The first thing to know is that board games are a niche hobby compared to let's say video games. IGN, a big channel for video game reviews, has 16.5 million subscribers, and their recent Elden Ring review got 3.4 million views. The biggest board game channels are The Dice Tower and Watch It Played, both with just under 300,000 subscribers. BoardGameGeek as a YouTube channel has 135,000 subscribers. While Quackalope is one of the bigger "individual" board game channels, he just has 37,700 subscribers. So ripping him for being overly commercial and a sellout to companies making Kickstarter board game projects is a bit unrealistic. Elden Ring apparently sold 10 million copies on the PC alone, a successful board game on Kickstarter is selling 10,000. If somebody really want to become rich by selling himself on YouTube, he should definitively choose a different subject matter other than board games.

Having said that, the small size of the market and the community does somewhat result in board game reviews being less than perfect. Board game YouTube content creators often sound like kids talking about their new toys. While the board game market is much smaller than the video game market, the price for an individual game is often higher. Especially with Kickstarter projects that can have all-in pledges of $500 or more. As consumer advice, a YouTube content creator excitedly playing with the prototype game the company with the Kickstarter project sent him is often less than ideal. You basically need to ignore what the influencer is saying, and try to gleam as much as possible from what he is showing of the game, especially if he is playing it on camera, to see for yourself whether that gameplay appeals to you.

Normally good video game reviews are more analytical. Many video game review sites have some sort of scoring system, like how are the graphics, how is the story, and so on. Only for Elden Ring have many reviewers recently thrown out the analytical approach and just gushed about it. For board games, most reviews are gushing like that. It is very rare that a board game reviewer on YouTube does *not* recommend buying the game he is reviewing. The best you can hope for is the reviewer admitting that not every board game is a good fit for everybody, so if you like very thematic beer & pretzel games, you will probably not like that highly abstract complex Euro game.

Beyond some sort of buy recommendation, or the Dice Tower's "seal of approval", at least board game reviewers on YouTube don't use review scores. Which is just as well, the review scores on BoardGameGeek are all over the place and actually not all that helpful. And speaking of helpful, where the YouTube board game channels shine outside game reviews is other helpful information. Watch It Played got so big by Rodney Smith patiently explaining the rules of every board game out there to his audience. If you start playing a new board game, watching a video on how it is played before reading the rulebook is usually very helpful. And both for learning a game and for making a buy decision, watching somebody else play the game is great.

Overall I think that the practice of game companies sending out prototypes of their games to YouTube reviewers, or even sometimes paying for playthrough videos, is not a bad one. Many years ago I said on this blog that you could buy my opinion, but it would cost you $100,000. Most people can't really be bought as cheap as a free game or some minor cash. If a YouTuber is overly enthusiastic about a prototype, it is usually because he is honestly really happy about getting to play it early. And some of the comments calling him a paid shill then are often more about other players jealous of not having that sort of early access. Kickstarters for board games have a high rate of delivery, but more often than not they are late. It is somewhat annoying to see somebody happily playing a game, knowing that even if you fund it, you won't be playing it before 2 years or so.