How to find players for less popular games?

[Neep]

I am looking expand my portfolio of games, and have found a few that are interesting to me. However, I noticed that they don't seem to have many games played or players participating. When you find a situation like this, how do you find players to get a game going? I've had a few ideas, but wondered if I was missing any. Also, are any of these a bad idea? (I worry that some would be considered annoying.)
1) Post in the General Messages chat
2) Post to the specific game forum
3) Message people who have played the game before
4) Friendly prodding of your BGA friends
5) Open a game and hope for the best

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Neep

[cigma]

All of that might work - or not. There is no general rule what people consider annoying though.

Here are some other suggestions:
If a game is considered less popular by BGA (usually with a waiting time of > 15 min), you can activate a bell icon to get a notification, when someone opens a realtime table of that game. For the bell go to the game page, e. g. https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... piritssaga, choose play and real-time. Then you'll find the bell icon under the play button. Click it to subscribe or unsubscribe.

If you have once played the game and enjoyed the gameplay, I suggest to make friends with the other players and possibly make plans to play together again. They like the same game, they play at the same time like you - good chances for a follow up!

You might also be interested in these groups (but I don't know how active they are):
Play a game we have never played https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=10129965
Discover and play all games https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=7553079

[Jellby]

The least annoying is evidently #5

You could also create a new group or join an existing one, and post there. As soon as you play your first game of X, you should automatically be enrolled in the group "X players" (the name is not always easy to find), but that's a special group where only admins can post, so it's not that useful for your purposes.

[Neep]

Thanks for the suggestions. I forgot about the real time bell.

The two groups seem inactive, but I'm thinking of joining and posting to see if anyone wakes up. If not, maybe it is time for a fresh group like that?

Number #5 did work, but I've had times in the past when games timed out after 5 days (or whatever the threshold is). It's amazing how some games have millions of plays and some can't get any. There are some bad games, but I wonder how much is name recognition and popularity.

Thanks again!

[tbhp]

There are some bad games, but I wonder how much is name recognition and popularity.

This certainly plays a role. It's like a self reinforcing circle, if people try less played games and they struggle to get any games started, they are going to be discouraged and will revert to playing popular games.

Games get some spotlight when they just got released and appear on the front page. But if a game doesn't catch on at this initial point, I suppose it's hard afterwards to increase its popularity.