BoardGaming Updates: Requested Games!

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

@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.

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.

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.

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.

Just opened up Ninjato for review for those lucky souls who have a copy 🙂

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.

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…..)

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.

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