Hi,
There have been quite a lot of reactions to our announcement about BGA+Asmodee, with some subjects that have been raised several times, so we thought it deserves a little FAQ (this one). So as an exception => second forum thread.
If you didn't read the announcement, you should read it first, as we tried to answer most questions directly on it.
We tried our best to gather the questions that have been asked a lot and was not answered in the initial announcement. If we see that there are still some unanswered questions that make sense we will do another FAQ.
Why not communicate in the news section / front page? Are you trying to hide something?
We did a press release, translated in many languages and sent to a big number of journalists. It has been published on all major board games news websites. So if we wanted to hide something, we've been very bad at it
At the same time, the number of "views" of our announcement and forum post is public, and as you can see this announcement has been viewed more times than any other recent news.
There is a very good game today in the news, and it corresponds to important information with a visible change for all BGA players (new major game). In the opposite, there is no visible change on the website with the BGA+Asmodee announcement, so replacing the Res Arcana news by the BGA+Asmodee news would have been an unuseful and bad decision.
Are the prices going to rise?
At first, I should mention that we agreed by contract (ie: between BGA and Asmodee) that the prices will be fixed by the BGA team, and not by Asmodee.
So basically, on this subject, the BGA+Asmodee (or BGAsmodee like I read - good one) does not change anything: if in the future there is a price change, well, it would have probably been the same without this announcement.
Now, to answer the question directly: maybe, but probably not in the near future, and anyway it is highly probable that we keep our current model (low prices) as it has proven its success.
Has BGA been developed by volunteers?
We need to distinguish 2 things here:
_ the games themselves
_ all the rest, what we called "the meta site"
The "meta site" has been developed exclusively by the BGA team (founders + employees / occasional freelancer), so there is no subject here.
The games have been developed either by the BGA team, by volunteers, by developers paid by BGA or by a publisher, and sometimes directly by their designers.
But why having volunteers?
You are a lot to play on BGA, so a lot of publishers want to publish their game here to make people aware about it. The problem is the following: even if the developer cost for an adaptation on BGA is quite low, it is still several thousands euros, so it is way too high for 80% of games / game publishers.
Fortunately, some developers like to develop games on BGA in their free time, for fun, for helping a game publisher or game designer they like, and also because you (as a community of players) make them proud every day of their work. So, at the same time, a lot of developers want to develop games on BGA as volunteers.
What we do is making publishers meet volunteers (and the opposite), for the benefits of both parties, and for the benefit of the BGA players.
This subject (volunteers) is one of the most discussed in the reaction following the BGA+Asmodee announcement, and I found this very paradoxal. Here is why: in fact, if our main focus was "money", it would have been easier to do without the help of the volunteers. We would have focused on the 20% games with the highest potential, those that bring today to BGA almost all its audience / premium / money (and are developed by "regular" developers). Instead of that, we invest money and time (and even recently hire a dedicated person) to build a development platform to allow every developer from the community to help us. We are doing that because it was the right thing to do to give a chance to any game from any publisher, even the smallest one, to have its adaptation on BGA. Do we get a benefit from this? Probably not because these games are... free. Maybe a little, because they are attracting players on BGA. And we're not asking us this question anyway: we just do it. But what is awkward is that no one write about "what if BGA+Asmodee stop the volunteers developer support?", which would have been a good question (answer: no we won't), but the other questions about the volunteers make in fact little sense to us.
Why would the volunteers want to develop for a "big" company?
BGA volunteers did not develop their adaptations "for" BGA, or the company behind BGA, or the owners of BGA. They developed their adaptations for a game publisher or a game designer that need help to make players aware about their games.
As explained in the previous question, this is not even sure that there is a money benefit for BGA with the volunteer work, as these games are proposed for free.
So the situation remains quite unchanged: there are still game publishers who need to make players aware of their games, these adaptations are still non-profitable no matter what, and the only possible way to have these adaptations is the great community of developers we have on BGA, whoever is the owner of BGA.
Why not alternative solutions?
We have been running BGA for 11 years, and we were looking for a solution for the long term, which means that the equivalent question is "how to make BGA run without us", which imply the other question "who is going to own BGA".
So the only question that matters is "who is the best owner for BGA for the long term?".
Some of you talked about "the players", which means "stock market", which means "anyone with enough money to buy the majority of the shares". No way we wanted to do that.
At this step, most entrepreneurs choose to go with some "investor fund". Choosing that option would mean that the main focus of the owner would be on money, not board games. No thanks.
So some of you talked about "small game publishers". Sorry, but if the idea is to make sure BGA will be there in 20 years, it is better not to rely on another small company that may not be there in 20 years.
So among all big publishers, why choose this one? Well, simple clue: look at the "most expected games" list on our frontpage, which didn't change very much in years. You'll see that on the 7 games displayed, 5 are published by the same group. Guess who?
Because of this and everything we said in the announcement, we think that Asmodee is the right partner. In 5, 10 , 20 years, there will still be there, there will still be major, and their main focus will be "board games". So no matter what happens, you can be 100% sure BGA will be important for Asmodee and that they will take care of BGA.
Asmodee going to ruin BGA? Is the Asmodee goal to kill BGA?
We understand that some of you had some bad experiences with Asmodee and/or think it is the "big evil".
We are not aware of all the details, and basically it doesn't matter because what we care about is BGA and what Asmodee can offer to BGA.
So no, Asmodee's plan is not "to kill BGA". They could have killed us in many different ways in the past, and they didn't.
Now, is all of this going to work well? We think yes. Obviously we can't be 100% sure because that's what the future is: unsure. But no matter what, we will continue to work and achieve this goal.
But the fact is: look at BGA today. Is it really different from BGA from last week? Do you have less fun today playing on BGA?
My point is: we may be right, we may be wrong, only the future can tell, but when I read comments today like "bye bye BGA", it sounds like a "Minority report guilty judgement" to me.
There is no use for Asmodee to buy BGA to keep it as it is, so why do you say nothing will change?
In fact, there is a big interest for Asmodee to keep BGA just like it is.
At first... it works! So why change?
Then, the simple addition of the big titles from the Asmodee catalog makes BGA more valuable for Asmodee, as it is the case for any other game publisher.
So obviously, there is very little to win and a lot to lose to change BGA.
However, yes, there will be changes, like we changed BGA during the past 11 years. We never stopped improving this service, and we won't. Not because we have Asmodee on board, but because this is what we are doing for 11 years and will continue to do it.
Will there be more games Premium? Will the free games remain free?
Each publisher can decide to make their game free or Premium on BGA.
Following the pandemic and the impossibility to play in real life for most of us, some publishers of popular games decided to change their mind and make their games Premium instead of free, a decision we support 100% (ex: Hanabi and Jaipur).
Some more popular games (at least 2) are already planned to go from free to premium in the following weeks/months, for reasons that - like the previous ones- has nothing to do with the BGAsmodee thing.
However, we don't expect the situation to change, as having a game adaptation on BGA for free is really the best way for a publisher to show everyone how good the game is.
Will BGA customer relationships be managed by Asmodee Customer services?
There is nothing common between taking care of physical board games services and the digital, so no, we intend to continue to handle our relationship with you in the BGA team, and by the way, there may be some announcement about a recruitment for this soon
There have been quite a lot of reactions to our announcement about BGA+Asmodee, with some subjects that have been raised several times, so we thought it deserves a little FAQ (this one). So as an exception => second forum thread.
If you didn't read the announcement, you should read it first, as we tried to answer most questions directly on it.
We tried our best to gather the questions that have been asked a lot and was not answered in the initial announcement. If we see that there are still some unanswered questions that make sense we will do another FAQ.
Why not communicate in the news section / front page? Are you trying to hide something?
We did a press release, translated in many languages and sent to a big number of journalists. It has been published on all major board games news websites. So if we wanted to hide something, we've been very bad at it
At the same time, the number of "views" of our announcement and forum post is public, and as you can see this announcement has been viewed more times than any other recent news.
There is a very good game today in the news, and it corresponds to important information with a visible change for all BGA players (new major game). In the opposite, there is no visible change on the website with the BGA+Asmodee announcement, so replacing the Res Arcana news by the BGA+Asmodee news would have been an unuseful and bad decision.
Are the prices going to rise?
At first, I should mention that we agreed by contract (ie: between BGA and Asmodee) that the prices will be fixed by the BGA team, and not by Asmodee.
So basically, on this subject, the BGA+Asmodee (or BGAsmodee like I read - good one) does not change anything: if in the future there is a price change, well, it would have probably been the same without this announcement.
Now, to answer the question directly: maybe, but probably not in the near future, and anyway it is highly probable that we keep our current model (low prices) as it has proven its success.
Has BGA been developed by volunteers?
We need to distinguish 2 things here:
_ the games themselves
_ all the rest, what we called "the meta site"
The "meta site" has been developed exclusively by the BGA team (founders + employees / occasional freelancer), so there is no subject here.
The games have been developed either by the BGA team, by volunteers, by developers paid by BGA or by a publisher, and sometimes directly by their designers.
But why having volunteers?
You are a lot to play on BGA, so a lot of publishers want to publish their game here to make people aware about it. The problem is the following: even if the developer cost for an adaptation on BGA is quite low, it is still several thousands euros, so it is way too high for 80% of games / game publishers.
Fortunately, some developers like to develop games on BGA in their free time, for fun, for helping a game publisher or game designer they like, and also because you (as a community of players) make them proud every day of their work. So, at the same time, a lot of developers want to develop games on BGA as volunteers.
What we do is making publishers meet volunteers (and the opposite), for the benefits of both parties, and for the benefit of the BGA players.
This subject (volunteers) is one of the most discussed in the reaction following the BGA+Asmodee announcement, and I found this very paradoxal. Here is why: in fact, if our main focus was "money", it would have been easier to do without the help of the volunteers. We would have focused on the 20% games with the highest potential, those that bring today to BGA almost all its audience / premium / money (and are developed by "regular" developers). Instead of that, we invest money and time (and even recently hire a dedicated person) to build a development platform to allow every developer from the community to help us. We are doing that because it was the right thing to do to give a chance to any game from any publisher, even the smallest one, to have its adaptation on BGA. Do we get a benefit from this? Probably not because these games are... free. Maybe a little, because they are attracting players on BGA. And we're not asking us this question anyway: we just do it. But what is awkward is that no one write about "what if BGA+Asmodee stop the volunteers developer support?", which would have been a good question (answer: no we won't), but the other questions about the volunteers make in fact little sense to us.
Why would the volunteers want to develop for a "big" company?
BGA volunteers did not develop their adaptations "for" BGA, or the company behind BGA, or the owners of BGA. They developed their adaptations for a game publisher or a game designer that need help to make players aware about their games.
As explained in the previous question, this is not even sure that there is a money benefit for BGA with the volunteer work, as these games are proposed for free.
So the situation remains quite unchanged: there are still game publishers who need to make players aware of their games, these adaptations are still non-profitable no matter what, and the only possible way to have these adaptations is the great community of developers we have on BGA, whoever is the owner of BGA.
Why not alternative solutions?
We have been running BGA for 11 years, and we were looking for a solution for the long term, which means that the equivalent question is "how to make BGA run without us", which imply the other question "who is going to own BGA".
So the only question that matters is "who is the best owner for BGA for the long term?".
Some of you talked about "the players", which means "stock market", which means "anyone with enough money to buy the majority of the shares". No way we wanted to do that.
At this step, most entrepreneurs choose to go with some "investor fund". Choosing that option would mean that the main focus of the owner would be on money, not board games. No thanks.
So some of you talked about "small game publishers". Sorry, but if the idea is to make sure BGA will be there in 20 years, it is better not to rely on another small company that may not be there in 20 years.
So among all big publishers, why choose this one? Well, simple clue: look at the "most expected games" list on our frontpage, which didn't change very much in years. You'll see that on the 7 games displayed, 5 are published by the same group. Guess who?
Because of this and everything we said in the announcement, we think that Asmodee is the right partner. In 5, 10 , 20 years, there will still be there, there will still be major, and their main focus will be "board games". So no matter what happens, you can be 100% sure BGA will be important for Asmodee and that they will take care of BGA.
Asmodee going to ruin BGA? Is the Asmodee goal to kill BGA?
We understand that some of you had some bad experiences with Asmodee and/or think it is the "big evil".
We are not aware of all the details, and basically it doesn't matter because what we care about is BGA and what Asmodee can offer to BGA.
So no, Asmodee's plan is not "to kill BGA". They could have killed us in many different ways in the past, and they didn't.
Now, is all of this going to work well? We think yes. Obviously we can't be 100% sure because that's what the future is: unsure. But no matter what, we will continue to work and achieve this goal.
But the fact is: look at BGA today. Is it really different from BGA from last week? Do you have less fun today playing on BGA?
My point is: we may be right, we may be wrong, only the future can tell, but when I read comments today like "bye bye BGA", it sounds like a "Minority report guilty judgement" to me.
There is no use for Asmodee to buy BGA to keep it as it is, so why do you say nothing will change?
In fact, there is a big interest for Asmodee to keep BGA just like it is.
At first... it works! So why change?
Then, the simple addition of the big titles from the Asmodee catalog makes BGA more valuable for Asmodee, as it is the case for any other game publisher.
So obviously, there is very little to win and a lot to lose to change BGA.
However, yes, there will be changes, like we changed BGA during the past 11 years. We never stopped improving this service, and we won't. Not because we have Asmodee on board, but because this is what we are doing for 11 years and will continue to do it.
Will there be more games Premium? Will the free games remain free?
Each publisher can decide to make their game free or Premium on BGA.
Following the pandemic and the impossibility to play in real life for most of us, some publishers of popular games decided to change their mind and make their games Premium instead of free, a decision we support 100% (ex: Hanabi and Jaipur).
Some more popular games (at least 2) are already planned to go from free to premium in the following weeks/months, for reasons that - like the previous ones- has nothing to do with the BGAsmodee thing.
However, we don't expect the situation to change, as having a game adaptation on BGA for free is really the best way for a publisher to show everyone how good the game is.
Will BGA customer relationships be managed by Asmodee Customer services?
There is nothing common between taking care of physical board games services and the digital, so no, we intend to continue to handle our relationship with you in the BGA team, and by the way, there may be some announcement about a recruitment for this soon
