Robot Viking

I was poking around some sites that have been sending links to Robot Viking, and I noticed two things on gaming message boards: 1). a generally positive attitude towards Robot Viking (thank you, I’m glad you like the site!) and 2). a few specific complaints about the site that I think are completely valid. So I thought I’d address them directly.

There’s really one man complaint that I see repeated: that a lot of Robot Viking’s coverage is focused on D&D and Magic. That’s very true, I won’t deny it. I will try to explain why, and how I’ve been working to diversify the site.

The biggest reason I tend to write about D&D and Magic a lot is that those are the two games I play the most. My weekly gaming group has been playing D&D for years now, and since I got back into tournament Magic last summer, the majority of my “competitive” gaming time and thought (and money) goes to that. Those games are on my mind a lot. I understand them, so I feel I can write about them with some degree of authority and confidence.

Another major reason? Those games are the 800 pound gorillas in the gaming room. They attract a lot of attention and traffic. I’m not a shameless pageview hound, but it is nice to get the extra eyes on what I write. This is a relatively minor factor, though — there are other 800 pound gaming gorillas, like Games Workshop’s games and Yugioh, but I don’t write about them because I don’t play them or know them. Robot Viking’s excellent Warhammer articles have all been the work of talented guest writers.

With brings me to my final point — Robot Viking is a one-man operation. I’m certainly not downplaying the efforts of the guest writers that have contributed great material to the site, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s just me. It’s why I don’t post more than once per day (or less, if I’m busy with my day job). I’ve put in many hours contacting various publishers to get review copies or email updates, but there are a lot of game publishers out there and I can never get to them all. On the other hand, when publishers contact me, I do my best to set up coverage of their game and treat it the same as any big release by Wizards of the Coast. I’ve covered some indie games in the last few weeks, and there’s more of that kind of coverage coming up. If you publish your own game or gaming material, or know someone who does, use the email link in the masthead and drop me a line!

(This, of course, comes with the caveat I offer all publishers who want material reviewed — I can’t guarantee a glowing review. I generally like games and find good things to say about them, but I won’t ignore flaws that I perceive. And you can’t argue I don’t give Wizards’ books the same treatment).

Lastly, I’ve heard mention that Robot Viking is rather barren in the board game department. There’s a good reason for that: board games can be really expensive! On the one hand, that means I can’t afford to buy every lavish $80 masterpiece that comes out. On the other hand (which is quite similar to the first hand, actually), board game publishers can’t afford to send out review copies of their $80 masterpieces to every gaming blarg on the Intart00bz. Still, I have a decent collection of board games and a good gaming group to play them and talk about them, so I could do better in this regard. I’ll plan to post our optional “Freight Trading” rule for Empire Builder later this week.

While Robot Viking will continue to feature a lot of material on D&D and Magic, I’ll continue to work toward finding a wider variety of games to cover alongside them. In the next few months, my gaming group is taking a D&D break to play something else, so there may be some gear shifting there. In any case, thanks for reading, even if I don’t always write about your favorite game.

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