FAQ BGA + Asmodee

[ViolentSilence]

The fact that anyone buys BGA tells me it is actually profitable, or at least could be made profitable. Maybe I should have realized it was profitable, but since I haven't given it much thought, I didn't. And for the record, I don't have any problem whatsoever with anyone making money offering me a good service, especially if it is free.

Not necessarily - sometimes you can justify a loss making enterprise if it serves a wider function such as advertising. You can look at some football clubs like Man City and PSG which essentially act as a PR exercise for ruling parties in oil states. BGA can be kept running to barely break even, if it is seen to work as an effective way to promote games and the wider industry. Sometimes companies can be looked at in terms of wider concerns than a simple P&L bottom line

[LaszloK]

I said this elsewhere already, but it bears repeating, sorry if you've heard it before: I'm one of the volunteer developers who implemented a (public domain) game here from scratch, for free, and I don't regret it one bit. Well, I did get a one-year extension to my Premium membership, so not entirely for free, but you get the idea.

I then went on to look for a number of other games and their licences, willing to adapt another one of my favourites, mainly as a "thank you" to the owners, but found that the licences weren't available. Specifically, the digital licences for more than half of the games I checked turned out to be owned by Asmodee. In fact I'm on the record saying as early as last summer that for a company like Asmodee, investing in BGA would make a lot of business sense, even more than just licensing their games.

Look at Asmodee's digital offering before this acquisition: iOS/Android apps for some of their games, each of which is individually more expensive than a membership here, and if Play Store reviews are to be trusted, of dubious quality despite the development cost which must be significantly higher than it would be to have them here. It makes a TON of sense for them to want their games up here instead. It also makes a TON of sense for them to not want their games up here without some kind of control that ensures (1) the site doesn't suddenly disappear, (2) games they do want here are released with a more specific timeframe than "when someone gets around to it", and (3) you get a better user experience (e.g. fewer occurrences of "Disconnected from game server!!! ... You are connected again.") than what their apps got those less than glowing reviews for.

Furthermore, now that they have acquired BGA, it makes a ton of business sense for them to pour resources into the general quality of the site (availability, reliability, upgrading the most "homegrown" features) as well as getting new adaptations of popular games done. It also makes a ton of business sense for them to want to give other publishers a fair deal, because the moment BGA becomes a catalogue of only their own games, it loses a lot of its appeal, and probably its status as the #1 online board gaming site with it. Which is probably why they will try to retain Gregory and Emmanuel for as long as they can.

As to what I expect is going to happen, in terms of some of the games I was interested in: Agricola is probably not going to be released anytime soon, and when it is, it'll definitely be Premium. I do expect Citadels and Patchwork to come out fairly soon, and probably be free to play. I also hope they can strike a deal with the licence owners of Qwirkle, too, and then it's their business decision whether they want to make it free to play (and absorb the license fee in the interest of getting more people on the site) or Premium. In any case I'm more hopeful about this now than I was when it was a random enthusiast (me) trying to convince people at MW that they would benefit from having Qwirkle here...

In the long run, the value of BGA is that it's THE place to play, or try out, board games. So I do agree there is a risk that Asmodee make bad business decisions and ruin the site, but that would be a typical example of Hanlon's razor, i.e. a case of being dumb rather than evil. (Incidentally, I believe very few corporations are evil. Capitalism is about being greedy, not evil. There is a difference.)

And as to all the uproar about free labour... if BGA had been owned by Asmodee (or any other company) I would have been just as happy to spend my time implementing my favourite game here, and grateful for the opportunity to rely on an established metasite and development framework while doing so, not because I don't like money but because it is obvious that nobody was ever going to pay me to do it - despite the fact that, yes, it has brought and will probably continue to bring new users to the site (at least two of whom I know for a fact only paid for Premium so they could play from the same location, despite the game being free to play). So I agree with those who call into question the validity of "[it] is not even sure that there is a money benefit for BGA with the volunteer work" - it seems clear and obvious to me that there is. But it doesn't change the bottom line.

[ChatGrognon]

“[…] so replacing the Res Arcana news by the BGA+Asmodee news would have been an unuseful and bad decision.”

Would have been the thing to do for at least the weekend. And surely you could have either added a temporary banner. I went to the forum because I read the news on BoardGameGeek and I did not understand it was not displayed on the main page.

“[..] it would have been easier to do without the help of the volunteers. […] 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.”

That sounds greedy.

I would have liked that this FAQ would have changed my bad feelings about this deal. Not that, per se, it’s a bad deal for the site. Sure, it will ensure its funding for a long time. But it will not be the same. I’ll surely not renew my premium account only “to encourage” it for my example.

[Tisaac]

That sounds greedy.

Care to elaborate ? It sounds precisely the opposite to me.

[Stroom]

Hanabi -> Cocktail games -> Asmodee
Carcassonne -> Z-Man-Games -> Asmodee
Love Letter -> Z-Man-Games -> Asmodee
Stone Age -> Z-Man Games -> Asmodee
Terra Mystica -> Filosofia/Z-Man Games -> Asmodee
Res Arcana -> Sand Castle Games ->Asmodee
7 Wonders -> Repos production -> Asmodee (online distribution rights?)
Seasons -> Libellud -> Asmodee
Potion Explosion -> Horrible Guild -> Asmodee (online distribution rights?)

Definitely there are more but I only looked at 20 of the top games in the list. So nearly half of the games from that list...

To me, this seems very much like a takeover. If Asmodee would pull out all those games, it would be quite a huge loss for BGA. Just a speculation but it just seems very suspicious all around.

[JustAGuyPlayin]

I said this elsewhere already, but it bears repeating, sorry if you've heard it before: I'm one of the volunteer developers who implemented a (public domain) game here from scratch, for free, and I don't regret it one bit. Well, I did get a one-year extension to my Premium membership, so not entirely for free, but you get the idea.

As someone with serious mixed feelings, it does make me a bit better to hear someone who has invested more than me in the site (I have a premium membership, but no html skills) that they feel the move is in alignment with their relationship with the site.

I still feel deep frustration that the site is actively hiding the deal and then denying that they are hiding it, as if they think we are all morons... until that stops I won't fully be on board.

I really do hope this all works out for the best.

[T72on1]

I said this elsewhere already, but it bears repeating, sorry if you've heard it before: I'm one of the volunteer developers who implemented a (public domain) game here from scratch, for free, and I don't regret it one bit. Well, I did get a one-year extension to my Premium membership, so not entirely for free, but you get the idea.

I then went on to look for a number of other games and their licences, willing to adapt another one of my favourites, mainly as a "thank you" to the owners, but found that the licences weren't available. Specifically, the digital licences for more than half of the games I checked turned out to be owned by Asmodee. In fact I'm on the record saying as early as last summer that for a company like Asmodee, investing in BGA would make a lot of business sense, even more than just licensing their games.

Look at Asmodee's digital offering before this acquisition: iOS/Android apps for some of their games, each of which is individually more expensive than a membership here, and if Play Store reviews are to be trusted, of dubious quality despite the development cost which must be significantly higher than it would be to have them here. It makes a TON of sense for them to want their games up here instead. It also makes a TON of sense for them to not want their games up here without some kind of control that ensures (1) the site doesn't suddenly disappear, (2) games they do want here are released with a more specific timeframe than "when someone gets around to it", and (3) you get a better user experience (e.g. fewer occurrences of "Disconnected from game server!!! ... You are connected again.") than what their apps got those less than glowing reviews for.

Furthermore, now that they have acquired BGA, it makes a ton of business sense for them to pour resources into the general quality of the site (availability, reliability, upgrading the most "homegrown" features) as well as getting new adaptations of popular games done. It also makes a ton of business sense for them to want to give other publishers a fair deal, because the moment BGA becomes a catalogue of only their own games, it loses a lot of its appeal, and probably its status as the #1 online board gaming site with it. Which is probably why they will try to retain Gregory and Emmanuel for as long as they can.

As to what I expect is going to happen, in terms of some of the games I was interested in: Agricola is probably not going to be released anytime soon, and when it is, it'll definitely be Premium. I do expect Citadels and Patchwork to come out fairly soon, and probably be free to play. I also hope they can strike a deal with the licence owners of Qwirkle, too, and then it's their business decision whether they want to make it free to play (and absorb the license fee in the interest of getting more people on the site) or Premium. In any case I'm more hopeful about this now than I was when it was a random enthusiast (me) trying to convince people at MW that they would benefit from having Qwirkle here...

In the long run, the value of BGA is that it's THE place to play, or try out, board games. So I do agree there is a risk that Asmodee make bad business decisions and ruin the site, but that would be a typical example of Hanlon's razor, i.e. a case of being dumb rather than evil. (Incidentally, I believe very few corporations are evil. Capitalism is about being greedy, not evil. There is a difference.)

And as to all the uproar about free labour... if BGA had been owned by Asmodee (or any other company) I would have been just as happy to spend my time implementing my favourite game here, and grateful for the opportunity to rely on an established metasite and development framework while doing so, not because I don't like money but because it is obvious that nobody was ever going to pay me to do it - despite the fact that, yes, it has brought and will probably continue to bring new users to the site (at least two of whom I know for a fact only paid for Premium so they could play from the same location, despite the game being free to play). So I agree with those who call into question the validity of "[it] is not even sure that there is a money benefit for BGA with the volunteer work" - it seems clear and obvious to me that there is. But it doesn't change the bottom line.

Thank you for this elaborate response. Very clear, and I'm glad to hear about a volunteer's point of view.

I agree with you on most if not all aspects of your post.

[tevas]

Just sad to see another beautiful community driven site eaten by a company owned by private equity.
I read all the official comments and I understand it's easy to justify such a move by just ignoring what makes this place special. I would have thought the few people that owned BGA would have understood the value of what they created, beyond any economical value. The human value, which is something that Asmodee doesn't care for and never will. Even if they wanted. It's what happens when you sacrifice the human side to growth and corporatism values.

Sad that you were not able to find someone else who would have ran the website under similar values that you built it upon and kept it since I found it almost ten years ago when looking for alternatives to Brettspielwelt.
I hope someone will find a way to start something new in the future and people will be able to join and see the beauty of people working and playing together detached from stakeholders demanding their share of profits.

[LaszloK]

I still feel deep frustration that the site is actively hiding the deal and then denying that they are hiding it, as if they think we are all morons... until that stops I won't fully be on board.

I agree that not having this news on the front page, even if just as a very short update that essentially says "Asmodee bought BGA, but everything is going to carry on as normal, other than even more games coming up on the horizon", is a serious PR mistake. But as Greg said somewhere: if they had wanted to hide this, they've done an awfully bad job of it. There have been a number of press releases (including statements by Greg and Emmanuel) and everyone who cared the tiniest bit found out pretty quickly.

For my part I'll just say that my love for this site has very little to do with the PR.

I don't want to sound like it's necessarily going to be all roses and butterflies - the possibility of someone making dumb decisions and ruining something good as a result is always a risk inherent in any large corporation. I just think it's a risk worth taking at this time, considering the likely benefits.

[el cosimo]

I think just see and see what happen.. i just hope they just keep the trust in the same people who work now on games and hope spend time to make the site better...

Maybe there is a bad history, I think it will bad to loose persons if they only make bad decisions..