My Journey

I've been playing board games all my life. Starting with classic games like "The Game of Life," "Monopoly," and "Sorry!" and into "Settlers of Catan," "Carcassonne," and "Pandemic" through college.

Now, I play all kinds of modern games like "Terraforming Mars," "Great Western Trail," and "Viticulture." I also organize a board game meetup once or twice a month as we're free.

The next phase was to create my YouTube channel where I'm creating learn-to-play board games videos!

How the Channel began:

For fun, in January, 2018, I made a teaching video on how to play the game “Archipelago.” It was rough around the edges, for sure, but it was a way to have my friends come to game night ready to play.

Even though the video was shot in poor quality, I gained a lot of valuable feedback and positive comments! I realized there are a lot of people that absolutely need video explanations of things in order to understand them. I didn’t know just how many people refuse to read a long rulebook, or just have so much trouble with it that they quit! I knew there was something to this, and that there are lots of fairly complex games that most people won’t ever get to play if left to figure it out on their own.

Since it first launched, I partnered with a friend who is an expert videographer, editor, and graphic designer. Together, we launched a channel dedicated to providing helpful board game teaching videos.

This lead to the creation of Meeple Mentor.

News and Networking

In November 2020, I began to again brainstorm new video series ideas to add to the channel.  I realized another missing area among content creators was a consistent news program that could give a quick update and overview of what's new in the hobby.  With doing some research and finding some great sources of board game news, I decided I could take on this news project myself.  On November 12 I published the first episode of "What's New in Board Gaming," which started my foray into reporting the news via YouTube videos.  I focused on current crowdfunding board games, industry news, and of course new game announcements.  Since then, I've consistently released news summary videos every other Friday!

Occasionally, I hear the Meeple Mentor channel mentioned on GameCasters or other podcasts, as well as having a lot of my Instagram and video content shared by others.  It's been nice to be part of it! 

 In conclusion, I’m always looking forward to your comments and feedback.  Please post on any of my YouTube videos released.

-Jared   (the Meeple Mentor)