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BoardGaming Updates: Requested Games!

Posted by Jim {Power Gamer} | 9-Sep-11 | 23 comments

Added Games:

This week, and in the weeks to come, most of the games we add to the site will be games requested by our users!

Alien Frontiers
Clever Mojo Games

Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game
Flying Frog Productions

Haggis
Indie Boards and Cards

Dungeon Lords
Z-Man Games

Twilight Struggle
GMT Games

Commands and Colors: Ancients
GMT Games

Arimaa
Z-Man Games

Tsuro
Calliope Games

Caylus
Rio Grande Games, Ystari Games

Red November
Fantasy Flight Games

Coloretto
Rio Grande Games

Memoir ’44
Days of Wonder

The Pillars of the Earth
Mayfair Games

Ninjato
Z-Man Games (soft release during Gen Con 2011)

Comments (23)

Gamer Avatar
7
Miniature Painter
Intermediate Reviewer
Master Grader

Love me some Tsuro!

Gamer Avatar
6
I play orange
Miniature Painter
Veteran Grader
Intermediate Reviewer

Infinity the miniature game. Gonna find all the ways to harrass you guys about this one. šŸ˜‰

Gamer Avatar
6
Poland
BoardGaming.com Beta 2.0 Tester

is there a chance to add all Descent expansions? I could do it, but I guess its impossible to do it from user panel šŸ˜‰

edit: just looked down for comments. understand the issue now šŸ™‚

Gamer Avatar
1
I Own a Game!

@Andrew D. Snow – I see your point, but it’s very frustrating for users to want to add games, some extremely common, to their profile or write reviews and have those games be unavailable.

Gamer Avatar
5
USA
Knight
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester

Sam, the main reason is to maintain a specific level of quality. By restricting the way games are added, two hings occur; there will be a high level of discussion with the developers of the site, and the over all quality of each page will remain high.

Gamer Avatar
3

Classics like these aren’t already on the site? Why is it that BoardGaming.com restricts users from adding content to the database, anyway? All these games and more would already be in the system if the site permitted it.

Gamer Avatar
7
Knight-errant
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
Intermediate Reviewer
The Big Cheese 2012

The incentives keep me coming back regularly.

I think that it is not up to the sites designers as to what kind of reviews people want. That is up to people who rate the reviews.

I prefer in depth reviews and that is what I write. Check them out to see what kind of review I like.

I am not going to defend the site outright as I also wish there were more games to rate and review.

Also the fact that this is pretty much the only site like this that isn’t blocked at work makes it ideal for me.

Gamer Avatar

re: whatawhale

Uhm…facebook is a data mining site masquerading as a social networking site. Not really a great comparison so far as there’s little to no social networking features on boardgaming.com right now and there doesn’t appear to be a ton of cash flowing in from advertisement deals to inject into this project.

I personally don’t do a ton of social networking myself, but I’m familiar enough with the process to know that the clock is ticking for boardgaming.com to take advantage of the traffic and interest. Enough people will jump the fence to try out something new like this site, because the overall form is pretty. Unfortunately, the function is somewhat suspect.

I’m looking at the relatively small amount of games they’ve uploaded so far and see a ton of progress still needed. I have over 500 games and game expansions in my collection and out of all of them, less than 10% are out of print. At the rate it’s taking them to add games on their own, they won’t have to worry about adding them because they’ll be out of print in another year or two, which is approximately how long it’ll take them to add the games on their own without either hiring more people or taking advantage of the user base.

I see an incentive system that’s currently broken. There are currently zero quests available for Explorer.

My Reporter Class is stalled. Currently, you can only advance it by following more users and recruiting, but I’m limited to 10 users + my Reporter level, which allows me another 5 for a max of 15. If I want to follow more users, I can’t. In order to do so, I’d have to recruit more, but since the open invite period is closed, I can’t recruit. No recruits, no more following. If they’re wanting to encourage any sort of social networking, why limit how many users you can follow?

Let’s see…there’s also the Professor Quests, which involve writing house rules, strategies and tips, as well as rating others’ reviews. I have no problem per se with writing these, but it’s tough to get “likes” on these submissions after the first day or two. After that, they get buried. There’s also the issue of quality, which is the same problem the Critic Class has.

The Critic Quests involve Favoriting games, Rating them and Reviewing them. All of these are limited by the amount of games in the system. The amount of games currently in print by game producers/manufacturers number in the thousands if not tens of thousands. How do you propose all those games get added to the site in a reasonable time if done by hand and only by the site administration? If you choose to limit the amount of games put up on the site beyond in print and out of print, who gets to decide what factors are considered?

On top of those concerns, there’s the issue of quality. The guys running things have already said they didn’t expect the turnout and the sheer amount of contributions already made in the form of reviews, feedback, strategies and game tips. As a result, there are some games that currently have over 50 reviews done on them already. There’s the built in incentive system with the quests, but what exactly are the site creators wanting to reward, quantity or quality? You’d think quality considering the “like” requirements, but there’s really nothing stopping someone from getting enough “likes” from their followers, friends or family to go up in level. The higher the reviewer’s level, the greater you’d expect the quality of their reviews, but I don’t even know what kind of review the site’s creators want. Do they want the in depth meaty reviews seen on sites like BoardGameGeek, Fortress Ameritrash or any number of private board game review blogs where the basic rules of the game are covered to give the reader a bit more perspective and where the review is broken down into several sections for consideration such as component quality, ease of teaching…etc? Or do they want the kind of review often found on retail sites that can be broken down into “bought it, used it (played it), loved it, and recommend you buy it too”? As it stands, the overwhelming majority of the reviews are a paragraph or less, which isn’t so bad until you realize that a good chunk of those are just one sentence. Those reviews get “likes”. Perhaps not as much as the better quality, in depth reviews, but they get them nonetheless. I have a problem with this. How do you crack down on this? Should you? Without a doubt there are probably people out there that have never been on BoardGameGeek or been to the now defunct BoardGameNews site. For the average person out there that’s just now discovering this vast world of games beyond Monopoly, a sentence or two per review might be seen as the norm. For those of us that have sunk a good chunk of our free time and money into this hobby/obsession, two sentences just leaves us hanging. Which do you cater to and should you discourage either style of review? Personally, I get tired of having to click on a button to expand several pages worth of reviews, just to find the one or two reviews that actually read like they were written by people that have not just played the game, but several times, something I feel is necessary to a good review, lest several important aspects of a game be missed by the folks writing a review after one potentially mistake-filled game.

Don’t even get me started about the Gamer Quests. What the heck is the difference between “Favoriting” a game and giving it a heart? What is this heart nonsense? What does it do? Why should anyone care? What difference does it make how many times you’ve played a game or which game it was? It might be of some use to me if I’m looking to determine which games have been getting neglected in my collection, so as to get them played, but if you can only mark one game per day as “Played”, then what’s the point? How many of you really only play one game and then stop playing? What’s the point of that limitation from the site’s creators?

So all in all I think the incentive system is at best a pointless waste of time and at worst, a way to drive users apart with elitism. If you want to reward folks for helping contribute to the quality of the site, great. Either hire them or come up with some reward for helping add games to the site.

All I can say is that as pretty as the site is, and as easy as it is to use, without the ability to add EVERY game I own to my collection, it is of NO use to me. I’ll just continue to get my game tips, strategy discussions, reviews as well as the multitude of things this site just can’t do yet…elsewhere.

Contact me when the site’s admins finally listen to masses as I’m done waiting.

Gamer Avatar
6
Count / Countess
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
BoardGaming.com Beta 2.0 Tester
Cryptozoic Entertainment fan

ccmonter,

>>Iā€™m trying to figure out what this website does for me that BoardGameGeek does not.

I think of boardgaming.com as a sort of “facebook” of gaming. It’s not so much about what it does for me that geeks does not do, although I will say that boardgaming.com is a beautiful site that is much more fun and easier to use.

Also, keep in mind boardgaming.com is still in beta.

Gamer Avatar
7
Knight-errant
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
Intermediate Reviewer
The Big Cheese 2012

you do raise some good points. I am enjoying the site so far, but I would have some of the same complaints. I am curious to the answers to these questions.

Gamer Avatar

I’m still not sure what niche this site is trying to carve out for itself.

If it’s a game database, the exclusion of OOP games still leaves BGG superior.

The social networking aspect of the site is non-existent.

You can’t buy or sell games on the site, either from or to another user or a retailer.

Everything is incentive-ized, which creates a TON of poor quality, one sentence reviews, comments, tips and strategy suggestions. Is this really what the creators of this site want to encourage? Even BGG’s system sucks in this regard. Most of the quality reviewers are doing it for altruistic reasons, or just for the joy of helping others and not for geek gold or XP.

If you don’t have the manpower to get the sheer amount of games you need entered, you HAVE to use the userbase, or fail. Asking for users to limit their game requests to 3 is asnine. You have a userbase clamoring to help. USE THEM. Or don’t, and sit back with a site that’s sorely lacking, watching the active users dwindle down to nothing. You’re in Beta right now, but you’re running the risk of the site being deemed a failure before it even goes public.

Which brings me full circle.

I asked earlier what niche they were trying to carve out for itself. Is this an attempted business venture? How will it stay in the black? Ads? Fees? Will retailers feature in the mix somehow? I suspect so. Since you’re limiting the games to just ones in print, this caters to retailers, not users. What do the users get out of the equation? So far, not much at all. All this site has going for it that BGG doesn’t offer is a much prettier user interface. But so far it’s all style and no substance. If this ends up being nothing more than one big advert masquerading as a board game website, I wouldn’t be surprised. I imagine the board game pages inevitably having links to purchase the game at any retailer that will pay the owners of boardgaming.com for that privilege. This endeavor is going to need financing and either the above scenario, or adverts are the only way I see this happening without some very generous benefactor.

So I don’t see what this site has to offer and would very much like to read some feedback from the owners/creators/operators. As is, I’m bored of the site as it serves no purpose other than to momentarily cure my boredom as I daily click on Played Today! and Heart It! in chase of the proverbial dangling carrot that is the Quests, XP, Player Stats…etc. Yeah…’cause that’s just what my experience at other sites such as BGG was lacking.

meh

Gamer Avatar
6
Mythic Kingdoms Backer 2020
Video Game Fan
Miniature Painter
The Gold Heart

Just opened up Ninjato for review for those lucky souls who have a copy šŸ™‚

Gamer Avatar
2
Gamer - Level 2

Ninjato is released (it officially came out @ GenCon) though there are only 51 copies of it currently in circulation

Gamer Avatar
8
Professional Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
Silver Supporter
Sentinels of the Multiverse fan

Thanks so much for adding Memoir ’44. My son and I have been playing it a lot lately, especially after getting the Pacific Theater expansion.

Gamer Avatar
10
Critic - Level 5
Professional Advisor
Expert Reviewer
Marquis / Marchioness

Not a bad looking list of games. It’s always great to see a site add the content the users want!

And I agree with Ray, Roads & Boats (even though it doesn’t quite meet the “availability” criteria) would be nice to see!

Gamer Avatar
8
Senior
Critic - Level 3
Junior Reporter
Explorer - Level 4

Thanks for adding one of the 3 games I requested (Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game)! You guys rock!

So……. do I get to add another game now that one of my 3 was chosen?
Like, um, Splotter’s Roads & Boats pretty please….

(Ouch, no…. don’t hit me again… I-I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it… really, I take it back, arrrgh…, no no no, of course I’m not ungrateful, ow! stop it, somebody help me…..)

Gamer Avatar
7
Knight-errant
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
Intermediate Reviewer
The Big Cheese 2012

@ccmonster. Still in beta. I enjoy coming here to look at games more because the layout is much more friendly and leaving tips and reading them is better.

Gamer Avatar
6
I play blue
USA

Finally some war games.

Can you get Martin Wallace’s A Few Acres of Snow into the next batch please. That is currently my most played game.

Gamer Avatar
3
Gamer - Level 3
Critic - Level 2

I’m trying to figure out what this website does for me that BoardGameGeek does not. It’s kind of fun to accumulate points, but for what? I’ll poke around for a bit longer. We’ll see…

Gamer Avatar
9
USA
Platinum Supporter
Petroglyph
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester

It’s awesome to have new game coming in. Now, I get to get to reviewing them!

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