Happy New
Year's! What's that? I'm three weeks late?
Well, it's still January, so let's just embrace it. Sometimes you don't get out your newsletter with any sort of regularity or punctuality, and that's okay. Because you've been
really busy, and writing newsletters is hard.
But let me start off this thing by announcing that Gloomhaven is now #1 in the BoardGameGeek.com rankings, which is very exciting to me! You probably already knew that, though, seeing as how it happened about three weeks ago, too. Still, it's what I lead every conversation with now, so it is to be expected that I would rave about it here as well.
I remember going to a journalism convention in high
school, and I received a "Superior" award (basically 1st place) for my entertainment writing. I was so amused that the award was called "Superior" that I went around announcing to people that I was superior. Not, like, random people, but my friends, who I thought would be amused by it as well. I guess it wasn't as amusing as I thought, though, because one of them actually wrote in my yearbook: "It usually doesn't go over too well when you tell people you're superior to
them, kidding or not." (This is the actual quote - I've got my yearbook in front of me right now to make sure, because that is what a superior journalist does.)
You better believe that being #1 on BGG will be the
first thing I tell her about if I ever see her again.
...Okay, well, maybe not, that would be weird. (And, for the record, I don't remember ever saying I was superior to others, I just remember announcing I was
superior - you know, in a general sense.)
But anyway, we've gotten way off track here. The point is that I am happy for the achievement. The BGG rankings mean different things to different people, but for me,
the list was super-important when I was first discovering the hobby. I used it to determine what games I should try out, and some of those top games are still among my favorite: Agricola, Caylus, etc.
Ever since I started designing games, it has been a goal of mine to get into the top 100 of these rankings. I could never have even fathomed being #1 until about a year ago. It's like making an indie film in your garage and then expecting to get an Oscar - it wasn't even on my radar. Now that it has miraculously happened, though, I can say that it is the highest possible honor I could ever imagine.
Seriously, I'm not sure where to go from here.
