Hello 4X, strategy, and tactics fans! We’re very proud to say that our GoFundMe (still accepting donations) was extremely successful. We asked for $2,500 USD and we received close to $2,900 after GoFundMe took their fees.
Before we continue, we’d like to thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. It’s clear that you value our voice and our content and that makes us immeasurably proud and happy. When Rob started this site in September of 2014, he had no idea how successful the site, podcast, Steam Group, and eventually, the Discord, YouTube, and most importantly, the community, would become.
Thank you. We are forever grateful. We will endeavor to earn your faith and support to the best of our abilities.
Moving forward, the staff at eXplorminate have decided on some new directions for our content, our editorial process, and our review structure.
A New, Old Direction
First, we’re going back to what made eXplorminate stand out in the first place: reliable, accurate, and thorough reviews. We didn’t care about “meeting deadlines” or getting reviews out on release dates. No, we cared more about getting it right.
So, moving forward, our reviews won’t be timely. We’re sorry about that. However, they WILL be accurate. They will be the definitive reviews that you’ve come to expect from eXplorminate. They will be as “timely” as we can get them, but we’re not going to worry about when it comes. Time simply won’t be our sole focus ever again.
We’re also going to return to our focus on quality over quantity. eXplorminate was never meant to be about being very prolific. Instead, it was meant to be a place for 4X and strategy fans to find exhaustive reviews that some of you have come to rely on. That’s what we want to provide and we believe that’s what you want us to provide.
Editors Will Be Compensated
Since our GoFundMe was so successful, we’ll be able to, for the first time ever, compensate our editors for the time they take making our content shine. Not only will that likely increase our site’s content quality even more, but it’ll feel a lot less like the thankless job that it felt like before.
This will also likely provide more incentive for our editors to be even more thorough (though we’re not sure how much more we can squeeze out of them), and will result in a better “eXplorminate product”.
Scores Are Dead; As They Should Be
We’re removing scores all together. They’re arbitrary, anyway. Plus, we don’t want to spend all of this time writing critically about the various games you’re interested in, just to have it all summed up as a number, and our thoughtful words possibly ignored as a result.
However, we will be awarding some games with our “eXemplary” award. This logo will serve as our highest honor, our “Seal of Approval”, and will symbolize to our readership that the game is seriously worth your time. Here’s the logo, for reference:
We have begun the process of retroactively removing them from some of the games we’ve reviewed over the past few years. They will remain awarded to the following games:
- Shadow Empire
- Conquest of Elysium 5
- Wildermyth
- Old World
- AI War 2
- And some others
What’s Next?
Well, our motivation is intensely reinvigorated after the success of the GoFundMe and the outpouring of support we’ve received. So, we have quite a few long-overdue articles in the works. BATTLEMODE Ben is working on the long-awaited Remnants of the Precursors review. Rob is working on the review for Galactic Civilizations 4. Both Rob and Ben are collaborating on a piece about the status of 4X games and their relative stagnation. Jesse will be working on some tactics articles. And lastly, for the time being, we’re updating our 4X database.
We have a lot of other game reviews in the works, too. We’ll be taking a look at Crate Entertainment’s Farthest Frontier. We’ll be revisiting Humankind. We’ll likely provide some critical thoughts on Praxis Game’s Interstellar Space: Genesis – Evolving Empires, too.
Finally, we’re making tweaks to the website to improve readability, its overall aesthetics, and format. We won’t be overhauling the site, but rather making some minor-to-moderate changes that will improve the experience and navigation ease of the site and modernizing it as much as we can. We will revisit this later down the line, but we personally like the site’s look and think this is the best direction for our site.
So things are alive and well here at eXplorminate. Again, thanks to you! We wouldn’t be here without you, we wouldn’t be so motivated without you, and we wouldn’t be so relatively well-funded without you. Thank you a million times over!
Please don’t forget to consider supporting us through our Patreon and be sure to keep an eye out for future written, video, and podcast content, all of which are coming very soon!
