The New BGG GeekPreview – Live Demo for SPIEL Essen 2026

0:00 Talk. You're live. It says on YouTube.

0:03 Good afternoon, everybody.

0:06 Hello, John. Hello, Beth. How are you doing?

0:09 Hello.

0:10 Doing very well. It's a beautiful Friday.

0:12 Yeah. How's it going? Like, it's it's actually pretty rainy here and we're welcoming the rain even though it's kind of flood conditions, which is like not good. Texas doesn't ever do anything.

0:22 No. No. Halfway

0:24 like 100 degrees or flooding. No in between. Anyway, the the temperature is really pleasant, but the although it's not raining now, so maybe we're past the flooding part. Well, good to see you. Uh, by the way, I want to introduce both of you. I don't think you've been Well, it's been a while since we've been on a live stream, right? Like, it's been some time.

0:42 I think we did this a lot more commonly back during the pandemic, and it's been a few years now we've not gotten together.

0:48 But, uh, John was not part of those streams, by the way. John is a new member of the Board Game Geek team. So, welcome, John. days

0:56 the team the new uh what's your title? What do we do we end up giving you a title?

1:00 Advertising manager.

1:02 I guess that's the t Yeah. I wasn't sure if we came up with something more um

1:05 that's what I've been calling you.

1:07 Extravagant lead the head head head advertising manager. Yeah.

1:12 Yeah that there's only one advertising manager. So I guess you are the head of it.

1:16 Anyway, good to have you been it's been a little bit of a whirlwind to get you on get you up on the in the on the world. No, it's been good to have you.

1:26 I like your painting uh setup back there. Do you do you paint minis?

1:30 I dabble, you know. I have so

1:32 You got a lot of paint for the only dabbling.

1:35 We can't go halfway.

1:38 But yeah, like I I have so many boxes full of gray plastic. I figured um a while back there was something called speed paint. Uh, Army Painter started that and I was like, "So, supposedly I can get highlights, the low lightss, and the midtones with just a single bottle and I could just do a single coat and it covers.

1:58 It works really well."

2:00 You should pair up with Lincoln during his paint stream sometimes if you want to get some tips.

2:04 Yeah. Yeah, we've been talking about that. I haven't yet. Um,

2:08 because you're basically on a webcam, right?

2:10 Yeah.

2:11 Yeah. Okay. Well, we'd have to figure how to get you. I mean obviously it' be true we you painting on your I don't know could you move the web I don't know maybe we'll have to think about it but also with us John welcome to the team and Beth who's been a long time she's basically the product manager for game geek right

2:28 I am and now the editor of the BG

2:31 the editor of the geek preview

2:33 yep and editor of previews yes so yeah

2:37 um and you should introduce yourself Scott

2:39 oh I'm Aldi basically the founder of Boardame Geek So, hello everybody. If you haven't seen me before, here I am alive. Um, so I got this new tool that we basically launching today. I think we're launching it today. Pretty sure

2:54 I'm showing it today.

2:55 Fingers crossed.

2:57 It should go out. It's going to be in a different spot than normal. Like it'll any I don't need to get into the details, but it's basically if you're familiar with the geek preview, which what's a what's what's a good summary of the geek preview? What's a

3:09 what is a good summary? So, the preview is a list that is specific to a in-person convention, and it is demoing um highlighting all the games that are going to be for sale or demoed at that show that are no more than six months old or we have a few exceptions to that, but so the newest of the new things. So, this is for users who are going to that convention. They can use this to help figure out what they want to try and what they want to buy. And then users of the site can figure out what the buzz is about and see what people are excited about. And then that's a title that they might watch a video on, read a designer diary, go read stuff on the game page, and kind of see what everyone else is excited about. So that is a preview list. There are eight preview lists per year that each one uh focusing on a different convention.

3:55 Rattled that off, right, without even think about it.

3:57 I've written that a lot. That's actually most of my my think about it. That'd be like mostly memorized.

4:05 That's awesome.

4:06 Whether or not I can rattle off the eight shows, that's a little bit more.

4:10 Yeah. Can you can you name them all?

4:11 Okay, let's see. Okay. Spiel, Messa, Festival International, Deju, um in cans, uh uh Gamma Expo, Origins, Gen Con, uh

4:24 Spiel, Paxu.

4:26 I think I think you said Spiel twice. Paxu. Yeah, Paxu.

4:31 I'm missing I'm missing one. We're missing one. Oh, no. UK.

4:35 Oh, UK Games.

4:36 UK. Yes. UK Game Expo. Yep. There we go.

4:39 So, I think wasn't can combine with Nerburgg. It's like a two in one. And also like

4:43 we did a two in one before. They are going to be separate lists from now on. Yes. Sorry, I was adding the word cans after festival international de just in case people don't realize where that is. It's in France.

4:53 Um and there could be more like the system is very flexible. We can create things now. It's a bit Tokyo game market as well. Yeah. Is that eight?

5:03 Excellent.

5:04 That might be nine. I might misremember.

5:06 We split them out. Yeah. I mean, we're like in between eight and 10. I don't know. Anyway, cool.

5:09 However many we need.

5:10 Whatever we need. Um

5:12 so, um yes, Beth has uh since Eric Martin has left, which if you have not checked out Eric Martin's new website, boardamebeek.com, which is awesome. He does all the all the news and stuff. It's really it's really

5:25 Yeah, beet. Not

5:26 not the vegetable.

5:27 Not it's not it's not be it's not like a borched. Um, board game beat with an A.

5:34 Yeah. Yeah.

5:35 Yeah. He's still

5:36 But he's been posting up all the reporting,

5:38 posting daily little news bites from the board game industry.

5:41 Yeah. Yeah. So, that's doing great. And then Beth basically took over not the same level, I guess, is what Eric did, but like she we could we turned it into a self-service

5:51 system. So, if you're a publisher and if there's any publishers watching, you can contact us at

5:56 newsorgangeek.com. Yeah. And you can say, "How do I get my my games?" Well, don't say how. Just say, "I need access to get my games on the way and we'll we'll hook you up and then it becomes a self-service." This is not a demo for the self-service part. We're going to I'm just putting it out there to like let people know that it exists and that's the way it works. Now, we basically curate it and like if things go a little haywire, we clean it up. Um, do you want to just rattle off the rules real quick? Do you remember the rules of the rules while we're talking about them? Okay.

6:25 Yes. Yes. So if this is for publishers, if you are interested in um publishing to any preview list, the rules are the same for every list. Uh the first one is that we do have that time restrict restriction which I mentioned earlier. It has to be no more than four to six months old unless you are a small publisher who has three or less titles and then we extend that window to one year. So that is from the date when your game goes for sale. So um and that unfortunately is not negotiable because we do have to draw that line pretty firmly. Um, the second rule is that you can post uh new versions of a game if that new version substantially changes somehow, bigs box edition, anniversary edition, new artwork, or if you are a new publisher selling a localized version of that game and it's now in a new language, that would count as a new version.

7:11 So, we don't allow people just to say, "Oh, yeah. I've had this game for three years and I'm going to, you know, it's new." Nope. Nope. This is a game for stuff that is new. And we do allow people who are self-published that they can also post on the preview list. The only restriction there is that you have to have a place in the convention where people can find you. So if you're kind of selling out of a suitcase like just walking around being like ask me about my game, it's for sale. Like

7:33 they can't find you. Um so we don't allow that on the preview list. But if you have a fixed location that you can just write down like I am always here even if that's somebody else's booth, no problem. Um

7:43 yeah, usually people have that. I think the selling out of backpacks has been is not like much of a thing anymore. Not as much anymore.

7:49 That was a Den thing back in the day. He had a rucks sack that he would sell like 10 games out of.

7:54 Anyway, that's old that's old times.

7:56 The final rule is that if your game is a demo, it has to be a playable demo that is available to the public. So, if you're just doing kind of a Kickstarter announcement or you just had the pieces out for viewing, but you can't actually interact with it at all, that would not be allowed on the preview list. But, as long as the public can sit and play at least a turns worth, then that's fine to be on the preview list. So that is what then you as a user would expect to see playable demos and then games for sale

8:21 because using our tool you can build your plan of attack to go to these conventions that are just like and by the way the the SM list is just ginormous this year. I don't know if this a record or not.

8:32 Just a hair we are slightly behind in about 1350 last year and we're just a hair under 1300. So, we're about 50 titles behind from last year, but still it's 1300 new games.

8:46 That's just mindboggling to me. Anyway, that's that's a whole another topic conversation about the amount of things coming out and

8:54 but it's exciting time to be a gamer. You know, we're in the

8:57 Indeed. Are we in the golden we're in the golden age?

9:01 We've been saying that since 2004.

9:03 Yeah, we're in an age, let's say. Okay, so let's share uh unless there's any other things that we want to talk about real quick. just bookkeeping or talking or just before I start sharing

9:12 share my screen.

9:12 I'm excited. Let's share.

9:13 Okay, cool. Let's share. All right, so first thing I got to share the right screen.

9:18 Let's hope I get it correctly

9:20 that we can help.

9:21 And

9:21 that would be good.

9:25 Okay, is it working?

9:26 And

9:27 hey, look at that front page.

9:28 It's a beautiful website.

9:30 The homepage. Actually, I've got another video going here and I'm going to pause it because I don't want to have so much data. Okay. Um even though I did get fiber now. Hopefully it doesn't doesn't lock up. Anyway, by the way, before we go move on, Beth has also taken over the designer diary scheduling. So, if you're a designer,

9:47 get us your designer Diaries. Do you want to say something about that real quick, Beth, or do we want to just move on?

9:52 Yeah. No, we can say I can say a quick 30 second pitch on that. So, um, we get a lot of, uh, people who really enjoy reading diaries. it. They will always show up on the front page like this and then they also go out if you subscribed to the BG blog um which is blog one is the first and blog. Um then you could be notified via a geek mail or email if you have that set up uh that a new diary has been posted and then you can go check that out. So these are written by either artists or designers and very occasionally publishers if they've really done something cool with development and they write up a piece and it's directly from them. So this is uh Peter Hayward who is the designer of triangulation wrote this diary went live this morning.

10:39 Um artwork bywanchai which is amazing.

10:42 Yeah, this artwork is blown me away.

10:45 Yeah, it's a word party game.

10:47 Yeah,

10:48 it's a word party game. So I'm like, "Oh, where? It's a cyber punk game." No, no, it's work, which I'm totally down with. So anyway,

10:54 now the other place that you can find this, so you can always go look at the blog. There's the whole history of all the diaries there. Or then Scott, if you could scroll a little bit further down, there's also a news section that is here on the front page, and you will also find right there. You'll also find that the thumbnails of the five most recent posts that have been on the blog are also going to be there. Uh once a week, we also feature uh Steph Hodgej. She writes a few like these are between three to five upcoming games sort of little game announcements. And then on Mondays we have a post written by Justin Bell who is a longtime writer from Meeple Mountain and he kind of writes little slice of gaming life long form pieces which are an absolute delight. So um yeah if you are a designer or an artist and you would like to submit a diary please email newsboardgeek.com.

11:40 Cool. Thanks. Uh, all right. So, PE the number one thing people tell me you cannot they cannot find the the preview which blows my mind but so be it. That's that's user interface user UX. I I get it. So, there is a permanent place here where you can find the previews on the browse menu. So, if you click that you will go to a list of all the previews. I'm not going to click it right now because I don't want to mess up where I am right now. But, you'll click here. In addition, we have just added this permanent spot on the homepage to show where the previews live. These are two the two most recent previews. Um Pax plug just went live like yesterday and yesterday.

12:20 Uh BLS and is current. We may reverse the order of these but I'm not sure. We're still might be a bug. Um okay. So let me go to the preview. I have to go back. Here's the preview. It's loading. Look how quick that loaded. Hold that.

12:36 Um I don't know if you've ever you probably used the current one. It's pretty This is So, first and foremost, the um the speed of this system has been vastly improved that I'm very proud of that. So, first of all, you'll notice that is one of one of the the new features, I guess, is is speed. Um it's very reactive and it works on a phone really beautifully. I I was demoing it to Michelle at lunchtime and I was like, it's amazing. Like, oh my gosh, I love it. So,

13:05 excellent. That'll be that'll be great on the show floor walking around.

13:08 Yeah. Hopefully, it'll Yeah. Yeah, it should be. Um, so here is the new layout. The headers are the same. And there's a bug here. I'm not going to Well, whatever. That picture is not correct, but we'll fix that. Um, first thing you'll notice is this title. This the the toolbar sticks to the top of the page.

13:25 So excited.

13:26 So that when you are doing stuff and going around, you will not have to scroll all the way back to the top.

13:33 And on this list, that's a very long scroll. Yeah, that's I guess we're Yeah, we're just under 1300 items at 1,294. Um, let's do a search like what's a good game to search for?

13:46 Something

13:47 time span.

13:49 Notice how I

13:50 boom. Yeah, right there.

13:51 If you just do time like, hey, you get two. But it's it's like instantaneous.

13:56 That's amazing.

13:57 It's really instantaneous. Yeah, I love it. Um, and then you can basically just filter if you're just if you know the title and you're like, I want to get there. Um, but let's clear it. Uh, so when you come into the pu uh to the preview for the first time, you'll be sorting by publisher.

14:13 And what that does is it groups the games by publisher. So at the top we have the self-published games and you can see the number of games that are getting uh released that are self-published. Um, and then you get the alphabetical list of all the publishers and you can just start scrolling and and clicking away as you go.

14:31 And if they have shared their booth location, that's also listed, right?

14:34 Yeah. Right there, you got the little boot location right underneath the right underneath the message.

14:38 The boot locations are also propagated to the these these are called like game cards, I guess, is what we're calling them.

14:45 Game card.

14:45 I was going to say that's up to you.

14:47 It's it's a detail whatever you want to call them. Yeah, it's it's a it's a card with details, I guess you should say.

14:52 Does that make sense?

14:53 Yep.

14:53 Let me make sure we're am I is the screen

14:55 goes for six?

14:56 Oh, let me let me hit the live button. Make sure Oh, yeah. We're good.

14:59 Um Okay. Uh where was I? Yeah. So, we're basically filtering uh we're on this the publisher publisher expanded details sort but publishers that this is what you'll see when you first uh come into the thing and this is the most rich page out of all all the this is the or sorry I should say the most rich view that you can interact with a game. Um you can change the sorts, you can sort your by title. Notice how that was instantaneous. I just I'm just always stunned at how faster this one is. Like so good. Um, you can sort by the number of thumbs here is the hot, you know, the most thumbmed games. Uh, you can sort sort by location if you want.

15:42 Hall one is the, you know, these are like if you're on MS and it's like the hall numbers are are the order. So, it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. They have all 10 halls this year, I think. Something like that.

15:52 Eight. Eight. Yes. But that is the max. That is the entire hall. Yep.

15:57 Uh, you can also sort by pricing. Let's see. What's the most expensive game? Yeah, $299 in Trespass Odyssey. This is I see a bug already. There's no price here, so we'll have to fix that.

16:12 Check mark. Add a bug to the list. Uh, okay. So, you can sort um let's see. Playtime, average rating, recently added to the list. Though, if you don't if you don't know if you're following the list, first thing you can do is subscribe. You definitely want to be on the subscription. Like, you have to have a user account on Board Game Geek for this. This will be added to your subscriptions that you can basically get notified when new items go on. But if you didn't subscribe, you can go by recently added. If you're just checking it daily and you want to see what's new, you can sort by what was recently added. And that is the games that just came in. Uh let's see. Um you can sort by your interest, which I have not talked about yet, but we'll we'll skip that for a second. And then another uh cool view is you can sort by the community interest. Community interest is an is how many people click this mustave button or interested or undecided. So you can sort by that. I'm sorting by must haves.

17:03 Apparently Queen Alice is the game to that everybody wants. That's 667 must haves. Hopefully bringing a lot of stock um to the game. Um what is Queen Alice? Well, you get the you get the punch line here or what do we call this? Not the punch line.

17:19 Short description.

17:21 The short tag. Yeah, that Yeah. Okay. Punch line if you're this comic. Um, a midheavy euro game all about tea, chess, and building engines. That sounds great. What else does it do? More details. Gives you a more expanded view. Did that work on my screen? Did that pop over?

17:36 Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

17:36 Okay. Cool. I wasn't sure.

17:37 That's great. The way that pops up on the side like that.

17:40 Yeah. So, you get that you get the full description. And I think we might This is This is the beginning of more things, which we'll come back. I don't It's a future idea about what this what this could be. Um, and you can see it's like who the publisher is, designers, and these are short clicks. You could click this. Every click in this uh is an open a new window click. So you can stay on this page. You don't have to do like the middle click,

18:04 you know.

18:04 Yeah. That way if you wanted if you wanted to see some p pictures from Queen Alice, you could click on that link and it'll open up a new tab and then you don't have to disrupt your preview list tab.

18:14 Yeah, absolutely.

18:15 Like a game page.

18:16 Well, I must have that. So you can click the must have button and like we I think we we changed the coloring of of these to get it be a little more a little less robust in your face. So like they were kind of blinding our you know like

18:29 green bold letters but you can must have it. You can if you didn't if you messed up you can just clear it and like okay I'm just interested whatever. But I think with with the queen Alice I'm definitely a must have. You can add a note to remind yourself about it like I really want to play this really want this game. want to show and then save. So your notes will appear right there in your list.

18:55 Oh, that's great.

18:55 That's nice. Yeah,

18:57 we like that. You can also add this, you know, the collection system on BG. I'm not going to get into how deep that the collection system is, but you can I would not recommend rating a game before you play it. Recommend that to everybody, please. But you can basically say I want to buy it or you know you can you can add it to your other lists on in the site like okay I pre-ordered or you know whatever

19:18 you know I think people know this stuff. Uh there's private information here like this is this is the geek this is the geek collection but it's basically one click away. I'm going to save that. Um so it's now been added to my collection.

19:30 But that setting the general geek collection and the ratings and whatnot and the wish list is separate from the preview list data. This is just a short way to get to it, so you don't have to go to that page. And it didn't load correctly, so I'm guessing there's a bug there, too. Okay, new bug. All right. Um, what what's left here with this page? Oh, um, these things are called tag chips. Tag chips. That's the name. And that's basically all of the properties that this game has. So if you like games that are like deck, bag, pool, and deck, bag, and pool building, you can oneclick that and basically get a filtered list

20:09 of the entire it adds to my filters.

20:11 Nice.

20:12 Real time.

20:13 Cost me a lot of money. Specifically clicking on that one, I now have 89 games I need to check out.

20:21 Yeah. No, that's Yeah, it's crazy, right? Uh would you like multi-use cards also? You can add them. Oh, that narrows it down even better.

20:30 Yeah, you're these are and this is this and this. It's on top of it's an and track movement which track movement is my one of my favorites. So, I'm going to go to track movement. Yeah.

20:40 Um, so yeah, that is one of the these are quick and you can it's a click to add and a click to remove, but you can also click these X's here or hit the clear but clear button.

20:50 Um,

20:52 and that's so responsive.

20:53 By the way, if anybody in chat has questions, I know there's 21 people watching. Thank you for watching this in the middle of the day on a Friday afternoon when you want to go home. Probably at work, right? Um but uh we're open to questions. Let's see. Where are we? All right. So, this is that Did I forget anything else here? I think I got it all on this page. Oh, you can share this too. Like if you want to share it to your social or you want to copy the link that is there. Um

21:18 does that share that specific game or just the preview?

21:21 It's it's a direct link to this pa this item on this preview.

21:24 Oh, gotcha. It's not a share to the game, it is a share to this spot. So if you want like publish,

21:31 this is something I recommend publishers do when you are uh in the publisher view. You can share your list. So let's go to 21st century games. You know what? I think that game that is not here. That is a missing feature. So add it to the list. I have to remind myself. Yeah. So basically on the old one, you could basically share the whole publisher the line. So that's another That's another uh feature that I don't have, but I will add it after we go.

22:00 Well, you do have a new feature that it shows how many games that publisher has released. That is not on the current.

22:05 Seven games.

22:06 Yep. That is a new thing. We count what we count dynamically. So, you don't have to you don't have to guess.

22:12 Think three games from two of

22:14 Oh, a new version of Finster floor as well.

22:19 Yes.

22:20 Yeah. Interesting. It's still 2003. I wonder I I'm thinking my bug my I still have a few pieces of code that are not live yet, but basically this should be the new version when you when you bring up the details.

22:33 Yeah, I think it's pulling the

22:34 I think it's pulling the original game out. Yeah, there's a version attached to this and I don't think that's live right now.

22:39 Yeah, I did check on that one. Yes, there is a new version. It

22:43 that code is can be on this list.

22:45 It might not fully be pushed out. Um, okay. Where else are Or you know what? I I think I actually know what the problem is, but that's a different kind of problem. Let's see here. What else? Okay, so this is the preview or the the details tab. That's a a lot for what it does. So, another tab you might want to be interested in is the thumbnails, which I really love to use myself because I like pictures of things.

23:09 And it is a scrolling list that you can just scroll forever. And that that's another part of this re redesign that if you um remember the old one you had to click a button that said show more and notice I'm just scrolling and scrolling and I'm not loading anymore.

23:26 I'm not loads smoothly streams them all across. That's fantastic. Yep.

23:31 There's a lot of games on this list. Holy cow. Can I get to the bottom?

23:36 And now what? I'm sorry about publisher. Let me start by title. Start. It went back to the top. Um, but I I was curious to how to know how far I had gone. Anyway, so this is a obviously thumbnail view. We've got the rating of the game if it has been rated on BG and that's 20 20 ratings by number of players um minimum. And you can there's a there's a limited number of things you can do. We don't have the tagging tag stuff, but you can set your interest from this page. What did I just do? Oh, I accidentally clicked on again. Let me go back. Back.

24:11 There's no back. You loaded a new tab.

24:13 Oh, I know a new tab. Hold on. Let me uh How do I close this tab? Close tab. Or maybe I can just control W. There we go.

24:23 Um, let's see what else is here. So, we had the set interest. That actually might be a bug when I click that. So, I have to fix I'll go I'm gonna have to go back through this video and watch it to see all my bugs that we've got found. Um, obviously you can click your thumbs and a lot of the same things, but it's not as detailed as the as the detail page because that's it's just for looking at stuff. Filters do work here. Oh, let's let's talk about this filters tab, which has sort of been overhauled. It's basically the same. Um, you can filter on your interests. You can also filter on games that have no interest set. So, if you want something you haven't made a decision on, you can go back and do that. You can also filter on your collection. Um, you can hide things or show. You can filter on the availability. Like if you only want to see for Oh my gosh, there's still,00.

25:10 That's not very many demo games to be honest. Only most things are for sale. Holy cow. Is that a new record?

25:16 That might be a new record. I'll have to check last year's.

25:19 It's still How can you buy?

25:24 Yeah. So, also standalone. 948 new standalone games. What a what a time to be alive. Um, the slider is like a real-time slider that sort of like you see how it's changing the number here like dynamically like like I really like the 90 plus minute game. So I can see how many that are for sale standalone 90 minutes. I hit the show button and immediately it filters the it filters the list.

25:49 That's cool.

25:50 And you can and you can clear these out here. They turn into chips. You can uh filter by publisher. These are these are this used to be like all on one screen and you would have this gig gigantic page to scroll. Now they're kind of accordioned so you can just like Okay, I really like co-op games so you can and and you previously had to scroll like a million miles. What did I just see scroll by the screen?

26:16 No matches.

26:17 Oh, it's Oh, it's just a um it's just a it's a mouse over that's getting scrolled. I have to have to see. Anyway, you can see see the number there. That's how many there are.

26:25 Like

26:26 Oh, you don't even need to apply the filter. It just tells you. Nice.

26:29 Yeah. Well, you would just see the number, but I do want cooperative games. There's 30 cooperative games that are um 90 plus minutes. What are these? Oh my gosh. 90 plus minutes with Wow. Some of these games have like multi multiple days listed as their play times, you know.

26:43 Yeah. Darth Romantic.

26:44 Yeah, because you you play it. It's a campaign. I think that's what what they mean by 90 minutes.

26:49 Um so, what do I got here? I got a cooperative game standalone 90 minutes and for sale. Uh here's my buy list. Uh Beth, we add all these to my list. Anyway, I like all cooperative games. So, let me uh clear the 90 minutes. So, now I've got 137 cooperative games. Thank you. I love the coop. Now, there's a couple duplicates here, but you'll have to notice that it's

27:10 an interesting idea. I wonder if we can filter on unique. Yeah, that's that's that's an idea for the uh filtering. Maybe don't show me don't show me multiple versions, but that's a Yeah,

27:19 and in case people are curious, we do that because sometimes different publishers are carrying different languages and they might have different booths. So that's why we do have them come up as different cards. Just uh if you're organizing a walking plan for for shopping or demoing, you might know, oh, this is over in hall five, but this is over in hall two. So uh depending on whether you wanted English or French or German or whatever,

27:43 right? Okay. So that's the thumbnails and that's the filters. Uh I think I got everything out of the filters. There was something else we did. Uh I think we added language. Did we have that before? Maybe we did. I don't remember. Uh, but you can I mean you can filter away if anybody has I think Beth you just had another idea for a filter. What was that your

28:03 uh Yeah, to be able to filter by age. So if you were specifically wanted to look kids games that we would probably bundle it

28:11 on the lower years because obviously most games that are adult are just going to be 12 and up and that's we don't really need any demarcation for 12 more 12 or more. Yes. For the younger kids ages that would be better.

28:23 Okay. Uh let's move to the condensed version which is this is the thing you're gonna bring to the show probably and go through the booth lines and mark things as you want. Um because you could basically you know once you make your list you can get this to be um like I want my well unfortunately I don't have a lot of a lot of things Mark must have here but I got my list. There's my list.

28:45 There's your list of Alice. You know, I should have clicked more things, but then this list is going to be you could sort this list by uh location and then it'll be in in the booth. It'll be in the hall order and then booth number. So,

28:58 or like for Gen Con, which is just a number. It would be from the smallest number to the largest number, I'm presuming.

29:04 Yeah, but it's it's group it is grouped by publisher there. So, it tells you in booth 3U120, that's combo games. Here's the games you're interested in. That's fantastic. Yeah, I I should have uh I guess I can't. Yeah, there I sorted by location with no filtering.

29:20 That'll be really great because sometimes multiple publishers share one booth and that'd be great if you sort by location, you know, okay, I actually have five different things I have to pick up at this one spot because I can't tell you how many times I've gone there and been like, "Oh, shoot.

29:35 They were back there, too. Dang it."

29:37 I think the search also searches on the publisher names. Like it's it's a unified search. Yeah. See, I just typed security. That's great. Oh, that's search by publisher. Oh. Oh, that makes my day.

29:49 If there's a game with the same publisher name, you'll get you'll hit both. But yeah, can't have everything.

29:55 Um, although now I say that, I'm like, can I fix this? But, uh, yeah. So, basically, if you just if you know the publisher name and then yeah, so it does and and I feel like there should be some demarcation here to give us a little like because this is not a game. This is a publisher

30:09 booth. I guess they also have two. Yeah, if they have multiple locations, they'll sometimes put them in as a comma list here. So, I leave it to you to figure out which one is the one. Either it's probably three, right? That's I don't know. That's that's a knowing how Essen works to to know if three is the one they should go to or seven because they've obviously got two booths here. Okay. Um what else do we got? What have I forgotten anything? Oh, um yeah, you can share. So, when you get your um all your priorities, you can share that to people like, "Hey, check out my priority list." Like that'll and it's a it's a private list link that well, it's not private, but they won't see your personal data. They'll just see what games you're interested in.

30:52 Oh, that's great.

30:53 That makes sense. So, it's a publicly sharable key, I guess you would call it.

30:57 Um, here's another thing you can do. Export CSV is comma separate, which is which is basically a spreadsheet. You can load that into your Excel or put it on your numbers or whatever you use and print it out if you want and that is part of it also. Um I think that's Am I forgetting anything?

31:19 No, I think only to put in a tiny PSA about previous. Um all people are welcomed to thumb a game on preview list. Even if you're not attending the show, that's fine. It's just to indicate interest. However, do not create a new account explicitly for the purposes of basically ballot boxing and stuffing the ballot box for thumbs.

31:40 That's not fair.

31:41 That does flag our system. Those accounts will be shut down. And that does include publishers as well. If you ask your employees to create accounts specifically to thumb your games on the preview list, those accounts will be shut down. And if that happens repeatedly, we will have a conversation.

31:58 If you have an account and you want to thumb it, that's totally fine. You just can't create an account just for that purpose alone.

32:04 Yeah, we like to keep it

32:07 honest.

32:08 Yes,

32:09 I guess is the word.

32:10 Yes, that's that exactly. We want to keep that a as true of a measurement of interest as we can without making it totally gatekeeped and difficult to use.

32:19 Yeah.

32:22 What are you looking forward to? What any anything striking you at any right now? Or have you had time to look through this list much? Oh, I husband John and I are are huge preview. I mean, even before I became the editor of the preview list, like we we use the we have used this tool for years. We rely on it. So, seeing that it's going to get all these improvements. So, personally excited like and that it loads faster because I stare at this multiple times a day. So, the fact that I don't have to wait for it to load I'm really excited about. Um the thing honestly that I'm most excited just for this show myself like we we go there to work. BGG does have a booth at Spiel if you're going. It's in Hall 4, G4 215. Uh so, uh golf 215. It's back by the stage in Hall 4. So, we're also back by some food courts or some food trucks.

33:13 So, if you want to get a bite to eat and come say hi.

33:15 No, that's our secret. Nobody goes to those.

33:18 That's true. I don't have to wait in line.

33:20 Um

33:21 so, that's not the secret you want to keep. You want to keep a secret bathroom.

33:24 Oh, yeah. Secret bathroom.

33:25 Do you remember the secret? I don't want to talk about the secret bathroom. There aren't any secret bathrooms anymore because all the halls are open. So there are no more secret bathrooms. They're they're all busy.

33:32 That's a challenge.

33:33 Yeah. So I personally don't have any opportunity to demo anything. Like I just don't have the time. We're working too much. We're having meetings. Like that's just not going to happen. Um so the thing that I though am most excited to get my hands on though is I absolutely love um puzzle games and I've been very interested in Fragments. Um which is yellow.

33:54 No fragments. Is that actually on the list?

33:56 It should be on the list.

33:58 We'll find out.

34:00 Um,

34:01 stop screen sharing. Yeah, I see. Frag fragments solara and fragments fungite.

34:06 Yes. So, it's kind of two different

34:09 two different

34:09 two different versions.

34:11 Well, it's more like two different chapters. Like each one is its own little puzzly adventure. There was a little puzzle adventure called Behind and it had like a blue box and a purple box. Like so I kind of equate it with that that there were three little challenges in the behind purple box and there were three little challenges in the behind blue box. And I think fragments is set up kind of the same way where uh you have sort of a a thing in one box and a thing in the other box. But it is jigsawbased where the clues are on the jigsaw. You're flipping pieces over. I will admit some of this is based on the fact that I have read the diary and it's not public yet. And so I got really excited reading the diary. So like that's the one I'm personally most excited to check out. So

34:50 that's cool.

34:50 That sounds really cool. Yeah.

34:52 I guess it's being co-published by Pegasus also with this other version. One of one of them is anyway.

34:57 Okay. I'm glad I did remember Yellow correctly though. John,

35:00 I see the

35:01 Yeah.

35:01 How about you? Is there anything you're

35:04 So when I go to Essen, um, previous years it's been largely on behalf of and collecting games for the BGG library for BGcon coming up in November. So, I spend the entire convention carrying around large canvas bags, walking the entire length of the convention hall from back in our corner in hall four through all of the crowds in Hall Three. Hi, Eurogamers. Love you. I'm one of you. Um, I deal with the crowds in hall three. It's great. Um, but typically that's what I spend most of my time doing. This year I do have many meetings scheduled already meeting with new publishers and people interested in finding out what BGG can do for them. If you're interested and you're a publisher and we don't have a meeting yet, let me know. Advertising at boardgamegeeek.com.

35:51 All right. Uh sell over. Um I would say games that I want to check out. I haven't got my hands on Drillers yet by CGE.

36:01 It looks super cool. Um what's theative60 degrees?

36:06 Yeah, I've been looking at that one too.

36:09 Yeah.

36:10 Yeah. Um but personally

36:13 if I'm going to pick up anything at Essen, it's going to be small expansions um that I can fit in my suitcase because luggage is a priority.

36:24 Oh yeah. Must have for me is the new expansion to Far Away. Far away just over my shoulder somewhere over here. Yeah.

36:30 Yeah. That's on my list. I love that game. So good.

36:34 My game that I'm interested in even though I'm not going uh is Kingdom Come Deliverance.

36:38 Oh, okay.

36:39 Still demo though. It's gonna be a bit

36:41 It's demo.

36:42 Yeah.

36:42 I mean, I ordered it, so I guess Oh, it is only demo. No, it's sale. Says for sale.

36:46 Oh, okay. I guess

36:47 it says sale price 150.

36:50 So, it's going to be another huge box that I'll make Laney carry through the hall.

36:58 Yeah, it's a chunker box. Cool. All right. Any and I was looking in the chat. I didn't see anybody have any questions. So, it's I guess I did a great demo that nobody had any questions at all. We'll take it at that.

37:10 I will say that one of the things I'm not excited about, there's this fear. So, you know that when we arrive at the booth on the setup day to make sure that all the stuff that should be delivered is actually there. And

37:22 I know that's

37:23 it'll all be there.

37:24 It'll all be there.

37:25 It'll be there. It'll be fine.

37:26 Which I want to tell people at least like I felt so bad last year. We had a pallet of stuff that got stuck in Barcelona and it was so heartbreaking the entire show to be like because I post a list of like this is what we're bringing so people can plan and a large chunk of that list wasn't there because it was stuck in Barcelona. So that palette was we'll just say a year early for this year's show. Um so everything is already in Europe like we do not have to worry about it getting into the

37:56 continent. It's still there from last year.

37:58 It's still there from last year. from last year which is kind of like hey we shipped it

38:02 but we also sent another pallet of stuff for newer things and that is also there. So like everything that's way better than last year.

38:09 Yeah it's way better is everything is in France where it should be and it'll come over to Essen and it's all good. So like

38:14 that part at least is a great weight lifted. So I'm very happy if anyone does come to to Shiel and uh was bummed from last year. Not a problem for this year. So,

38:27 so I guess we will have the booth. What are we going to have this year? We going to have Geekup bits, shirts.

38:34 Yes. Yes.

38:35 Bats, mugs, posters,

38:37 mugs. No. Um, we'll have the artist series, which are more prints.

38:43 Yeah. They're not posters, John. They're prints.

38:47 Very particular about that. Um, we'll have a bunch of fun little stuff like keychains, stickers, magnets. Um, we'll also have a whole bunch of gaming supplies, which is one of our main stays for the Texas conventions, BG Con and BG Spring. Like, you will not believe how useful it is. We have 13 different colors of just blank microfiber drawstring bags. They are some of the most useful things that you can buy. Like, just in a couple different colors and then you will find you will pull them out and you will use them all the time. So, like I'm I'm really excited to have those. We have a couple fun ones that have like maples printed on it and Cthulhu tentacles printed on it. Yeah. Yeah. some fun stuff like that. And then a whole bunch of t-shirts um including the one I'm wearing. So this cool paint splash

39:31 paint splash one will will be there as well with I will say with a collar. I cut my collars off t-shirts so they will have collars. Um

39:40 and u shirts without collars

39:43 and then uh a couple of winter hats just in case the weather gets a little nippy by the time.

39:49 Do we have any scarves left over? Did any of those make it or are those

39:51 all? No, we didn't because it doesn't quite get cold enough in October in Germany for scarf weather. So, I have the beanies, but I didn't do the scarves.

40:01 Some I remember some years pretty cold. You remember that year you were

40:04 Oh gosh, there was one year when So, I used to when we had our booth uh for years, we ran a video booth. We were live streaming just like we're doing now, but it would be your first look at games. Um which at the time for many years was really the first look. There was no like

40:20 content creators getting copies ahead of time. Like we were the first for their first go. And there was one year it was snowing and we were right by this and we film on the setup day. So it was right by an open door and on camera my fingers were blue and Aldi saved my butt. He came over and just a cup of tea just arrived in front of me. I'm like thank you. I mean you could actually at one point hear my teeth chattering. I was that cold. Yeah.

40:45 Gosh. I wonder if we have any of those videos. What year was that? Early.

40:49 Um, that was one of the early years. It wasn't the first year. I think that would have been 2011 cuz that's when we were right next to the snack point, which I quite aside from it being free freezing, I love that location because we were right by the snack point. That that was great. And then we moved kind of into our regular location, I think, was Hall Five for quite a few years. Um, if we ever look through like old footage for the by far the best moment is when my dad surprised me. That was 2015.

41:18 Awesome.

41:18 It was amazing. He was on a flight from Rome back home to Boston and got and had a a changeover in Frankfurt and the second half Frankfurt to Boston got cancelled. So he had a full day to kill. So he literally just got on a train and came up to Essen and surprised me. and I'm on camera and I'm live and I'm the host and I'm between two games and and you know your parents throat clear like it's hardcoded as a kid and what are you doing here and I run off camera but I'm still miked so everyone in the chat was like what's going on who is this and of course I drag one camera this is my dad

41:59 that's amazing

42:00 yeah oh no that that was like the best moment ever so I mean

42:03 before I sign off I want to show the mobile view real quick an emulation of the mobile view, but it totally works. Uh, and I don't remember if the old one did, but this one does. Hold on. Doing the wrong thing. One sec. Oh,

42:21 this work full screen.

42:23 Curious about the mobile view because again, that's what I will be using on site.

42:28 Oh, if I close, I like the export to a CSV. Like I like having paper I can scribble all over when I'm when I'm there in person. But you know what? I've never tried a mobile view. I should I should um I should give that a go and see. Uh

42:41 if I can

42:42 change my tune if I can write

42:48 seems like it's not working as way the way I want to because I keep when I when I when I close the window, it basically it goes back to normal. Let me

42:55 You know, you know what my my goal for my my personal my professional goal for this year is to order soda for the booth in units and not in cases. Oh, was that was that a thing? We we had

43:10 Oh, we maybe didn't tell you at the time. It's fine. They return like they a pallet and a half of soda shows up.

43:17 Oh, wow.

43:18 And he could Well, we might not have told you at the time. Um

43:23 he obviously saw my face and he goes, "Is that not what you wanted?" I said, "I wanted to order singles." And he's like, "Oh, no problem. We'll just take what you want and we'll pay and just pay for that and we'll take the rest back." And I I almost started to cry. like it was a nonpro. That's why I didn't tell you. Um, but uh, yeah. So, this year I I I I made sure I said units, just so we know. Like,

43:46 yeah,

43:46 I would like

43:48 18 bottles of water

43:49 instead of 18 cases.

43:50 Three cases. 18 bottles total.

43:53 Oh, wow. Got it.

43:55 So, here's the mobile view. Now, this is an emulation in Chrome. Um,

43:58 sure.

43:59 But, uh, it is pretty responsive. If you can see that all the stuff loads nicely and you can

44:05 click the things like to click

44:07 I don't know if you can see my can you see the dynamic filter?

44:10 Yeah. Yeah.

44:10 You see? Okay.

44:12 Yeah. We can we can see where your your cursor thumb would be where my mouse is.

44:15 Yeah.

44:16 And uh yeah it all it all like a lot a lot of time was spent on getting the responsive view because everybody uses their phone.

44:24 Now is that using BG just through a mobile web browser or is that through the app? There's no No, this is not related to the app. This is the website.

44:34 Okay.

44:36 That's great. Yeah. Yeah. But it looks it looks good.

44:39 Yeah, it looks great.

44:40 I got a mark time span, too. I want that cam. That's That's a That's a must have.

44:43 I have tried that already.

44:45 Have you played it?

44:45 I have played it. Yes.

44:47 Oh, wow.

44:48 Well, I'm in the same I'm in the same city as Justin Bill, so uh he gets a lot of review copies, so every once in a while I get to try something ahead of time.

44:56 Gotcha. Well, cool. There. Uh there's a quick demo of it in mobile view in the emulation mode in Chrome. And I tested on my phone at lunch, which was a real phone. And this is obviously an iPhone 16 Pro, which is a big screen. I'm curious what see what's a what's a what's a like an iPhone 16? It got a little smaller

45:14 little

45:15 but still absolutely usable.

45:17 Uh and then the iPad Pro is usable. Like people walk the iPads on

45:23 I don't know. That's you know, you have to buy that mobile plan if you want it like that.

45:27 Yeah. Tether it to your phone.

45:29 What do we got? A Pixel 9 fold. I wonder. Oh gosh. Oh

45:32 yeah. Where's the fold?

45:34 I wonder if I can make it do the fold.

45:36 Apple Apple Duo.

45:38 Galaxy Zfold 6. I guess it just is showing me one half one. Yeah.

45:42 I don't know. Is there a way to

45:44 I'm curious if I haven't tested this in a while. iPhone SE. Oh, the iPhone SE is kind of tight, but it still works.

45:53 So does the phone.

45:55 Yeah. What else we got here? H, that's probably enough.

46:00 I want to see it on the nest.

46:03 Is there at the bottom? The nest hub max. Oh. Oh, wow. That's actually not bad.

46:10 It's actually I actually

46:11 That's bigger than I thought. It's 1280 by 800.

46:13 Yeah, I'm visioning that on on the on the screen over here. That That's pretty funny.

46:17 I had never even heard of that.

46:19 Okay. Well, there you go. Cool. All right. Indeed. Well,

46:23 that's it. 45 minutes. Any questions? You can post in the Well, don't post in the YouTube thing. I won't be able to see them. Although, is there any last questions here? Uh, is fuzzy matching part of the search? If I mistype a word, no, fuzzy matching is not in this unfortunately. It's basically like real search just like or exact searches. Um, and when will this be available? I'm hoping to launch it today, but we found a couple bugs here and I might try to fix it and maybe launch it this weekend or Monday.

46:49 Yeah.

46:49 But it's it's imminent and it's been I've been using it for like weeks. We've just been cleaning up features and stuff. So cool. Thanks fantastic

46:59 John for joining me. I'm I do better when not when with a with other people in the room to talk through these things and uh

47:07 I think it's I think it I'm excited and hope have a great time in Essen.

47:11 Indeed. It's going to be fun.

47:14 All righty.

47:14 All right. Hopefully the weather's good.

47:17 Yeah.

47:17 Do we know? Is it too early?

47:19 It's too early.

47:20 Yeah.

47:21 Yeah. I mean, if anyone wants a comparison, like on average, it's going to be much like New England is in the fall,

47:28 about the same temperature. It's going to be 40s and 50s. When it's sunny, it's perfect. When it's rainy, it's miserable. And then every once in a while, there is a very early snow.

47:39 Gotcha.

47:39 We're going to be mostly indoors with board games. So, that's what what more could you ask for? Indeed.

47:46 That's the best.

47:48 Cool. All right. Have a good afternoon. Have a good weekend. I'll talk to you guys soon.

47:53 Thanks, guys. Bye.