Hello, fellow Wargamers. I don’t get to write pieces like this too often, but if we can’t have a little heart-to-heart like this at Christmas, when can we? As my trusty squad of four writers winds down for the holiday break, I wanted to take a rare moment to speak directly to you, dear reader, and cast a brief look back over the last 12 months of fun and frolics here at Wargamer Dot Com.
I thought you might appreciate a glimpse inside the machine and a ‘human moment’ from this humble, nerdy quill-wiggler. If not, I hope you’ll excuse my little burst of retrospection in the spirit of holiday goodwill.
Wargamer’s had an excellent year. Despite a lot of ups and downs, our monthly readership is now consistently well over one million and steadily growing. We’ve smashed our own records many times over, with multiple breakthrough stories reaching 70,000, 80,000, and even 100,000 readers. We’ve led the global pack with our coverage of major tabletop gaming milestones in 2023, like the launch of Warhammer 40k 10th edition and successive DnD 5.5e playtests.
But, like every single part of the game industry – and especially games media – it’s also been a tumultuous year, full of challenges, surprises, and, at times, fears for the future. Making a reliable living by doing proper journalism is getting harder and harder these days, which harms everyone, and can often make our industry feel bleak.
Nevertheless, we’ve grown together as a team, as journalists, and as friends – and we’ve played a ton of fantastic games along the way. I’m phenomenally proud of my staff writers and all our intrepid freelancers for 12 months of stellar work.
Wargamer’s continuing success is overwhelmingly down to the world-class journalism Matt Bassil, Mollie Russell, and Tim Linward have produced in 2023 – if I listed even the highlights here, this letter would run to thousands of words. Just click on their names, scroll down, and you’ll see what I mean.
It’s easy to forget, on this internet of ours, that a ‘brand’ like Wargamer is made of real, living people: a hard-bitten little band of writers, researchers, investigators, reporters, reviewers, editors, proof-readers, fact-checkers, image wizards, search engine optimizers, and loads more essential jobs.
If you’re not in the biz, you might also be somewhat surprised to realize that all those diverse, skilled tasks are not done by dozens of people (as they were in the old days) but by just four – all of them, day in, day out.
We’re not complaining; it’s a wonderful job – but it’s not as easy as folks might think, so we always have to remember to rejoice and take pleasure from its best, brightest parts. Number one on that list? It’s a dead heat between two things: each other – and you, our audience.
Wargamer’s writers work remotely rather than in the same room, but we’re a close-knit bunch of comrades in arms, relying on each other to keep growing and improving our games journalism, earning our place as the world’s biggest and best dedicated tabletop games site. None of that would be possible without you all reading, enjoying, sharing, and discussing our articles.
So, from Wargamer’s team to you: a genuine, heartfelt thank you. Your time, your interest, your support, and your clicks make our work possible, and quite literally put food on our tables. I promise we’ll keep up the fight, bringing you even more top quality journalism in 2024 and beyond.
There’s much more great, brand new stuff coming out on the site throughout the winter break, and we’ll be back with you, in our virtual newsroom, from January 2. You better believe we’ll return with all guns a’ blazin’.
In the meantime, I wish you all safe and happy holidays, good food, good company, and good games all round.