Fifty Reviews!

A few weeks ago I wrote my 50th review on BoardGameGeek. Since they introduced the system-awarded microbadges I'm trying to collect a set of Golden Session Reporter, GeekLister, Reviewer and Image Uploader. I have gold in the first two, and silver in the others. I don't even have copper in anything else, so I have no ambitions there, but for the record the options are File Uploader and GeekBadge Designer.

Anyway, to get my silver Reviewer badge I needed to have written 50 reviews, and I spent a long time at about 41. Now that I've got to 50 I'm thinking of the gold badge for which I need 100, and I'm thinking that's a long way off. I just checked to see how long it has taken me to get to 50. My first review was submitted in November 2004, so that's 4 years! There's no way I plan to take 4 years to get the gold badge, so I'll have to up my rate.

Fifty is a lot of reviews! I got to 40 without really noticing I was doing it, so I wondered where they all came from. Here's the year-by-year breakdown.

2004 - 2 reviews
2005 - 19 reviews
2006 - 1 review
2007 - 15 reviews
2008 - 17 reviews (and one more submitted)

There were a few patches where I wrote a lot. In 2005 I acquired quite a few games from thrifting, and had some quite odd ones lying around the house. I always feel more motivated to write about a game that's uncommon so that I can get the word out about it. For example, I wanted to warn other people away from Batman & Robin - the Board Game, and wanted to alert them to the pleasures of Nodwick - the Card Game. In 2006 my life was very focused on things other than writing game reviews, though I did play a lot of games that year, and the only game I managed to review was The 24 Card Game, and that's STILL the only article for that game.

In 2007 I found a few more odd games, particularly from Scrabblette's visit to India, so they needed to be talked about. One day in December I figured it would be mighty useful of me to talk about all of the Runebound expansions I own, and I reviewed 6 of them in one day. Then at the beginning of this year I played a lot of children's games, assessing them for an award, and so wrote reviews of them as well. It seems people want to review the games they want to play, whereas I like to review the games I think people will be glad to find any information about. No four year olds are going to review games, so I'm happy to do that job on their behalf!

That was where things stood when the microbadges arrived, and I decided I had to write more reviews. It's a little hard to get motivated sometimes, which is why progress has been slow. I've mostly continued reviewing word games and children's games, but occasionally I'll write about something more popular. I just HAD to write a review of Rheinlander because I thought Greg Schloesser's review didn't do one of my favourite games any justice.

Yesterday I wrote my 51st review, and today my 52nd, 53rd and 54th. I don't know how long this burst of energy will last, but I can't see myself knocking out another 46 reviews this evening. I'm not Tom Vasel, after all :-).