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).
再見，祝你玩得愉快！
來自 BGA 創辦人 Greg Isabelli（又名Sourisdudesert ）的留言：
親愛的玩家，
13 年前，我有了創辦Board Game Arena的瘋狂念頭。
今天，是我離開的時候了，讓BGA獨立自主。
在過去的兩年半中，我們做了一切必要的準備，確保這個轉變順利進行。
特別是，我們招募了一支由10位非凡的人才組成的出色團隊，他們每天管理著BGA，現在已經擁有了使其更好的所需技能。
在組建和組織這個團隊時，我很幸運得到我們母公司 Asmodee 的充分信任。
自一月以來，Alexandre Schlecht（在BGA上的帳號為lordalx）已經負責管理BGA，而我只是作為一個支持者和顧問的身份在那裡。
Alex 在 BGA 工作了多年，開發了總計13款在BGA上的遊戲，其中包括像卡坦島、璀璨寶石以及最近的 Next Station: Tokyo 等熱門遊戲。
在過去幾個月與他共度的所有時光使我完全確信他是帶領BGA並繼續改善這項服務的合適人選。
我不會透露關於 BGA 下一個更新的任何事情，但您不會失望的
每次 BGA 上發生重要事件時，我們都會寫一個小的“常見問題解答”，所以這裡有一個！
與您共同創立 BGA 的 Emmanuel Colin (Een) 呢？
Emmanuel在幾個月前離開了公司，並在這篇文章中宣布了這個消息。
我們兩人的離職顯然與這個FAQ中所解釋的一切有關。
為什麼是現在呢？
創辦人離職對於任何網路服務來說都是一個重大風險。
我和我的共同創辦人完全明白這一點，這就是我們希望為此過渡做好準備和安排的原因。
首先，我們在選擇買家時，我們關注的是選擇一個對BGA始終重視的公司，這樣我們可以百分之百確定他們將在未來的日子裡關心它。
然後，我們自己挑選並培訓了一個團隊，以確保服務不會因我們的離開而受到影響。
整個過程共花費了兩年半的時間，現在已經結束。
我們曾經見過太多情況，創辦人希望保留他們的職位，但卻已經無法為服務帶來任何價值，最終被迫離開：我們不希望這種情況發生在BGA身上。
你離開是因為 Asmodee 嗎？
絕對不是。
我從一開始就對Asmodee非常明確：BGA的收購是我們過渡到新團隊以使其隨著時間的推移持續發展的策略的一部分。
他們始終接受並支持這一點。
你對最近的BGA更新和價格上漲有何看法？
我百分之百支持最近的更新：我幾乎跟踪了它們的所有開發。
關於價格：很明顯，我們過去的“歷史價格”太低了。
過去兩年的價格調整是必要的。
除其他考慮因素外，每個人都應該牢記的一點是，BGA的收入以"版稅"的形式與尊榮遊戲出版商分享。
顯著的版稅意味著更多的錢來創造新的未來遊戲，但也使得它們在BGA上的可能性更大。
你接下來要做什麼？
我很幸運能夠專注於非營利項目。
我一直發現使用技術使新型社交互動成為可能的可能性令人著迷。
在這些年裡，看到你們用BGA創造的所有東西，作為一個玩家社區，我感到很高興。
一種特定的社會組織現在運行得不太好：代議制民主。
我創建了一個新的移動應用程式，Baztille ，它可以滲透代議制民主，讓公民直接參與影響他們的決策。
每個星期，您都會為您的國家、地區或城市投票並集體做出決定。
然後，在選舉時，"Baztille"候選人可以被選舉出來，週復一週地實施公民通過應用程式所做的決定。
如果你也想讓民主進入二十一世紀，你可以在這個網站上註冊，以確保你將成為在你的國家嘗試這個應用程式的第一批人。
誰知道，你們中間可能會有未來的Baztille代表？
我想知道更多關於BGA的歷史！
在我離開 BGA 之際，這是一個談論 BGA 歷史的機會。
這是一個非常特殊的故事，因為 BGA 最初是作為業餘服務推出的。
不幸的是，只有“Un Monde de Jeux”以法語提供關於此的非常完整的影片，因為這是唯一詢問我們的媒體。
如果我有機會用另一種語言做類似的事情，我會告訴你的！
你在這次冒險中學到了什麼？
您對其他企業家有哪些建議？
這裡有太多要說的，這裡放不下。
在13年的時間裡，我不得不在如網頁開發、遠端團隊管理、大型社區管理、訂閱為基礎的經濟模型、用戶體驗設計、多語言系統、開發平台、可擴展應用程式寄存、責任計算、個人數據保護、IT安全等等許多不同的領域中獲取技能。
我考慮過用“博客”格式寫文章來討論 BGA 背景下的其中一些主題，但我很難評估這是否會讓您感興趣。
所以讓我們做一件簡單的事情：如果你想到一個可以成為一篇好文章的主題，請將它寫在這篇文章的評論裡。
如果我看到有很多有趣的主題，我會選擇其中的一些在“博客”上寫文章，然後看看它的發展方向。
最後的話？
非常感謝所有使這項服務得以存在和發展的人：相信這個項目的遊戲發行商和遊戲設計師（沒有你就沒有什麼），Asmodée 團隊，BGA 團隊：Ian、Jurica、Tof、Xate， Sunil、Cyril、Aurélien、Alex 和 Pietro——你們是我的復仇者聯盟，我的聯合創始人 Emmanuel，他們一直支持我，當然還有你們，所有讓 BGA 成為今天的玩家，尤其是遊戲開發者，測試人員、版主、翻譯人員、教程作者以及所有在某些時候幫助我們走得更遠的人。
對於那些對我未來的項目和出版物感興趣的人，您可以關注我：
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gisabelli
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sourisdudesert/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisabelli/
在BGA的最初幾年，我們習慣於會議結束時說"To infinity and beyond(永恆與超越)"。
那麼，我們在下一次冒險中再見，超越無窮！
Greg
