some of them in the coming year. We’ll hopefully have some announcements on that front that we can tell you about in the next month or two, but hopefully it goes without saying that we sadly won’t be able to afford to offer ongoing work to every single one of them. Having said that: what a hotbed of talent! It’s no surprise that some of those who made it to the top of a list of 250 applicants are more than happy to take the experience we’ve offered away with them to do very different things - we can’t wait to see what they all get up to in the future, and it was superb to be able to give them all a chunk of paid work in which they could sharpen up their already nifty skills. In terms of Interns Of The Future? That’s currently very much TBC - there are a couple of people from the original shortlist I’d like to give some time to, and while I think we’d be very keen to do something similar in the future - as alluded to earlier, a year of back-to-back intern stuff was perhaps a little ambitious for a two-person team!
Quinns: Some interesting inside knowledge for you folks - would you be surprised to hear that despite us more than doubling our YouTube subscribers over the last two years, the income we’ve received from donations has remained steady over the same period? Bear with me, this isn’t a complaint! We’re tremendously thankful - but it is a bit *weird*. Dozens of recurring donations are cancelled each month, and then we add roughly that many back during our bi-annual donation drives.
Matt: Mostly though, that’s fine! We understand that what we do is niche, and we’ve always been a very small team with very few overheads - and having your donations be freakishly predictable with a lovely jump from one time donations durring our drives means we’ve been able to carefully plan ahead, budgeting for things like better cameras, the intern program, or even an initial boost to our very own convention (which is now its own thing and handled completely separately while still being ‘ours’ – if you’ve been a part of SHUX in the past thanks so much for helping us create that community! Maybe book off Oct. 16-18, 2020 in your calendar?).
But while donations remain the foundation of what we do, and why we’re able to do it - we don’t want to stretch that generosity. After carefully wieghing the pros and cons, we decided to make some changes this year to allow us the breathing room needed to grow. If you don’t run an ad-blocker, you’ll have noticed that after years of shunning them, we decided to turn on YouTube ads.
Quinns: In all honesty, not much has changed in our attitudes. We still think that adverts are naff, and if you want to block them then that’s totally fine. We also still feel very strongly about independent reporting and never taking money from publishers in exchange for coverage, as well as ensuring that our website proper remains a clean, simple, ad-free space. But after seeing such rapid growth on the YouTube channel and having 99.9% of that audience unable to donate, we finally relented to the requests for ads on YT.
Matt: Amazingly, at the moment, this doesn’t make us a dramatic amount of money - but as our views grow we’re looking at a thousand dollars or so each month that we didn’t have before, and that’s money that we can comfortably plough right back into making more great INTERNET STUFF.
It also opens up some tools and search engine optimization from YouTube that we’ve been happily sacrificing for years. We can actually link to our website now! Imagine! Finally though, to give you a really honest peek behind the curtain - the main thing that we’re hoping this will help with is growth. Without adverts on YouTube, the platform won’t promote us. At a time - both within the world and the industry - where the future looks set to see a number of big changes, we believe that board games are for everyone: a powerful force for understanding both ourselves, and those around us. We adore the community that we see flourishing around board games, and the only way we can personally help to preserve that in today’s world is by ensuring we don’t allow our voice to become increasingly diluted. We hope that in reading this, you care about these things too - but if you just like watching us being ridiculous and goofy, that’s fine too! Thanks!
Matt: So that’s the end of our AGM Megablast! But remember, changes you’ve seen over the last year of SU&SD don’t change the core truth that what we do is truly powered by YOU. While we’re constantly striving to improve what we do, and take on as much external advice as possible, we know that there is always room to do better.
So please do write into us, and let us know what’s working for you, and what’s not. As we step towards exciting new things, this job has never been more important to us, so please do write in and tell us how you feel.
Quinns: But of course, we couldn’t end the newsletter without a teency peek at some of the games that you can expect us to cover in the new year.
Matt: You’re talking about Roads & Boats, of course.
Quinns: Matt, I’m starting to think you have a crush.
Matt: I do have a crush! Roads & Boats: 20th Anniversary Edition landed in our laps at the very end of the year, and Quinns and I both found ourselves captivated. This is a cruel, sprawling economic game with a unique focus on logistics, as well as a peculiar love of donkeys and geese. It’s too big, too strange, and altogether too good.
It’s also part of a very a limited print run, and almost entirely sold out. If you tend to enjoy SU&SD’s recommendations on heavy games, or if you’re looking for something just as brutal and bizarre as Food Chain Magnate (but even more strange-looking), you could do a lot worse than grabbing one of the few copies left on Splotter’s site.
Quinns: Our first plays of the horrendously-titled Welcome To...: New Las Vegas have been fascinating. Despite this being a roll’n’write, a genre /ordinarily/ known for straightforward rules, it’s among the most intimidatingly awkward rulesets that I’ve had to teach this year. In a nutshell, New Las Vegas resembles its predecessor, Welcome To..., except every single mechanic that you have to teach has a catch. It’s like teaching from a textbook made of fishhooks.
Rather than creating runs of numbers, you now make runs of odd or even numbers. Rather than trying to dig pools, you now put on shows that are added in one of two separate columns, each of which will penalise you if you don’t manage to invest enough. And rather than doodling numbers in any building you choose, lots of buildings have to first be constructed. It’s very pointy, very thinky, and I enjoy it a great deal.
However, it might not be the next roll’n’write that you see a video review of on the site. Copenhagen: Roll & Write is absolutely excellent, and this year I’m finally hoping to get a copy of Fleet: The Dice Game, which a lot of people are calling their favourite roll’n’write.
Matt: Quinns and I also had some first plays of Irish Gauge, and we’re happy to add our voices to the chorus of reviewers calling it a superb box.
Quinns: With one page of rules (amazing), no set-up (amazing) and a play time of no more than an hour (amazing), Irish Gauge is a game of developing five different Irish train companies. I think the quickest way to describe how neatly-balanced it is is that on your turn you must always choose one of the game’s four actions - lay rail, develop a town, start an auction or call for a table-wide payday - and on almost all of my turns I wanted to do all of them. Argh! Not an easy decision in sight!
Matt: But frankly, this is just the tip of the review-iceberg. There’s a good chance that early 2020 will have the highest density of exciting reviews that our site has ever seen. Hold onto your bottoms - WE'RE JUST GETTIN' STARTED.
Thank you so much from all of the team - we hope you have a wonderful and relaxing break over the next few weeks!
