Bruno Faidutti's Website

Over at Bruno Faidutti's wonderful website he has commented that he is looking to close his website and start a blog.

Bruno, in all his glory (from faidutti.com)

Bruno's Website:

This website was originally designed like a small game encyclopaedia, and this concept has become largely obsolete, for at least two reasons. First, there are more and more new board and card games every year, and I play fewer of them every year, which makes the ideal game library much less relevant. Second, the internet also has changed, and encyclopaedias are now collective stuff. There is more even about my own games on the Boardgamegeek than on my own website. 

This is why, in a few weeks, I plan to shut down this website and replace it with a more modest, more standard, but also more actual blog, with only short descriptions of my games and the occasional op-ed, not necessarily always about games.

Well, this won't happen at once. I must first learn to use Wordpress, and this will probably take one or two weeks. My first blogpost, however, will certainly be about the ludopathic gathering.

Of course it is completely Bruno's choice as to what he does - and I'll read his writing whether it be on his website, a blog or even just scrawled crayon on lolly wrappers.


However, I've always considered Bruno's website to be something different than what he describes as being a small 'encyclopaedia of games'.  Bruno, as a game designer, a passionate game player and a vocal member of the game community (for far longer than many) has a strong and personality rich voice.


Yes, Bruno's website is a wonderful online resource, but more importantly, he reviews games with an idiosyncratic set of tastes and a way of anatomising why a game hits or misses the mark that is all his own.  I may not always like the same games as he (more often than not I do), but it has been through his website that I have had the opportunity to encounter many great games.  His reviews are candid and often manage to highlight wonderful games that all too often fly under the radar or disappear in the haze of new releases.


Some of my favourite and most well-played games have been purchased based on his reviews of them, including Fairy Tale, Neuroshima Hex, Manila, Condottiere, Midgard and others (and all of these I regard as games that would have passed me by had his voice not convinced me to give them a look).


I won't sign a petition asking Bruno to maintain it, if he is ready to move on and wants to do so, I wish him all the best (and look forward to adding his blog feed to my reader).  So here instead is a simple short note; a comment on what a wonderful site faidutti.com is.  Most certainly more than a small encyclopaedia - it has personality as well.




Cheers,
Giles.