Boardgames To Go 260 - Online Boardgaming, Updated

Opener: Take Time Closer: AI as a boardgame hobbyist, not designer or publisher or artist If you've listened to this podcast at all, you've heard me talk about online boardgaming. That's probably true of most boardgame podcasts, these days. The rise of Boardgame Arena has made it fairly ubiquitous among hobbyists, though not universal. However, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you'll recall that I've been talking about online gaming for two decades. Before it was cool. :-) In fact, as I thought about it and did some research, I've been playing games online even longer than I've been doing this podcast. I can find old references in my blog, on usenet...I even did some really old-school postal Play By Mail (PBM) gaming in the 1980s and play-by-Email Settlers of Catan in the 1990s. By 2005 and the start of this podcast, online boardgaming had already come a long way from those days. We had Brettspielwelt (BSW), Yucata.de, SpielByWeb.com, Mabiweb, Ludagora, YouPlayIt, Boîte a Jeux, and more. Some of those sites are still around, updated to the present-day or else unchanged for 20 years. Some others are just gone, unfortunately. In their place, new sites have popped up. Everyone knows about Boardgame Arena, and I'm a heavy user, premium subscriber, to that awesome service. It's where I do the bulk of my online gaming. However, there are some other sites worth knowing about. I find it incredibly encouraging that BGA's success has not stifled other programmers who still set up new sites with bunches of games we can't play elsewhere. Then add something like a semi digital prototyping tool at virtualtabletop.io and the landscape is vast!