Three months ago, I encountered perhaps the worst board game I’ve ever played. This thing was truly non-functional, less coherent than almost any prototype that gets sent my way, a misbegotten experiment in game timers and open-ended negotiation. Worse, it was supposedly a game “about” something, the passage of time and the rise and fall of civilizations, the way societies are imprinted by their leaders. Surprise surprise, even those concepts were fumbled.

I’m never going to write about it.

Maybe that isn’t what you expected. Space-Biff! features a number of negative reviews. Some of them are scathing. Quite often, I’ve been told that it’s the inclusion of negative coverage that makes my site come across as trustworthy. So why wouldn’t I take this particular game down a peg?

In the interests of transparency, but also hopefully some good old-fashioned uncommon sense, today I’m going to talk about my thought process for what gets covered — and what doesn’t.

I. Prototypes

One of my greatest pleasures in running Space-Biff! is uncovering a game that might not have otherwise gotten its time in the spotlight. I won’t title titles — that’s more self-aggrandizing than my mother raised this boy to be comfortable with — but every year I hear back from a small handful of designers that my review helped connect their game with the right audience. Those are the moments I’m proudest of the work I do.

But there’s a dark side to this process: lots and lots of prototypes. In some cases, very bad, underdeveloped prototypes. Digital prototypes. On Tabletop Simulator, operating under the eye of its inexplicable physics engine. With modules that don’t always load properly. Being told “pretend this blank white card is the image I just sent you in chat” never bodes well for the next two hours of my life. I’m embarrassed to admit that more than once I’ve nodded off during a particularly bad rules explanation.

For the most part, this process is worth the effort. I enjoy playing bad games as much as I enjoy playing good games. Okay, not quite as much. Still, there’s some pleasantness to be found in stumbling through a half-functional title, and I prefer to take my joy where I can find it. Discovery is part of the gig. You don’t find gemstones without digging through the muck.

Pretty often, though, a prototype won’t be worth the effort of writing a review. In those cases, my policy is to decline to write about it at all. In the event that I was sent a physical prototype, I’m happy to ship it back.

So what’s happening here? In some cases, these prototypes are on crowdfunding platforms! Shouldn’t I warn my readers against backing a board game that will almost certainly not be worth their time and money?

Probably. Trust me, that’s something I worry about. One of the functions of formal criticism is curation. My role, in part, is to help people find the good stuff and avoid the bad. If directly asked, I’m happy to share my opinion on pretty much any game.

But there are two considerations that prevent me from negatively covering a game in its prototype phase.

First, these games are not finished. Oh, maybe their designers think they are. Maybe a game won’t receive the necessary development before it’s actually printed. That’s always possible. But more often than not, designers want their games to be good. So I’ll give some feedback, send back the prototype, and wait like everybody else to see if the game that eventually appears is worthwhile. Because that’s the only method of writing about board games that feels internally consistent to me. Writing about a game before publication feels like the equivalent of critiquing a book in its alpha stage when it’s full of typos and still needs some narrative tightening, or posting a movie clip before it’s been shaped into a theatrical edit.

This raises a corollary: why even write previews, then? That’s a great question, and it’s one I struggle with on a regular basis. There’s probably an industry element at play. In our corner of the world, crowdfunding is the surest avenue for small studios or independent designers to create their work. Grants and mentorships are becoming more common, but they’re still scarce on the ground, and let’s face it, publishing a board game is a complicated, frightening, and expensive process compared to, say, putting together an e-book. Without the occasional preview — discerning previews, I hope, since that’s the point of this entire section — some of these games would never exist.

Which brings us to the second reason I often decline to write negatively about prototypes: because I hope to keep the boundary between designers and critics as surpassable as possible. I already have a reputation for writing negative reviews. It takes guts to reach out and say, “Hey, Dan, want to take a look at my game?” So it’s prudent to keep that interaction as secure as possible. If somebody shows me a game in its infancy, that’s an act of trust. To turn around and slam that game is not only premature, it also tells that creator — and anyone in that creator’s word-of-mouth network — that I have a reputation for smothering infants in their cribs. It stands to reason that in the long run other designers would hesitate to show me their projects, thus hampering my ability to discover and write about the best titles.

It’s a tricky balancing act, in other words. I want to be transparent and warn my readers not to waste their time, money, and attention on something that isn’t a worthwhile experience, but I also need to remain approachable for first- or second-time designers who might not want to show their project to somebody with a reputation for preventing their games from hitting its funding goal. No man can serve two masters, according to the big guy, but it sounds like that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.

Fortunately, this problem largely solves itself thanks to…

II. Reach

Thus far we’ve been talking about prototypes, usually prototypes cobbled together by smaller publishers or independent designers. But what happens when we’re talking about a prototype (or heck, even a fully published game) by a bigger company? You know the type. Fancy miniatures. Big sprawling boards. Shockingly underwritten rulebooks.

Here’s the thing: those publishers don’t actually care about these internal trolley problems. They don’t need me. They have banner ads on every board game site. Crud, they have ads on every social media site. They have pocket “content creators” who will breathlessly enthuse about each new product. They likely have reserved spots on the shelves of your local game store. In some cases, they literally own their own crowdfunding sites. Cough Gamefound cough.

In other words, they have reach.

Reach is the measure of a game’s capacity to attract audiences. When I talk about discovering some wonderful little board game that would otherwise go unnoticed, I’m not talking about the latest monstrosity by Awaken Realms. I’m talking about a designer who’s wagering her own money to produce three prototypes to send out to reviewers. I’m talking about someone who’s been showing off his passion project at conventions for years. Without wider attention, those projects have so little reach that to not write about them is more or less the same thing as warning my audiences not to play them.

Think of it this way. If I write an article about how you absolutely should not support Shocking Hive Minds of the Aegean III: The Cretan Connection, this has probably been a waste of both of our time. Maybe the article is fun to read. I hope so. Because you had never even heard of Shocking Hive Minds of the Aegean before this instant, and there are three of them (!?), and now you’re sorta curious how this train wreck warranted a third visit. It’s possible that my warning has now proved counterproductive, because now you’re on the Shocking Hive Minds of the Aegean website and you know what? It looks neat. Maybe it’s worth the plunge. By trying to curate everything, I’ve failed as a curator.

At the same time, “reach” is a wishy-washy metric that’s always in flux. At a recent convention, some of us got to talking about a forthcoming game that looks terrible — historically unsound, possibly a fascist dog whistle, just an ill-conceived project all around. I mentioned that I wanted to write about it.

“Wouldn’t that just be giving it oxygen?” somebody asked.

That’s a great point! And not only because it’s the same exact point I made up above! When it comes to declining to write about a project because it doesn’t deserve the extra reach, none of these are surefire boundaries. They’re guidelines. Deciding whether to write about a game is an internal conversation about whether there’s any value to the proposed critique.

For example, some games have such extensive reach that I decline to write about them because what’s the point? Nobody cares about my hot takes on Agricola. I mentally composed a whole essay about Great Western Trail the one time I played it, but there are already half a million copies out there. My thoughts aren’t going to move the needle. I’d rather spend my time on pieces that might add to the conversation rather than adding to the noise.

And anyway, maybe I don’t want to play the game enough to understand it. I am a human after all. Which brings us to…

III. Agony

Maybe I don’t want to play this game anymore. Have you ever thought about that? I doubt it. To some, I am a demigod who happens to waste his time writing about board games. But in fact I am a mortal man of flesh and bone. Also blood. And organ tissue. One or two implants. Also, I only have so many hours in my week. Some of those hours are best spent with my kiddos. Two hours per week at least.

My policy is to play a board game at least three times before I write about it. In practice, I often play a game quite a few more times than that. Given some of the, ah, under-cooked reviews I read here and there, it might behoove certain reviewers to give their games an extra look as well. Spare me your thoughts on balance until you’ve played a game enough times to understand how it works, please.

I also don’t begrudge first-impression reviews or those that throw in the towel. “We couldn’t stand this game for even a quarter of a play” can be useful feedback. It speaks to a certain degree of agony. Maybe a given game is too hard to learn. Maybe it demands too many plays before it comes together. Those, too, are essential textures.

But they aren’t my textures. I want to play a game three times before I voice my opinions on it. If a game is so terrible that I can’t reach three plays — well, now we’re back to the trolley problem of whether to protect my readers or do my bare minimum diligence. The issue isn’t the hoary old ethics of games journalism. It’s a question of what to do when two ethical standards come into friction.

More often than not, my answer is to persevere. See my previous statement on enjoying bad games. Genuinely, I usually do. In some cases, though, I can’t bring myself to experience a game again. Or else my loved ones and play companions can’t. In those cases, it’s time to bow out. I’ll still happily share my opinion on those titles when asked, but the effort of drafting, editing, and publishing a review simply aren’t worth it.

IV. Robot Art

I don’t play games that nobody could be bothered to design. I’ve written about this in the past, but it bears repeating as more and more non-designers approach me with their non-designs. I would rather play your worst prototype than play your best robo-game. No, I will not consider your one exception. That’s it. No more discussion.

Anyway, these are the criteria that spring to mind. Three months ago, I played one of the worst board games of my entire professional and also non-professional life. I will never write about it. Why? Because of every reason I listed here. It was very nearly a prototype — self-published, which isn’t always that far off. It lacked any reach, so there was no pressing need to warn anybody against wasting their precious time, money, and lifeblood on it. Further, the mere thought of playing it two more times was more intrusive than dental work. Anyway, I am fairly certain some of its images were made by unethical and unnatural scraping of real people’s work by soulless corporations for the sake of slowly draining our human verve. Death to the death-bringers.

What did I miss? Are there any other considerations you hope would be included? What are my ethical blind spots?

This article was only possible thanks to the generous donations of my Patreon supporters. My next installment of Talking About Games flips the script and asks, instead, why I write certain reviews at all, especially when it comes to games that are difficult to acquire or experience. Supporters can read it right now.