Then today is your lucky day!
Listed below are the best online video shows to sate the geekiest of depressions. These shows are ranked based on their production quality, content originality, and frequency of posts.
So let’s get to it!
10. Blame Society: Beer and Board Games
Blame Society is a comedy show produced by Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda. They’ve been making online videos since 2006 and are best known for the multi-awarded fan film “Chad Vader”. One of their series is called Beer and Board Games. The duo, accompanied by two other guests, play games while drinking various local craft beers. Their professional adult humour and silly antics are the show’s highlight. What prevented them from placing higher was because they often play out-of-print games. Overall, an entertaining series for adolescents and above.
Team Covenant is a channel dedicated to tabletop gaming since 2008. They are widely known in the Competitive Card Game communities – providing high quality, play-by-play videos and previews, while covering miniatures and related genres. Intelligent camera framing, cool video overlays and professional lighting make Team Covenant videos a delightful watch.
A bunch of friends formed a YouTube channel February of 2013 to make unique content for the board game hobby – and so Moonrat Media was born. Witty humour underscored in well-written scripts keep their bits authentic and intriguing. Board with Life is a show about news, trailers, stories and gaming tidbits, with at least three uploads a week.
This is the actual video channel of BoardGameGeek: the biggest internet database of everything board games. As of this writing, they have published 1700+ videos since May 2011. They excel at event coverage, quick game previews and full game run through. My favourite is their show “Game Night”. In Game Night, they do a full game play through regardless of the game length. With the full play details, you can really gauge whether you would like the game or not. They tend to lean towards European-style and younger-generation games.
Richard Ham is a veteran video game designer, working on big video game titles like Syphon Filter and Fable. Since 2006, Richard has made 1000+ videos, covering hundreds of games on his own. He prefers to play Two-player games with his wife, Jen. At the start, his camera shy wife seldom made appearances in the videos, however, when fans insisted she join him every few episodes – she happily obliged.
Richard’s commitment in content producing is amazing but sometimes overlooks details while recording. He never fails to correct these in the video annotations.
The newest show on the list, Board Game Replay only started filming January of 2014 but their professional-quality videos rank them high on this list. Matt and his friends play a game and from there take you straight to post-game discussion. As they talk about funny or cool things that happened, they cut-in actual replay footage. If game length permits, they actually do full game playthroughs along with discussion. Their attention to sound and lighting quality is paramount in the channel’s swift rise in popularity – evidenced by a fast-growing youtube following.
Rodney Smith in 2011 started his show “Watch It Played”. The show starts with Rodney explaining how to play a game, then for the few, he goes through a couple of rounds of actual play, asking the audience to chime in suggestions. He is often joined by his son, Luke, and daughter, Andrea. The clear, precise instructions, clarity of voice / video, and interactive presentation style, makes this series a “go to” channel for learning board games. Companies have been known to work with him to make official “how-to” tutorials for their games.
Quintin Smith and Paul Dean started reviewing board games in 2011. They originally produced a Youtube series, gaining wide acceptance in the community. Their synergy in film-making, contrast in game preferences, British accents and smart quips blend into a genuine display of how much they love board gaming. Now, they publish their content on Vimeo and on their website. Every game is conveyed through their unique style of storytelling. Aside from reviews, they have a section on “starters”: easy to cook dishes partnered with easy-to-teach games.
Will Wheaton together with Felicia Day from Geek & Sundry started Tabletop in 2012: the board gaming industry exploded. Geeks all over the world were ecstatic to see celebrities like Grant Imahara from Mythbusters and Allison Scagliotti from Warehouse 13 play board games. Some game companies later indicated an upswing in sales of games that were featured in the show. In Tabletop, you are watching a commercially produced TV series about capturing the fun of the board gaming. Season 1 and 2 are finished and are all published in YouTube. Season 3 is funded and is in the pipeline for production. The new season is rumoured to dedicate some episode(s) on old-school pen and paper RPGs.
Dice Tower of Tom Vasel is probably the biggest online board game review network today. The programming stars of with Board Game Breakfast on Monday, followed throughout the week with a plethora of game reviews, Top 10s, and full game videos. If a game is any good, there is a strong likelihood that Dice Tower has done a video on it. Among my favourites are Dan King in his show GameBoy Geek, Zee Garcia in Miami Dice and Scott Nicholson from the Ivory Tower.
I hope you find this list helpful. If you have suggestions, comments or adverse reactions, feel free to leave a comment for me below. Until then – keep on playing!
Written by Ronald Villaver
Edited by Reg Tolentino