When Bill Abner offered me the opportunity to write for Gameshark.com, I couldn’t help but jump at the chance and I did so only to find out later that the pay was just a little bit more than seventeen cents and some pocket lint. (But it’s lint of the highest quality… - ed) For one thing, paid gigs in the world of hobby game writing are just shy of non-existent. But for another, it was an opportunity for me to write about board games at a video games website. It was a way for me to be a voice for the hobby—to reach out beyond the middle-aged mindset that has settled in and crippled hobby gaming, it was a way to get the word out to a hopefully new and hopefully receptive audience that would be more youthful, culturally aware, and interested in seeing whatever it is I happened to be ranting or raving about in any given week. I can’t measure whether or not those goals have been successful after these 100 articles, but I’ve gotten one person out there to pick up a copy of SETTLERS OF CATAN, THE WORLD CUP GAME, CIVILIZATION, or anything else I’ve written about- even if I’ve trashed it- and then share it with friends and family then I’ve done what I think is pretty good work.
That brings me around to the closing paragraph of Cracked LCD #1, which may as well be the closing paragraph of Cracked LCD #100 too-
So then, I invite you all to my gaming table here at GameShark to check out some really great board games. I hope to enlighten those of you who might not be aware of what’s been going on in other areas of the gaming hobby and maybe I can turn you on to something new to do with your friends on a rainy day. Or maybe I can make you one of us…a dice-tossing chithead prowling eBay for moldy, long-forgotten bookcase games and constantly wondering when the next Fantasy Flight big box game is coming out. If you’re already in the board gaming brotherhood, it’s great to have you here and I hope I can entertain you with insights and ideas that aren’t necessarily the pro-Eurogame “party line” expressed on other board gaming sites. I’m committed to promoting this hobby because I love it, I write about it because I love it, and I believe that if your idea of “gaming” stops at a gamepad or ends in a wall outlet then you’re missing out on a lot of fun.
Volume One of this series of books does a grand job of introducing gaming to the masses, but offers a lot of familar information for gamers already in the know.
