Hey there, readers. We’re sorry for the interruption of your regularly (or irregularly) scheduled board game content, but we have an important message to share today.
The short version of which is this: as of June 1, The Cardboard Republic is going on a four-month hiatus.
Not shutting down. Not going away. But it’s time for a little break. It’s not a decision we’ve come to lightly. Yet if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s also been long overdue.
We’ve been making content since 2012, with our first planning meetings that summer forever etched into our memories. Since the very beginning we wanted to create a site that took a different approach to board game review coverage, focusing not on whether I liked a game or Ryan liked a game and instead of whether you, the reader, would like it. That’s how the Archetype system was born. (This is why unlike most reviewers you never find us using the standard first person approach.) We also wanted to dedicate part of our efforts towards smaller and independent publishers rather than only the names and titles that often get the most attention. At the time there weren’t a lot of sites doing that. Which is how The CR came to be. And we’ve spent close to the last decade on that mission.
The board gaming scene has changed a lot since 2012. The hobby has exploded in popularity, crowdfunding has skyrocketed, and entirely new modes to create and share gaming content exists now that didn’t before. For a while we felt we’d been keeping up ok, but then came the pandemic. And like a lot of sites it hit us particularly hard. Because of the nature of our Archetype review system, we rely heavily on our play groups for comprehensive thoughts – which we had very limited access to during that nearly two year stretch – making regular output difficult. We also had attrition from members due to various life events, which only compounded matters. All of this has affected our readership and engagement (as is the nature of content creation), but interest from designers and publishers certainly has not diminished. We’re just as busy as ever. The result, however, is a cycle where we constantly feel like we’re playing catchup, which is preventing us getting back to a routine schedule – let alone implementing a bunch of new ideas we’ve been sitting on over the years.
Putting this all together, we’ve come to the realistic conclusion that for a team of our size who aren’t doing this as a full-time gig, there are some changes behind the scenes that we just can’t make while also attempting to put out regular articles, posts, and updates. Hence, a hiatus. We’re planning to use our time off to update the site, build up our backlog of content, implement some new features, and…maybe play some games?
While we’ll be closed for renovations this summer, we’ll still be reachable via email or on social media for questions and inquiries. Above all, please continue to watch this space and we’ll be back before you know it!
-Erin, Ryan, Dave, and rest of the CR crew
