I wanted to introduce you all to a favorite blog of mine, Meeple Like Us. Meeple Like Us is a tabletop gaming blog focusing on inclusion and thoughtful critique of games and game culture. The blog focuses in on accessibility with those who have disabilities and impairments. They also include evaluative and academic journalism that describes the feelings and emotions a game can evoke within you, rather than “This game does this, this and this. Here is a rule, here is how it works. It’s a good rule. It’s a good game”. That kind of writing is what would usually be found within a a Board Game Geek forum post, or what a cut-and-dry reviewer on Youtube would say. Instead, MLU provides introspective looks into the feelings conveyed throughout the gameplay session, while touching on the rules every so often. If anything, they keep it within the fiction when referring to rules. My favorite example of this would be their review of Mysterium (which is one of my favorite large group games)! Along with every review, MLU do an accessibility teardown of the same so those who are interested, but worried about certain factors involving the components or content within the contained story.

The accessibility teardown is a extremely handy tool that would help a large portion of players who want to play board games, but don’t know enough about the contents. You don’t want to purchase a board game only to find out that you cannot identify which colored components are which, just because you have color blindness. You also wouldn’t want to participate in a game that demonstrates sensitive topics openly, without warning, with the potential to become uncomfortable. These accessibility teardowns goes through each game MLU reviews. They analyze components and content with different tools and frameworks for color blindness, physical impairments, emotiveness and other potential issues a player could face. They also include their game rating (1-5 scale (potentially 0?)) within a master list MLU provided.

Meeple Like Us are currently in a blitzkrieg of sorts within the Board Game Journalism scene. They posted a critique of the current state of this journalism, where MLU argues that the way the community discusses games is inappropriate. Going back to where I speak on how some outlets report on games in a very dry fashion, MLU hones in on this thought that Boardgame Journalism doesn’t HAVE to be like that. There is a market for that type of review, sure. But more memorable reviews, articles and posts happen to be those where the author described their feelings throughout the game. An adrenaline rush during a dice roll, the absolute rage you fly into having to give up your favorite item, other anecdotal stories that describes the GAME. Instead, a lot of writers fall into describing the barebones gameplay. The card stock is cheap, this mechanic makes the game slower, other flavors added in to try and make the most objective view possible. You cannot write games without some bias, so why not lean into it? Being at this crossroads in my life, I’m trying to figure out what to do. This article inspired me, and made my direction a little clearer. Thank you, Meeple Like Us!

Gravitymagician, singing off!