Early Welcome - Please excuse the dust!

[James Mathe]

Greetings all,

I just wanted to take a moment to set a few things straight since there is a ramped thread over at BGG about us now...

I would post there myself but BGG has delete so many of my accounts (including games my company publishes) this year my head spins – they are in no way non-bias.

First a bit about me and the ownership of this site... I have been around the unplugged gaming industry a long time and have created many sites before this one. I own a publishing company, 2 game stores, and an online ebook store. More details here: http://www.JamesMathe.com This site is owned by my company but has a strategic partnership with RPG.NET and others. That does not mean we're a part of or owned by RPG.NET so I hope that clears up some confusion there. While I'm a major owner in OBS (ebook company that owns RPGNow.com, WargameVault.com, DrivethruComics.com and more) they in no way endorse or have any input or ownership in this site.

So, on to clearing up some of the misstatements being made before they run wild:

- The site is still in BETA (meaning it's functions and look and feel will change regularly and some things may not work – but the data should be solid and we encourage people to rate games) and while we were trying to seek more contributors the cat got out of the bag early and now some public posts have made it too far gone to ignore. Please try to reserve any judgment on us for a few months while we ramp up.

- Our goal is to be pro-retailer, yes. That simply means we would like a site that retailers do not mind sending their customers to for learning more about the games we all love. A place to provide ratings and reviews and guidance on finding games they will enjoy. Being a retailer and being involved in retailer private forums, the biggest beef they have with sending people to BGG is they fear the loss of the customer to a deep discounter advertising there. So we have chosen not to place such ads on our site. That does not, IN ANY WAY, mean we're trying to stifle talking about great deals or linking to them in forums or whatever – it's simply that we do not wish to have the casual visitor of our site bombarded by ads telling them not to by locally.

- It is not our intention to be a BGG clone. We wish to find our own way and to share the Internet either in a friendly way with all board game sites. We will find our “voice” and run with that... which as I see it will be more review and meetup centric with features to help push “trusted” and “featured” content to the front of all the rest of the noise. We wish to promote the growth of board games and that to us means keeping local stores and groups that help teach people about these games alive.

- Our mission documents was never meant for public posting, but it got out too – since we have nothing to hide, I just left it as is. I donno why some people find the need to be critical of spelling errors in it or whatever, I guess they have other agendas.

- We will be loading a lot more content in the near future and then new and exclusive content will begin to surface. So what you see is really just the base-line data for the site. Please do not judge that as a bad thing as we need that (and your ratings now) to have top lists that make sense. There is very little data to base those on right now – so the site will appear to have some “wonky” answers to these lists.

- It states in our Mission statement to keep the front page clean and simple... well we've been bouncing back and forth on that one and welcome your input. The current one has more data of usefulness, but doesn't meant the simple/clean desire. Our older front page was this one: http://www.boardgameinfo.com/content/1-Search-Engines

Anyway, that's about it... Just wanted to keep people from spreading incorrect information about us. As you can see we are in desperate need for someone to step up and be our Voice and some forum moderators to help with managing this area while I and my staff get down to the business of making this site ready for full public enjoyment!

James Mathe
Owner
BGi

P.S. You'll see Chris Johanson posting as and admin here and there, he's our code monkey so treat him well.