Is anyone else a little let down with the new game additions

[Tryken]

I don't want to be a negative nancy or anything, and I don't want it to look like I'm going, "Board Game Arena sucks! Screw 'em!" I'm not. I like Board Game Arena, it's my favorite place to play board games online.

But, man, these recent additions have been let downs to me.

A lot of abstracts, or additions of games that are available on a multitude of websites (Hearts?). Some of these, I know, are to demonstrate what can be done with the new system on BGA, but I haven't really been getting excited when surprise talk happens on the website.

I wonder if it's because a lot of the bigger named titles (7 Wonders, Ascension, etc.) are all doing their own thing instead of handing it over to a third party website like BGA?

There have been some interesting ones like Libertalia and Seasons, but I've still been a little underwhelmed with abstract and non-hobby game announcement after announcement.

With that said, keep up the good work, BGA! I just wanted to give my opinion. I love what you're doing for PC board gaming, and am generally really happy with this great site. =)

[Oso]

I don't want to be a negative nancy or anything, and I don't want it to look like I'm going, "Board Game Arena sucks! Screw 'em!" I'm not. I like Board Game Arena, it's my favorite place to play board games online.

But, man, these recent additions have been let downs to me.

A lot of abstracts, or additions of games that are available on a multitude of websites (Hearts?). Some of these, I know, are to demonstrate what can be done with the new system on BGA, but I haven't really been getting excited when surprise talk happens on the website.

I wonder if it's because a lot of the bigger named titles (7 Wonders, Ascension, etc.) are all doing their own thing instead of handing it over to a third party website like BGA?

There have been some interesting ones like Libertalia and Seasons, but I've still been a little underwhelmed with abstract and non-hobby game announcement after announcement.

With that said, keep up the good work, BGA! I just wanted to give my opinion. I love what you're doing for PC board gaming, and am generally really happy with this great site. =)

You can talk with the producers of games, so we can develop here in BGA :3.

Lot of people say "I want 7 Wonders, I want Myrmes, I want whatever", but some producers don't want to give your game for free in BGA.

Of course, If you give us 50,000 dollars, maybe we can negotiate with them

[Een]

@Tryken: strange, from your profile your last game is from a very long time and you didn't play Libertalia or Seasons. Lots of games you can try before waiting for new releases

Anyway, thanks for your positive opinion of BGA, here is a quick answer to your remarks.

• There is a lot of parameters for a game being adapted on BGA. One of them is getting authorisation from the publisher. Obviously for some games publishers simply have other plans or prior engagements (or don't know and just don't have the time to make a decision).
• There is more and more players in more and more countries (see the map). So there is no way we can make everyone happy with each new release. We try to have a range of different games in our selection so that everyone can find something they enjoy (some people _love_ abstracts). With our three last releases, 'Expedition: Northwest Passage', 'Pylos' and 'Elfenland', we feel that we give something to enjoy to every category of players. In fact, we are very happy and proud about these releases
• We implement the games we love, and our time is limited. But there is a solution if you want a particular game on BGA. We opened our studio to developers, so you can learn PHP, Javascript and SQL, do a simple game as a trial, then work on the game you love! (or pester a friend to do it )

Cheers,
Een

[Tryken]

Hey guys,

Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I sort of hinted at it in my post, but I gathered that majority of the problem came from publishers not wanting to share their work, especially when they have iOS dollars in their eyes. Haha.

I have Seasons and a friend recently bought Libertalia. So hopefully we'll be hopping on to play those shortly. Also, thank you for the recent addition of Elfenland! Very excited to give that a try. And certainly I think some of the new games have been good additions. I was just getting worried that BGA was having increasing difficulty getting licensed titles (which I imagine is always a struggle).

Thanks, again, for getting back with me and with such detail.

Cheers,

Ryan

[Speusippus]

Does it help if people randomy contact publishers about particular games, or does that just aggravate them?

The designers of Ladies of Troyes regularly visit their forum on BGG, and I've wondered whether it would be a good idea or a bad idea to explicitly say to them I'd love to see it implemented here on BGA, especially considering Troyes itself is already here...

[Een]

Telling a publisher/designer that you love their game and would like to see it on BGA should not be harmful, but as a general rule we don't advise to contact them just for this (especially not randomly) since they already get a lot of sollicitations.

Also, as I said, authorisation is only one of the parameters. We currently have more authorisations that we can handle and we have to make choices. I mentioned limited time: it correlates with game complexity. This is especially true when talking about expansions, since sometimes (and for Ladies of Troy I think that you can easily understand why) it means not only implementing the new game features (which can be complex by themselves) but reworking the game zone, the graphics size (with the risk of breaking 1024px terminals compatibility), and doing a big overhaul of the original implementation to manage the expansion. That's why expansions are something we get into only from time to time and very carefully.

Cheers,
Een

[Speusippus]

That's totally understandable, Een. Thanks for the interesting reply.

(You could just implement the new cards in Ladies of Troyes... no change to the game layout in that case... I'll shut up about it now!)

ETA: Was going to PM this but it appears you're not PM-able. I've tought myself programming languages before for specific applications, so I want to register here that though I'd have to take a little time to learn the language as I went, when it comes to coding the rules logic (probably not the graphical elements but maybe even that) I can probably help out if the need should ever arise.

[nunoruf]

Speaking of new games I couldn't be happier to see Tzolk'in getting on board BGA. Only knew about it yesterday and it already looks like a long time waiting for it to show up

Nice addiction to the already varied and nice list of games available here