I had planned a different article for this week (you’ll get that one next Wednesday), but then I realized that today, we are publishing our 500^th article on the Daily Worker Placement, an accomplishment I couldn’t have conceived when I started blogging back in February 2014. We spent about a year on Tumblr before migrating to our current home. Over the past, almost five years we’ve had 20 different contributors, adding their opinions to the articles we publish.

My gaming background started at a young age. Me and my brothers grew up with an island cottage with no TVs, our computers, long before the age of smart phones and internet. We’d play games throughout the day, and gather as a family during the evening for a nightly game. I was late to the party when it game to the new waves of games, first introduced to Catan, them Carcassonne, and eventually titles like Citadels and Dominion. My gaming knowledge exploded when I started working at Snakes & Lattes in 2011. Working there in those early days was like being on a wave of something that was just starting to blow up. We could never believe how popular and busy we were going to be. People were coming in to play board games. Snakes has changed a lot over the years, and many other game cafes have opened up, but nothing will take away the amazing experience it was to work there right at the beginning.

The DWP, funnily enough, was started sorta by accident. One of my favourite parts of the job at Snakes was writing about board games, and when I left there, I was determined to keep it up in some capacity. Writing about games and taking pictures of them is both cathartic and one of the creative outlets that I have. Publishing a new article is one of the best feelings I get on a weekly basis.

As I mentioned, we have had a number of different people lend their talents to the site. You can check out some of those amazing people here. Two people that have become more than contributors to the site are Nicole H. and David W. We have become an editorial team working together to cover the world of board games as best we can. They are more than co-workers and more than just friends. They make the work we do possible.

I enjoy every article that they write but a couple that have stood out to be include Nicole’s examination of how Settlers of Catan is being used as a teaching tool for how colonialism has affected the world and David’s two-part series on Civilization games. Other highlights that stand out to me include our week long look at trick-taking games, our Board Game Dictionary articles, and our Designer Spotlights.

We have always wanted to do more than just reviews here. Sure, we love to play a new game and share our thoughts, but we also like to take a journalistic approach to the hobby. We like to cover stories in the industry, gaming events that occur throughout the year, and to go beyond just gaming. We want to talk about the people who play and create the games.

One thing that makes our work a lot easier is being based out of Toronto. It is such a vibrant city and the gaming community is really alive. From Snakes & Lattes gaming café, to 401 Games, to countless meetups around the city, you really don’t have to go a day without a game if you don’t want to. There are stories to tell in your own backyard, no matter where you’re from. You just have to go out and tell those stories.

In closing, I just want to say, that this might sound a little self-congratulatory. It’s meant more as a retrospective of the first 500 articles of the DWP and little bit of a look behind what we do and why we do it. We don’t mean to pat ourselves on our own backs, but we are incredibly proud to be able to add our voices to many wonderful board game journalists out there.