Not enough users

[ChiefPointThief]

About more users. The more the better. Lets say bga was able to increase their player base by 10% over the next year and that hypothetically that number is 100,000. Does that mean that your game will get 100,000 new players in its community? No. But if a game like that is averaging 10,000 players as of now you can expect about 1,000 more players added to that community. Now these players will be broken down into 4 categories. 1 - People who extremely love the game (3%). 2 - People who like the game and will keep it in rotation (%15). 3 - People who will play once in awhile (%20). 4 - People who will play 1-3x and thats it (62%). This doesn't turn this game into a powerhouse but it helps the community. What you want is simply to find games. The category 1 players are the usually suspects that you will find in lobby all the time and the category 2/3 players contribute to the community as well.

Unnecessary. Just find online friends and ask them to play that dead game with you. No need to force active communities to exist for all of those games.

There goes that "force" word again. Also bga already incentivizes playing more games. It is better for the site to have several games with strong communities but carry on.

Who says that multiple small communities is better than a few large game communities? Small community means less players to play with at any given time. Large community means that there's always someone to play with and the community has less chance of dying off.

Small games can just exist without anyone playing them. Just like on my shelf... Once in a while someone gathers his/her friends and opens up a game, plays it and then doesn't play again. Just find your online friends yourself.

I didn't say small community. In the message above I said "strong" community. I would consider that the tier of games below the elite communities like ttr, azul, wingspan. I've also used the word "healthy" community meaning that it isn't difficult to find tables in these communities.

Having 5-10% of the entire site on one game (ark nova) like the image shown a few pages ago isn't beneficial at all. That community could lose as much as 80% and still be fine. You can only play on one real time table at a time. Is a ark nova player's experience going to deteriorate if there were 100 concurrent tables instead of 330?

I agree that it is great to bring the major titles here. Those games are like turkeys on thanksgiving. Stores will have sales to draw in customers but they just don't want you to get the turkey. They want you to pick up some potatoes, stuffing, pie, or whatever else also. So what I'm saying is bga can easily use their turkey (the ark novas of the world) in events like the bga awards and get people to look at the potatoes too while they are here. And that benefits the site as a whole.

[ChiefPointThief]

They can't make users out of thin air, and they can't "FORCE" them to play the game you want to play. There are lots of tables created ALL the time - just join one. OR bring your friends.

May the force be with you. I guess this will keep being thrown around. Did anyone suggest bga tie people to a chair, threaten them, and shove a meeple in their hand?

Quite a relief to finally find a post that actually makes sense in this thread.

You just cosigned a comment last page which kind of reignited this whole debate in the first place

[Stroom]

About more users. The more the better. Lets say bga was able to increase their player base by 10% over the next year and that hypothetically that number is 100,000. Does that mean that your game will get 100,000 new players in its community? No. But if a game like that is averaging 10,000 players as of now you can expect about 1,000 more players added to that community. Now these players will be broken down into 4 categories. 1 - People who extremely love the game (3%). 2 - People who like the game and will keep it in rotation (%15). 3 - People who will play once in awhile (%20). 4 - People who will play 1-3x and thats it (62%). This doesn't turn this game into a powerhouse but it helps the community. What you want is simply to find games. The category 1 players are the usually suspects that you will find in lobby all the time and the category 2/3 players contribute to the community as well.

BGA is regularly crashing under the amount of players already. It can't grow indefinitely. But the amount of games can grow much more. Also the numbers you present are clearly assumptions. You can't say that this percentage is going to be the same for every game out there.

You have to understand that some games just are not interesting. You assume too much about how other people think (or should think). Not every game deserves to have an active community. If there are better games, those will be played. There likely is a lot of overlap among the mechanisms of board games so if you already play a few deck builders, you would not be interested in learning another one. And that is OK.

[Zozoken]

enter 'play board games online' into google:
and the first response is BGA for me.

You're misunderstanding the premium feature, and why it exists. BGA is primarily a free to use web service. A community site. Even if it is now owned by Asmodee.
Premium is to show support for the site, but more so is used as a way to raise money to give back to game publishers and to entice them to want to have their games on BGA. A scratch each others back scenario.

The #1 concern from the user base is new games. Given they release a game about every 2 days now, and the availability of the top rated games has improved drastically. I would say they are hitting their own goals.

There are discord servers and and the general messages to start a new game.

Take it as a sign that the servers tend to creak in the evening. They've got their hands full just keeping up with the current demand.

They can't make users out of thin air, and they can't force them to play the game you want to play. There are lots of tables created ALL the time - just join one. OR bring your friends.

First of all, thank you for your posts RicardoRix. Although you disagree with me, your posts are thoughtful and not with a "deal with it" attitude. I hope others that disagree with my points start to follow your example!

On your comments about BGA popping up when you Google search for board games online... you are right, BGA does come up easily in internet searches now. I suppose I've had blinders on since I haven't heard anyone really talk much about BGA outside of this site. Glad to see more and more people can easily find this site. Growth is good!

On your comments about the purpose of Premium... it says on the Premium page "Play Premium Games. No waiting games when games start. Play with friends next to you, using multiple devices or "Hotseat" mode. Video/Voice chat." What you say is all true about Premium, but it's marketed as a package of exclusive benefits, not an altruistic donation to keep the site running. According to BGA itself, it's a paid service that allows free to play.

On your comments about adding games and server stress... that's of course due to the popularity of the website. Hopefully we will see more stability in the near future. It's a fair and valid point that BGA's priority should be focused on that rather than promoting dead games. So I think we agree on this point as well.

On your comments about forcing players to play certain games... this is a clear misunderstanding. Nobody in this 10+ page thread suggested that BGA owes it to anyone to provide players for less popular games on here. There have been several suggestions on what BGA can do to help with this issue, as well as the fact that the bell notification the team added is a clear sign that they are aware of the issue. Hopefully BGA does what they can, though it's not an issue fully in their control. As you say, players are going to play what they like to play and BGA does not need to force others to play games they don't like to play. (I'm not even sure how they would do that, anyway.) Although we disagree on how much is actually on BGA's shoulders, I'm glad we can disagree on it respectfully!

And the last comment... bring your friends... That's something we all agree on. Though I think BGA could make it easier to coordinate tables for less active games, ultimately we all find out that if we want to play a game badly enough, we do need to bring outside help. Once again, I appreciate that your attitude has not been that players need to deal with it or belittle others for their gaming choices.

I'm not going to continue to reply in this thread. I was hoping that we would all at least be sympathetic for someone joining the site and expecting a quick game only to find their game of choice does not get many active real time tables. But I suppose their comments about how BGA needs to bring more people in rubbed people the wrong way. That's the only thing I can think of for why we're all basically saying the same thing (the only thing you can do about it is bring friends in to play with you) while not seeing eye to eye about BGA's role in it (a perceived sense of entitlement when none is there).

Happy gaming, and I hope you all are able to find good tables to play in!!

[ChiefPointThief]

Why are the majority of people here assuming everyone has friends and family? Maybe they came here online to play with strangers because they don't have any friends and family. Or maybe they do but their friends and family aren't into board games that much. I can't imagine trying to play terra mystica with my family

BGA is regularly crashing under the amount of players already.

Indeed! I've mentioned this. But saying bga in incapable of supporting more users therefore it isn't good is different than saying more users isn't good for less popular games because all the new users will just play ark nova anyway.

It can't grow indefinitely. But the amount of games can grow much more. Also the numbers you present are clearly assumptions. You can't say that this percentage is going to be the same for every game out there.

You have to understand that some games just are not interesting. You assume too much about how other people think (or should think). Not every game deserves to have an active community. If there are better games, those will be played. There likely is a lot of overlap among the mechanisms of board games so if you already play a few deck builders, you would not be interested in learning another one. And that is OK.

I'm not saying this same percentage would be the same for every game. What I'm saying is you can look at already existing statistics and get a feel of how players are adapting to a game of that caliber. Then based on numbers you can come up with an estimation about how many players would continue to play in the community for a particular type of game based on data. So if we have a game that got 10,000 players but only 300 still play on a regular basis you can assume that if the player base was 10% more than there would be 330 players still playing on a regular basis. Would that be 100% accurate? No. But it wouldn't be drastically off either.

[TsPeacock]

The wait times are really getting ridiculous. They should really do more marketing, especially since they charge (or have a paid level). I had never heard of it until someone told me about it.

I agree with you. Though this idea has been met with resistance.

The general mood of the thread is that it's not BGA's problem to fix long wait times. BGA doesn't owe us anything and dead games / long waiting times are to be expected because players are not obligated to play the specific games we want or the times we want. If we want to play something like chess we should go to another site, decide to play a more popular game, bring friends, etc etc.

It's a bit hypocritical since the same logic can be applied to recent changes to elo and the Games In Progress page. It's BGA's site, they can do whatever they want with it, you are paying for access to their entire library of 900 games which is still worth it despite the changes, nobody is obligated to care about elo, it's up to Hanabi players to find players of similar level and agreed conventions, we can make a spreadsheet to track our games if we don't like how the new GIP is, etc etc.

It ignores a lot of navigation issues of the site... How does one coordinate games unless they bring in real-life friends like I do? With the way lobby is, tables timing out if they are not filled by a certain time, not having a LFG forum like most gaming sites, not allowed to post LFG threads in the forum, groups being incredibly unwieldy to find and operate, advertised games do not match player preferences and cannot be manually set by tags, the inability to see what games people are actually playing right now, etc etc. Apparently BGA's hands are tied. There's nothing they can do!! At least we have the notification bell which is helpful for finding real time games.

The workaround (not necessarily the solution but I call it the solution) is to bring friends outside of BGA's framework such as Discord and get them to play games on here. There are several people on my friends list that made accounts just to play on our game nights and they don't visit the site in between. It's not ideal, but it's what we have to do if we want to experience all BGA has to offer.

Once again I encourage anyone affected by long wait times to find a nice and friendly BGA group that coordinates games or find people outside of BGA that wants to play specific games. Maybe posting a thread on the BGG forum for the specific game, for example. Stating the obvious issue "Games have long wait times. BGA should market more to help fix it." has only been met with "No, the problem is you. It's not BGA's problem. You fix it." That's not been helpful and will only serve to drive newcomers from the site.

The amount of BGA cheerleads on these forums seems suspicious

[Stroom]

I'm not saying this same percentage would be the same for every game. What I'm saying is you can look at already existing statistics and get a feel of how players are adapting to a game of that caliber. Then based on numbers you can come up with an estimation about how many players would continue to play in the community for a particular type of game based on data. So if we have a game that got 10,000 players but only 300 still play on a regular basis you can assume that if the player base was 10% more than there would be 330 players still playing on a regular basis. Would that be 100% accurate? No. But it wouldn't be drastically off either.

Let me say it again.

Some games are not worth playing.

Your estimations are based on the assumption that all games deserve to have an active player base. They don't. Just like in a library some books are rarely loaned out, BGA is a lot like a board games library. And that is OK!

[ChiefPointThief]

I'm not saying this same percentage would be the same for every game. What I'm saying is you can look at already existing statistics and get a feel of how players are adapting to a game of that caliber. Then based on numbers you can come up with an estimation about how many players would continue to play in the community for a particular type of game based on data. So if we have a game that got 10,000 players but only 300 still play on a regular basis you can assume that if the player base was 10% more than there would be 330 players still playing on a regular basis. Would that be 100% accurate? No. But it wouldn't be drastically off either.

Let me say it again.

Some games are not worth playing.

Your estimations are based on the assumption that all games deserve to have an active player base. They don't. Just like in a library some books are rarely loaned out, BGA is a lot like a board games library. And that is OK!

"There's nothing bga can do to help about wait times" - I provide several examples of things bga can do to help with wait times.
"Nobody cares about the events you are talking about" - I explain that these events have hundreds of thousands of views in the threads alone
"More users won't help the issue at all" - I give an example with numbers how more users can help communities
"Well those games aren't Hanabi so who cares about playing them anyway"

oops. forgot about "This issue doesn't exist or bga shouldn't care about the issue" to which bga already acknowledges the issue and has tried things already to mitigate the issue.

[Stroom]

"There's nothing bga can do to help about wait times" - I provide several examples of things bga can do to help with wait times.
"Nobody cares about the events you are talking about" - I explain that these events have hundreds of thousands of views in the threads alone
"More users won't help the issue at all" - I give an example with numbers how more users can help communities
"Well those games aren't Hanabi so who cares about playing them anyway"

oops. forgot about "This issue doesn't exist or bga shouldn't care about the issue" to which bga already acknowledges the issue and has tried things already to mitigate the issue.

Wait times - I also proposed something - bring back the old lobby. Much better than whatever you have said so far IMO.

Nobody cares about events - yes they do not really care. If there are 200 dead games and you try to keep them all alive, you won't get much engagement. Too much boring stuff... meanwhile you can create an event for an actually popular game and get much more engagement for the same expense.

More users won't help - YES. It won't help. Much more new games are being created. Player base is not growing at the same pace. There will eventually be many dead games. Player base growing just slows down the dying of small game communities. And that is OK! you just have to start organizing games by yourself, not depending on the lobby or automated match maker. And that is OK too.

[ChiefPointThief]

"There's nothing bga can do to help about wait times" - I provide several examples of things bga can do to help with wait times.
"Nobody cares about the events you are talking about" - I explain that these events have hundreds of thousands of views in the threads alone
"More users won't help the issue at all" - I give an example with numbers how more users can help communities
"Well those games aren't Hanabi so who cares about playing them anyway"

oops. forgot about "This issue doesn't exist or bga shouldn't care about the issue" to which bga already acknowledges the issue and has tried things already to mitigate the issue.

Nobody cares about events - yes they do not really care. If there are 200 dead games and you try to keep them all alive, you won't get much engagement. Too much boring stuff... meanwhile you can create an event for an actually popular game and get much more engagement for the same expense.

I assumed several comments ago that you were once again commenting on subjects you know absolutely nothing about and I was right. You have a habit of doing this. Like the time you debated with me that the old team elo was good only to find out you had no idea what it was or that bga even had team games There is a thread with 2.5mil views and 64 pgs of people complaining about elo changes. The same thread in which several posters called you the 5 letter t word for doing things like this. No one thought the old team elo was good but I find myself debating with the one person who does but doesn't know how it worked or that there were team games here I need to do better.

I'm not going to continue to reply in this thread. I was hoping that we would all at least be sympathetic for someone joining the site and expecting a quick game only to find their game of choice does not get many active real time tables. But I suppose their comments about how BGA needs to bring more people in rubbed people the wrong way. That's the only thing I can think of for why we're all basically saying the same thing (the only thing you can do about it is bring friends in to play with you) while not seeing eye to eye about BGA's role in it (a perceived sense of entitlement when none is there).

You were very fair in your assessment of things. Before you leave may I ask if you participated in the bga awards? Were you encouraged (not forced) to try more games so that you can submit honest votes? Did you like any of these games? Thanks in advance for the feedback.