The Boardgames Chronicle blog in 2021 – analysis

As at the beginning of the last year I am going to look back at my blog and analyze the previous year. Unfortunately, once again this was time of pandemic, isolation & lockdowns – which definitely impacted behavioral patterns, especially in social media. So how did it go? What trends do I observe? Let us see!

Stats

The wordpess.com is really great as far as statistics are concerned. It shows a lot of interesting data based on which I will try to draw some conclusions:

Area	2018	2019	2020	2021
Views	26,744	74,683	393,948	487,253
Visitors	14,858	41,271	211,265	253,953
Likes	104	362	774	973
Comments	166	195	501	509

It is good to see that the trend with increase in number of views as well as visitors continues. I think there are at least couple of reasons for this. First, pretty obvious factor was the spread of pandemic and resulting isolation & lockdowns. That of course forced a lot of people towards the online media. Secondly, I continued multiple post series which proved to be so successful in 2020. On top of this, I invested time into my YouTube channel which had also impact on the blog.

Except for above, pretty straightforward observations, I think huge effort put into creation of versatile content, which I serve regularly and of course in nice graphical form – as you know, I love all those arrows in my session reports or close-ups in review articles – has a huge impact. Of course, it would not be possible if not for the interest of Dear Readers! Thank you!

My prominent post series

Instead of showing the most viewed posts table, I would like to focus on articles series created or continued in 2021. Second year in a row, the most successful was Gloomhaven strategy-related set, which went over the roof as far as views are concerned. I also continued with My top 3 games… series – a ranking of titles in particular category I know and love to play.

More about those two series and links to particular posts – created in 2021 – below.

Except for those two series – which were responsible for huge part of all visits to the site – there were couple of other prominent endeavors. Firstly, I wrote couple of long-overdue REVIEWs for my all-time favorite games, among them:

• Paths of Glory
• Combat Commander Europe
• Empire of The Sun
• Here I Stand

Secondly, as you very well know, I am big fun of picture-rich Session Reports. Thus this is not surprising that some of the content created in 2021 had a really great reception. Among them:

• Demo of “Undaunted Reinforcements”
• Once again introducing Combat Commander Europe – #1 Fat Lipki
• Atlantic Chase – playing solitaire Blockade Scenarios
• Empire of the Sun – Playtesting Burma Scenario

Traffic Sources:

That is another kind of interesting statistic:

As in previous year, the top group are the English-speaking readers, from US, UK and Canada (thank you Dave!). Not surprisingly, I have also pretty many readers in Europe – including Germany (thanks Clio!), Spain, France, Italy & Netherlands. It is also encouraging to see so many views from Australia!

Of course, each and every entry to the site brings joy, even from such distant places like Swaziland, Botswana or Papua New Guinea. It is great to see your blog read all around the world!

Summary /  Comments:

I will not not deny it, I am deeply happy & satisfied with my blog. To be clear, what I mean by this are not sheer numbers, but the community I managed to build across the world around it as well as the joy of writing and opportunity to express myself.

With that said, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all readers, subscribers and boardgamers for interest in this blog. Without you I would not have energy to devout so much time to it. Thank you!

PS. Any suggestions or comments what can I do differently / additionally are welcome!