The Making Of A Game Review

So you want to know the process we go through to do a game review.  Maybe you’re thinking of doing a review for us, and want to know what all in involved.  Well, let me tell you, it’s not all fun and games.

Ok, it is mostly fun and games, but there is a lot of work that goes into it.  Here are some of the things that go into creating those 10 minute or less video reviews that we put out.

Step One: Playing the game.

Sure it sounds easy, but there’s a lot more thought than just sitting down and playing your game a couple times to learn the rules.  You also have to play enough to understand the different strategies that can be applied and see if there are any obvious areas the publisher may have been more thorough on in those rules.

You’ll also want to see if there are any alternative rules or expansion sets that might improve or otherwise change the game play and go through those as well. Again, you have to keep in mind the strategies that work best.  You also want to try playing all the options with as few and as many players as possible to see if it changes the game around any.

Step Two: Writing it Up

While we choose to use a more organic approach here at Games Overboard, we still have to write up and reconsider the reviews we’re doing.  We try to list the pros and cons of a game, the best and worst strategies to utilize, and how game play is effected by multiple players.  There’s also the sequencing of the review that has to be considered and adjusted for timing.  Of course all this is just a map to go by when we get down to the review itself.

Step Three: The Dry Run

The first run of the review is usually the driest.  This is where we work out any kinks in the review process and make decisions on the wording.  Content is added or removed for clarity and timing.  We usually film it to allow us to review and make notes on the final review.  We also try to decide how to start and end the review and where to insert the displays, the layout of the game on the table, etc.

Step Four: The Filming

The actual filming of a review takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or so.  Usually we have to film the review twice (sometimes 3 or 4 times.)  We’re going for a one-shot, no-edit filming, and most of the time something goes awry.  Whether it be a case of the laughs, a cell phone going off, a dog walking into the tripod, invariably something throws off the first (or second, or third) attempt at the review.  So re-shoots are necessary to get the tape we want.

Step Five: The Editing

Most of the time it’s no more that clipping off the first and last few minutes of the final taping where we were getting over that case of the giggles, and before we hit stop on the camera.  We also keep snips and pieces of the screw-ups for that blooper reel we’re putting together.  Every once in awhile we have to reshoot and edit in a scene or add a quick note at the end about some aspect we forgot in the original filming.  Either way, full editing can take a couple hours to make sure everything flows.

Step Six: Publishing

Loading up the final edit to YouTube or Vimeo, snipping the code into the blog post, and writing up a quick snippet of the title reviewed and some of our findings.  This is probably the easiest part of the whole review process.  After that, just click the publish button and you’re done.

So that’s the whole process we go through.  From beginning to end it can take almost 8 hours or more.  Most of that time is spent actually playing the game and figuring out all the different variations.  And, to be completely honest, I’ve made it sound a lot more dry and boring than it truly is.

Reviewing board games is a whole lot of fun, and we’d love to see reviews from our readers.  If you have a good one just send us a message (and don’t forget to include a link to your review online.)  If we like it, we’ll even post it on the site and send people your way.

Here’s some of the equipment you’ll need to create your own board game review:

1. The Game you want to review, of course.
2. Any well lit room or area with a large enough table to display that game.
3. A good tripod to hold your camera.
4. A decent digital camcorder, though some of our first posts were done with a little webcam.
5. Some video editting software.  We use Pinnable Studio for our work, but whatever you like is fine.
6. Some good friends (probably the most important part.)

We hope to see some of your work soon.

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