A message from BGA founder, Greg Isabelli (aka Sourisdudesert):
Dear players,
13 years ago I got this crazy idea of launching Board Game Arena. Today, it is time for me to leave and let BGA stand on its own feet.
During the past 2 years 1/2, we set up all what is needed to prepare this transition and make sure it happens well. In particular, we recruited a wonderful team of 10 extraordinary people who manage BGA everyday and have now all the needed skills to make it better. I was lucky to have full trust from our mother company, Asmodee, when assembling and organizing this team.
Since January, Alexandre Schlecht (lordalx on BGA) is already managing BGA and I have been there only as a support and an adviser. Alex has been working with BGA for years, and developed a total of 13 games on BGA including hits like CATAN, Splendor or recently "Next Station: Tokyo". All the time I spent with him these last months made me absolutely convinced that he is the right person to lead BGA and continue to make this service better. I will not unveil anything about the next BGA updates, but you will not be disappointed 🙂
Each time there has been an important event on BGA we used to write a small "FAQ", so here is one !
What about Emmanuel Colin (Een) who co-founded BGA with you?
Emmanuel left the company a few months ago and announced it in this message . Our 2 departures are obviously linked by all what is explained in this FAQ.
Why now?
Founders departure is a major risk for any Internet services. My co-founder and I are perfectly aware of that, and this is the reason we would like to prepare and organize this transition. First, when selecting a buyer, we care about choosing a company for which BGA will always be important, so we are 100% sure they will care about it over the years. Then, we selected and trained a team ourselves, to make sure the service will not be affected by our departures. The complete process took 2 years and 1/2 and ends now.
We have seen too many bad situations where founders want to keep their positions while they do not have anything to bring to the service anymore, and are finally pushed away: we did not want that for BGA.
Are you leaving because of Asmodee?
Absolutely not. I have been very clear from the start with Asmodee: BGA buyout was part of a transition strategy to a new team to make it sustainable over time. They accepted and supported that all along the way.
What do you think about the latest BGA updates and price increase?
I support 100% the latest updates: I followed the development of almost all of them.
About prices: it is quite obvious that the "historic prices" we used to have were too low. The catch-up that has been done these 2 last years was welcome. Among other considerations, something that everyone should keep in mind is that the BGA revenues are shared with Premium games publishers as "royalties". Significant royalties means more money to create new future games, but also make it more probable to have them on BGA.
What are you going to do now?
I am lucky enough to be able to focus on non-profit projects.
I have always found fascinating the possibility of using technology to make new kinds of social interactions possible. It was a pleasure to see all what you created using BGA as a community of players all along these years.
A specific social organization is not going very well at the moment: representative democracy.
I have created a new mobile app, Baztille, which make it possible to infiltrate representative democracy to allow citizens to participate directly to decisions affecting them. Each week, you vote and take collectively a decision for your country, your area or your city. Then, at election time, "Baztille" candidates can be elected to apply decisions taken by citizens, week after week, using the app.
If you also want to make democracy enter in the XXIe century, you can register on this website to make sure you will be part of the very first to try the app in your country. And who knows, they may be future Baztille representative among you?
I want to know more about BGA history !
As I am leaving BGA, this is an occasion to talk about BGA history. This is a quite particular story since BGA was launched as an amateur service at first.
A very complete video about this is unfortunately only available in French by "Un Monde de Jeux" since this is the only media that asked us. If I have the occasion to do something similar in another language I will let you know!
What did you learn in this adventure? Which advice would you have for other entrepreneurs?
There is so much to say and this would not fit here. In 13 years, I had to acquire skills in domains as different as web development, distant team management, large community management, subscriptions based economic models, UX design, multilingual systems, development platforms, scalable application hosting, accountability, personal data protection, IT security, and many others ...
I thought about writing articles with a "blog" format to talk about some of these subjects in the context of BGA, but I have difficulty evaluating if this can interest you or not.
So let's make a simple thing: if you think about a subject that could make a good article, please write it down as a comment to this post. If I see that there are many interesting subjects I will select some of them to write articles on a "blog" and will see where it goes.
Any last word?
A huge thank you to everyone who make this service possible to exist and to grow: game publishers and game designers who believed in this project (there is nothing without you), Asmodée team, the BGA team: Ian, Jurica, Tof, Xate, Sunil, Cyril, Aurélien, Alex & Pietro - you are my Avengers, my co-founder Emmanuel who support me all along the way, and obviously YOU, all the players who made BGA what it is today, and especially the game developers, the testers, the moderators, the translators, the tutorial authors, and all those who at some point help us to go further.
For those who are interested by my future projects & publications, you can follow me on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gisabelli
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sourisdudesert/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisabelli/
During BGA's first years, we used to end our meeting with "To infinity and beyond". Well, see you for the next adventure, beyond infinity!
Greg
Update: I am not used to talk about BGA to entrepreneurs, but this little talk below is an exception 🙂
If you are interested by entrepreneurship or BGA in general, you should like it (Audio in French / English subtitles available).
再见，这场游戏很棒！
来自 BGA 创始人 Greg Isabelli（又名Sourisdudesert ）的消息：
亲爱的各位玩家，
13 年前，我有了创设Board Game Arena的疯狂想法。
今天，到了我该离开，让BGA自立的时候了。
在过去的两年半中，我们为这次管理层的换届做了万全准备，并确保它顺利进行。
特别是，我们招募了一支由10 名非凡人士组成的优秀团队，他们每天管理 BGA，目前具备帮它变得更好所需的所有技能。
在召集和组织这个团队时，我很幸运得到我们母公司 Asmodee 的充分信任。
自1月以来， Alexandre Schlecht （BGA 上的lordalx ）已经在管理 BGA，而我只是作为支持人员和顾问提供帮助。
Alex 已在 BGA 工作多年，并在 BGA 上共开发了13款游戏，包括卡坦岛、璀璨宝石或最近的“下一站：东京”等热门游戏。
过去几个月我和他一起度过的所有时间让我绝对相信他是领导 BGA 并继续改善这项服务的合适人选。
我不会透露关于下一个 BGA 更新的任何信息，但您不会失望的
每次 BGA 上发生重要事件时，我们都会写一个小的“常见问题解答”，这里也不例外！
与您共同创立 BGA 的 Emmanuel Colin (Een) 呢？
Emmanuel 几个月前离开了公司，并在此消息中宣布了这一消息。
我们两人的离开显然与本常见问题解答中解释的所有内容有关。
为什么现在？
创始人离职是任何互联网服务的主要风险。
我和我的联合创始人都非常清楚这一点，这就是我们愿意准备和组织这次换届的原因。
首先，在选择买家时，我们关注选择一家 BGA 对它来说始终很重要的公司，这样我们 能100% 确定它未来多年会关心它。
然后，我们自己挑选并培训了一个团队，以确保服务不会因我们的离开而受到影响。
整个过程时长两年半，并且在现在结束。
我们已经看到太多糟糕的情况，创始人想要保住自己的位置，而他们已经不能为服务提供更多增长点，最终不得不被迫离场：我们不希望 BGA 出现这种情况。
你离开是因为 Asmodee 吗？
绝对不。
从 Asmodee 一开始我就非常清楚：BGA 买断是向新团队过渡战略的一部分，以使其随着时间的推移可持续发展。
他们一直接受并支持这一点。
您如何看待最近的BGA更新和价格上涨的问题？
我 100%支持最近的更新：我关注了几乎所有更新的开发。
关于价格：很明显，我们的“历史价格”太低了。
过去两年的涨价受到了欢迎。
在其他考虑因素中，每个人都应该记住的一点是，BGA 收入作为“专利税”与尊享游戏的发行商分享。
高额的专利费意味着更多的钱来创造未来的新游戏，但也使它们更有可能在 BGA 上出现。
你现在要去做什么？
我很幸运能够专注于非营利项目。
我一直认为技术应用促成新型社交互动的潜能令人着迷。
这些年来，很高兴看到您使用 BGA 作为玩家社区所创造的所有内容。
一个特定的社会组织目前运作得不是很好：代议制民主。
我创建了一个新的移动应用程序 Baztille ，它可以渗透代议制民主，让公民直接参与影响他们的决策。
每个星期，您都会为您的国家、地区或城市投票并集体做出决定。
然后，在选举时，通过该应用程序可以选出“Baztille”候选人，以执行公民做出的决定，周复一周。
如果你也想让民主进入二十一世纪，你可以在这个网站上注册，以确保你将成为你所在国家/地区第一批试用该应用程序的人。
谁知道，他们可能是你们未来的 Baztille 代表？
我想知道更多关于BGA的历史！
在我离开 BGA 之际，这是一个谈论 BGA 历史的机会。
这是一个非常独特的故事，因为 BGA 最初是作为业余服务推出的。
不幸的是，只有“Un Monde de Jeux”以法语提供关于此的非常完整的视频，因为这是唯一询问我们的媒体。
如果我有机会用另一种语言做类似的介绍，我会告诉你的！
你在这次冒险中学到了什么？
您对其他企业家有哪些建议？
我有很多话要说，但是不太适合在这里说。
在过去 13 年的时间里，我必须学习不同领域的技能，例如 Web 开发、远程团队管理、大型社区管理、基于订阅的经济模型、UX 设计、多语言系统、开发平台、可扩展的应用程序托管、问责制、个人数据保护、IT安全和许多其他......
我考虑过用“博客”格式写文章来讨论 BGA 背景下的其中一些主题，但我不确定它们是否会让您感兴趣。
所以让我们做一件简单的事情：如果你想到一个可以成为一篇好文章的主题，请把它写下来作为对这篇文章的评论。
如果我看到有很多有趣的主题，我会选择其中一些在“博客”上写文章，然后看看它的反响。
有什么在最后想说的？
非常感谢所有使这项服务得以存在和发展的人：相信这个项目的游戏发行商和游戏设计师（没有你就没有什么），Asmodée 团队，BGA 团队：Ian、Jurica、Tof、Xate， Sunil、Cyril、Aurélien、Alex 和 Pietro——你们是我的复仇者联盟，我的联合创始人 Emmanuel，他们一直支持我，当然还有你们，所有让 BGA 成为今天这个样子的玩家，尤其是游戏开发者，测试人员、版主、翻译人员、教程作者以及所有在某些时候帮助我们走得更远的人。
对于那些对我未来的项目和公开发布感兴趣的人，您可以关注我：
脸书：https: //www.facebook.com/gisabelli
Instagram：https: //www.instagram.com/sourisdudesert/
领英：https: //www.linkedin.com/in/gisabelli/
在 BGA 成立的头几年，我们常常以“To infinity and beyond”来结束我们的会议。
好吧，我们下一次冒险见，超越无限！
格雷格
