Shut Up & Sit Down continues push into game development through tie-up with publisher Play to Z, says deal will “not compromise on our core values”

Board game review giant Shut Up & Sit Down has made a further move into game development by inking a deal with star-studded publisher Play to Z – a financial tie-up it admits will mean “additional caveats, conversations, and potential complications” for its review work.

SU&SD said its team will select and streamline out-of-print designs for the ‘SU&SD Presents’ line, before working as consultants to remove plastic “bloat” and advise on theme and art direction ahead of the games being published by Play to Z.

The partnership plans to release a single title each year, but will launch with two titles in 2025 – including a new game from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, Animal Rescue Team, which he has created alongside his friend and real life animal rescuer Lisa Towell.

That game is set to be crowdfunded early next year, while a smaller-box, lower-priced remaster of well-regarded Paolo Mori design Dogs of War – which has been out of print for years following its initial publication by CMON in 2014 – is slated for retail release in late 2025.

Play to Z was launched last year by former Z-Man Games founder Zev Shlasinger and a string of other high-profile tabletop industry veterans, including Stronghold Games founder Stephen Buonocore and Space Cadets designer and TableTop Games Designers Association co-founder Geoff Engelstein.

Shut Up & Sit Down editor in chief Tom Brewster told BoardGameWire that a chat with Shlasinger at PAX Unplugged a couple of years ago about what games they would love to see reprinted had later “blossomed into a collaboration”, when they realised Shlasinger “might be the person to make it a reality”.

He said, “When Play to Z started in earnest, Zev also had a smorgasbord of designs that would have potential for co-publishing – and sitting down to Animal Rescue Team was a delight that widened the scope of the project from merely reprints to include original designs as well.

“We’ve seen some comparisons to Dice Tower Essentials, but as far as I’m aware we’re suggesting a slightly different prospect – actively putting our time into developing the games into the best versions they can be.

“We’re doing something similar in bringing some (older) games to a publisher to remaster, but that stream of recommendation runs both ways, and we’re ultimately putting our hours into making sure the games are squeaky clean.”

Fellow board game review giant The Dice Tower launched its Essentials collaboration with Arcane Wonders in 2014, with Dice Tower creator Tom Vasel bringing out of print games to the publisher in an attempt to get new versions into the market.

Big successes for that partnership have included Sheriff of Nottingham – a reworking of 1950s design Contraband – which was ultimately sold on to CMON, and titles including Onitama and Foundations of Rome.

The Shut Up & Sit Down Effect

The SU&SD partnership has obvious benefits for Play to Z, providing it with a direct line in showcasing the games to Shut Up & Sit Down’s vast 439,000-strong YouTube subscriber base.

That number is almost as many as the YouTube followings of The Dice Tower and fellow board game review major Rahdo combined, and underscores the huge power SU&SD has in boosting sales of a game with a positive video.

Scores of games have benefitted from what has become known as the ‘Shut Up & Sit Down effect’ since the site was launched in 2011, in which titles praised in the team’s videos quickly sell out of their print runs.

That very effect was obliquely namechecked in 2021 by Z-Man Games’ then studio head Steve Kimball, who said the scrapping of the publisher’s Euro Classics line of games was partly down to having to “pray that any number of witty UK board game influencers take notice and give you coverage”.

In a now-deleted blog post announcing the cancellation of Euro Classics, which included games such as Taj Mahal, Samurai, Ra and Tigris & Euphrates, he said, “Those folks hold massive sway over the current industry’s focus, and without a ringing endorsement poshly articulated in the Queen’s English (‘Best Euro Ever’ anyone?), your revised labor of love is headed for a Miniature Market fire sale.”

Shlasinger, who left Z-Man in 2016, can now count on those endorsements for the SU&SD Presents titles, while Shut Up & Sit Down gains a revenue stream that takes a little of the heat away from its heavy reliance on donations from its community of fans.

Long-time SU&SD reviewer and podcast co-host Matt Lees – the sole director of the company since co-founder Quintin Smith stepped back in 2021 – commented on SU&SD’s announcement of the Play to Z deal to say it would be “silly to be dismissive of the financial incentives”, but also emphasised the importance of the site maintaining its ability to provide independent criticism.

He said, “In 2024 we’re navigating a media landscape in which we’re competing for donations with a very wide variety of companies, many of which perhaps don’t strictly need it.

“We’ve also seen a steep increase in the general cost of living – this means our wages don’t stretch as far, and it also means that an awful lot of folks no longer have much disposable income.

“Finally – and we frankly don’t ever talk about this publicly, as it’s almost impossible to do so without looking as if we’re throwing shade: we’re also one of the few outlets in this industry that consistently ensure that we pay people fairly.

“So yes – it’s really important to us, too, that we do what we can to maintain and uphold our independent criticism – but that’s only one of the aspects in which we constantly strive to do things the right way, and for the right reasons.

“I think what I’d really like to convey is that this is a continuation of those principles, rather than a step away from them. We’re doing something new, we’re mindful of that, and we’re putting in an awful lot of time and work to ensure we do it properly.”

Previous Partnerships

Shut Up & Sit Down’s previous forays into game development and publishing have been via team-ups with design studio and publisher CMYK, initially through a 2017 expansion for its party game Monikers written by the SU&SD team.

SU&SD also worked on a bigger-box Monikers expansion, Serious Nonsense, released in 2019, and revealed this summer that it had helped create a board game adaptation of video game Wilmot’s Warehouse with CMYK.

Brewster told BoardGameWire the site would approach other games from Play to Z, and from collaborating designers such as Leacock and Mori, in the same way it had done with CMYK Games – “with incredibly clear disclaimers on any coverage given”.

He said, “We’re aware of the potential for implicit bias that comes from reviewing a game belonging to someone you’re actively launching a product with!

“Viewers are free to entirely discount our opinions on these things, and we will make sure they know the collaboration exists before any relevant coverage.

“If a game is truly exceptional, we’re still going to cover it – but you’ll absolutely know that there’s a link between us and that product.

“For viewers that don’t trust the verdict because of that, we’ll be sure to include relevant disclaimers up-front and center stage. We want to be as transparent as possible.”

Caveat Clarity

But Shut Up & Sit Down’s CMYK partnership underscores the difficulty of collaborations between board game reviewers and publishers, in terms of how aggressively and consistently disclaimers are provided.

SU&SD has always been meticulous in including disclaimers in its videos which mention Monikers, making it clear it was involved in making expansions for the game, and has avoided reviewing the game’s other expansions to avoid any conflicts of interest.

Its two videos for Wilmot’s Warehouse – a short overview and a full ‘how to play’ video – both include written disclaimers in the description text underneath the videos on YouTube, albeit requiring a user to click ‘see more’ to be shown them – but only the overview video mentions that SU&SD is financially involved with the game.

Even then, the script only mentions it being “an exciting collaboration between our favourite video game people and our favourite board game people – and for some reason we’re involved a little bit too?”, as well as adding “we loved it enough to stick our oar in and get involved with it. We’ve had our hands on this game in a bunch of different little ways”, and “watching this thing come to life with our help has been joyous”, and has no direct disclosure at the start of the video detailing SU&SD’s involvement.

The SU&SD Board Game Gift Guide 2024 video caveated their recommendation of Wilmot’s Warehouse with the fact that they make a “little bit” of money from sales, and then had to disclaimer their next recommendation, CMYK-published Lacuna, because of their work with the company.

Lees says in the video, “The reason we work with them is because literally no one out there in the space makes better board game products than CMYK”, before adding that having to constantly do the caveats was “slightly frustrating”.

SU&SD’s coverage of other CMYK games highlights the complications faced by reviewers entering financial arrangements with publishers, even when being as clearly committed to transparency and ethical integrity as the Shut Up & Sit Down team obviously are.

SU&SD is yet to review CMYK’s Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning climate action game Daybreak – co-created by Matt Leacock – for example, but the game has been highlighted by the team on both a podcast episode and as one of its best games of 2024.

The team spent most of the roughly half-hour podcast episode 246 in March this year discussing Daybreak, describing it as optimistic, intriguing, and “a game from one of our favorite publishers, CMYK Games”, with no disclaimer about SU&SD’s ongoing partnership with the company.

SU&SD’s ‘Best Games of 2024‘ video from December 5 features Daybreak as the second of its six picks for favourite games of the year, with Lees saying, “It is just so good, I think the more I play it the more I think ‘this is clever’ in maybe a way I didn’t give it credit for in my first playthrough”.

That video also makes no mention of Shut Up & Sit Down’s business relationship with publisher CMYK – something it should do according to guidance from the US Federal Trade Commission, the government agency in charge of consumer protection.

Last year the FTC updated its 14-year-old guidance on ‘endorsements and testimonials in advertising’ to accommodate the rise in online influencers, and included a long Q&A attempting to clarify specific situations which may occur for content creators.

The new guidance makes it clear reviewers and other media creators should clearly disclose when they receive free products, financial backing or other perks from a company, adding that multiple disclosures through a video or live stream are preferable to a single disclosure at the start.

Additionally, it cautions that media with a financial relationship should disclose each time they endorse one of the company’s products, to avoid the possibility of deception.

FTC enforcement against board game reviewers is a vanishingly small possibility, but the SU&SD tie-up with CMYK spotlights the ease with which even content creators with strong ethical ideals can struggle with the mounting caveats caused by financial partnerships, while also retaining the flow and easy-going nature of an entertainment show.

Brewster told BoardGameWire, “I definitely think that seeing where we’ve stumbled with CMYK stuff is an eye-opener – I think to us it’s so obvious that things are caveated but making sure that’s center stage in coverage is really important to us.

“We talk a lot on the site about the idea of YouTube being ‘unstuck in time’ – what people are watching can be completely non-linear to what we’re actually making here and now.

“I think we can sometimes fall into the trap of assuming the audience is following the work with the same vigor as our core donor base follows it – to us its obvious of the caveats because we (and our core donors) watch every video. The passing viewer might not have the same experience.”

In response to a small handful of comments on the SU&SD announcement of the Play to Z deal which highlighted the potential ethical difficulties of such a partnership, Lees said, “We’ve always done our best to strive for independence and integrity – and we do appreciate that projects like this mean additional caveats, conversations, and potential complications!

“I think it’s great that people are asking these questions, because it reassures us that all the work that we’ve put in to avoid conflicts of interest throughout the years haven’t gone unnoticed: we’re one of a vanishingly small number of outlets who don’t accept money from publishers for anything and everything – this has by no means been easy, and it does frequently feel like something that’s frequently taken for granted, or simply overlooked.

He added, “With the cards we’re all being dealt in 2024, there are no perfect solutions. We’ll continue to take our choices seriously, we’ll continue to take your TRUST really seriously, and while some of the implications of this latest step are fuzzy – in some ways what we’re doing really hasn’t changed at all: we’re putting a lot of care & work & love into making things that we think you’re gonna love.”