Am I actually the person acting like a jerk right now?

I participate in a wide variety of discussions on the internet (mostly in relation to tabletop games), and on occasion I will find myself responding to some aggravating comments. It’s in those moments when I’m pounding away at the keyboard that I try to step back and ask myself, “Wait, am I being a jerk?”

Sometimes the answer is no. But sometimes, sure enough, my response isn’t kind (or at least neutral), and that is directly counter to my goal of building community. Regardless of how the other person is acting, I have control over my own behavior.

There are various versions of this question; here are some others that I ask myself (and often wish others would ask themselves):

• Would I speak differently if the other person was a friend or if I was face to face with them?
• Is the phrasing of my question, request, or post aligned with the outcome I’m hoping to achieve? (i.e., if I start a conversation by calling a game “a total joke”, I shouldn’t be surprised when the ensuing conversation ignores my more salient points)
• Is this an opportunity to ask a question instead of assuming or declaring? (i.e., it’s really important to get the facts straight before forming conclusions. See also this open letter to the internet.)
• Am I addressing the right person for this criticism or question? (i.e., if I have a question about a game in a specific language or digital format, am I asking the correct publisher/developer?)
• What if everyone requested this or asked this privately? (i.e., if 1,000 people asked this same question, would that be fair to the person I’m asking? See also the value of public questions.)

I truly believe that the internet would be a better place if we more consistently asked ourselves a self-awareness question. So I asked Stonemaier ambassadors to see if any of them had a question along these lines, and they had some great responses beyond those listed above. Here are a few of the 100+ questions they shared:

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  Am I participating in this discussion to be helpful or I just have something to prove?

• Does this affect my daily life? If so, is there anything I can do about it?
• Is this helping or hurting?
• Will this comment help anything/anyone?
• What am I trying to achieve?
• Am I treating this person like a person, or like a symbol of something I dislike?
• Am I responding to what they actually said or to the worst interpretation of it?
• Am I expecting others to think the way I do?
• Deep breath, how would I want someone to respond to me on this?
• Does my comment add value to the conversation?
• Would I be happy with what I wrote if I come back to the thread and reread it in the future?
• If I did not know me and my intentions, what would be my first reaction to reading what I wrote?
• Is my response furthering a meaningful discussion or just adding fuel to the fire?
• Is my comment on topic?
• Is this really worth letting someone who has no real impact on my life get me upset?
• What am I actually upset about that is provoking this reaction from me?
• What am I missing?
• What implicit bias do I have that is making me react this way?
• What is driving my need to respond right now?
• What is the right thing to do/say?
• What would my mom/spouse think if they saw me acting this way?
• Would I do/say this in a professional setting?

Do you have a go-to self-awareness question that helps you be the best version of yourself on the internet? Let me know in the comments.

Also read: An Open Letter to the Internet

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I spent the last 4 days at Geekway to the West, an absolutely incredible game convention in St. Louis. Today I’ll share some of my highlights and observations through three lenses: Jamey as a publisher, designer, and gamer.

Publisher Jamey

Stonemaier Games participates in a few ways at Geekway: We donate a lot of games to their play-and-win section, which has proven year after year to be a great way to share our games with people who haven’t tried them.

We also have a booth in their vendor hall (Geekway primarily focuses on casual gaming, but they do have vendor space too) run by my coworker Dave and staffed by an amazingly generous demo team. Our main intent at the booth is simply for people to have fun and learn about our games, and it’s a nice bonus if we sell some games too (this year it looks like our booth revenue was around $16k, and people could also place orders on our webstore and pick up their order at Geekway since our warehouse is located in St. Louis).

I like that Geekway provides publishers a lot of different options. You can have a booth if you want, but you could also have a demo table through Double Exposure, you could just put games in play-and-win, or you can just wander around and connect with people (or scout games to potentially publish).

I’ll also add that having several years of t-shirt and hoodie sales provides a really nice way for me to look around any room at Geekway and identify people who know Stonemaier Games. The warm hoodies were particularly helpful, as the main hall at Geekway was quite cold this year.

Designer Jamey

There are two sides to Designer Jamey at conventions: past and future. For games I’ve already designed, it’s immensely gratifying to see people playing them. I don’t think I’m alone, as I saw other designers checking in on people playing their games (this happened to me while playing the card game Oopsy Poopsy). I taught and played Euphoria Essential and Origin Story, and I had a great time learning the game Dark Heists from the designer, Moe Poplar.

Then there are the games I have yet to to design. I love playing a variety of published games at Geekway to learn from them. This year I played 14 new-to-me games and 6 games I already knew (it’s nice to revisit games to look at them from a fresh perspective).

Geekway provides several opportunities for designers to get feedback about unpublished games, including the clever Playtest to Win area.

Last, I’m so grateful for everyone who either played a game with me or just came up to me to say hi. Those moments and that time means the world to me. As someone who has social anxiety about approaching people, seeing others do it to me gives me the courage to do the same for others. Thank you for the inspiration!

Gamer Jamey

While Geekway is part work for me, it’s also part play. I love playing games with delightful people, and Geekway is full of them. In total I played 20 different games at Geekway (plus a round of disc golf) with around 60 people. I spent most of my time in a smaller ballroom in the first floor of the connected hotel–it was a much quieter in there (and warmer) than the main convention hall. Thanks to everyone who took the time to play with me!

I appreciate play-and-win as a gamer too, as it helps me narrow down which games to play out of so many options (though I did also check out both Blood Rage and The King Is Dead from the main library to revisit them). Without play-and-win, I wouldn’t have discovered the delightful game 3 Chapters, experienced the whimsy of the cat game Oopsy Poopsy, or delved into the strategic cleverness of Galileo Galilei.

While Geekway does have a few events people can sign up for, the vast majority of the convention is casual gaming. This, I’ve found, is my preferred structure for a convention, as I like the fluid nature of going from game to game at my own pace, remaining flexible as to what I play and how long I play. I’m grateful to Geekway for embracing this format, and I’m always open to suggestions for other similar conventions!

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If you were at Geekway to the West this weekend (or you’ve attended a gaming event in 2026), I’d love to hear a few of your highlights!

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I attended a fundraising trivia night over the weekend where every table had a theme chosen by the attendees. Our table was Wingspan & bird themed: Most of us wore bird shirts, there were dessert nests with candy eggs, we had two huge owl statues, and I brought a random Wingspan Americas bird card for each of the 10 of us.

The fundraiser was entirely unrelated to tabletop games–it was for the St. Louis roller derby team–but several people stopped by to say how much they loved Wingspan. One comment stood out: “I love Wingspan. It’s the only game I play.”

You might glance at your vast collection of games as you read this and wonder why this person hasn’t tried other great games, but think back to when you got into modern gaming. For me, Catan was the only game I played for a few years, followed by Agricola. The mentality was, “Why would we play something else when we already know–and enjoy–this game?”

Eventually I started exploring other games (Fresco, Dominion, Stone Age, etc), but I would bet that a not-insignificant number of people are “lifestyle gamers”–they pick a game, and that’s the only game they play. They might go deep into a modern game like Wingspan, a classic game like chess, or a trading/living card game like Magic.

I love when someone finds a game that they want to play over and over again. As a publisher, I want to support the things that bring people joy. Here are a few ways I try to support those who choose to play a specific Stonemaier game over and over:

• community support: If I go deep into a game, I like to talk about the game on online forums (especially BoardGameGeek and Facebook). I try to help people feel welcome when they venture into the comments for our games, as it can be intimidating to show up in a group of 20,000 people and not know how your first question/comment will be received. Part of community support also includes supporting and encouraging fan creations (e.g., Wingspan’s bird promo packs or expansions like Scythe: The Wind Gambit).
• content creators: Here’s a little secret about why we send so many games to reviewers (all games in our catalog, not just the new hotness): It’s just as much to get people excited about the games they already play/own as it is about informing people who don’t already have the game.
• digital versions: The tabletop experience is awesome, but it isn’t always an option. We work with developers to bring our games to life digitally so the person who plays Wingspan once a month in person but wants to play every day in between online can do that.
• accessories/expansions/promos/merch: For the two games I played over and over for several years (Catan and Agricola), we literally had one copy of the game among us. At a certain point, those of us who didn’t own the game felt the desire to contribute. We bought expansions, upgraded tokens, and promos; we might even have bought Agricola t-shirts if we had thought of it.
• spinoffs/sequels: There are certainly many people who just want more Wingspan or more Scythe. But there are some who want different-Wingspan or different-Scythe; hence Wyrmspan, Finspan, and Expeditions.
• gift giving: My first few games after Catan and Agricola were all gifts. I’m sure I would have eventually started buying other games myself, but I’m so grateful that people gave me that nudge by giving me Dominion, Stone Age, and Fresco. We have a gift guide at Stonemaier Games, but as I write this, I think it might be helpful to bridge the gap between popular non-Stonemaier games and our games. For example, if someone you know loves Carcassonne, they might also enjoy Between Two Castles. That sort of thing.

Did you–or do you still–have a game that you play over and over? In what ways has the publisher supported your passion for that game?

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Also read or watch:

• The Formula for Wingspan’s Longevity, Replayability, and Success
• Cult of the New or Longevity of the Old
• 15 Ways to Increase a Game’s Replayability

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I spent the last weekend hosting friends at the Gamers Ranch, a gaming-focused vacation property in the middle of Missouri. I had an amazing time, and I loved seeing the power of the tabletop community in action, especially in seeing different gaming friends intermingle.

As I reflected on the weekend, I realized that among the dozens of games played, there were 5 games that hit the table more than any others. I thought I’d briefly look at each of those games to see what made them work particularly well for events and conventions, which can sometimes be the difference for a game to break out.

Moon Colony Bloodbath: I taught and played this 6 times over the weekend, and nearly everyone played again later. Even though it’s heavier than the other games on this list, the single deck of cards (flip a card and everyone does what it says) helps a teacher to guide everyone through the first few turns. It’s also entirely simultaneous, so there’s no downtime. There’s also the dark humor of the theme and the bold name, which seemed to attract curiosity from those who hadn’t played.

Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking: The cooperative nature of this game creates a sense of camaraderie; camaraderie is often a primary motivator for someone to attend a gaming event. Also, the short playing time and the variety of each chapter–all based on a simple core system–created a “just one more game” mentality.

Bomb Busters: I’ll continue what I said above about the Lord of the Rings trick-taking game, as this applies to both: I’ve noticed at gaming events that many people are hesitant to commit to a 3-hour game, yet they’ll end up playing short, escalating, cooperative games like Bomb Busters for hours. I love the idea of breaking a longer game into bite-size pieces.

Magical Athlete: Everything about the product design of this whimsical racing game lends itself to events. While it asks players to make a key decision before the game starts (which characters you select in the draft), the rules are so bare-bones that this isn’t a problem. I noticed that people seemed to gravitate towards this game after playing a heavier game, as it’s a great brain break.

Mindbug: This snappy two-player dueling game has a unique hook that seemed to intrigue people (twice per game when your opponent plays a card, you can claim it as your own instead). An accessible, quick 2-player game is really nice for an event when a few people are waiting for longer, larger-group games to finish.

Also note that all of these games are super fast to set up.

One other commonality between these games is that they all had someone championing them. This can make a huge difference at an event or convention: If there’s someone visibly excited to play a game they already know, people will gravitate towards that game.

Have you noticed a game spreading like wildfire at events or conventions? What is it about that game or the situation that resulted in the game returning to the table over and over?

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Here are the events and conventions in which Stonemaier Games is participating in 2026.

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.