The Board Game Book | Explore the year's greatest games

BackerKit surveys are GO! Please respond this week if you can!
about 5 years ago – Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 11:16:53 AM

Just a short update to say that we're sending BackerKit surveys today. It would be immensely helpful if folks could respond by Friday. If you have backed at a level that includes a listing in the book's acknowledgements section, we need to have your survey by then to include your name in the list. If we don't have your response by the weekend, we will err on the side of protecting your privacy and leave you out of the list. So if you'd like a shout-out as a supporter, please let us know!

Where we are now
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 11:55:08 PM

Hi everybody.

I just wanted to update you on the progress of the project. I know we're behind where we wanted to be at this point, and I'd like to take a minute to explain why.

First, we've had a little difficulty getting a couple of assets in place from games publishers. While we've done our own photography for almost the entirety of the book (my Lightroom catalogue for the project has more than 4,000 shots!), we have been trying to get hold of original art assets for the RPG section, because they look a lot better in print than photographs of pages from their rulebooks. This has been a slower process than I'd bargained for. That's not me complaining about the companies concerned. Some have been very quick to respond, most have been incredibly enthusiastic. They just have to prioritise their own business ahead of replying to media requests, which is understandable. In any case, it's all sorted now.

(Incidentally, we've also used some media images from publishers for things like legacy games, where photographing our review copies would constitute pretty significant spoilers.)

We also ran into a situation where one company suggested we'd need their permission to feature their products in the book. We were pretty confident that this wasn't the case, since editorial content, critique and review are robustly protected under copyright exemptions in the UK and internationally. But we didn't want to take any chances, so we sought some legal advice as a precaution. We turned out to be correct, but I'm glad we took the time to do it rather than leaving ourselves open to legal risks which might have had a more severe impact on production. I also don't think there was any ill will on the part of the company concerned, just a bit of a misunderstanding of the situation.

Finally, there's the fact that dotting our Is and crossing our Ts has simply taken a little longer than I'd bargained for. This is down to my inexperience, and making the book has been a real learning process for me. My background is in radio and online journalism, and this is my first time producing a physical print product. We're making sure that every line of text in the book goes past at least three pairs of eyes before it goes to print.

Barring any unforeseen mishaps, we'll be sending the book to the printer next week. I will update you when that happens. Thanks again for your support and your patience, and I hope you all get to play some cool games over the weekend!

Sharing some photos
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 08, 2019 at 05:05:57 PM

Hello everybody. I've been shooting photos of games at a pretty furious pace. Just wanted to share some with you! We're also ploughing through the page design process much more quickly than I expected, entirely thanks to my dad, a retired newspaper editor with decades of InDesign experience who's got the process down to a very precise science.

It's great being at the tail end of the project!

Very quick update
about 5 years ago – Mon, Mar 04, 2019 at 02:44:31 PM

Hi folks,

So it's official, I quit my day job last week. Unfortunately, it involved some legal stuff (nothing nasty - just standard form-filling and solicitors' advice!) which took up quite a bit more time than I had bargained for. We also had a few more designers getting back to us with their interviews after I thought they weren't going to be participating in the project, which is great, but has necessitated some last-minute changes to the page plan, which all takes time.

The good news is that I'm now free to blast through my remaining work on the book. I expect to have all of my work tied off this week, and we're handing stuff off to proofreaders section-by-section as it's ready rather than waiting until we have everything complete, which should streamline things somewhat.

Finally, the folks at Backerkit have reviewed our backer survey, so we just need to make their suggested tweaks and we can get it out this week.

Thank you so much for your patience. This has been a learning experience for me and I'm going to be in a position to work much more efficiently on next year's edition. I'm already looking forward to seeing some of you at the UK Games Expo.

Backer surveys are coming!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 04:54:06 PM

Hello everyone! I'm aiming to finish off my work on the book over the weekend in a caffeine-fuelled sprint to the finish. From there it'll be a short hop to proofreading, some last-minute revisions and print. In the meantime, I'm getting ready to send backer surveys to get the information we need to ship your rewards. The surveys are just being checked over by Backerkit now, and you should receive them next week.

These will ask for your address details, and also how you want your name to appear in the book. I'd be really grateful if you could respond quickly because we need this info before we go to print. If we don't hear back from you on this, we will err on the side of protecting your privacy and NOT include your name in the list. You can also explicitly tell us that you don't want to be listed by responding NONE to the appropriate survey question.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be at this stage. The team has put literally thousands of hours of work into the project, and it's great that with your help we're bringing it to fruition.