Howdy, y'all! I'm the former editor of BoardgameNews.com, and I'll be running the show here at BGG News, with assistance and support from a team of reporters, researchers and ne'er-do-wells. (I'll let you decide who falls into which category.)

BGG News will publish game announcements, industry news, previews of upcoming games, game design diaries from the designers themselves, and interviews with folks from around the game world. (For the past several weeks, I've been posting info about forthcoming games in a Nürnberg 2011 geeklist; check it out if you haven't seen it already!) Guest authors will pop up from time to time with articles that merit your attention, and I'll post link round-ups for other game-related posts to check out should you feel like venturing away from the cozy confines of BGG.

BGG News should feel familiar to those who have been on BGG for a while. The comment system is the same; you can thumb, tip or flag posts; you can subscribe to future posts through BGG's internal subscription system or through RSS; an author's avatar is visible on each post, so you can check out that person's profile or contact him or her privately.

What's new? Clicking on a name in the contributor list in the right sidebar will show all items published on this blog from that user (and not take you to that person's profile); similarly, clicking a category will show only those items tagged as belonging to that category. At the bottom of a post, you will often find linked items: a game, publisher, designer, and so on. Clicking on a linked item will bring you to that item's page on BGG. (In the future, posts included in blogs will appear on a game page, publisher's page, etc., so you'll be able to reach everything from anywhere.)

Gone Cardboard – BGN's list of forthcoming and recently released titles – will reappear on BGG down the road. Integrating Gone Cardboard with BGG involves more trickery and work than what I did on BGN, but thankfully people far more experienced with site design than me will be figuring out how to make everything function. In other words, when Gone Cardboard does reappear, it will work as intended!

Designer diaries, game previews and other articles previously published on Boardgame News – whether on the first or second version of that site – will be republished in BGG News in the future, making that material available once again.

Finally, if you want to contribute to BGG News – whether as a designer or publisher with info to share or a design story to tell, as a reporter or researcher who wants to cover particular companies or game genres, or as a ne'er-do-well who, um, never does well – contact me via email (wericmartin @ gmail . com) or through BGG. I want to hear from you, as do BGG readers, who want to stay on top of all that's coming in this great hobby of ours. I'll do my best to keep you informed, and I hope you'll keep reading!