'Asynchronous' and 'turn-based' are not synonyms

[admiralspunky]

BGA has become so pervasive that I frequently have to explain to people, in real life, that a "turn-based" game is a game where you take turns. As opposed to, say, Magic Maze, where everyone moves at the same time. If, however, you and your opponents aren't expected to be online, or in the same place, for the entire duration of the game, that's asynchronous. Can you change that terminology, please? Most mistranslations are harmless, but this one is misleading and inaccurate.

[Strode]

Do you have any reason to believe anyone is actually being mislead by this? Someone comes here and thinks, oh, I want to play a game where people take turns? Turn-based it is!

I'd bet a lot more people would be confused by "asynchronous", which isn't exactly a familiar word.

[Grimwold]

I'm really curious why you have to explain that to people.
What problems those people encounter because of that misleading translation on this site that they have to seek your help ?

[Jellby]

I'd argue that "asynchronous" is not more accurate. Real-time (in BGA's terms) is asynchronous too: you take your turn, I take my turn. We don't need to be online simultaneously and except in a few games (e.g. Spot-it) my timing is not affected by yours. The only difference with turn-based games is that the turns are much shorter: seconds-minutes instead of hours-days, and that you can only have one real-time game active.

[FrankJones]

Turn-based is generally understood to mean "not real-time."

People often use "Asynchronous", but as noted, asynchronous could just mean "not taking turns at the same time. For example, "Earth" and "7 Wonders" are synchronous. On each turn, all players take simultaneous actions. 7 Wonders is an especially good example, since it makes no difference whose turn it actually is - all players have the same options. In "Earth", all players take simultaneous actions, but the primary player whose turn it is gains more of the benefit. But it's still synchronous.

So, I agree that "turn-based" and "asynchronous" are not synonyms, but either phrase could be ambiguous.

[Ceaseless]

Do you have any reason to believe anyone is actually being mislead by this? Someone comes here and thinks, oh, I want to play a game where people take turns? Turn-based it is!

I'd bet a lot more people would be confused by "asynchronous", which isn't exactly a familiar word.

Introducing real-time Chess, where both players move at the same time!
You thought you were taking my queen, but it moved out of the way!

Or even better. Unexpectedly capturing the king!
They thought they were moving their king to safety, but it was intercepted!

[admiralspunky]

Introducing real-time Chess, where both players move at the same time!
You thought you were taking my queen, but it moved out of the way!

Or even better. Unexpectedly capturing the king!
They thought they were moving their king to safety, but it was intercepted!

Sure, real-time chess is great, but have you ever played Spoons by snail mail? You mail a card to the next person on the list(the actual physical card; shipping is pretty cheap for a single playing card), and then, when someone gets a four of a kind, they write a letter announcing this fact to everyone on the list, and then it's their job to reply as quickly as possible. Then the person who went out first checks the postmarks from the other players, and the player with the latest postmark is out. It sounds awful, but it's a lot of fun, I promise.

BGA's time control labels are misleading, but other sites aren't much better. * calls async games "Daily". * uses "Correspondence", which is better (kind of anachronistic, but alright). * actually uses both for some reason: "Daily Correspondence". I still like "asynchronous", but pretty much any label is an improvement over "turn-based". As for live games, may we just call them "live", and not "real-time"?

*Moderator edit: please do not specifically name other gaming platforms

[KenFin1]

As for live games, may we just call them "live", and not "real-time"?

well a live game is a game in progress/ game in action as opposed to a dead game which is ended, so players here have lots of live games going on at any given point, both real time and turn based. I once had 49 turn based games going when I was playing a few tournaments. So no, I don't think that suggestion is a great one, nor is changing turn-based. We all know what it means. I mean sure, maybe the subscribers of Pedants Weekly might complain (note I deliberately omitted the apostrophe just to amuse them) but that's quite a niche subset of the internet. You also have to consider the international translations that will need to be considered. It's not just the English meaning. It needs to go across the myriad user languages on here. That is not simple either as what is obvious in one language isn't in another.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. BGA aren't great at following that tbh but this is one place they should just leave well alone, and thankfully are doing. Now if they can just leave the old lobby and stop adding advertising bloat and page clutter everywhere that'll be grand. I imagine the number of instruction pages and guides where "turn-based" is written in hard code is so large that it wouldn't be worth BGA's time and effort, given they say they only have limited resources.

[JohnnyCyclops]

A game where all players took their actions at the same time might be called synchronous play. And then games where players took their actions one after another would be called asynchronous play.

Isn’t Seven Wonders a synchronous game?

[Ceaseless]

Introducing real-time Chess, where both players move at the same time!
You thought you were taking my queen, but it moved out of the way!

Or even better. Unexpectedly capturing the king!
They thought they were moving their king to safety, but it was intercepted!

Sure, real-time chess is great, but have you ever played Spoons by snail mail? You mail a card to the next person on the list(the actual physical card; shipping is pretty cheap for a single playing card), and then, when someone gets a four of a kind, they write a letter announcing this fact to everyone on the list, and then it's their job to reply as quickly as possible. Then the person who went out first checks the postmarks from the other players, and the player with the latest postmark is out. It sounds awful, but it's a lot of fun, I promise.

BGA's time control labels are misleading, but other sites aren't much better. * calls async games "Daily". * uses "Correspondence", which is better (kind of anachronistic, but alright). * actually uses both for some reason: "Daily Correspondence". I still like "asynchronous", but pretty much any label is an improvement over "turn-based". As for live games, may we just call them "live", and not "real-time"?

*Moderator edit: please do not specifically name other gaming platforms

I play my games in one sitting. It doesn't have to be a short game but doing it in parts is torture to me.

I don't think the names matter much. They're just site-specific labels used to divide those game types. I can't say I hold a strong association to any given word for those groups.