“I wanted to elevate board gaming to the same level as cinema, literature, theatre”: Senet editor Dan Jolin celebrates five years of publishing board gaming’s most beautiful magazine

Modern board gaming’s boom over the past 20 years has been accompanied by an avalanche of creatives reviewing, discussing and celebrating the growing hobby. That media continues to be dominated by video reviews and previews – but five years ago long-time film magazine editor Dan Jolin and art director James Hunter took a chance that there was room in the industry for a beautiful, high-quality magazine “celebrating the craft, creativity and community” of tabletop gaming. That hunch has proven well judged, with the magazine’s readership having grown five-fold compared to its original Kickstarter campaign thanks to its beautiful presentation, thoughtful reviews and articles, and interviews with the biggest names in board gaming. Editor Dan Jolin spoke to BoardGameWire about the magazine’s journey so far, how the industry has changed and what the future holds for Senet.

BoardGameWire: Hi Dan! Senet just celebrated its fifth anniversary, congratulations! Did you expect when you launched the original Kickstarter in 2020 that the magazine would still be going strong after five years?

Senet co-creator and editor Dan Jolin: Thanks! This is a tricky question, because if I said “no”, that would make it sound like I didn’t have much faith in the concept, which obviously wasn’t the case. However, I do think it’s fair to say that I had no expectation that the magazine would still be going after five years – and going stronger than ever – if only because both James [Hunter, co-founder and art director] and I were so focused on the Kickstarter campaign itself, then of course making the launch issue the best board- game related print experience it possibly could be. It really was a case, to mangle the script for Field of Dreams, of “Let’s build it, and then see if they will come.” And they came. And they kept on coming. And here we are!

You launched the magazine to celebrate “the craft, creativity and community of board gaming” – why do you think that was missing from a lot of coverage about the industry?

I think it would be a bit unfair of me to say that it was missing entirely from all the coverage that was out there in 2019/20, but I did feel that nothing, in print media at least, was really committed to treating board games seriously as an art form and entertainment form. You use the word “industry”, but the word I see most in relation to board gaming is “hobby”. This is not a bad word per se, but it does infer triviality – it feels almost dismissive – and as such, I believe, does board gaming little justice.

I wanted to elevate board gaming to the same level as cinema, literature, theatre, or the way some publications treat video games. Like any of those art forms, board games require skill to craft and attract a community around them, comprising both creators and players. But I felt the majority of coverage out there just treated games as ‘products’ to be marketed, and gaming itself as little more than a frivolous pastime. I felt Senet could do more – in the premium print medium, at least.

Do you think things have changed now? Or do you think Senet is still somewhat of an outlier in terms of what it does?

In terms of our commitment to treating board games seriously (which isn’t to say the magazine is po faced – far from it!) in a purely print format, I’ve not actually seen a huge change since the turn of the decade. There have been other English-language magazines taking a similar approach to related topics – Wyrd Science on tabletop role-playing games and ON Games Journal on video games, for example – but to my knowledge no-one else has done it for board games. However, I would say that on a general level, it’s my impression that board games feel far more part of the culture they were before Senet launched. Which is lovely.

Where do you go to read about board games, when you’re not busy editing the magazine?

In print, I read Tabletop Gaming, which is published here in the UK (I’m a former contributor, so rather fond of it), and also Spielbox’s English-language edition. Online, I’m a huge fan of SPACE-BIFF! There’s a good case for Dan Thurot being the world’s best board-game writer… which is why he’s been contributing to Senet since Issue 1!

What’s your favourite segment of the magazine, and why?

I’m trying to resist replying ‘that’s like asking who’s my favourite child’… But I will say I remain very proud of what I call our ‘cross-sectional approach’. By which I mean, rather than filling our features section with piece after piece hooked on a new title that’s out, each issue focuses on the four main strands of game creation: the author (in the form of an in-depth designer Q&A), the artist (in the form of an insightfully captioned gallery), mechanism and theme (both of which get a deep-dive treatment by a great writer). I should also add that I always love seeing what amazing covers James comes up with. So I guess the cover is my favourite ‘segment’ of the magazine!

Which piece are you most proud of publishing over the last five years?

Ooh, good question. But I couldn’t possibly give you just one answer. So, in no particular order: I really loved Dan Thurot’s interview with Cole Wehrle (Issue 16), Owen Duffy’s piece on colonialism as a board-game theme (Issue 2) and Alexandra Sonechkina’s feature on social deduction games (Issue 8), even though it’s not a mechanism I’m hugely into. It was also a huge honour to have the gorgeous work of artists like Kwanchai Moriya (Issue 2 again) and Kyle Ferrin (Issue 3) on our pages, and a personal highpoint was interviewing Sir Ian Livingstone, who’s one of my lifelong heroes (Issue 9).

What are the biggest changes in the industry that you’ve seen take place in the last five years?

The headline for the past five years is clearly growth. Precise industry figures are hard to come by, as you’ll no doubt well know, but it does appear that board gaming is a steadily growing business, now bigger than it’s ever been. Of course, that’s not a change, just the continuation of a heartening trend, but it bears highlighting, I think. In terms of big shifts, I suppose the move by many publishers away from Kickstarter to Gamefound for their crowdfunding is a key one. Then there’s the current situation with Trump’s tariff frenzy, which is looking a bit grim, sadly.

What are the big challenges for board game creatives – designers, artists, writers – currently?

Presuming you mean creatively rather than commercially, I would say it’s keeping things fresh and exciting and engaging enough in an increasingly crowded scene. Also, as in any creative industry right now, the threat of generative AI is also a big and very concerning challenge.

How do you feel about the future of creativity within board game art and design, and what are the opportunities out there now that maybe didn’t exist five years ago?

The capacity for board-game creators of all types to stay innovative impresses me on a yearly basis, so I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the future of the industry – assuming we can deal with this AI nonsense. I love the sheer breadth of themes we’re seeing in games now, which not only welcome more people into the hobby (see, I use that word, too), but can open doors into other cultures if handled appropriately. It doesn’t all have to be spaceships, dragons, Lovecraft and steam trains! It’s also been good to witness more non-male designers rising to prominence – though we are still far from reaching the kind of parity there that we should have by now.

And how do you feel about the rising amount of AI art making its way into new board games – and what challenges is that creating for traditional artists in the space?

Honestly, I think it’s lazy, clumsy and despicable. I have no time for anybody who, instead of commissioning an artist, uses a quick-fix tool which only exists through the wide-scale theft of copyrighted art. It’s a challenge for artists because it provides potential clients an incredibly cheap (if not free) way to avoid hiring them. Which sucks even more because that alternative to hiring them has already shamelessly ripped off those artists’ work. It’s just a horrible, hateful situation. Senet will never knowingly use, publish or promote AI-generated art – just as we’d never publish AI-generated writing.

Print publishing has obviously taken a hammering in the last couple of decades, across both newspapers and magazines. Why do you think Senet has managed to thrive regardless?

Primarily because we’re beholden to nobody other than our readers. We have no owners or shareholders pushing us down shiny new commercial cul-de-sacs, and are blissfully free of the corporate anxiety that grips so many big publishers. We’re not trying to be a multi-platform brand that clings gaudily to the newsstand while spreading itself thin across the ever-shifting digital space. We are a subscription-focused service that understands a simple, fundamental fact: that people who have a passion for something love to read about it on a well-made paper product they can hold in their hands, and will happily spend a bit of their hard-earned money to do so, for a few quality hours, away from their screens and all the other stresses of their lives.

What sort of circulation does Senet have these days, and how does that compare to the initial print run for the first magazine?

We’ve grown from around 500 Kickstarter backers to over 2,500 subscribers worldwide, and our print run has more than tripled since launch. We’ve even reprinted a few early issues, in response to requests from new readers who want to complete their collections.

Have you considered expansion into web publishing, podcasting, or any other types of media for Senet, or do you think its home will remain in magazine form?

James and I regard Senet purely as an analogue artefact – just like the board games we love. We believe that the immersive tactility of words, photography and illustration on high-quality paper just can’t be beat, which is why we don’t even have a digital/pdf edition. That said, I admit I have toyed with the idea of doing a Senet-adjacent podcast, as I do love podcasts and enjoy podding myself (I’m an occasional member of the Empire pod team). So who knows? Maybe one day I’ll actually get around to it.

What are you most excited about for the future of Senet – for the next year, and for the next five? Will we be doing this interview again for its 10th anniversary?

Well, I can’t reveal too much right now – we like our subscribers to hear about things first – but let’s just say that our next issue (which is out at the end of May) marks the start of a new phase in Senet’s editorial development. So I’m very excited about that, obviously. And with regards to another five years, I can only judge by the last five, which, thanks to the brilliance of the Senet team, all the board-game talent out there in the world and our amazing readers, have been huge fun, highly satisfying creatively and a bigger success than I could have hoped back in early 2020. I think that’s a strong enough basis for me to say: see you on the 10th anniversary!

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Current and previous issues of Senet are available at senetmagazine.com, where you’ll also find a list of bricks-and-mortar stockists. It’s also available at selected WHSmith and Waterstones stores in the UK.