Is it possible to develop a new game for BGA?

[Lucas Malor]

As title. I have an idea for a new simple game. Is it possible to implement it for BGA?

[Uthopia]

From: https://boardgamearena.com/doc/BGA_Game_licenses

I want to make my prototype/unpublished game available on BGA

This is possible, BUT most of the time, we consider this is a bad idea for the following reasons:

if your game has not been published yet, there is certainly a good reason - most of the time there is still some more work to do on the game itself. Publishing a game on BGA that is not 100% finalized won't help you to finalize it.
as a rule of thumb, popular board games on BGA are games that are popular in the real world. As a consequence prototypes most likely won't get a big audience on BGA.
we also advise you against developing your own game: games adaptation are better when there is a designer whose focus is on the gameplay and a developer whose focus is on the implementation.

So you definitely can develop your prototype/unpublished game on BGA, but we encourage you to think twice about it and do it only if you are in one/several of the situations below:

the game is going to be published in the near future
the game design process is really 100% done: the game is ready to be published in its current shape (ex: self-publishing game, game in a crowdfunding process...)
you want to test your game with a big number of players to fine-tune some minor things ("balance" of the game).

[ufm]

From https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788

The guidelines recommend against this here: http://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/BGA_Ga ... ble_on_BGA

For prototyping, you would be better off with an unscripted sandbox environment, such as Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia. There you can adjust rules on the fly and have a much better time with access control. This is the most common method currently in use among virtual playtesting meetups.

I can say from personal experience that investing a huge amount of time into a fully implemented digital adaptation will prematurely solidify underdeveloped design decisions and make the design less receptive to valuable feedback.

Even though some devs (including myself) worked on new games without a physical version, the game design had been already completed then.
I recommend Tabletop Simulator to test your prototype idea as above. Access and module modification are both easier than other sandbox platforms.