Board Game Arena

With Agricola easily being the most requested game on BGA, some may be wondering why this has not happened yet. I am not a game designer nor do I have any inside knowledge or influence on what games are put on BGA. I am simply a gamer and a fan of Agricola that will attempt to logically speculate on the challenges of bringing this wonderful game to BGA. I would really encourage BGA designers to contribute to this thread and add more insight.

From what I can deduce, the single biggest reason that Agricola has not made its way to BGA is money and digital rights. From what I have read, Chris, the designer at play-agricola.com had to buy a physical copy of the game for each table that exists on the site. That would get incredibly costly on here. I would guess that BGA either can't or won't (for economic reasons) get the digital rights to put Agricola on BGA. I would imagine that Lookout Games would give BGA digital rights to Agricola for a certain price. The question is, what is that price? And is it economically feasible on a site that runs solely on donations? The Play Agricola site has a size-able community considering how functionally limited the site is. The only way I see Agricola getting added to BGA is to make it available to donors ONLY. So here is my question to those who are currently NOT donors to BGA... Would you pay to play Agricola on BGA? I have donated to BGA in the past but have let my donation expire because I am very poor.. That said, I would probably donate ASAP if Agricola was made available to donors only. To those of you who ARE current donors, would having Agricola on this site motivate you to continue donating?

Of course the other challenge of bringing Agricola to BGA is that it would be an incredibly complex and time consuming game to code. Each card would require individual coding that interacts with the base code. It's likely one of the reasons that Apple did not have Agricola on IOS until fairly recently, and to this date, they only have the E deck available. I'm certain that Apple has alot more money that BGA That said, I'm certain that there is somebody within this huge BGA community that is smart enough to bring Agricola to BGA and could give a large amount of time to the project as long as they are paid... Again, this all goes back to money..

Let me close by saying that I love this site.. BGA, is in my opinion, is the best board gaming site on the internet. You guys are doing a fantastic job. Adding a game like Agricola would only make it better.

I'm pretty sure, that BGA also has to pay for the other games, and I think the requirement to own a physical copy for each game is not that expensive. I have no idea about how many people would play Agricola, but if we need 20 tables, thats only around 700 EUR. For that money, you would get a professional developer for one day (may be 2 days for a professional game developer). Even when using volunteers, I think the costs to develop this game would be much higher than the one-copy-per-game costs.

But to answer your questions: Being able to play agricola would be a very high motivation to donate again on this site, but it would be contrary to the whole donation system. The whole concept of Free2Play is, that you can do anything without paying, and thats what keeps the users coming. I would rather consider to add some features that are only available if one player in the game has donated, e.g. expansions.

More importantly: It would be awesome to get some insights into BGA and hear how the people running this site think about this!

Hi,

Well, things are not really working like this. BGA does not have a commercial approach and do not pay for licences, publishers does not pay for development, and players does not pay for playing. This is the spirit of the service.

We asked for Agricola and until now the publisher refuses. That's it. I didn't manage to figure out what happened with the other websites - maybe they are not really satisfied with other adaptations - but this is the situation.

Cheers,

sourisdudesert wrote:Hi,

Well, things are not really working like this. BGA does not have a commercial approach and do not pay for licences, publishers does not pay for development, and players does not pay for playing. This is the spirit of the service.

We asked for Agricola and until now the publisher refuses. That's it. I didn't manage to figure out what happened with the other websites - maybe they are not really satisfied with other adaptations - but this is the situation.

Cheers,

Wow thank you for that information.. It really clears things up. I am amazed at what you have been able to build without paying for any licenses. You are all doing a wonderful job. Unfortunately, it also explains why Agricola and a few other popular Euro titles are not on here and will likely never be on here. The publishers are going to want money. So if BGA fans want Agricola on here, we need to contact Lookout Games and pressure..cough cough.. I mean kindly persuade them?

Thanks a lot for clearing things up sourisdudesert.. I was told, that BGA actually pays for the licences of other games, but that was obviously wrong.

@beccers I'm not really sure about that.. after all, there are other gaming-sites where the publishers PAY to have their games played. I think especially Agricola is a game where it makes a lot of sense to allow online playing:
* It's a pretty strategic game for serious players. Serious players tend to buy games more often than casual players.
* Agricola is an awesome game.. if you discover it on BGA, there's a high chance you wanna buy it.
* There is a huge number of expansions - so there is still a good reason to buy the game

On the other hand, its the 3rd best rated game on Boardgamegeek, so maybe they don't need that much publicity anymore.

Maybe I'll try to ask Uwe Rosenberg when I meet him on the next game-fare. I know that he's not the publisher, but he might have some influence on Lookout Games...