Well, seems like SUSD are closing more and more features on their website, focusing more on audiovisual (videos, streams and podcasts).
Shame, it was a weekly visit of mine every Tuesday (perks of being in NZ) and loved the writing of Ava and the banter with Tom, but hey, it is their decision. Farewell weekly news.
It makes a lot of sense. I found the news section a bit of a wasted effort in terms of effort Vs output, and it always felt a bit directionless. It’s good to see they’re focusing their work on where it makes the biggest difference.
Hopefully they carry on writing, it achieves something completely different to podcasts and videos. I love Ava’s articles.
It is where I tend to hear about things from companies I don’t already know that aren’t big enough to be on BGG news. Ah well.
I assume some of it’ll be moving into the now weekly podcast, but it’s a shame for those who used to stop by to read it. I am much too forgetful to read it on a regular basis however.
I lament the loss of any written articles.
Snap. I’m still not in the habit of watching videos online
I just saw a new post on the main site and was going to save it to read later before realising it was not news, or at least not good news.
Although I like the videos I really enjoyed the writing, hope they fill it with some more written articles.
I cannot blame the SUSD crew for this decision: I have no concept of how much work goes into each of their creative outputs nor how they rank and rate among their audience.
However… I fear that their decisions about what content they create are ever-trending towards the media outlet they most align with: Twitter. I’ve always found Twitter to be a drab, uninteresting place full of low-effort content; when there is actual content worth consuming, it is unnecessarily obstructed by the core conceits of Twitter as to make it a frustrating experience.
I realize there is a big push in online media to move towards short, ephemeral content that can engage readers (edit: ha ha, who are we kidding) viewers with the attention span of a goldfish… but in a hobby where entire sub-genres of that hobby can be defined as the opposite of ephemeral and short, I can’t help be begin to feel disenfranchised.
Hopefully I’m wrong.
Might it just be their christmas break?
Nope, sadly.
The lovely Ava have just added an update further down the comment thread.
Hm, that’s a shame. Is there any equivalent light boardgames news round up anywhere else? While we’re at it, is there an equivalent for RPGs? I feel like I discovered so much through those weekly posts that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise…
Maybe dicebreaker?
I find they tend to be a bit more headline focused - one article per news item, published throughout the week rather than a quick round up. Which I’m sure makes sense to drive engagement but doesn’t feel necessary for the slow-moving world of boardgames. Thanks though, good suggestion!
Are they that active on twitter? I found myself looking at twitter less and less in the past year so I have no idea who writes what where. Twitter is always full of so much drama and my drama capacity is just about filled after reading the newspaper these days.
As for the news: I am going to miss them. I don’t do well with podcasts. they are simply too long and I don’t absorb information very well that I just hear.
Well, you’ve caught me! I actually don’t know. I just assume that Twitter is their primary community engagement because of how often a) key updates are traced back to tweets b) how often they mention an interaction that occurred on Twitter when recounting a story on the podcast or during their streams c) I think both Matt and Quinns mentioned at one point that they focus more on Discord (presumably private SUSD) and Twitter than they do on, e.g. the old official Forums… or maybe it was just Matt that said that?
Either way, I’m not on Twitter enough to know for certain.
I think auto correct struck and it’s meant to say twitch.
Ahh, Twitch has been a very inconsistent and/or recent thing?
I used to be on twitter a bit more and back then none of them were very active there. although I only know for certain I was following Matt ~a year ago.
Sad about the news in any case but I imagine hunting for new stuff to talk about is probably a fulltime job. You need to keep up with kickstarters, with designers, with tons of blogs, probably with twitter and so many other resources, I can understand how it takes away from things like the videos and the podcasts without anyone outside their immediate “fans” realizing the news even exist because I assume most engagement with their content comes from subscriptions outside of the SUSD website.
Does that mean that Ava is going to be more involved in the podcast and videos? I appreciate the view of someone who leans more towards involved and fiddly games 
It took me a while to get a good read on Ava’s tastes and, once I had, I too hope for more Ava content.
Matt also seems to enjoy a good amount of fiddle which I’ve found interesting, but ultimately there is fiddle that he enjoys and that which he doesn’t… he’s fiddle fickle, if you will.
Ava is the same, but they seem much more in-line with my tolerances for fiddle than Matt.