Happy Birthday Creaking Shelves!

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to meeeeee – oh! How long have you been sat there?

Goodness! Creaking Shelves is 1 year old today! What a year it has been. We’ve taken our first faltering steps into the board gaming world and while our first words may have been little more than incoherent babbling we are finally starting to make some sense. Hopefully this time next year we’ll be speaking in full sentences! And like any new parent I’ve had a few sleepless nights. Fortunately in my case, those were generally spent playing board games.

So 1 year in, 170+ articles written, 1200 Twitter followers and 350 on Instagram. Hundreds of games played, thousands of photos taken and I really don’t want to know how many Kickstarter project pages read. I’ve worked and built relationships with publishers from the smallest Kickstarter companies through to the biggest distributors in the UK. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting (even interviewing) some big names in the industry but the best bits have always been just playing hilarious and brilliant games with friends new and old!

While we have definitely had some successes, I want to see Creaking Shelves continue to grow, to reach greater heights and have more fun doing so! This means we need a plan…

Kickstart Your Month – You’ll have already seen our new Kickstarter coverage. A weekly article was just too great a drain on my time (each typically took around 8 hours in research, writing and editing) and so a new format was called for. Moving to a monthly article lets me focus on what I consider to be the best projects, providing more value for you (I hope), and letting me work faster. So that I can spend more time on cooler projects…

Cult of the New – Only the freshest milkshakes bring the boys to the yard and so I am starting to direct my attention more towards the bigger new releases. This means less emphasis on Kickstarter previews. I’ve done reviews for a number of games over the past few months that simply haven’t brought in much interest and I have to respond to the wishes of my audience. I’ll still consider reviews of Kickstarter games, but I have to be more discerning in those that I choose to look at.

Look backs – Something a number of podcasts do is to return to games they reviewed a year ago and see how they have held up over time. I like this format and am considering doing a monthly look back at the games I reviewed that month last year. Crazy to think this is a thing I can actually do now…

Interviews – I’ve got a few interviews under my belt now and it’s always great to hear about the experiences of other members of the industry. I’m looking forward to doing some more of these!

Game design – I used to play around a bit with game design but then the pressures of the blog took over and sapped all my time! I’ve had fun, but I want to get back to designing games and hopefully that can contribute material for this blog in an interesting way. My main focus will continue to be reviews but this is something I intend to spend more time on so I’m hoping you’ll like to hear about it too!

Videos – Say what!? Oh yeah. The fact is written material only gets you so far and video is a medium I’ve been considering playing with for a while. We’re still a way off from Creaking Shelves TV (or whatever) but expect to see more hints in the coming months!

In other news… I’m moving house! This weekend! I’ve tried to prepare as much as possible but there will likely be some disruption to my article schedule over the next week or so as I settle in and learn to adapt to a new life style, as well as find new gaming groups to play with!

 

So those are some ideas I’m playing about with, from already implemented to a little way into the future. What are your thoughts on my new plans? What would you be interested in seeing? Let me know!