Addressing communication challenge in cooperative games

[KryptoZ]

A remark and a suggestion for the developers of the cooperative games on BGA (it does not concerns only Pandemic, but I had a bad first experience with Pandemic related to the following issue).

The point of cooperative games is to exchange ideas and suggestions between players in order to handle the game at best. This is only possible if all the players share a common language, which is currently not a criteria of selection of the players put together in a game by BGA.

In my opinion, it would be more appropriate to set an additional setting in BGA for the cooperative games in order to address this issue, instead of letting the players deal themselves with tricky communication problems. Since the players on BGA are asked to mention the languages they can handle, it seems achievable to me...

Thanks and congrats to the developers of BGA by the way, and successful continuation!

[Jellby]

This is only possible if all the players share a common language, which is currently not a criteria of selection of the players put together in a game by BGA.

Yes, it is. You can restrict table access by language. Of course, people can still have wrong or incomplete language settings, or refuse to communicate even if they understand the language.

[Earthboundia]

A remark and a suggestion for the developers of the cooperative games on BGA (it does not concerns only Pandemic, but I had a bad first experience with Pandemic related to the following issue).

The point of cooperative games is to exchange ideas and suggestions between players in order to handle the game at best. This is only possible if all the players share a common language, which is currently not a criteria of selection of the players put together in a game by BGA.

In my opinion, it would be more appropriate to set an additional setting in BGA for the cooperative games in order to address this issue, instead of letting the players deal themselves with tricky communication problems. Since the players on BGA are asked to mention the languages they can handle, it seems achievable to me...

Thanks and congrats to the developers of BGA by the way, and successful continuation!

I like where this is coming from. However I think this language barrier can be solved with a very simple case of google translate. I think the real language barrier comes from communicating strategies successfully without any quarterbacking.

[SonicJuz]

When you have to reverse translate cards, it's problematic.
Also google translate is not an acceptable solution for all games where communication is needed. Beside false friends, it will lead to many mistakes, incorrect grammatical structures that will totally change the meaning of sentences, and so on. Once I got stuck with Deepl keeping mentioning ice skating when it was about a number. It is also not effective to keep switching between a translation window and the game when time is running low. Last thing, people who have "dominating" languages as mother tongue are not the most patient; especially when they don't know any other language than their own.

I totally support the idea of an obligatory language setting, or a visible (not too tiny and not mouse-hover) mention of spoken languages of the players in ALL appearing game proposition (lobby, game panel and bell reminder)