Board Game Beat Is Six Months Old

Six months ago today, I said goodbye to BoardGameGeek after fifteen years and officially launched Board Game Beat, an independent publication devoted to the craft, culture, and business of tabletop games.

At that time, I knew what I wanted to publish: game announcements and industry news, previews and reviews, convention reports, interviews, essays, videos, and other explorations of how games are designed, published, played, and experienced. I also knew what I did not want to create: an enormous content machine that would require me to be online at all hours, chase algorithms, or publish simply because the calendar said I should. The goal was to create something smaller, more personal, and more sustainable.

Six months in, Board Game Beat has published 200+ posts and reaches 44,000+ unique visitors each month. More than 2,000 people have signed up as members, including approximately 300 paid members.

Those numbers feel somewhat unreal to me. Board Game Beat exists because readers were willing to follow me somewhere new — and because many more of you have discovered the site since its launch. Thank you!

Six Months in Review

During these first six months, I've written about games from publishers around the world, both large and small, familiar and obscure. I've covered new releases, awards, crowdfunding projects, industry changes, and random appearances by games in other media.

I've reported from Spielwarenmesse, Toy Fair NY, GAMA Expo, and Origins Game Fair, previewing games and reflecting on the conventions themselves — and I'm proud to continue publishing Saigo's translations of Takuya Ono's reports (part 1 & part 2) from Game Market, giving you a direct peek into the Japanese indie scene.

I've featured creators talking about their work, including Inka and Markus Brand discussing ten years of EXIT: The Game, R. Eric Reuss detailing the future of Spirit Island, and Thomas Sing explaining how he re-designed The Crew to invite players on a Journey to the Ends of the Earth.

I've written about the increasingly blurry boundary between games and puzzles, how and why people use BoardGameGeek, factors affecting tabletop game distribution, how to complain about games productively, and whatever else has seemed worth examining.

The precise shape of Board Game Beat has evolved along the way, and it will continue to evolve. Some ideas work differently in practice than they did in my head, some subjects demand more attention than I had anticipated, and sometimes I slip down a rabbit hole when tracking a game or publisher's back story. That flexibility is one of the reasons I wanted to work independently.

Behind the Beat

Over the past six months, my wife Linda and I have continued to work on the systems that allow Board Game Beat to operate as a tiny independent business.

Readers can receive posts individually or in a digest, follow the site through RSS and federated social platforms, participate in member surveys, and comment without surrendering their privacy to a large social-media platform. We avoid tracking scripts and the sale or exploitation of reader data. The site carries only a small number of directly-sold advertisements, with no behavioral targeting, ad networks, or rotating clusters of banners.

Most recently, we launched an automated advertising system through which publishers can see available dates and current prices, reserve one of those limited placements, upload their assets, and receive an invoice without requiring a long chain of emails. That system should make advertising easier for publishers while reducing the administrative work required on our end.

That last part matters as I want Board Game Beat to be sustainable personally as well as financially. I want to keep doing this work — and keep enjoying it.

What Membership Makes Possible

Advertising can cover part of the cost of operating Board Game Beat, but we deliberately limit the number of ads on the site. Paid memberships provide a steadier foundation and allow us to keep the great majority of the site freely available to everyone.

Membership helps cover the technology required to run the publication, original reporting and research, convention coverage, outside contributions, and the less visible work involved in maintaining and improving the site.

Paid memberships begin at $2 per month, with higher tiers for readers who want to contribute more or receive additional member features. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time, so here is our entire six-month membership drive:

If you regularly read Board Game Beat and value what we are doing, please consider becoming a paid member.

I'm not going to turn this into a week of countdowns and repeated appeals. This post is the drive. If you already support Board Game Beat as a paid member, this is not a request to upgrade. You are already helping to make the publication possible, and I am deeply grateful.

If a paid membership is not right for you, no problem! Reading the site, subscribing for free, sharing an article with someone who might appreciate it, or simply sending a kind note all help Board Game Beat find its place in the tabletop world.

What's Next

Over the next six months, I will continue to cover new games and industry developments, talk with people who create and publish games, and explore aspects of the game industry. I'll be at Gen Con 2026 in a few days, and I'll see what other travel is possible, as well.

While the site features have changed since launch, the goal remains the same: Help people find games they might love, while celebrating the creators who make these games possible.

Thank you for reading, subscribing, supporting, commenting, correcting, sharing, and joining us during Board Game Beat's first six months.