The Boardgames Chronicle in 2025 – analysis

Welcome to the second post in the series, which will summaries my boardgame 2025 year as well as my plans for 2026. If you would like to see the first article, check this out: The Boardgames Chronicle 2025 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 2025, we all know it was a very uneasy – at times even turbulent – year, marked by conflicts across the world, political tensions, and long-held assumptions being increasingly questioned. Issues such as tariffs had a tangible impact on industry as well. It is only natural to expect that these factors influenced behavioral patterns, particularly in online media. So how did this translate into actual trends? Let us take a closer look.

BLOG

Stats

WordPress.com offers excellent statistical tools, providing a wealth of interesting data from which I will attempt to draw some conclusions:

Area	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Views	74k	394k	487k	447k	451k	402k	439k
Visitors	41k	211k	254k	243k	250k	217k	228k
Likes	362	774	973	1005	980	847	605
Comms	195	501	509	448	547	383	283

The 2025 was a very good year for the blog, with almost 440k visits. Honestly, I was not expecting this.

This is a bit surprising, as we see a significant outflow from this type of media (where you need to focus on content and read it!) but at the same time – most encouraging. I think we are past the Twitter (now X) collapse and BlueSky nicely filled the niche. As observed last year, Mastodon is slightly losing in this race and I would not be surprised if it cease to exist eventually.

What is evident to me – and also apparent when analyzing the data above – is that after the intense pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, it has become much harder to capture readers’ attention. In a world where data and information are produced in unprecedented volumes, attention spans are increasingly measured in seconds rather than in minutes, let alone hours.

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:

Apart from those two series – which accounted for a large share of the site’s total visits – there were also several other notable contributions. I had the opportunity to play many new games, both releases from 2025 and titles from earlier years, and to share either initial impressions after one or two plays or full reviews once a game had been thoroughly explored. Among the wide range of published material, the following pieces are worth highlighting, not only because they attracted the highest number of visits but also because of the breadth of topics they covered:

• My top anticipated wargames of 2025 – this is probably one of my best-performing posts – shows my anticipation for the coming year and what we can expect from it. Some of the predictions fulfilled (like Seljuk or Congress of Vienna) but for some we are still waiting (Costal Watchers or Guadalcanal: The Battle for Henderson Field, Oct 23-26 1942).
• [REVIEW] Burning Banners – one of my favorite games of 2024 got its review; very popular among players – not surprising, as this is wonderful title!
• [REVIEW] ARCS: Conflict & Collapse in the Reach – interestingly, second review which got most views was ARCS – Base Game. I just finished campaign in that game and Guys, this is getting even better. Stay tuned for another review!
• My pre-orders analysis – what is new and coming! – I thought why not to look at my preorders and discuss with fellow Readers; that was good idea!
• Exciting session with 18XX games! – I am playing not only wargames; some heavy Euro with interesting economic twist are also welcome!
• Spiel Essen 2025 – Wargames Preview – this I started in 2024 and proves to be one of the best performing articles in the year; while SPIEL is mainly EURO games fair, many looks for conflict games there too!
• Kingdom of Heaven – Scenario A – The First Crusade – oh, that was one of the greatest discoveries of 2025. Old game from MMP, which by far is the best strategic level wargame about Crusades. Make sure to check!
• Top 1000 BoardGameGeek Games – One per Hundred – that was a lark – inspired by Dave and Clio; still, very interesting way to look at your games from a BGG perspective!

Traffic Sources:

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

This year wordpress.com allows for more gradual view – not only Countries but also Regions and Cities!

Again, and not surprisingly, 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

This was definitely one of the fastest-growing areas for me last year. I enjoy talking about games, presenting them, playing them, and reporting on them – also in video form. The growth was very encouraging, with increases of around 30 percent in both views and watch time. I also reached the milestone of 3,500 subscribers, which confirms that this focus was well 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, with Fields of Fire taking first place in all the categories! Just have a look at those interesting titles:

This year, I plan to continue experimenting on YouTube with different types of videos and content. It will remain a complementary extension of the blog, but I must admit that it also brings me a great deal of personal satisfaction.

Cooperation with Cube4Me

This is certainly another area I am extremely proud of. A Poland-based blogger and a Poland-based 18XX enthusiast who runs a game components shop joined forces to create a unique series of products – custom-made storage and sorting solutions. It required a great deal of effort and time, but the satisfaction has been immense, and I sincerely hope that you also benefit from these excellent sets.

You can find their great products always here:

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

Summary /  Comments:

Looking back on 2025, I can confidently say it was a good and deeply satisfying year for me as a content creator. Running the blog, maintaining a YouTube channel, developing the Storage Solutions initiative, and traveling to the Essen fair – where I had the pleasure of meeting many familiar faces such as Clio, Wolfgang, Uwe, Grant, and Alexander – were all highlights, alongside many smaller events, ideas, and plans. Above all, I am happy that I still find time to do what matters most: play boardgames.

This also feels like the perfect moment to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the readers, subscribers, players, content creators, and designers – to everyone who contributes to our hobby and finds The Boardgames Chronicle worth their time. Your support is deeply appreciated, and without it, I would certainly not have the energy to continue doing what I love.

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