BoardGameGeek · Lablypedia

History

BoardGameGeek was founded in January 2000 by Scott Alden and Derk Solko. Alden had an ambition for the website to be the "worldwide definitive resource for board games." The site's early structure was based on Alden's earlier work from 1996, 3DGameGeek. This was a similar site which hosted discussions on digital games with three-dimensional graphics.

In 2005, BGG began hosting an annual board game convention, BGG.CON, that has a focus on playing games and where winners of the Golden Geek Awards are announced. New games are showcased and convention staff is provided to teach rules. In 2010, BGG received the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming which recognized it as "a resource without peer for board and card gamers, the recognized authority of this online community." On the BGG forums, posts seeking new players and groups for playing tabletop games roughly tripled from 2005 to 2015, growing at a rate of 10% per year. By 2014, the website's database held cross-referenced entries for over 65,000 games, 9,000 artists, 13,000 publishers and 18,000 designers. By April 2019, it covered 80,000 titles. Over 250,000 users had rated at least one game on the website, with a total of 15 million ratings.

In 2019, the site updated its logo, which originally depicted a white blond man with spectacles running with a checkerboard. Alden wrote that "BGG welcomes all gamers, whatever your level of experience or particular tastes, and updating the logo reflects our belief that gaming is for everyone, not just geeky guys with glasses. Whatever our differences individually, gaming brings us together. Our new symbol is a nod to BGG's past, while also inviting you to see yourself in that silhouette—or to find your passion for play represented in that 'game flame.'"

In 2020, BGG was inducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame that year. In 2024, the website had information on over 150,000 board games, and was being regularly accessed by 300,000 active users.

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Design

BoardGameGeek's central piece is its large database of cross-referenced entries of board games, artists, publishers and designers. To navigate this database, users can browse categories of board games. The website groups games by their 'families', using broad concepts such as 'strategy' instead of directly classifying themes. It also logs the games' mechanisms. Information on the website is the result of user-driven labor. The database can be accessed to conduct quantitative research, with much recent academic literature about board games relying on BGG.

BGG has a live rating system, through which games are rated by users on a scale of 1 to 10. To supplement this, they are also allowed to give a qualitative description of their rating. The lowest rating, 1, is suggested by the website to correspond with the words, "Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken", whereas games rated 10 are "Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change". Ratings of 8 and above generally indicate that a game is well-liked, whereas ratings under 7 indicate the opposite. Users of the website generally prefer games which are longer and more complex. The website's user reviews are often placed next to those of more established outlets such as Shut Up & Sit Down and The Dice Tower, rather than being purely curated through online magazine ratings as per the digital game industry.

Users can visit BGG's online forums, which involve reviews, errata, news, play logs, design notes, articles about strategy, and images. Users maintain a personal profile where they may list, rank, and review their board game collections, manage a blog, and advertise projects and local conventions.. the website's international userbase is highlighted through use of flags denoting users' countries of origin that exist next to all user avatars. They can view 'Geeklists' which are lists of games put together by other users; one of these lists a history of the number-one ranked games on BGG. Contributors can buy 'geek gold', which buys cosmetics for users on the website, and BGG also gains funds through an annual end-of-year fundraiser.

Users can also shop for games and accessories, trade and sell games between one another through the site's market or through Amazon and eBay, and take part in user-and company-driven giveaways and contests.

Golden Geek Award

Since 2006, the site annually awards the best new board games of the year with the Golden Geek Award. Winners are selected based on a vote by registered users.

2006–2009

2010–2019

RPG and Video Game awards

RPG and Video game awards were introduced in 2014 and awarded through 2017. Only 1 category was awarded in 2018, and none in following years.

2020–present

2020 saw many awards replaced with new categories, such as "Board Game of the Year" replaced with "Game of the Year, Light", "Medium" and "Heavy".