WVGamers formed in 2012 as a group raising money for the WVU Children's Hospital via the Extra Life charity. Initially, this came in the form of yearly video game gatherings at Brian and Amanda's house, the founders of this website. Our team was fairly small at this time, but it consisted of a close group of friends.
In late 2016, the Four Horsemen Comics and Gaming of Clarksburg opened, and this provided the team a new place to learn about board games and other roleplay game systems. We have been fortunate to have made so many new friends, who have shared their passion for gaming with us; we are happy they have joined us on our journey to help children and spread the joy of gaming to our local community. The WVGamers joined forces with a local board game community, who had been hosting various gaming events across north central West Virginia for a few years called the WV Nerd Herd. The WV Nerd Herd's members are well versed in over a 1,000 board games and are always interested in getting more people into board games.
In 2018, Brian and Amanda became involved with a few board game demo programs, which provided access to more games to introduce to the community and access to multiple gaming conventions. These demo programs were put in place to help get publishers games into the community as direct marketing opportunities and to help get feedback from those who take part in the demos. Brian and Amanda have spent a lot of time crafting their social media marketing for their demo events, building a community that is excited to see the new games publishers are releasing, and developing useful feedback to these publishers.
As of 2020, the two have demoed over 300 unique games at local Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS), state conventions, and larger conventions (Origins, PAX Unplugged). The team has also supported the playtest and rules editing of a few games.
This website is a passion project and a creative outlet for the team who love games and truly respect the works of art they released every year. Our goal is tell people about the games that our community have discovered and believe others will truly enjoy. We wish to build relationships with publishers and our community to help the fire and passion of gaming to spread, to provide families and friends a new way to spend time together, and to tell people about things we find neat.