What a week!
To our supporters and new community…
We need to first send out a huge thank you to Michael Mindes, founder/owner of Tasty Minstrel Games, for inviting fans of his games to participate in our beta stage of the site! We also want to extend a big thank you out to everyone who has invited their friends and family to participate!
We hope you all like what you see, and enjoy the journey of participating in a site that will continue to have so much more to offer! You may have noticed our feedback page is closed… that’s only because you’ve given us so much great feedback, that our to-do lists are overflowing!
Adding games to the site
The biggest feedback we’ve received is that our community wants more games! This week’s limited amount of added games is only due to us spending our time figuring out a system and process to add games to the site at a much faster rate. We will continue to work on this task of adding more games to the site, while also striving to create game pages that have added value, like videos and photographs of the components. We ask for your patience!
Added Games:
San Juan
Battlestar Galactica
Alhambra
Brass
Added Expansions:
Ascension: Return of the Fallen
Treasure Chest
Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus Expansion
Battlestar Galactica: Exodus Expansion
Alhambra: Vizier’s Favor
Alhambra: City Gates
Alhambra: Thief’s Turn
Alhambra: The Treasure Chamber
Alhambra: Power of the Sultan
The beta tester open registration will be closing September 1st
Invite your fellow gamer friends and family while you can!
We’ve gotten so much great feedback. Now we need time to implement updates, add more features, work out the kinks, add more games, avatars, quests, and more!
We will then re-open registration to the public with something even better than what we currently have! During the closed beta, beta testers will continue to be able to participate on the site, and experience first hand the new features we are working on. Even though other’s won’t be able to register, they’ll still be able to browse the site and all the great content the community is adding!
Just joined a couple days ago and am glad I did. First, I’d like to say that the site looks fantastic (honestly, one of the best I’ve ever seen) and it is very obvious that the designers are working from the heart.
I agree that the vast number of games out there makes it nearly impossible for the BG team to keep up. I could see the potential downfall and drop in user interest if the site can’t keep updating with new games. It would be very easy for someone to say, “yeah, I like the site, but they don’t have enough games.”
Yet user’s observations that having it completely open could result in a lot of errors or bad entries.
Here’s my idea – Let anyone who is of some determined low level (e.g., level 1 or 2) be able to “suggest” a game to add. Then let users who have reached a higher level have the opportunity (if they choose) to go through some sort of vetting process and if passed, they have the additional ability to add games.
This gives incentive for people to go up in level at least some degree to try and get content added to the site and ensures that only those who are truly dedicated/interested will be able to actually add content. Hopefully by the time they reach that higher level (whatever it may be), they will have proven themselves capable of the additional responsibility. And, of course, this solves the problem of a backlog of content for the development team.
Keep up the good work and keep those games coming. I just joined up today and I am enjoying myself a lot here. A lot of others have said it already and I agree users need to be able to add games. Several of my favourites are not up yet and I would gladly take the time to add them.
Great job, the site looks great, congratulations on how well you guys have done so far.
I don’t know what’s involved in adding games but, all other things being equal, it might be more efficient to focus on rolling out *games* and not expansions.
I know that Minion Games, Cambridge Games, Indie Board and Card Games, and Moosestache Games all want in on the site. Please get their games on. If you need any form of contact information about these companies, let me know.
As far as adding new games, perhaps it was brought up before, but why not tap into boardgamegeek.com via their API?
When searching for a game to add, if it is not in your system, ping bgg to verify it is a game and add it to your own DB on the.
I think the key is to create a form for game entry with specific fields to fill… and help along the way with choices in drop-downs or check boxes to standardize names for mechanics, themes, and even components. Photos are the tough part, but maybe BG could provide a template, or leave that as the one thing they need to complete.
Then the game goes into a queue for BG approval.
There would need to be an alert or check at the beginning to make sure you weren’t adding a game that was already in the queue.
Easy-peasy! LOL! (Right Jon?) 🙂
But how to maintain balance between user-driven growth and the data consistency? If now two-sentence entries pretend to be reviews I’m afraid what happens when users are able to add games.
I, for one, definitely think that user-added games is the only possible way that this site can ever work. There are simply too many games already out there (heck, I own over 500 games and expansions myself), and so many more coming out continuously, that a small team can never hope to keep up.
BoardGameGeek.com would never have grown into the site that it did without the user-created content. I understand that the focus here is different, but the same thing applies: there is too much data for a small team to manage.
The key is to have a way to submit changes to existing games, as well as the ability to edit your own reviews/tips/posts.
Just found the site this morning. Great design and nice to look at. Like others have mentioned, it needs more content. I don’t think that allowing users to add games willy-nilly is the best idea though. Too much chance of lowering the quality of entries.
However, maybe adding “game testing area” where it is a free-for-all of sorts where there can be multiple entries for games where information about the game is tweaked and voted on.
First entry to get an amount of votes gets promoted to “review stage” where a member of your staff looks over it and okays it for publishing.
All other entries in the testing area are either deleted or merged with the final version.
Anyway…great site!
I want to chime in and say allowing community members to add games. Julian and ericbjohnson have great points.
I agree with the comment about allowing the community to add games. Any way I can help increase the content of this site I am on board. I don’t like board game geek. It’s just annoying to look at and bothersome to navigate.
The site you are building here is beautiful, well designed, and fun to interact with. I would love to see it expand quickly on its games selection so that it can become an even better resource.
However, don’t encourage too much fee wheeling. Definitely make sure you’re giving any new major site content final review. You’ve obviously got a great sense of design going here and I would hate to see that messed up by too much of a free for all community helping out.
Hello there, what a nice site!
I am also for “quality over quantity” rule for the games here. We have BGG as a database of virtually every game ever created.
I’d like to recommend adding the games from my personal top three to the boardgaming.com database:
Caylus – challenging and good-looking
Arimaa – pure mind duel
El Grande – appealing, with a substantial fun-factor
As a side note: an option to preview an ariticle/review/tip is something really welcome here (for example to check link correctness)!
Be cool if you did a regular poll to allow users to vote on what games get added next! Maybe that will help you prioritize the next games to add.
I hope to see much more added to this site so that I will have reason to stop by more often!
I have been enjoying this site quite a bit. I hope you have great success!
This is a great site keep up the good work!!!!!1
Ideally, I’d like to see a steady stream of new games added. The key word there is “steady.” It’d be nice if I could count on 5-10 new games being added every Sunday night or something like that. It’d give me an excuse to check on the site on a regular basis.
About how often are new games added to the site? Are there plans to ramp up the frequency or volume per update? And, is there anything us site members can do to help?
I’m not sure anyone was suggesting that the moderator of the site wouldn’t have final say on publishing a game. They should, as who knows what would go onto the site? However, I completely disagree with this statement:
I do not want to start seeing a bunch of kickstarter games or garage-band games listed. I’m all for that kind of start-up, but I like the current focus of the site – tested, mainstream games.
If this were the case, I’d just use Amazon as my source of reviews. Board Games have reached beyond Monopoly, and closing the doors now would defeat the purpose of a site like this IMO. It’s OK if the moderators choose not to add a small publisher’s game. It’s their right. However, many of the “mainstream” games you are enjoying now started as a small run or small publisher game at one point. If we went with “mainstream” games… would that mean adding Candyland but not Summoner Wars? I hope not.
Kickstarter is actually being used by several established publishers to get their games off the ground… Mayday, Eagle, etc… so, it’s a valid source for new games. Most of the bad games do not get funded.
I understand the sentimant, but I really don’t want someone else deciding what the good games are before I have a chance to evaluate them (before we have the chance). I agree with moderator choice, but think the moderators should and will be open to more than just the Big Wigs. Let’s make a game well-known, not wait until it does.
Happy Gaming!
I’m with Markmistr on this – quality over quantity. It might be best to do a hybrid approach – letting the community suggest titles, but having a gatekeeper/moderator enter the actual games.
I do not want to start seeing a bunch of kickstarter games or garage-band games listed. I’m all for that kind of start-up, but I like the current focus of the site – tested, mainstream games.