Ads?

I'm dipping my toe into commercialism.

I've put one ad on my blog. Temporarily. To see how it works. You may have missed it, actually - it's below my games collection on the right when you go to the main page of this blog.

See, I like Tanga. I've bought a bunch of stuff from them, and I trust them.

I don't want to do the Google Ads thing, because I have less control over what ads show in my blog. And the ads are ... boring. With Tanga, I know what the ad looks like - I've see the same ad on the 'Geek every day for months, now.

If it works out, I may put ads for other products/services/companies I like on the page. I may not. Time will tell.

April Fool's Day

Those of you active on the Geek may have seen a surprise over the weekend - Puerto Rico was knocked out of its #1 Position, which it has held since BoardGameGeek first started tracking games. A position which it's held through several revisions in how first place is rated.

It was knocked out of its space by this game.

Now, Aldie (the owner/operator/chief game enthusiast of BoardGameGeek) has an excellent sense of humor, and always does something for April Fool's Day. But he didn't do this.

Another user - Rootbeer went through the database to find a bad-looking out-of-print game with no ratings and no recorded plays. He then sent GeekMail to over 300 people, suggesting the prank.

Aldie's shill-busting abilities are legendary - this sort of thing doesn't usually get through, as the algorithm set up for determining game ranking is notoriously difficult to "game" (as it were). Every three "10" ratings a game is given are balanced by a "5.5" (or something like that). It ensures that no game will ever have a perfect ten. Because of this, I don't think anyone expected this to work.

Either way, it did. In less than a day, Monkey Auto Races went from total obscurity to being the #1 game on the Geek. Not only that, but the forums (which had previously been empty) were filled with reviews, rules questions, variants and strategy discussion.

All in all, it was a brilliant prank - made all the more amusing because it required over 300 people working together to pull it off. And no-one spilled the beans.

Brilliant.

I look forward to next year's community prank.

Work

CarDomain and I continue to alter one another in subtle ways.

Last Week

Those of you who monitor my games played on the Geek may have noticed an oddity last week: A Wednesday with no games played.

On Wednesday, February 28th, all areas North of Seattle got hit with a sudden snowstorm. For this area, any snow is unusual. More than two inches is downright rare.

We got six inches. At least one regular attendee of our Wednesday festivities got a foot and a half.

Normally, I'd have just hung out and played solitaire games or something similar. Last Wednesday was a bit odd on several other fronts, however:

Our annual mortgage inspection was on Thursday, so the apartment needed more cleaning.
My wife's grandmother passed on Monday, so she flew out to Colorado on Tuesday morning. I was scheduled to fly out on Thursday, and needed to find both a ride to the airport and someone to house-sit (the person who usually house-sits for us had a foot and a half of snow).

I did make an appearance at Game Night and played one game: High Roll. Three of us each rolled a die. High Roll won.

I don't think there's an entry on the Geek for High Roll. Or, if there is, it's under some other name.

So that's why there's no games played for last week.

Eww!

Does anyone else find this horrific and disturbing?

Shilling

I really love The Geek. It's the best community website in which I participate.

But it's a fear of mine that I'll be perceived as a shill.

See, I'm reasonably active on the Geek. But I'm very active in the Asmodée forums on the geek, because these are the game I have a personal involvement with.

I'm up-front about my involvement. I also try to rate the games fairly - I don't inflate the ratings I give games published by Asmodée just because I like the company.

So I decided to support the Geek. I actually decided a few months ago, but I wasn't able to financially commit.

There are people out there who will see my badge and assume that Asmodée bought it for me. I'll know better. People who poke into my profile might figure it out - I'd never posted on any of Asmodée's games prior to 2005, as I didn't start working with them until that point. I registered on the Geek in 2003.

My Collection

I spent a chunk of yesterday updaing my collection on the Geek.

I started alphabetically at the beginning of all the listings on BoardGameGeek, and got through the letter A. It took me all night.

My goal is to eventually update through all the letters of the alphabet. Then I plan to go through and rate all of them.

I have 212 games listed in my collection at present, and I know that some are missing (including several HeroScape expansions).

That's a lotta games.