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We at GiocAreA are proud to let you read this article by the famous game journalist Rick Thornquist (in the picture, with a small part of his game collection). Our best wishes for his new adventure!
Discovering German Games My introduction into German games took place sometime in 2000 via GAMES Magazine and their Game of the Year - Tikal. I ordered the game, played it, and was hooked. It wasn't long before I was trolling the Internet for every scrap of information I could possibly dig up on these wonderful new games. I devoured the content of websites like Funagain along with a site that was quite new at the time - BoardgameGeek. Even though my writing skills were practically non-existent (remember, I was a computer programmer), I was inspired enough to write a few small reviews and post them to Funagain. I also wrote some reviews for Moves, a now defunct print magazine. My first efforts at writing were painful - I wasn't any good at it and it took me hours and hours to write anything decent. I never could have imagined that writing would soon become my career! Terminal City Gamers Though I loved the games, I always had trouble finding opponents. My non-gaming friends would indulge my obsession by playing a game or two every now and then, but I always wanted to play more than they wanted to. My salvation came in the form of Vancouver gamer Jeremy Avery who contacted me (via my reviews on Funagain) so we could get together and play. We were joined by two other gamers that he discovered - Jeff Suderman and Corwin Koch - and together we formed the Terminal City Gamers ('Terminal City' being a nickname of our hometown of Vancouver, Canada). Not long after we started, Jeremy started a website for the group. He maintained it for a while, posting information about the group, our members, pictures, etc. However, towards the end of 2001, Jeremy let us know that he was going to be leaving Vancouver to work outside the country for six months. Not only were we losing a valuable member of our game group, we were also losing our webmaster. Even though I was involved in the computer business at the time, I hadn't really had much exposure to creating websites. With Jeremy leaving, this seemed a golden opportunity to take over the running of the site and learn more about how websites worked. In January of 2002 I took over control of the site from Jeremy. Little did I realize what I was getting myself into...
For my first few months at the helm, I spent most of the time learning how to run and update the site. I did the occasional update with information about our game group - new members, session reports, etc. On March 7, 2002, I posted something on the site that I had never posted before - a news item. Over the previous few months I had gotten into the habit of scouring the web for news about games and on this day I had heard about some new games that had just been released (among them, Mexica, Where's Bob's Hat?, and a few others). I thought this news would be of interest to the members of my game group who were, at the time, the only ones who read the site, so I wrote up a news item about the games and posted it. I didn't know it at the time, but this marked the start of my career in games journalism. It was also around this time that I decided that I was going to try to challenge myself to post at least one news item to the website every day - including Saturdays and Sundays (I have no idea why I thought I should do that, I must have been insane). I've kept it up for the last four years, posting (with rare exceptions for holidays) some gaming news to the Internet almost every single day. As the months went on, I started posting less and less about the group and more and more news about world of games. In April of 2002, I attended my first Gathering of Friends. Before I left I challenged myself again, this time to post daily reports from the convention - typing up my experiences and posting pictures. When I got there I played games all day and into the evening and then stayed up until 3 in the morning typing up stuff, formatting pictures and uploading the reports - over a modem! It was a lot more work than I expected it to be (again, I must have been insane) but the payoff was incredible. Not only did my friends love reading the reports but I also got emails from others in the gaming community who were reading my reports as well. This was my first inkling that people other than my group were reading the site. Since then, I have attended many game conventions and I have posted daily reports from almost all of them. In July 2002, another milestone: my first interview with a game designer. At the time, Villa Paletti had just won the Spiel des Jahres and I found out that the designer, Bill Payne, was a fellow Canadian. I was able to get in contact with him and he very kindly allowed himself to be interviewed. This was my first interview ever, so I very carefully prepared for it. I thought a phone interview would be easiest so I got this gizmo that attached a tape recorder to my phone, called Bill, and did the interview. Well, it didn't work too well - I had to put upon a friend to get the tape transcribed and some of it was inaudible (I learned my lesson - I now do interviews by email!). It all came out fine, though, and I posted it. I felt great about it - I thought it quite a coup to get an interview with an SdJ winner that no one else had. I was also pleased to see that many game sites, including ones from Europe, had mentioned my interview and linked to it. It was at this point I really started feeling like a game journalist. After the interview, I started getting emails from publishers and others in the gaming community giving me tips on news. Once in contact with the publishers I was able to get more news on upcoming games as well as some pictures, and I started creating previews of upcoming games. Designers also started emailing me and actually asking ME if I would interview THEM! Also in July 2002, yet another milestone: the creation of Gone Cardboard. A few months prior to this, while scouring the game publisher's websites for news, I had started keeping track of their upcoming games and the estimated release dates. I kept track of these in an Excel spreadsheet, basically for my own information (so I could plan which games to buy). At one point I thought that this information might be helpful to others. I was right - shortly after I debuted Gone Cardboard I was inundated with email thanking me for the feature. I have kept up the Gone Cardboard page for more than three years now, updating it every few days. Why the name 'Gone Cardboard'? At the time, there was a similar feature for computer games on a website called 'Gone Gold' (an expression used when a computer game was complete and ready to be published). I thought, well, boardgames are made out of cardboard, so why not 'Gone Cardboard'? The name was only going to be temporary, but after a while the name grew on me so I ended up sticking with it. It was at this point that the ball was really rolling. I was getting more and more readers from all over the world, and my website was getting over a thousand visits a week. With so much practice I was also getting better at writing (and faster). Over the previous few months, more and more of my time was being swallowed up by being a game journalist and I was spending less and less time doing computer work. It was around this point when I decided to leave the computer world altogether and devote myself full-time to being a game journalist. Even though I was happy with my decision, I wasn't actually making any money at the new job. I didn't have any advertising on the Terminal City Gamers site nor did I solicit subscriptions or contributions. I did it all for nothing - just living off my savings and doing the job because I loved doing it. For the rest of 2002 and into 2003 I continued to expand the website, adding new features and getting some help from other members of the Terminal City Gamers. Dan Bosley wrote up a very funny story of an experience he had teaching games to some non-gamers and the 'Misadventures in Gaming' series was born. Patrick Korner started translating German previews of the Essen and Nuremberg game conventions and that gave birth to our monster convention previews. Gamewire
The timing of the offer couldn't have been better. While I loved doing the Terminal City Gamers website, I was actually thinking of stopping it. I just couldn't continue working full-time on something that paid no money. The offer from Gamefest meant I could keep doing what I was doing and make some money at it at the same time (to be clear, though, it was not enough money to live - I still had to live off my savings somewhat). In October of 2003, Gamefest was launched with my new home for game news - Gamewire. We started things off with a bang - I headed to Essen for the first time and did daily reports from the fair. Though I was worried about the technical aspects of doing reports on a new website from another country with uncertain Internet access, it all went off fine and Gamewire was off to a rousing start. For the next two years, I posted to Gamewire almost every day. I posted news, updated Gone Cardboard, posted previews, reviews, convention previews, convention reports, interviews and much more. I posted more than 2,500 news items over those two years, plus innumerable previews, reviews, feature articles, weblogs, etc. Some additional milestones were achieved. One was the daily gaming weblogs, an idea of Gamefest's Adam Hill, where seven gaming personalities would each write a weekly column with their thoughts about games. Another milestone was The Dice Tower, Tom Vasel and Joe Steadman's podcast about games - I was very happy to be able to host their excellent show on Gamewire. Not long ago, I attended Essen 2005 and again did daily reports from the show for Gamewire. When I got back I had a chance to sit back and reflect on what I had done over the past two years at Gamefest. I was quite happy with what I'd accomplished and was especially pleased with my reporting from Essen 2005. Though I was pleased with my reporting, I wasn't as pleased with Gamefest. I had been having a few problems with them for a number of months. The problems were not hugely serious, but they were enough for me to be dissatisfied with Gamefest. It seemed like the right time to part ways - if I was going to leave Gamewire I wanted to leave on a high note and I thought the Essen 2005 coverage was a pretty high note. I'd like to note that on the whole I'm very happy with the Gamefest experience. I did have some problems with them but for the most part they treated me very well. Without Gamefest I probably would have stopped my game journalism career years ago. They gave me the opportunity to continue doing a job I loved and I thank them very much for the opportunity. A New Home After I posted my farewell note to Gamewire, I sat back to contemplate what to do next. I still loved game journalism, but I thought I might move onto something else. Shortly after my note was posted, I started getting a trickle of emails from people who were surprised at my decision to leave, but at the same time appreciative of all the work I'd done. The trickle soon turned into a torrent and, along with notes on BoardgameGeek and other online forums, I was soon overwhelmed with messages. I thought that people would notice my departure, but the outpouring of goodwill after it happened was just staggering. I was very moved by all of the messages and emails. All the attention brought home one big fact - that there was an appetite for game news among the gaming community. I thought that with the support of the community, I may be able to continue doing news about gaming. The question was, where? In the two weeks that followed my departure from Gamefest, I considered many options, including a few offers from other websites. In the end, I decided to start up a brand-new website dedicated to boardgame news. There were a number of reasons for starting up something new but the main one was that I would have complete control of the site - the look, the structure and the content. So what will the new site be like? Well, I hope it to be all that Gamewire was, plus more. I'll be joined in my new venture by my old Gamewire (and Terminal City Gamers) friends - Patrick Korner, Dan Bosley, Greg Schloesser, Tom Vasel and Ryan Bretsch. I'm very happy that these guys are going to be along for the ride. I also have plans to add quite a few more gaming personalities to the mix, including a set of international columnists who will be posting about the gaming in their parts of the world. I have a number of ideas for additional features as well. I'm planning for the new site to be online by the end of November 2005 (and it may actually be up by the time you read this). It has indeed been a long, strange road that I've taken over the past four years. It's also been an incredibly fun and rewarding ride. With the new site, I'm looking forward to even more adventures in my new career in gaming journalism.
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I
never would have believed it - me, a game journalist. Four years ago I
was a computer programmer, with not an inkling in the world that my life
was about to change completely. I'm constantly amazed at how I was able
to parley my love of games into something that I could do as a vocation
(or as a vacation, as some people think of my job). What a long, strange
road it's been... 
It
was during 2003 that I was approached by some people who were going to
be starting up a new online game store, to be called Gamefest.
They asked me if I was interested in moving my game news to their site
for the purposes of drawing traffic to their site. I would get a small
salary, plus my expenses to go to the Gathering and to Essen. 