Neil's Thoughts

A few days ago, while sorting through old files, I found something I had not properly looked at in years.

In January 2010, my wife and I published the first issue of thru-the-portal, a free digital magazine about board games, card games, roleplaying, online gaming and the wider social gaming hobby.

I had almost forgotten how ambitious it was.

The first issue ran to 55 pages. We commissioned original cover art from Cynthia Sheppard, interviewed publishers and game designers, attended events, reviewed games, wrote features and even included puzzles and a crossword. That issue alone covered everything from Small World, Pandemic and Through the Desert to LARPing, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age and a conversation with Mark Kaufmann, co-founder and VP of Days of Wonder.

Looking through it now is rather like opening a time capsule.

The story began a couple of years earlier. My future wife introduced me to modern board games, starting with Memoir '44. Until then, my frame of reference had been the familiar British household staples. I remember thinking how strange it was that there was no strip around the board to move along, and that I had cards I could play when I wanted rather than just rolling and hoping. Suddenly there were games such as Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Catan, each built around ideas I had not encountered before.

During our transatlantic relationship, World of Warcraft became one of the places where we spent time together. Running around killing Quilboars across a six-hour time difference. When she moved to the UK in 2009, she brought a board game collection of around sixty games with her. At the time, that felt enormous.

It is slightly amusing to write that now.

After visiting Essen together, we went looking for an English-language magazine that covered the breadth of the hobby. Board games, card games, RPGs, online gaming, events. We did not find quite what we wanted, so we decided to make one.

Initially, we considered print. Then someone on BoardGameGeek suggested a digital publication. It made immediate sense. We could distribute it internationally, avoid the cost and waste of unsold copies, and allow people to download and share it freely. In 2010, that still required a little explanation. Today, it feels completely ordinary.

Producing it was not ordinary.

Contributors volunteered and then became busy. Articles arrived late or not at all. Layout took far longer than expected. We contacted publishers, arranged interviews, chased material, edited copy and tried to make the whole thing look coherent. Much of the writing ended up being mine, driven largely by enthusiasm and the increasingly fixed reality of a publication date.

It was exhausting. It was also wonderful.

We published four issues across 2010. Each quarter brought new interviews, new event coverage, new reviews. We spoke to the founder of Z-Man Games at Essen. We spent a family weekend at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham. We reviewed whether innovation in the industry was dead or merely sleeping. By the third issue, we were running to 56 pages and getting noticed by gaming press in the States.

Then life happened. The final issue included an article titled "UK Events, Babies and the Future of the Magazine." The future of the magazine, as it turned out, was that there would not be one. Not because the interest died, but because time became finite in a new way.

The website eventually disappeared, links broke, and most downloaded copies probably vanished with old laptops and failed hard drives.

That is the melancholy side of digital work. We tend to assume that anything placed online will remain there forever. In reality, the internet forgets constantly.

But this copy survived.

Reading it now, I can see the rough edges, the period design choices and the things I would do differently. I can also see two people making something because they believed it ought to exist. Two people who contacted publishers cold, who chased artists, who stayed up formatting columns and debating whether a particular review was too generous.

That matters more to me than whether it was perfect.

For a brief time, we opened a small portal into a hobby we loved and invited other people through.

I am very glad I found it again.

You can download Issue 1 here if you are curious.