Hey, eXplorminate fans!

I am writing to inform you of some changes that eXplorminate is implementing.

First, I’d like to apologize for the lack of content from us over the past month. Unfortunately, my father, my best friend, and most important mentor, passed away unexpectedly a month ago. As you can imagine, it shook my world and left me a bit unsure of the future of eXplorminate.

With that said, after some time considering what I wanted from this endeavor, I’ve decided to reduce our scope back to strictly 4X games. We’re the only site on the web with that particular niche, and since it *is* such a niche, it’s easier to manage content, staff, and article editing with a smaller focus like 4X.

It also means we will shift back to more thought pieces, discussions on common game mechanics associated with 4X games, expositions, and less focus on timeliness. We’re here to share our passion for the genre, but we don’t want it to feel like it’s forced or needs to make a deadline, as it has often felt as of late.

In addition, I’ve also begun to revamp our 4X Game Database and focus on games that are strictly 4X games or adjacent enough to them to have some substantial overlap (games like Thea: The Awakening, for example). Please allow some time to finish it, as it takes a lot of time to work on it, and time is certainly hard to come by.

The podcast will be back soon, too. I wasn’t able to talk much about video games in light of such very real pain, but I’m slowly feeling the desire to get back into them. BATTLEMODE Ben has a few recorded, and he promises to edit them soon, so hopefully, those will tide you all over until we get the podcast back up to speed. Our first planned episode as a group will likely be about Galactic Civilizations 4. Let us know what else you’d like to hear us discuss!

So keep an eye and ear out, and we’ll soon be back to our roots, deeply seated in 4X games, and ready to eXpand the 4X empire even farther than before!

Until then, keep eXploring!