Paul: You got here safely!
All right, everybody quiet down! Girls, your dormitories are over there. Boys, your rooms are still under construction. You’ll be sleeping in the… toilets? That can’t be right.
If anyone had any questions, we answer them in an FAQ after the jump.
You’re making the jump? Okay, hold on. Not to me.
Q: I’m hungry
That’s not a question.
Q: I’m hungry and WHAT ARE YOU DOING
We’re building something. This site you’re on is the work of Pretend Money, a collaboration of writers, videographers, coders and designers who want to build the world’s best board game resource. It’s also not finished yet. Don’t touch anything!
And by not finished yet, we mean Shut Up & Sit Down is just the start.
Board games are incredible these days. They deserve the best writing, but also the best tech. And so do you! And so we made this.
Q: “Just the start”? What’s next?
You’ll have to wait and see! But you’ll love it, and it’s important.
Q: Are you going to be bringing over videos from the old site?
Quinns: Afraid not. The old Shut Up & Sit Down site saw us using about a thousand songs we don’t have the rights to, even though Paul is friends with Queen. That’s fine! It was all legal so long as we didn’t intend to make any money.
Q: MONEY?!
MONEY! Do you have any money? We don’t!
Somewhere between Paul and myself almost freezing to death in our Bang! review and our divine director doing a second take of walking backwards up a 200 step staircase in the Necreaux review, it became apparent that someone was going to have to start paying us.
I kid. Mostly. The truth is that we started Shut Up & Sit Down to get more people into this hobby. We’re thrilled with what we’ve achieved, but committing ourselves to the World’s Best Board Game Coverage takes a lot of our time. If we wanted to produce more content, we were going to have to make rent doing it.
Q: Wait. You’re making money now? How?
Affiliate links. See all the helpful “Buy this now!” buttons linking to either Amazon or the iOS App Store? When you follow those links and buy anything, we get a cut of the retail price.
Q: Does that mean I can support you by…
Paul: …by buying everything you ordinarily would from Amazon, iTunes or the App Store by going through one of our links first? Yes. This would be absolutely wonderful of you, and won’t cost you anything extra either.
Quinns: If you care about the work we do, please, please bookmark this link for Amazon, and this link for the App store if you’re reading on an iPad or iPhone.
Go through them before you buy anything, from a board game, to painkillers, to Justin Bieber’s new album, and you’ll make sure a small percentage of the purchase goes to us instead of Amazon or Apple. They’re okay, they won’t mind.
Q: Does this mean you’re going to stop publishing negative reviews?
Nope.
Q: Waaait. Amazon? I thought SU&SD was all about buying from your friendly local game store?
We are. Having a local retailer is wonderful, if you’re lucky enough to have one. But the stronger the digital community that we can build, the more people we can get buying games and supporting the hobby in their own way.
Paul: I do not know who Justin Bieber is. Why would you buy his album with painkillers?
Quinns: Take my word for it.
Online retail is actually one of the reasons the sales of board games have been increasing for the last ten years. As gamers, we’re going to keep buying from our local shops, and we’re going to be buying online, too. You should do whatever works for you. Just keep buying and keep playing. But if there’s a chance you were going to go through Amazon anyway, it would help us a lot.
Q: I’m overwhelmed!
Here, have a lollipop.
Q: schlurp schlurp Urgh, it’s toffee flavoured.
Yeah we took all the fruit ones for ourselves.
Q: What does this mean for the future of SU&SD? *schlurp*
Nothing but good stuff. To start with, it means more news, podcasts and videos, as well as actual board game journalism we’ll pay our lovely friends to grapple with.
Paul: Long term, it means whatever you guys want. We want a forum where you can hang out, talk to us and talk to each other. (It’s a bit like bar, but with no music or drinks or food or floor.)
It means much more diverse content too, lots from both us and from other gamers who can cover areas where we’re weaker, like war games and role playing games. We’re going to spread our reach wider than before, all the way to war games and role playing games, like a big gaming… yawn?
It also means more of a chance for us to travel to board game conventions, try new formats, or both at once- we’d love to host epic-scale games here in London, and film the nonsensical results.
With all this, we’re still going to stay scrappy and strange and do what makes sense to us. I also want to add that it’s a delight to say that we’ll be able to pay the friends who will be stepping forward to help out. You’ll recognise faces who’ve lent a hand in the past, for which we’ve been massively grateful, but now it’s time to really acknowledge their contribution.
Q: Okay, yeah, whatever. Where am I sleeping again?
Just down the hall. Welcome home.
