Board Game Arena

Gramarye wrote:I don't know if it was your intention, sourisdudesert, but I've found your responses in this thread rude and dismissive.

They've created a great site but they've never been very good at communicating (see this thread and watch the dates).

Anyways. I'm out of here. Apparently there's only one useful site left.

PS: I never understand webmasters, saying they need to make money from their site to make a living from it. There would be a simple solution: keep your hobby a hobby.

ShaneOMac wrote:
They've created a great site but they've never been very good at communicating

Funny, I just read the thread '11 december Crash' before this one, and I found only comments which thank to bga's communication...

yoyote wrote:

ShaneOMac wrote:
They've created a great site but they've never been very good at communicating

Funny, I just read the thread '11 december Crash' before this one, and I found only comments which thank to bga's communication...

Okay, how about this:

They are great at communicating about problems which are not their fault and about new features and games. You know, the easy stuff and the stuff that makes them look good.

However, they are often terrible at communicating anything about why they prioritize certain things or make the choices they do, particularly giving legitimate explanatory answers when their reasoning is criticized or their choices questioned. You know, the hard stuff and the stuff that makes them look bad.

Like, they could have just said "As we need additional revenue, we are now charging people to play from the same IP, as this indicates that they are either deriving value from using our service instead of the physical game, or using our service instead of purchasing the physical game", but instead they went with "Introducing the new feature: Hot Seat Mode!". This is quite obviously a duplicitous attempt to make their perfectly legitimate decision to change a free service into one that you have to pay for sound like a cool new feature instead.

That is the worst possible kind of communication, and for what? It fools no one and just makes them look like jerks. Why not just be straight up about this?

Then they post three reasons why they made the change in this thread, the first of which is incomplete and the other two which are not even good reasons. When their reasoning is then challenged, instead of responding to the specific challenges they copy/paste the same rationales that we've been exploring more deeply and/or refuting for an entire thread, which is pretty darn dismissive if you ask me.

Then finally, when called out for this, they eventually admit that those reasons were bogus and it is actually all about the numbers, as was pretty much obvious to everyone from the jump:

sourisdudesert wrote:at the end, the decision to keep this or to remove this will not be taken depending on this forum thread: it will only be taken depending on numbers (audience lost vs additional premium accounts)

They could have just explained it this way from the start, as it makes perfect sense, but they don't want to admit that what they are actually doing is trying to force more memberships. I even agree with their decision in principle, but communicating about it this way is disrespectful and makes it seem like they think we are all gullible idiots.

I don't care about the same-IP thing being premium or not, so I don't have a personal interest in it, and every change will generally bring about people who are upset, so I'm not even that concerned over the threats of people to stop supporting or to leave. I think that is probably a given. So it's fairly easy for me to be completely unbiased about this issue

But I definitely do agree this was gone about in a very bad way, that communication about it was bad, and that the responses are pretty dismissive. And being a business person, I even understand about the bottom line. But in the past it seems things could be discussed and that people could accept that they need to wait and see how things pan out, i.e. whether the gain is worth the loss. And I can even see how it might be difficult to face this thread full of acid and have to just put on a strong front and stick to their guns. But I agree it was hidden behind a "feature," and people will react more strongly and not try to understand when something sneaks up behind them with no warning and they feel they've been duped. It's not like they sent out a message warning people of what was going to happen, with a bit of notice, and explaining the reasons for it, and give people time to adjust, instead of just coming here one day and finding something different - surprise!

And I do think some of the reasoning is a bit flawed. I suspect there's a very small percent of people who come here just to avoid ever buying any games, or at least out of people who can afford them and could probably afford to pay this place, i.e. the ones seriously taking advantage. (Although, when you offer something for free, then people do take advantage of it, and not necessarily in an ill-intended way.) I suspect the number of people who have purchased games due to being able to try them out here, or discover them here, outweighs that. Or, even my own personal case, where I buy a new game(s) instead of becoming a paying member here cause I can't afford both - isn't it better that I buy the game? Or at least by their reasoning, it should be. Is this reason really a thing, or just imagination? I'm sure the publishers are perfectly aware that some people take advantage. Or maybe it was a publisher that got upset and led to this - and I think in that case they could say so, without even naming anyone.

And I even understand that they don't need anyone's permission for anything they do. It's their site. It's just one of those situations where you have to make decisions, and sometimes have a choice between doing what people want, and doing what you want at a cost of people.

But what if instead they give fair warning about the same-IP thing, with some notice, and then say BUT we're also going to introduce a new feature to go along with it, to cushion that blow a bit. (Too late for that of course.)