I created Punchboard because I like writing, board games, and telling people about board games.
My reviews will usually be in the 1000-1500 word range. The average reading speed of an adult is approximately 240 words per minute1, which means if you fall into the category of ‘average adult’ it’ll only take you between four and six minutes to read my reviews.
My reviews reflect my own way of talking. That is to say, I’ll use plain English the vast majority of the time, and I’ll try to make sure my own personality and sense of humour come across. I might make up my own words once in a while, but on the whole, I try to keep things easy to read. I test my writing with tools to make sure that on scales like the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease scale, I stay well above a score of 60, which means people from the age of 12 upwards will have no trouble reading it.
My reviews will always be honest. I have never, and will never, take payment or any kind of compensation for a favourable review. The same goes for crowdfunding previews. Many of the ‘big names’ create paid previews for games, but paid previews cannot provide opinions. They might show you the pieces of the game, and tell you something looks cool, but you still don’t know the answer to the main question – Is the game good or not? My previews will always give my full opinion. Any time the game has been provided to me for free, I will still give my honest opinion, and declare how I got it. I make all partners aware of this before agreeing to work with them. Does this mean my reviews are 100% free of bias? Of course not. That’s an impossibility. However, I promise to be honest in what I write.
I’m not doing this to make money. I created Punchboard because I have a passion, and that hasn’t changed. I ran the site at my own expense long before the Ko-fi membership existed, and I’ll continue to, even if I have no members. I only have two tiers of membership, at £1 and £3. Compare that to other creators. At the time of writing, I have eight paid members who give me a gross amount of £22 per month. Paypal takes their fees for processing those payments, which means I see around £17.50 of that. My hosting costs for December were £9.18 for my Google Workspace, and £13.62 for Google Cloud Compute. Even with my current members’ help, which is hugely appreciated, I still make a loss every month, let alone paying for the domain, and other bits and pieces.
I want more people to enjoy this wonderful hobby. The reason I want people to read my reviews isn’t to inflate my ego. I want to communicate my enthusiasm for tabletop games of all kinds. I like to look at the tangential aspects of the hobby too; things like mental health, community, and inclusion. While I admit that I do get a kick out of seeing lots of visitors to this site and getting positive feedback from readers, the reason I promote my work on the various social channels and tag everyone involved is to spread the word.
