SU&SD IS GETTING EXPERIMENTAL!: SU&SD Newsletter #74

Tom: Hello, donors, new and old! If you’ve been following the newsletter recently, you’ll be aware that this month is ‘juicy info time’! Here comes the aeroplane (of information!)

Matt: Nyyyyyoooo-

Tom: Stop that immediately. They’re (probably) adults.

Matt: You started it!

Tom: I was deploying a sophisticated aviation metaphor. You’re treating them like children. Get out of the newsletter!!

If you’ve not seen our absolutely sick and twisted donation drive update video, that’s probably the most entertaining way to digest this stuff, but we’ve also got some bonus bits to share with just you lot.

For those who haven’t seen the video - here’s the skinny. Shut Up & Sit Down has had a wonky few years - during the pandemic we worked really hard to sustainably make the thing we do best, and coming out of that pandemic has had us re-assessing what we do in light of the burnout we all experienced as part of that work. We need a bit of change so that the site stays as passionate and excitable a place to talk about board games as ever, without compromising the very core thing we do well.

Matt: It’s a decision not just borne out of fatigue, though, and we’re excited for the site to grow in what it can be. We’ve had such a predefined understanding of what we do that we stopped thinking about what we can do - what we’d like to do with the platform we have found ourselves with.

Tom: Exactly! And we’ve not critically looked at our format and questioned what it does for our core goals. To me, the pillars of SU&SD are twofold. We’re aiming to get people into boardgames, and we’re aiming to highlight the very best of those games to both newcomers and veterans of the hobby. Sometimes the standard review-show format doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to achieving those two central ideas of the site.

So we did some thinking. We had some ideas. And we resolved to have a little try at a bunch of new projects to see what feels comfortable - SU&SD Is Getting Experimental! You, as a donor to the site, will get early access to everything we want to try - and here’s the list of dabblings we’re going to attempt over the next six months of the site:

The Top 100 Board Games Of All Time:
My goodness, it might finally be time. After ages of kicking this format around and not leaping into it, we’re finally going to make it happen. We’ve got the studio ready to record a set of four episodes in late August, and to have a rough-around-the-edges pilot soon after. Thank you so much for your patience, we took literally forever on this. The rough idea of this one will be as follows: we sit down and play a classic game, recording the playthrough, before then having a long chat about said game. We’ll then cap the episode off by placing said game into a canon, 100% factual list of the top 100 games ever. Splice those chunks of footage together and you’ve got yourself a FORMAT, baby! I think this will be a great way of spotlighting some traditionally fantastic titles, and combatting some of that ‘chasing of the hotness’ that we, as fans of games, can often fall into! Do you need the hot new thing, or is the evergreen just as green as we all remember it? I think this has the strongest chance of being the biggest and best new thing we do.

Untitled eBay Format:
Suggested by Pip, this one is absolutely turbo-silly. Three contestants trawl through eBay and acquire the crustiest, oldest, wonkiest games imaginable and put them to the test in an arena of cruft. This speaks for itself! I think it will be very, very fun.

Untitled Chat Format:
Sometimes, we play incredibly heavy games that are hard to review. Maybe they’re impossibly tricky to get to the table, maybe they’re thematically knotty, maybe they’re hard to explain purely through audio. Recognising this fault of the site, where games like this can slip through the cracks, we wanted to have something of an extended video-podcast format where we can ramble about just one game for as long as our little hearts desire, with helpful instructional video to go alongside. Our first of this will be a big chat about Hegemony, the game of class warfare, and we should have a pilot of this format sorted in early September.

Playthroughs:
Everyone asks for this! We will film full playthroughs for the above formats and make them available to watch, in full, with only minor editing for when someone does a big guff. Simple stuff.

Donor Podcast:
At last! A space to ramble about all the nonsense we’ve been consuming recently. This would be an audio extension to the ‘What Are We’ sections of the newsletter, delivered once a month, and will be extra long so you can bust through that big pile of washing up with consistent company. I think this is also the perfect place to bring back another much-requested feature - The Mailbag! Expect requests for questions very soon, and our first episode to appear in August.

Convention Reports:
We go to conventions, and many people do not. What are they like? What did we play? Find out more in a daft, light, silly travel-log format. We’ll do one of these soon - a report on RopeCon in Helsinki - and another towards the tail-end of the year which covers both Essen and the World Series of Board Games.

How are we going to do all of this new stuff? Well, firstly, we’re going to get a little scrappier with our initial productions - to just do it rather than polish it to the standard we’re now used to. It’s a bit of a return to the early years of the show, excitedly getting good games out there, no matter how wonky the white balance or licensed the audio.

But we’re also going to be helped! By a new cast of contributors who we think you will really get on with. Here’s the humans! SAY HELLO HUMANS!

Polly: Hello everyone! I’m really excited to be here! SU&SD got me into board games and I’m hoping that my work with the gang will help others not in the hobby to realise what a great community it is. I’ve been doing some editing work here and there for a year on the channel now, and I’ve got some fun projects and ideas that I can’t wait to share with you all.

Emily: Hey! I’m Emily and I live in Australia. I agree, what am I doing here? I was just making my own board game review videos and somehow Tom found them. As a big SUSD fan I thought it was pretty cool and we set up to play a video game together. This was a lie. A complete ruse from an utterly untrustworthy man. What was meant to be a hangout instead became a meeting about me becoming a contributor to the site. I was looking for friendship and he completely colleague-zoned me. You never think it will happen to you :(

ANYWAY, incredibly excited to contribute to a site I genuinely care about and have loved for many years! A dream opportunity. I can’t wait for you all to be initially sceptical of me and gradually ease into thinking I’m not so bad/the death of the site!

Pip: Hello! I'm Pip and I'm guessing I'll be familiar to some of you and a stranger to others. I've been what you might call a "Friend of the Show" for years, gradually amassing Let's Play appearances, written reviews, SHUX panels, gravel-voiced wrestling RPG alter-egos, and the odd feature, as well as enjoying the contents of the SUSD founders' kettles and snack cupboards. BUT! A mere … *checks website* … almost eleven years??? since I first started doing things for Shut Up & Sit Down, we're ready to take our relationship to THE NEXT LEVEL!

So far, THE NEXT LEVEL involves changing my job description from "Friend of the Show" to either "BFF of the Show" or "Nemesis of the Show" (depending on whether Tom has recently beaten me at a board game), and we've also started recording podcasts and planning studio dates for the fun video content Tom outlined above. I'm legit excited!

Oh! Er, I am also a narrative designer for videogames, a beetle enthusiast, and I do illustration work on the side. Send me pictures of weevils.

Tom: Everybody say thank you to these fine folks for agreeing to play board games with us, before they realise what a terrible mistake they have made.

Here’s the deal with these formats, though. Nothing at all is set in stone. I want to make one of everything listed above, so we can see what sticks, and what doesn’t, and I want to do it with these lovely new people we're bringing in to help. And you, our core of wonderful donors who make it all possible - you get to see these things before we make them, you get to give feedback on them, you get to decide what the channel makes long-term. We want to pay back some of the trust that the core donors put in us in carrying us through quieter times. Thank you so much for your support.

Importantly, none of this will replace the standard reviews. We will still make them, and we will hopefully have renewed energy and focus to make them afforded by not having to rush to get one out most every week. We’ve really needed the slower schedule that this year started with, and I think having a more varied selection of content will do wonders for the site. We think you’ll dig it largestyle.

DOUBLE importantly - our studio efforts will ALSO not replace the cosy at-home filming style that's our bread and butter. We're not going to be replacing our questionable wall art and creaky chairs for the cold studio touch, and the core vids will remain where boardgames are most commonly found - at home! The studio is for gettin' weird, the house is for gettin' weird (in the usual way).

Lastly - where are we going to film all of this? Let us introduce you to… THE SHUT UP & SIT DOWN VIDEO STUDIO ! ! ! !

Oh boy, what on earth. It’s just made of concrete and dreams at the moment, and some of the early stuff filmed in it will look ‘proper scary’. But we see this space as bustling with potential - hell, with some pot-plants and a wee red background it looked great in our SHUX Preview videos from last year!

So that’s that. We spoke of exciting new projects in the Christmas donation drive video, but the site just wasn’t in the right place to make that happen. Now, we are. We’re ready. I'm excited! Thank you all for your support.

What are we video games!  🎮

Tom: After getting big into Street Fighter 6 with Quinns, I’ve been looking for more ways to get my punches and kicks in. Sifu somehow feels like a hidden gem despite it receiving pretty great reviews at launch - but I think it’s slightly wonky tutorialisation had people dipping out of what is truly a great game a little too early. The third level, set in a museum, is one of the most electric chunks of ‘level’ I’ve played recently - full of memorable set-pieces as a grounded set of fights devolves into hazy action that evokes Rothko more than Bruce Lee.

Pip: I have a lot of deadlines at the moment, so what better way to unwind when I clock out than by pretending I have a completely different job? By day I come up with words for indie games, but by night I boot up PowerWash Simulator and become PIP THE POWER WASHER. Armed only with my trusty Prime Vista Pro (and its many attachments) I can now solve any and all problems. Dirty treehouse? Leave it to me! Dirty ferris wheel? Say no more! Dirty invisible boatmobile in the Spongebob Squarepants Powerwash DLC? It's a doddle! Truly, a power washer is a panacea in the form of a watery projectile. All hail the power washer.

What are we music!  🎵

Tom: Loving ‘Fad’ by Silverbacks! It’s just good. It’s just a good record.

What I’ve mostly been doing this month, though, is listening to a bunch of the “Enjoy An Album” podcast; re-listening to the records discussed beforehand. This is rarely a useful process, mind - time spent actually talking about the records is pretty minimal - displaced by some severely scuffed impressions and show-stealing guests. I think the ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ episode and ‘Myths of the Near Future’ episode are just great, and fab places to start if you’re curious. I’ve also been going through everything Radiohead this past month, so expect a retrospective round-up and definitive tier-list in the next newsletter.

Also, a last-minute addition written far after the rest; holy moly is black midi’s ‘Hellfire’ one of the greatest albums of the decade. I’m re-listening to it almost daily at this point, it’s just that good. I could spend so many words describing why, but just go and listen to it do it right now! Right now!!! RIGHT NOW!!!

Emily: I’ve been thoroughly enjoying TOPS lately. The people, obviously, but more relevantly to this newsletter, the band! This Canadian indie pop quartet had somehow flown under my radar until recently, but their nostalgic and melancholic sound has hit at the perfect time. The band provides an exquisite soundtrack for the rainy winter days I’m currently experiencing. Highly recommend their 2020 album I Feel Alive with ‘Drowning in Paradise’ being my personal highlight of the LP.

What are we watching? 📺

Pip: As a reality TV aficionado, I am generally spoilt for choice in terms of shows. Until now, Vanderpump Rules was something I knew about but didn't actively watch, but the word "Scandoval" ripped across my timeline like a tornado in a Judy Garland movie. Scandoval is actually a portmaneau of "scandal" and "Tom Sandoval". It refers to the latter being caught cheating on his longterm girlfriend and costar Ariana with another castmate as season 10 of the show wrapped filming.

Scandoval immediately cast every episode of season 10 in a completely new light as viewers compared the onscreen version of "reality" against a timeline of behind-the-scenes events which were gradually revealed via an emergency extra episode of the show, interviews, and a three part reunion. I find the conflicting concepts of reality inherent inreality TV fascinating so I ended up binge-watching all ten seasons about a month. It's given me a lot of food for thought, but I'm not going to suggest you do the same! Partly, that's because reality TV is a complex ethical subject at the best of times, and Scandoval is acting as a lightning rod for vitriol in a way that is disturbing and potentially dangerous. Partly, I just feel like I've learned about Jax and Brittany's beer cheese business structure so you don't have to. You're welcome, internet!

What are we reading? 📚

Quinns: I’m going to cheat and sneak a GAME into this segment. I got my backer .pdf of Teeth, a roleplaying game of Georgian-era British folk horror (which was briefly mentioned on SU&SD podcast number #147), and it’s just a delight. I spent an entire Saturday reading it almost cover to cover, and I expect you’ll see it nominated for an award or two next year.

In a nutshell, Teeth re-imagines the horrible, reality-bending Exclusion Zone of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  as a cordoned-off stretch of 18th century England. The players represent a band of hunters who are allowed to spend exactly one year exploring this territory, making contacts, making their name and seeking majickal artifacts, but after their year is up they’ll have to leave forever before they become irrevocably contaminated. So it’s at least partially a game about exploring, making it only as good as whatever there is in the game to find, but Teeth has got you covered. All of the NPCs are marvellously off-kilter, the monsters and treasures are both disturbing and whimsical, and at the same time lovingly-depicted Northern English landscape gives everything a very grounded tone. Too much wackiness starts to feel much of a muchness, y’know? But the bleak, hard-scrabble moors, bogs and forests of actual England feel at every point like they were what inspired Teeth in the first place.

Full disclosure - I have worked with the folks behind Teeth in the past; a personal connection worth flagging, and part of the reason the chat about it in Podcast #147 was so brief! But I'm sneaking it into the newsletter anyway >:)

Emily: Monstrilio is the debut novel by author Gerardo Sámano Córdova and what an incredible debut it is. The story revolves around the death of an eleven-year-old boy and the family’s inability to process the loss. The boy’s mother attempts to hold on to her son by removing a piece of his lung and feeding it until it gains sentience and takes his form. However, the grown child is more monstrous than the son she had to say goodbye to. The novel is classified as horror and though it does delve into grotesque, gory and often strange moments (as I’m sure you can tell from the premise alone) I was surprised and impressed by its emotional depth. It explores the theme of grief, particularly familial grief, so potently that it will stick with me for some time to come. Highly recommend!