The Boardgames Chronicle in 2024 – analysis

Welcome to the second post in the series, which will summaries my boardgame 2024 year as well as my plans for 2025. If you would like to see the first article, check this out: The Boardgames Chronicle 2024 most often played games.

Following the last years’ example, I am going now to look back at The Boardgames Chronicle in its entire performance. By this I mean Blog, You Tube Channel as well as cooperation with Cube4Me. Reflecting upon this statement, I can only wonder, how the scope of my activity expanded over the years. Which is good of course!

Looking back at 2024, we all known these were very uneasy – or even turbulent – times, with conflicts all over the world, politicians making their statements and things we deemed as certain questioned by many. What one might expect, is that this of course had a definite impact on behavioral patterns, especially in online media. So how did it go? What trends can we observe? Let us see!

BLOG

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	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Views	74,683	393,948	487,253	446,883	450,568	402,228
Visitors	41,271	211,265	253,953	242,778	250’025	217,426
Likes	362	774	973	1005	980	847
Comms	195	501	509	448	547	383

The 2024 was a pretty decent year for the blog, with over 400k visits. However, it was smaller than previous year – something which we observe in many cases on the fellow content creators blogs. One of the contributing factors was of course collapse of Twitter (now X) as one of the main mediums for the wargamers. Mastodon did not really filled the gap, and BlueSky is just starting.

Another prominent factor was definitely change in Google algorithm. I am not talking about the small updates which they do all the time but the large one at the onset of 2024. It promotes the content which definitely is much easier to digest than reviews of political or historical wargames. Does that discourages us, content creators? On the contrary!

What is of course evident for me – and also when you analyze above data – is the fact that after the heavy pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, it is much harder to catch the readers attention – in the world where the data and information is produced in quantities never before achievable, span of focus is measured in seconds rather than hours or even minutes.

My prominent post series

Over to most juicy topic! Another year in a row, the most successful was Gloomhaven & Frosthaven 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 below:

Except for those two series – which were responsible for huge part of all the visits to the site – there were couple of other prominent efforts. I had a chance to play a lot of new games – both published in 2024 but also earlier years – and share my initial impressions (after one or two first plays) or full reviews (once thoroughly played the title) with the Readers. Among multitude of the materials, the following are worth mentioning – not only because they attracted highest visit number, but also due to the scope they covered:

• First Impressions for Dune: Imperium – Uprising – that was my birthday present from my friends. I really enjoyed that game, playing solo and multiplayer. One wonders how a fresh implementation of already good game can be great.
• First Impressions for Panzers Last Stand: Battles for Budapest, 1945 – it takes time and devotion to get into Battalion Combat Series from Multi Man Publishing. But this is so much worth it. I had a blast with Panzers Last Stand and I am sure to play further titles in the series.
• [REVIEW] Triomphe à Marengo – this was a unique experience; a no-dice game, with thematic and beautiful map and great components. Still need to play more of it!
• Last Hundred Yards – Mission #1 On Their Own – here is example of one of my online games – this time with Dave via Vassal. I appreciate Last Hundred Yards although Combat Commander Europe stays a my top tactical game.
• First Impressions for Vijayanagara from GMT Games – here we have probably the most positive surprise of the whoel year. The COIN-adjacent game about medieval India made a huge impression on all of us playing it. Great mechanics, balanced play for three players plus superb and beautiful components!
• [REVIEW] Plantagenet: Cousins’ War for England, 1459 – 1485 – so far my most played and favorite Levy & Campaign game. Was such a fun to bring this to the table – both live and via Rally the Troops. Can’t wait to see next installment – Seljuk!
• [REVIEW] Traces of War by VUCA Simulations – VUCA makes not only beautiful but also interesting and accessible games. Traces of War are a good representation ff this. It has some issue with victory conditions; still gives a lot of fun when played.

Traffic Sources:

Let us have a look at another of interesting statistic – traffic sources:

Again, and not surprising, the top group are the English-speaking readers, from United States, Great Britain and Canada (thanks Dave!). Thank you so much guys! Of course, quite a large group reads the posts locally, in Poland. On top of this, I have also pretty broad audience 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 Cook Islands, Vanuatu or Marshall Islands. It is great to see your blog read all around the world!

YouTube Channel

That was definitely one of the fastest growing areas for me last year. I love talking about games, showing them, playing them and reporting – also via video format. The growth was nice, both in views and watch time of about 30%. I also hit the magic 2500 Subscribers barrier – which proves that this focus was worth the effort.

And what was the best – in terms of views and likes – content created? You would not be surprised – some of my favorite wargames! Just have a look at those interesting titles:

This year I am going to continue my YouTube experiments – with different types of videos and materials; it will always be a supportive effort to blog, but I admit – giving me a lot of satisfaction too!

Cooperation with Cube4Me

This is definitely another area I am extremely proud of. Poland based blogger and Poland based 18XX fan who runs the games components shop combined their efforts to create a unique series of products – tailor made storage and sorting solutions. It took a lot of effort and time investment but the satisfaction is great – and I truly hope you guys also benefit from those great sets!

You can find their great products always here:

• https://cube4me.com/product-category/wargames-sets/

Summary /  Comments:

Reflecting upon 2024 I can conclude that this was a good, satisfying year for me as a content creator. Running blog, YouTube channel, Storage Solutions enterprise, trip to Essen Fair where I could meet a lot of familiar faces (Clio in 2023, Wolfgang and Uwe in 2024), and many, many more smaller events, ideas and plans. I am really satisfied and glad. What is most important, I still have time to play boardgames 🙂

I believe this is also a very good opportunity to say huge thank you all the Readers, Subscribers, Players, Content Creators, Designer – to everybody who contributes to our hobby and finds The Boardgames Chronicle content worth spending time with. Thank you – without your support I would definitely not have so much energy continue with what I am doing!

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