Board Game Arena

Is it possible or likely that the database of games already played can be set up as queryable? SQL style?

I ask because such queries can be helpful and interesting in analyses of game performance, balance, etc.

And making it available to the general population would allow anyone with a little bit of SQL knowledge to break the site at almost any time....

What type of searches would you be wanting?

You wouldn't have to make all SQL functions available.... MODIFY, UPDATE, ALTER TABLE and such would not be allowed... COUNT and SUM and SELECT would be OK. Nor would the databases have to be the actual working databases... just facsimiles rendered on a periodic basis.

I think it would be interesting in Puerto Rico, for example, to investigate the rate of success given the construction of certain buildings, or given the original seat positions of players, or the rate of success against certain other players.... all sorts of things.

But then again maybe I'm just too fanatical about Puerto Rico.

More game statistics would be very nice, although it would be a huge undertaking. I would love to be able to search for things like, say, win% of master Hive players when opening with Mosquito as white. Or check to see how broken things are, like how often a player wins deathmatch style Tash-Kalar when drawing Storm or Time Elemental as a legendary summon (I suspect they provide a big advantage).

But this will almost certainly never happen because they would have to make a whole UI for it really, and I'm not sure how much of this data is even stored in a searchable place/format. There are also lots of things I'd rather see them work on before this. It is too bad though, because the player statistics already offered at the end of games are pretty uninformative.

I'm not sure it would be a huge undertaking. I'm certain the data already exists in SQL tables, and the largest portion of what's really necessary to publish would be the names and locations of the rendered facsimile databases and their structures.