It's a Siteiversary!

Who doesn’t like a good birthday?

That’s what we’re here to celebrate today! Yes, our little Republic is now officially two years old, and we want to thank you for making that possible. Running a website such as this takes an inordinate investment of time and effort just to keep things rolling. There are times when even getting games to the table can be an endeavor, let alone organizing a podcast, arranging interviews, writing content articles, editing, coding the site (yeah we do that too), and trying to stay on top of the latest industry news.

The system works!

That also says nothing of the actual game reviews we put out, which, trust me, take a lot longer than they may seem to write. In that same way that you can tell from watching someone’s video reviews that it took substantial time to film and edit, so too do those reviews. Because of how we frame them, we put in a lot of thought and more than a few playthroughs to determine which Archetypes a game would be good for.

Before we first launched, I was insistent on gauging a game’s worth through a different lens than a simple first-person perspective. To me, saying “Ryan and Dave liked it but Erin and Joe didn’t”, wasn’t the most ideal way for us to talk about how good (or bad) a game may be. Hence our approach, which is not only unique, but we have actually found out first-hand that it’s a great way to ascertain which games to pull off the shelf for someone who hasn’t played them before. Indeed, the Archetype System is something we here at the Cardboard Republic are very proud of.

That all said, we do this – all of this – as a labor of love for our shared hobby, and we’ll continue to do so as long as people find it useful. We are so so so thankful to you who come along with us on our now two-year ride. To our readers and listeners (and watchers – whha??), all of us here are both supremely humbled and incredibly appreciative that you find us a useful resource for gaming-related tidbits. It may be a lot of work on our part, often with late nights and last minute deadlines, and all on top of full-time jobs, but eh, who needs free time?

Really, thank you for making it all feel worth it. We mean that.

Our Own Phase Three

Now, not to rest on our laurels, we’re also pressing forward into year three. It’s crazy to think it’s been another full year since our last siteiversary, but here we are.

No good Republic would do well without a roadmap of some kind on where we’d like to go next, and since we’re celebrating, I’d like to share with you a few of the things we’re hoping to work on. In no particular order, here’s a couple things we’re hoping to have in store by this time next year:

More Content: As I have mentioned previously, one of our regular writers departed from us early in the year and another was on hiatus for much of 2014. We like having lots of different voices on the site about the gaming universe, and we are actively looking for new contributors. If you enjoy gaming and blogging, you can email us for details. We’re pretty open-minded on ideas. So if you have one…
Revived Weekly News: We had to table our news posting not long ago because we had trouble keeping up. We’d like to revive it in 2015 though. If this sounds like something you’d like to help with, contact us above!
More Google Hangouts: This is such a great resource, and one we feel isn’t being fully utilized on our ends. We’re hoping to get some more mileage out of it in the future.
Site Tweaking: Since we’re also the site coders, many of the tweaks we wanted to implement in 2014 didn’t happen. I’m hoping to rectify that in the months ahead, though, again, we could use some help since we’re not an actual programmers…
Archetype Quiz 2.0: We love our custom-designed Archetype quiz, but in its current form there are two issues with it. One, while mostly accurate, it has been known on rare occasion to throw some outlier results. Two, it doesn’t fit with the site’s current aesthetics. Both of these will be corrected as soon as possible.
The Youtubes: For reals. While we have no plans on switching to video reviews as there are so many great folks who do that format incredibly well already, we do have project in the works all the same. We aren’t saying more than that at this time, except to add that it is a fan-made idea. A number of you suggested it a while back and we liked it so much that we’re going to try to make it happen.

Once again, thanks to all of you for making this crazy idea of ours possible. We really appreciate it.

Until next time, may your dice always come up sixes. And game on!