BGA yesterday, now and tomorrow

[JPreto]

With a bit of sarcasm: "How are you so naive?"

Most tech companies do this somewhere along the way, either sell their company or make profit out of it with advertising. This is a studied and developed business model! Creating and managing a platform that is feed of free users.

These users are volunteers, and when they eventually get bigger, they make profit out of their work.

What publicity would Facebook sell, if the users didn´t create free content? What information would Google Maps sell, if the users didn´t identify, take photos and rate the places for free? What Craigslist would be without users listings? What Ebay would be without users posting products to sell?

You can see this business model everywhere, free volunteer work and major companies taking advantage of it!

I really don´t get all the fuzz... This is "business as usual", this is the capitalist society we all created!

The fair/ethical thing would be to split the ammount of the sale profit to every user, according to their contribution:

- 200 Developers, made the game... each deserve something.
- 50 Moderators, manage the comunity... each deserve something.
- 4.000.000 Users, created forum posts, bug reports, game notoriety... each deserve something.

Do you really think this is going to happen?

[johnbook]

This REALLY should be on the main page, Greg. Not on a buried thread.

Asmodee does not need my premium membership, and the way this has quite literally been sold and handled (even if poorly by some against this decision) goes to show what kind of trust BGA had in the community here.

It’s appointing and, frankly, disheartening.

This isn’t a positive development. If it were, it would be on the front page. Period.

[lunatic4ever]

And here I was thinking about extending my premium subscription to a yearly subscription...well, that's definitely not happening. Too bad, feels like it was really coming together nicely. I'll watch this space carefully and will jump the moment they ruin it.

[Kingaby]

Why isn't this a front page news announcement?

[Stroom]

Because it is embarrassing.

They completely mismanaged the Hanabi update. A lot of bugs still in the UI. The games are much more enjoyable if they are made by the players who actually play the game. They know much more how to make the game faster and more fun to play... But that didn't really matter, they went through with their own changes and didn't really care. Then they made it premium. And now they completely sold out. What else is there to do...

[hasi6562]

Weil man zu feige dazu ist. Es zeigt von Respektlosigkeit den Usern gegenüber. Gib den Menschen Geld und du lernst ihren wahren Charakter kennen. Was zu Neujahr noch mitgeteilt wurde einfach lächerlich. Ich hätte gerne meinen Jahresbeitrag zurück. Habe damit bga unterstützt aber nicht asmodee.

[JustAGuyPlayin]

\I have deeply mixed feelings about all of this. I do understand that the creators did this project out of love at first, and they have created something that has brought me deep joy. Especially through the pandemic. I feel grateful to them. And they have now likely achieved financial success and comfort, which I certainly wish on people who have used their technical skills to create a platform that has given me a lot.

I am also excited about properties that may come to the site. It looks like Splendor is coming soon, which is exciting. Asmodee also owns a lot of other properties that I would be excited to play. I use this as a site to introduce new gamers to games and also to explore games for more experienced gamers, and I am excited about playing the new games that will be offered.

Now the concerns: This news was communicated in a very non-transparent way. I am on this site daily, and I found out from Google News. And then I needed to search for this thread. I hope I am wrong, but it seems like an intentional decision was made to not be transparent with the community.

I worry for the future of the site. BGA has existed as it currently is, in large part, by donated labor. Reading the replies, it seems like some portion of the donated labor will not want their labor to go towards a corporation, rather than a community. It is hard to imagine Asmodee will not try to make up this money somehow. There are some ways that I hope to see: By adding popular games, perhaps they can grow the user base who buy paid subscriptions greatly in order to fund games. Also, I think it would be reasonable to have non-intrusive self-referential advertisements. For example, after you finish a game, there is a clearly visible, but also easily ignorable button that links to the publisher site selling the game. Through this, a reasonable interpretation might be that Asmodee might not want to make digital money off making the site worse, but might use the site to introduce more players to their board games and then use that to sell hard copies of the board game. This also might help make it worth it for non-Asmodee publishers to continue here if it helps them sell their hard copies directly. (I want to be clear that things like banner ads will be straight-up adblocked by almost all of us, and if they start doing interruptive ads I would likely cancel my membership immediately.) I say this because their are many ways they may try to make money off the site that will be very bad for the site. I hope they don't go in this direction.

Finally, I am deeply concerned with how leadership responded to the criticism from a developer on this thread. Specifically, it seems like they have accused a developer of "spreading lies" about them. They have every right to feel disrespected by the reaction, even if most of the community feel hurt by some of their choices. But accusing someone of lying to the community without specifically saying what you are calling a lie is troublesome, to say the least. I have not been on these communications: perhaps an explicit lie has been told; perhaps one has not. But in this context, accusing someone of lying without citing the exact statement you are calling a lie feels disastrously harmful to community trust at a time when trust has never been more important. I would kindly like to ask leadership to explicitly say what statement is unambiguously untrue. Alternatively, perhaps if they cannot, they can try to rebuild trust with a statement like "We maintain that we feel disrespected, but after further consideration and reflection, we feel that the party might have characterized our discussion in a manner that we disagree with, but we acknowledge that this is different than lying, and we shouldn't have accused him of such."

That said, what I want right now is peace. I am very anxious for the site that means a lot to me. I deeply hope that this move proves to work out well for the community. I am planning on maintaining my premium membership. I hope others who have supported this site don't immediately give up on it, and continue to support it while we wait to see the results of this move. And I hope leadership recognizes their role in building and maintaining trust through open and honest conversation. Because we will all be better off if the Arena is a success.

[patrober]

I hope this is as good as you state. But, if it is, why is it not a major announcement rather than hidden in a discussion forum? I only found out as as result of a comment on a facebook page otherwise I would not have known about it. I suspect the majority of users are unaware of this.

Believe in what you say, and make a proper announcement.

[tchobello]

\I have deeply mixed feelings about all of this. I do understand that the creators did this project out of love at first, and they have created something that has brought me deep joy. Especially through the pandemic. I feel grateful to them. And they have now likely achieved financial success and comfort, which I certainly wish on people who have used their technical skills to create a platform that has given me a lot.

I am also excited about properties that may come to the site. It looks like Splendor is coming soon, which is exciting. Asmodee also owns a lot of other properties that I would be excited to play. I use this as a site to introduce new gamers to games and also to explore games for more experienced gamers, and I am excited about playing the new games that will be offered.

Now the concerns: This news was communicated in a very non-transparent way. I am on this site daily, and I found out from Google News. And then I needed to search for this thread. I hope I am wrong, but it seems like an intentional decision was made to not be transparent with the community.

I worry for the future of the site. BGA has existed as it currently is, in large part, by donated labor. Reading the replies, it seems like some portion of the donated labor will not want their labor to go towards a corporation, rather than a community. It is hard to imagine Asmodee will not try to make up this money somehow. There are some ways that I hope to see: By adding popular games, perhaps they can grow the user base who buy paid subscriptions greatly in order to fund games. Also, I think it would be reasonable to have non-intrusive self-referential advertisements. For example, after you finish a game, there is a clearly visible, but also easily ignorable button that links to the publisher site selling the game. Through this, a reasonable interpretation might be that Asmodee might not want to make digital money off making the site worse, but might use the site to introduce more players to their board games and then use that to sell hard copies of the board game. This also might help make it worth it for non-Asmodee publishers to continue here if it helps them sell their hard copies directly. (I want to be clear that things like banner ads will be straight-up adblocked by almost all of us, and if they start doing interruptive ads I would likely cancel my membership immediately.) I say this because their are many ways they may try to make money off the site that will be very bad for the site. I hope they don't go in this direction.

Finally, I am deeply concerned with how leadership responded to the criticism from a developer on this thread. Specifically, it seems like they have accused a developer of "spreading lies" about them. They have every right to feel disrespected by the reaction, even if most of the community feel hurt by some of their choices. But accusing someone of lying to the community without specifically saying what you are calling a lie is troublesome, to say the least. I have not been on these communications: perhaps an explicit lie has been told; perhaps one has not. But in this context, accusing someone of lying without citing the exact statement you are calling a lie feels disastrously harmful to community trust at a time when trust has never been more important. I would kindly like to ask leadership to explicitly say what statement is unambiguously untrue. Alternatively, perhaps if they cannot, they can try to rebuild trust with a statement like "We maintain that we feel disrespected, but after further consideration and reflection, we feel that the party might have characterized our discussion in a manner that we disagree with, but we acknowledge that this is different than lying, and we shouldn't have accused him of such."

That said, what I want right now is peace. I am very anxious for the site that means a lot to me. I deeply hope that this move proves to work out well for the community. I am planning on maintaining my premium membership. I hope others who have supported this site don't immediately give up on it, and continue to support it while we wait to see the results of this move. And I hope leadership recognizes their role in building and maintaining trust through open and honest conversation. Because we will all be better off if the Arena is a success.

It's not a developer, it's a publisher talking about developers... in a very aggressive way.

[intelekt]

I’ve been extremely civil and have asked you once already to point out where I’ve been “aggressive” or said anything that is not true.

Quite frankly, the fact the Greg took to the time post to all Stir Fry Eighteen players about this and shut the game off, but still hasn’t informed the community on a front page post about the sale, is extremely telling.

I’ve asked in 3 places now for anyone from BGA to please explain what Lie was told, no one can seem to respond to that with anything other than deflection.

I understand they don’t want me calling attention to unethical actions, which is why I’ve asked them to consider an ethical way forward.

Three days later, they’ve removed my game, committed slander, and still have not informed the community in a front page post like many people have asked in these threads.

Actions speak far louder than words.