As expressed in our latest communications to studio developers, we are adapting to a completely new situation with a high level of solicitation and a very small team. One of the aspects of this is that there is now a lot more games adaptations needing review in the studio that the admins can manage by themselves.
Thus, we have made it a priority to create a new review process implicating the community to allow games to move forward, with feedback from the community, to get them from "alpha" to "beta".
On the BGA community side, this will happen from the "Contribute to BGA" / "Become a BGA reviewer" page released today and announced here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =5&t=15276
On the BGA studio side, there can be 2 situations:
~~ Your project has already been moved to production for testing (if it has happened, you know it). Please let us know if you want it to be available for review by writing to studio@boardgamearena.com.
~~ Your project is ready to go to "alpha" status. Please check out the last steps of the "Pre-release checklist" (http://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Pre-release_checklist). They have been updated for a more proper submission. Some of you have already contacted us, but please submit again so that we don't forget anyone.
We'll work in the two next weeks to move the projects reported as ready for review to "alpha" status (you'll be notified by email once it has been done). This means:
~~ That you will be admin of the game group, and as such, you'll be able to invite other players into the group to playtest with you. This can be your close circle of friends and family, or other players you have met on the platform, or the games designers if they own a BGA account and you are in contact with them already. The players you invite in will receive a BGA notification allowing them to join the game group to get access to the game.
~~ That expert BGA players enrolling into the BGA reviewers group (access to this group is restricted to make sure that reviewers have a really good knowledge of BGA and a lot of playing experience) will be able to join the game group to playtest your game and provide you feedback through the BGA bugs and suggestions report system. They will also have the possibility, when they consider your adaptation as ready, to finalize their review to record their assessment that the game is ready for release.
~~ That announcing the game on the developers forum to get feedback from developers is now obsolete. It was a temporary solution we allowed because we didn't have anything else in place yet, but it was not satisfactory since it's visible from everyone and may encourage non-developers to register on the studio. And the studio should stay an exclusive domain for you developers! So please do not announce your games on the forum anymore, and if you have made an announcement already, once your project has been moved to "alpha", please remove that announcement. UPDATE: there is now a forum dedicated to "alpha" games. You can announce your games there once they have been deployed for alpha-testing.
And finally, how and when does this review phase ends? Once a project will have received enough approvals from reviewers (we are not yet sure what a good number for this is, we'll figure it out along the way), admins will consider the game for release. The space available for an announcement on our welcome/news pages being limited (and we already have 3 games planned for that), in order not to make you wait too long before release once a game is approved, for most games we'll propose a release associated to a social media announcement and a forum post (at most one game release each week).
Sorry again for those of you who have been waiting a long time! We really needed to take the time to set up a new process that would alleviate the load on us by implicating the community, while being sustainable in the long run.
We hope we got it right, but it's still really new. We count on your help and feedback to make it better!
Thus, we have made it a priority to create a new review process implicating the community to allow games to move forward, with feedback from the community, to get them from "alpha" to "beta".
In two quick words:
_ when your game is ready to be tested, you can ask us to move it to BGA production in "alpha" status.
_ your friends and experienced BGA players volunteering to test it will then be able to play it, evaluate it, and provide you with feedback.
To learn how the review process works in more detail, please continue reading below.
On the BGA community side, this will happen from the "Contribute to BGA" / "Become a BGA reviewer" page released today and announced here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =5&t=15276
On the BGA studio side, there can be 2 situations:
~~ Your project has already been moved to production for testing (if it has happened, you know it). Please let us know if you want it to be available for review by writing to studio@boardgamearena.com.
~~ Your project is ready to go to "alpha" status. Please check out the last steps of the "Pre-release checklist" (http://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Pre-release_checklist). They have been updated for a more proper submission. Some of you have already contacted us, but please submit again so that we don't forget anyone.
We'll work in the two next weeks to move the projects reported as ready for review to "alpha" status (you'll be notified by email once it has been done). This means:
~~ That you will be admin of the game group, and as such, you'll be able to invite other players into the group to playtest with you. This can be your close circle of friends and family, or other players you have met on the platform, or the games designers if they own a BGA account and you are in contact with them already. The players you invite in will receive a BGA notification allowing them to join the game group to get access to the game.
~~ That expert BGA players enrolling into the BGA reviewers group (access to this group is restricted to make sure that reviewers have a really good knowledge of BGA and a lot of playing experience) will be able to join the game group to playtest your game and provide you feedback through the BGA bugs and suggestions report system. They will also have the possibility, when they consider your adaptation as ready, to finalize their review to record their assessment that the game is ready for release.
~~ That announcing the game on the developers forum to get feedback from developers is now obsolete. It was a temporary solution we allowed because we didn't have anything else in place yet, but it was not satisfactory since it's visible from everyone and may encourage non-developers to register on the studio. And the studio should stay an exclusive domain for you developers! So please do not announce your games on the forum anymore, and if you have made an announcement already, once your project has been moved to "alpha", please remove that announcement. UPDATE: there is now a forum dedicated to "alpha" games. You can announce your games there once they have been deployed for alpha-testing.
And finally, how and when does this review phase ends? Once a project will have received enough approvals from reviewers (we are not yet sure what a good number for this is, we'll figure it out along the way), admins will consider the game for release. The space available for an announcement on our welcome/news pages being limited (and we already have 3 games planned for that), in order not to make you wait too long before release once a game is approved, for most games we'll propose a release associated to a social media announcement and a forum post (at most one game release each week).
Sorry again for those of you who have been waiting a long time! We really needed to take the time to set up a new process that would alleviate the load on us by implicating the community, while being sustainable in the long run.
We hope we got it right, but it's still really new. We count on your help and feedback to make it better!