The REALITY behind YouTube board game coverage. (Patreon)

An Introduction

I love what I do here on YouTube. My goal from the start was to be real. Yes even when all I did was paint miniatures my channel was founded on the concept of being honest. I wasn't going to be one of those YouTubers that cut out their mistakes. Instead I'd make it a point to show those mistakes every time, and talk over how it happened and how I got around it. And sometimes I wasn't able to.

That's actually an apt sentence for my channel as a whole. I'm not perfect and I've made mistakes. Sure some are small like not pronouncing a word right or getting a rule a bit mixed up, but others have been more profound. At times my entire intent on a video has been lost. At times I haven't communicated well at all and other times I've been sucked into hype more than I should have.

And then there was that one time I took money for a review. In fact this happened twice.

Now first if that shocks you then that's good. It means I've gotten better. So why did I do it then, when I never would now?

An Explanation

As you just read, I founded my channel on being honest. To being real without pretension of anything, especially as an authoritative figure. But that was it...just an idea. YouTube is a grind. With a full time job I have to put almost every moment of my spare time ensuring I can make 2 videos a week. As I said before I love what I do, but it keeps you busy. Every week I was down in the trenches grinding away without ever taking a step back.

Just recently I finally took a step back. I spent several weeks ensuring I took the time to really think about my purpose. All of you patrons know about this from my previous post where I laid out a charter for my channel. It's one thing to have a general idea or concept of something, but it's something entirely different to have a well thought out understanding of it.

The Facts

So those two videos that were sponsored, what's up with those? The first you might have seen, it's the only video I have that has that YouTube blurb on the bottom of the video at the beginning about it being sponsored. Of course I still had my principles. I didn't submit my review before posting and included negatives, but this was during the time when I didn't do reviews often and I felt that if I was to take the time away from my normal videos to film a review, I should be paid. This was before I got ad revenue from Youtube. Anyway I think the second time I accepted payment is much more interesting so I'll be using that as an example for much of this post.

I accepted payment to make a review for a game that ended up bombing on Kickstarter. It wasn't a game I was interested in, had never mentioned it on my channel, and never even played it or made the review video. In the end I got paid for nothing.

The game in question isn't all that important since nothing ever materialized. What is important is the price point. I listed triple (yes, 3x!) what I made in a month at the time and it was accepted quickly, without hesitation. I imagine most paid reviews go higher than this.

That's right, 1 sponsored video paid as much as 3 months of videos. More than ad revenue, more than Patreon, all of it. For just 1 video. It's important I think to realize the pull of this sort of lopsided money on channels for the rest of this post. In fact, I'm just going to come out and say it:

You have to be an idiot not to take the money.

Seriously, unless you are just doing this for fun, why not take the money? One quick sponsored video every so often could net you 5 times the money or more. That's the landscape of YouTube board game coverage in a nutshell. No one can compete with corporate money. Not Patreon. Not likes and subscribes. Not good intentions. Nothing. Money speaks and the people who have the most, and therefore the loudest voice are the companies themselves.

Before I get into my list of what to watch out for I want to list a few more things. Trust me, one of these will blow you away.

Of course it almost goes without saying that often times it's just free product. Or is it just free product? There are unspoken strings attached. If you get a product for free, and then dislike it and say as much, do you think that company is going to send you another product again? Of course not. Why would they? There is no "board game media" - it's all just a bunch of (mostly) dudes with cameras on YouTube. No one here is a journalist, or a even a real critic.

Here's a real doozey. In fact, I'm just going to put up the (edited) email for your entertainment.

In case you can't read that here is the text:

Title:  Advertisement
Body:  Hello, we are the founders on  <redacted>  and have made a game called  <redacted> , you can see our game on this link. 

<redacted>

We are interested in ads on you Youtube channel. We will send you videos of our game from above, so that it won't be visible who is playing and you to put a voice on it. What are you prices and different options please let me know,

Looking forward to hearing from you,

 <redacted> 

Yes you read that right. They want to send me a pre-filmed video that I would just add voice over to so I could pretend to play the game and are willing to hand me money to do it.

WOW.

Alright one more and then we'll get to my list.

Another benefit of getting free product is getting it early. I cannot stress enough how beneficial it is to be first. First to unbox a game? Yep that's a clear benefit. First to review a game? Same thing. You'll get more views and it makes sense. Not everyone wants to watch a board game unboxed a whole bunch of times. Not everyone is going to watch a review of something they watched a review for already months ago.

The List

Below is a list of what to watch out for, knowing what you know now. Don't rely on that little YouTube sponsored blurb, most people won't post it. Business favors (early copies and such) are just as profitable at times than actual money, and it allows people to avoid posting that.

• Anything with the word "Preview" or "Sneak Peek" in the title.
  - These might be okay, but be extra critical of what you see. More often than not these are simply paid ads from the company. They can be useful for information as most board game companies lack a lot of filming know-how so they use YouTubers to make the videos for them, but if an opinion is shared or if something seems off, be alert.
• Early Reviews
  - Kind of goes without saying but with any review you should be cautious. Especially important for any early reviews. It's beneficial for the channel to continue to get these so they might be lenient.
• Complete Positivity
  - If you ever, ever see a "review" that doesn't mention any negatives, run the other way, it's all a lie. No game is perfect and any "reviewer" pretending to be a critic while not listing any negatives just wants more free product or money from the company. You see this most often on early reviews, or reviews that are posted onto the Kickstarter page itself. If you see that every review of them has a thumbnail of them SUPER EXCITED about the game then somethings up. Could you review 200 games and love them all? I didn't think so.
  
  I'd also ad "soft" reviews. I use this term twofold. Sometimes you'll have a preview video or a game mechanic explanation video and then at the very end they'll throw a quick opinion out there. I always discard this as fake by default unless the channel honestly presents itself otherwise. Many times YouTubers will slip these in as sweet nothings into the companies ear, hoping to earn repeated business favors or a higher status such as being shared on the company's social media posts, or on their Kickstarter.
• Any video that covers multiple things and has a Sponsored tag but doesn't explicitly state which part is sponsored.
  - You see this often with Kickstarter list videos or ones that have a more talk-show format that go over news and such. How is the viewer supposed to know who paid to be in the video and who didn't. Was it all of them? If the YouTuber is being that shady about paid adverts then don't feed into their ad-revenue. You deserve better.
• Exclusives/giveaways/other channel perks
  - Any time a video has an exclusive you should pause the video and think about why they might have that. I can tell you first hand that I've tried to cover games and asked for something to put on the thumbnail, or within the video and have been told "sorry, but we already agreed to an exclusive with this other channel." Exclusives are just like any other business perk. Same with giveaways. They are usually always tied to views and subscriptions, meaning they are good for the channel. I should know, I'm doing one now. I'm doing it to celebrate with you all, but if you find a channel that does many of them, then it's integrated into their business model. Don't trust any business model that REQUIRED friendly participation with the companies they are supposedly critiquing.
• Disassociation with consumers
  - I was watching a "review" for a certain superhero game a few months back and the reviewers recommended an "alternative" product that costs multiple times as much as the one they reviewed. It was pretty obvious that they are used to getting their products for free and are no longer within the "consumer mindset". Their skin (read: money) is no longer in the game and they cannot reasonably have your best interests at heart because they aren't even aware of your issues anymore. Price is a hugely important part of a consumer's decision and if they can't be bothered to even track how much the stuff they are reviewing costs, they are obviously no where close to representing you, the viewer.

The End

Okay so let's wrap this up. Most of what I listed, under the right circumstances can be okay. Remember the beginning of this post - no one is perfect, myself included. It's why I made my charter public. Who knows, perhaps someday one of you will have to send me a PM and ask for a clarification, or point out how I might be breaking it. Hopefully that never happens but I believe it makes a good point: It's the effort that counts. If a reviewer is making an honest effort to...well...be honest - I say give them a shot. It can be hard, especially for new channels. There's a lot of money and perks tempting them away from honesty but hopefully more YouTubers show up with the right mindset to push back on all of those temptations.

With that in mind I'd like to respond to anything I've done that's on that list, for greater transparency:

• Anything with the word "Preview" or "Sneak Peek" in the title.
  - I've unboxed and reviewed preview copies. Funny thing here: after my Awaken Realms video I upset a lot of people, and companies. In my attempt to be honest I made a fairly damaging video. Trust me when I say a lot of companies stopped talking to me right then and there. However, and here's the funny part, several other companies that were more confident in their product actually approached me. None for preview stuff here but the point is that I started to actually get noticed as someone honest with his thoughts and some companies are okay with that. As it stands now I only cover what I'm interested in. nothing gets on my channel that I'm not okay with putting my name next to (of course I reserve the right to remove that privilege). My point is that now that I have that trust with my community, if I show off a preview it's not because I want favors, or because I'm "in bed" with the company and instead it's reversed, it's me wanting to help the company succeed.
• Early Reviews
  - Beyond my one paid-for review I mentioned early and the preview copies I just covered I don't believe I've done any.
• Complete Positivity
  - HAH!
• Any video that covers multiple things and has a Sponsored tag but doesn't explicitly state which part is sponsored.
  - Never done this either. I'm super picky about what makes it onto my Kickstarter videos as I never want to lead someone to a crappy product.
• Exclusives/giveaways/other channel perks
  - I kind of already mentioned this but I only do giveaways to celebrate with you guys and my community at large. It's very sporadic and I've never asked a company for anything.
• Disassociation with consumers
  - I spend thousands of dollars buying most of these games. Yes some I get for free, but it is never on my mind at all, to the point where my wife has watched a review of mine and came up to me saying "isn't that one you got for free?" - I think that fact that I'm positive you cannot accurately know when I get for free and which I don't proves my point. It's just not in my nature, I am who I am.
  
  One more thing here while I'm on the subject: unless it's tied to your business revenue (early reviews, etc.) you should be more concerned with the ones they DID pay for. Someone is much more likely to try and subconsciously defend a product they spent hundreds of their own dollars on versus one they got for free that they weren't going to back anyway. Again this is only applicable if that free product isn't tied into them getting more money through business perks.

And that's it! That's all I think I really wanted to say. So what do you think? Did you bother to even read the whole thing? Could I improve on this in some way to explain what it is I'm trying to explain here? My point with the post is two A) try and shine a light on some business practices consumers might not be aware of and B) to provide some tips on what to look out for so you can better judge videos in the future.

As always guys, thanks for being here! You all rock and you REALLY do help make this channel more self sufficient. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without you.