A website doesn't come together in a day. I mean, it could, but it probably wouldn't be ideal. Thankfully, while I was still working at BoardGameGeek, my wife Linda took charge of Board Game Beat's site design, logo design, policy pages, marketing, social media presence, and much more.
Normally Behind the Beat posts are available only to Board Game Beat members at the Press Proof+ tiers of membership, but for our first week we want everyone to sample what's available on the site. If you haven't already, please consider a paid membership starting at just $2/month!
Like me, Linda started as a freelance writer in the mid-1990s, and while I tend to favor writing over all of the other skills needed to function as a freelance writer, she excelled in those other skills. She loves brainstorming, pitching ideas to editors, organizing workflow, and creating systems and processes far more than writing, and she drew on thirty years of experience to put this site together.
For the first few weeks, we worked with the name "Turn Zero" for the site, as in "Here's where to go for info before you start to play", which is way too clever since you need to explain what the name means. Nothing about the name says "games" or "board games" or "news", which were detriments that didn't deter my clever self. (The existence of a Los Angeles game store named "Turn Zero Games" was a possible issue, although its logo — [Ø] — was not similar to what we worked on and its business was retail, whereas we had no plans to sell anything other than ads.)
The Turn Zero logo was similarly both clever and confusing:
We were weighing all of these issues and brainstorming yet again for names when I blurted out "Board Game Beat", as in "Board Game Newsbeat"...but without the news. Now the name says both "board game" and "news", albeit in a funky way that might not be clear to non-native English speakers, but "beat" also expresses the rhythm and regularity of news. Every day, news keeps on coming...
To avoid confusion with my former employer and other businesses such as Canadian online retailer BoardGameBliss, we refer to the site only as "Board Game Beat" or "the Beat", never as BGB — other than this one time in this post.
Linda researched site hosts and landed on Ghost, then started working out a design using lots of placeholders and stock images so that she could try layouts, typefaces, ad placement, and so on:
We settled early on a minimal advertising presence: the home page, the top and bottom of a post, and audio and video sponsorship. Based on my past experience running BoardgameNews.com in the late 2000s, I didn't think I'd be able to run a business solely on reader support, but we also wanted to go with an airy, less busy site with lots of white space and color only in the logo, images, and ads.
Once we landed on the "Board Game Beat" name, we decided to use my stylized WEM logo as the logo for the site. Why'd we go with green? Because green's my favorite color. (I told someone recently the logo is meant to display my secret life as a Friedemann Friese fanboy, but that's only coincidental.) Why'd we go with that logo? Because I appreciate the graphic simplicity of it, with the stacked rectangles being a quiet reference to stacked games.
The image above shows a less than ideal combination of logo and text, and eventually we moved my name and the site name into the logo itself. Why my name? I've been writing about games full-time since 2006, and Linda and her friend Diana, a fellow writer and a great sounding board, suggested that I lean into that. Board Game Beat is me and my writing, so let's make that clear from the get go. I might hire other writers in time if the finances make it possible, but for now the site is all me...and Linda, but she doesn't want her name trumpeted anywhere.
We did purchase the URL boardgamebeat.com in order to re-direct it to the current wericmartin.com landing zone. (Having that URL be available was yet another consideration when we landed on the name.)
As Linda worked on the site, she continually ran it through accessScan to check for accessibility issues, fixing and adding things as needed until the site scored an A. Keeping the site less fussy helped in this regard since you have fewer items to cause issues. I'm doing my best to remember to place alt text on every image on the site, and Linda is often running checks on such things herself for posts in the drafting and scheduled queue.
We developed Patreon-style backer tiers, something that Ghost allowed to be integrated with site membership, and the features/rewards of those tiers bounced around a lot. We initially had the top tier being a shared video call among anyone who wanted to participate, but (1) I'm not a huge fan of video calls and (2) I worried that my time would be locked into a call when other opportunities arose.
Instead we turned to the idea of custom goodies, initially researching goods produced in China before deciding to do something handmade in the U.S. instead. Among her many searches, Linda found CrochetCleric on Etsy, who had posted a knitted dice bag with a sunflower design. We reached out to her about doing a custom bag, and she proposed various designs in the site colors:
Granny squares?! Let's do that! Linda and I each have quilts that our grandmothers knitted decades ago, and the look is one that shows concentrated effort, so we asked for a sample, loved the look of it, and ordered twenty. Will we ever have twenty deluxe backers and run out of dice bags? If so, that's a nice problem to have, and we'll order more. They're not cheap compared to some of the Chinese-produced items we looked at, but that's not a problem since we didn't want to order hundreds of a promo item and we're paying a person directly to do creative work — which seems like a better approach for a game site that's trying to highlight individuals doing creative work themselves.
For my initial video, we decided to focus on our decision to avoid traditional social media and instead use federated social media. Not sure what the difference is? That video will be posted on Friday, January 30, so watch and learn!
I've never enjoyed editing video — or recording it either, for that matter — so we reached out to David Ryan, a neighbor three houses down the street who creates video presentations for businesses, and hired him to edit at least the initial video. Here's the sample he created as we were fooling around while setting up a studio space:
Whoa, way goofier than I ever imagined it would be...yet it was fun and I appreciated Dave's interest in collaborating in unexpected ways. He's done similar work on that first video. Paying people to do stuff I'm not good at and don't want to do has been a great decision.
For reference, the image at the top of the post features that studio recording space:
You can see notes taped to the wall that summarized aspects of the video script. Normally I just wing my videos and do endless takes until I get something that feels right. This video includes many references that aren't just Eric gassing about something, so I wanted to ensure that I could refer to what I needed, still doing endless takes to get it all right before Dave stitched it together.
You can see my green screen reflected in one of the lights. I had never considered using a green screen before, but that's mostly because of the "not liking to edit videos" aspect of my personality, but Dave brought one over, then showed us the sample, so I bought a green screen and more lights. Thankfully we have this extra room needed for nothing else; it's been many things over the past six years, and currently it's a studio where I can keep all of this set up for future videos.
Okay, it's time to head back to the Spielwarenmesse toy and game fair for my final day at the show. Take care!
