Last updated: April(ish) 2020

Hello! If you’re reading this message please read this page thoroughly, as some of our menu options continue to change on regular intervals.

If you are looking for reviews, please reach out directly, as my best shipping address has changed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

I moved recently, so this is still true, and it will become difficult or impossible for me to receive copies of games sent to my old address in a few months.

Contacting Me, Generally Speaking

Please contact me if you have any constructive feedback, requests, etc. at the email address I’m using solely because I’m too cheap to get a custom domain, whatsericplaying@gmail.com. You can also tweet at me or comment in my general direction on Instagram (there’s not a good word for it) or like at me on the Facebook (I am at least 20% sure that’s how you say that), and I’m usually decently responsive. I generally don’t respond to direct messages on these platforms, so if you’d like to discuss something, please email.

I Would Like To Use Your Photos For Something

Awesome! Glad you like them. I’m trying to license my stuff out via Creative Commons, so here’s more information on the license I’m using. If you’d like to use them for commercial purposes, email me and we can work something out, potentially. Generally I’ll charge a per-photo fee and am loathe to give up copyright. I also, unfortunately, have to aggressively defend my copyright to avoid setting a bad precedent, so if you get a takedown request from me, no hard feelings! Just please only use my photos in accordance with an agreement we’ve made or via my license. Here’s how that breaks down:

Photography Fees and Licensing Information

So like I said, I want to make sure that I’m placing the appropriate value on this kind of work, so I do have to charge for commercial use of my photography. Here’s how that breaks down:

• Arrangement Photos / “Featured” Photos: $200
• Standard Photos+ (includes things like background color changes, other post-processing requests, or fancier arrangements): $150
• Standard Photos: $100
• Single Components (first-player token or something): $40

Photoshop costs money time is money editing is labor-intensive etc etc etc.

These prices are subject to a bit of adjustment (especially if you’re looking, say, for a Kickstarter package), especially if you’re considering longer-term use. Email me if you’re interested; happy to negotiate package deals.

Noncommercial use of my photography is permitted, but I would appreciate a heads-up either way. For the record, this means, please do not use my photos (without my explicit permission) for:

• Marketing your game on social media;
• Showing off your game on Kickstarter;
• Using it on your ad-supported YouTube channel;
• Putting it in a book that you plan to sell for money (and then trying to get me to agree to license you the photos for free);
• other commercial uses (this is a non-exhaustive list).

Either way, I do require appropriate attribution, for copyright reasons. For more information, please see the license here:

These works by Eric Yurko are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at whatsericplaying.com/contact.

There has been some “confusion” about what I mean by appropriate attribution, so let me be clear. If you are using my photography for any reason, you should include a photo credit to Eric Yurko of What’s Eric Playing? and a link back to my site. Anything less than this is a violation of my license and will be treated as such, unfortunately. Gotta protect the art and all that.

Let’s Partner Up for a Giveaway!

Awesome, let’s. I usually do 1 – 3 giveaways a year, but I may do more now that I’m doing the whole Patreon thing. (Turns out, Patreon doesn’t allow you to do special giveaways for Patrons or give Patrons extra entries in raffles because of gambling laws and a general disdain for fun, so, that’s out.) Only things:

• It’s a bit easier if y’all mail it to the winner. If you mail it to me then we’re just paying for shipping twice.
• Lemme know if you can do an international giveaway. I generally assume US-only (again, shipping), but happy to open it up if that works for you.
• It’s probably best if I have reviewed whatever game y’all want me to giveaway. Just for practical reasons.

You Should Review A Game I Made

If it’s published and I own a copy, great. If I don’t own a copy and you want to send me a copy, also great. I can give you a good address to send stuff to, because I live in a place that has an address. If it doesn’t physically exist in the way you and I physically exist (as humans that have skin, which is a thing we both do, probably), that’s a bit more complicated, as I’m not super good at print-and-plays (except for Tiny Epic Galaxies and Entropy, which were both totally worth all the paper cuts). I generally won’t do print-and-play games, for this reason.

If it’s a Kickstarter / other crowdfunding platforms game that you haven’t released yet and you’re looking for a preview, that’s also cool! (I love Kickstarter games and have already backed too many.) I’m reasonably down to give it a whirl, provided it’s completed (as in a mostly finalized state) within some guidelines.

General Game Review Consideration Guidelines

• Hey, if I do a Kickstarter preview for you, please send me a final copy of the game once it fulfills. Even if you don’t think I “liked it enough”, it’s been a little disheartening that a bunch of folks have just had me write a preview (for free) and then not even followed up with me during fulfillment. Now I have to start asking folks about it, and that sucks, too.
• On the subject of Kickstarter previews, I review the game as presented, which includes things like the rulebook. I understand if the art assets aren’t finalized, but the rulebook should be close to finalized by the time it gets to your reviewers, and I’m going to treat it as such.
• The pandemic has really taken it out of me. Sorry friends, I’m really tired and I can’t hold game nights anymore. I can still get some games played, but it’s very gradual. You’ll see two reviews a week, tops, and I cannot guarantee review-by dates. I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your flexibility. This may manifest as me not responding to emails very quickly, and I apologize; I’m doing my best.
• I cannot review every game. I’m writing this looking at my … significant backlog, and I know it’s only going to get longer. I generally try to review every game that I’m sent, but, there are games that I play that I will not get played again. This applies doubly to games that you send that I haven’t agreed to look at. If you send a game that we haven’t discussed in advance, the chances of it getting reviewed drop dramatically. Please be considerate of my time and resources and just ask me first, before sending games.
• You must have a BGG page for your game. It’s confusing / frustrating / annoying if there isn’t one, as I tend to do photography and upload those photos to BGG and I … can’t do that if you don’t have a page for it! It also makes logging my plays harder, and that’s something I do a lot of. It’s okay if you’re still in the process of getting one approved, but please let me know that that’s the case.
• Please link to my review from your Kickstarter, if you’re doing one. You’d be surprised how many people click through on a Kickstarter to the review and it helps increase the longevity of the review, which is nice. Failure to do so will make it much less likely that I’ll do reviews for you in the future, because, well, it’s kind of rude?
• I have a priority queue for reviewing. I’m trying to make sure that I’m being sensitive to everyone’s needs (as well as my time and sanity and desire to binge TV shows after work), so I have some organization to the order in which I review games. This allows me to prioritize. If you ever need to know when I’m planning to publish my review of your game, please ask! I’m happy to be flexible-ish if you have a deadline or a preferred time frame. That queue, for those of you who are curious, is:
  1. Agreed-upon publish dates. If you need something done by a certain day, ask. The worst I’ll say is no.
  2. Upcoming Kickstarters.
  3. Games with upcoming release dates.
  4. Review copies we’ve discussed.
  5. Games I’ve purchased for myself.
  6. Review copies we haven’t discussed. Sorry; it’s just generally harder to get these to the table. Like I said earlier, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that these will get reviewed at all. If you would like me to review a game, please email me about it.
• Party games and pure storytelling games / RPGs are extremely difficult for to review. Usually that means I have to get 5-10 people together and yeah, it’s a bit logistically complex. I will likely pass on those, as a rule, sorry. My game groups are getting smaller, so it’s harder to find time to play party games like I used to. That said, I reviewed Legacy of Dragonholt so who knows how consistent this rule will be!
• Your best bet is going to be 2-5 players and < 60 minutes. That means usually I can convince a coworker or someone I know to play a few games with me and then expand it out a bit. One player is a bit lonely, unless it’s a game with a solo variant. (Which I do try out pretty frequently!)
• It could take me like, a while to actually get a review done. Time pressure ruins the magic or something. I’ll try to put some pressure on myself if you have a deadline, but please let me know if you need a game done by a certain date. Specifically regarding Kickstarter games: I generally prefer to release my review the Monday before your Kickstarter launches. This means that it’s really helpful if you can tell me when your Kickstarter is going to launch. Please have the game to me 6 – 8 weeks before your planned launch. This is a change from prior policy. If you need to rush (as in, you cannot get the game physically to me 6 or more weeks before the launch), I’ll generally charge a rush fee (if I can do a preview at all) so that I can structure my time efficiently (and I might … have to sleep a bit less to do so). We can discuss that, if necessary. To that end, though, if I do charge a rush fee, please have that ready when my review is posted. I’ve been taken for a bit of a ride in the past, and I’d prefer not to have to take down my review for lack of being paid.
• I take pictures during gameplay and will post them to Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / BGG. Please let me know beforehand if having pictures of your game online is a problem, so I can remember to take any photos. If not, I’ll assume you’re cool with it. To that end, please send me a game as close to complete as possible, since I’ll be taking a fair number of photos. If you send me an early-stage prototype, I’ll still take photos, they just … won’t show as much.
• If you would ever like me to remove one of my photos from BGG, let me know! Especially for Kickstarter previews, my photos aren’t always reflective of the final product, so when the final product does launch you may end up wanting other photos to be available. I’m happy to work with you on that.
• I need to see diversity and inclusion in the games that I play.. Don’t give me that “historical accuracy” bullshit; I’m not interested in it. Too many dour-looking medieval dudes on your cover? Add some women. Make them all women. Whatever. Are you asking yourself why there are no playable people of color in your game that involves people? Take steps to correct it. This is just an expectation I have for games I’m going to play, now, and I’m going to make very. few. exceptions. Plus an obvious blanket exception for things that have no humanoid / anthropomorphic characters, for obvious reasons.
• I do not charge money for Kickstarter previews, beyond a rush fee. That said, if you’d like me to review a preview copy, I’d ask that you send a final copy of the deluxe version of the game to me once it’s produced. It lets me update some of the photography, such as the box / card art. You’re also a full 200% more likely to get your game previewed if you include in your email “I’ve read your Contact page including the part where I’m supposed to indicate that I’ve read your Contact page.” It helps me verify that I don’t need to re-ask a bunch of questions.
• If I cannot review your game, I will generally offer to ask someone else. This may be one of my collaborators in Punchboard Media or Inside Voices. If that’s a problem, please let me know.
• Yeah, uh, if you need me to send your game along, please let me know … before we do the review. I tend to be a bit more careful with those games, and also, it means I won’t move it into the deep storage once I’m done with it. Also it’s a bit more polite. One note, though, I have to pay per sheet of paper I print (complicated story), so printing a shipping label costs me a bit of money. All this means is that passing a game along to another reviewer should either include a pre-paid shipping label or I’ll assess a small (~$1) printing fee to do it myself. That’s if you want me to pass the game along. Worst-case, I’ll pass it on to the local tabletop developers group for use as parts. If you’d prefer that not happen, let me know.

This page is subject to change occasionally.