Whether this is the 1st or the 100th article you’ve read on the Stonemaier Games blog this year, I’m so thankful that you’ve decided to read along (and sometimes join the discussion in the comments). Today I’m going to share my most-read articles of 2023 and a key takeaway from each.
- The 10 Best and Worst Decisions I’ve Ever Made: This was probably the most helpful article for me to write this year, and I’m glad it resonated with others too. The list features 7 good decisions (like my commitment to consistent communication with my parents and my choice to study abroad in college) and 3 bad decisions (a bad mortgage, a lack of romantic commitment in the past, and any time I’ve chosen to act out of anything other than love, kindness, & compassion). Interestingly, the article may have gotten the most traction for a comment from a stranger who was 100% convinced that my disinterest in having children was a massive mistake.
- Announcing the Wingspan Fan Art Challenge: A few days into 2023, we invited Wingspan fan artists from around the world to submit one artist rendition of an existing bird in Wingspan. We carefully considered all submissions and chose as many as possible (the main limiting factor was when multiple people submitted art for the same bird), and later in the year we released the 255-card Wingspan Fan Art Pack.
- The One Ring and Extreme Rarity in Games: When Wizards of the Coast announced their Lord of the Rings-inspired set, the buzz was all about The One Ring, a single copy of a specific version of a card (which ended up being sold to Post Malone for around $2 million). In this post I revealed something special about the one millionth copy of Wingspan that we made in 2021.
- Eager Mechs: Exploring the Expeditions Surprise: Early in the production for Expeditions, our follow up to Scythe, I announced the game and opened preorders for it. In this blog post I explain why we deviated from our normal method of making a product before announcing it (largely to ensure that supply met demand).
- 2022 Behind-the Scenes Stakeholder Report for Stonemaier Games: Every year I share a version of this report, which includes sales stats for each of our games, a summary of our releases, social media stats, and a variety of other updates.
Some other popular articles this year were:
- The Gold Rush for Game Names
- 10 Ways for Creators to Prevent a Mythic Meltdown
- The Next Big Thing: How to Handle a Product’s Runaway Success
- A Packing Solution for Both the Environment and Customers
- If You Want It, We’ll Make It…but Will You Buy It?
The other substantial content I make is found on our YouTube channel. Other than Stonemaier-specific trailers and videos (like this one showing 4 quick turns in Expeditions), the top 3 most popular videos from 2023 were as follows:
- My Top 10 Favorite Games as of September 2023
- My Top 10 Favorite Games as of March 2023
- My Top 10 Favorite Games of 2022
Is there an article/video–from anywhere–that provided good food for thought this year? If so, I invite you to share a link and your key takeaway in the comments.
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
