Contributing to BGG 👨‍💻

BGG stands for BoardGameGeek. If you've never heard of it, think of it like IMDb but for board games. If a board game isn’t on BGG, it doesn’t exist. Naturally, I wanted my games to be there.

But before I dive into the process, let me share my thoughts on BGG.

I don’t use BGG often, but I’m sure it’s great. This might sound strange considering how much I love board games. For me, though, the site’s navigation and interactions feel... off. Things are hard to find, and I often resort to Googling things like “publisher name + BGG” even when I already have the site open. That said, let’s get into the process of adding my game!

The BGG Wiki is your friend

While I might have issues with BGG’s navigation, I do appreciate their comprehensive guides. For example, the article How to Add Content explains nearly everything you need to know about submitting content.

Which, now that I think about it, kind of makes this blog post redundant... BUT! I ran into a few hiccups that might be worth sharing.

Submitting a new game and publisher

Here’s a fun quirk: you can’t add a game without a publisher, but a publisher can’t be approved without having any games credited to it. So, how do you proceed?

The solution is to add a "pending publisher" to your game submission. First, you need to submit your game publisher. Once the system acknowledges your submission and marks it as "pending," you can use that pending publisher in your game submission.

Editing pending submissions?

After submitting my first game, Queteb, I realized I’d forgotten to add my co-designer. What now?

Googling didn’t help much. My first thought was to wait until the game was approved and then add him later, but surely there had to be a way to edit pending submissions. After some searching, I concluded that it wasn’t possible and sent a "GeekMail" (BGG’s internal messaging service) to an admin explaining the situation.

A couple of days later (with no response from the admin), I did stumble across a page showing all my pending submissions! This takes me back to my earlier point: BGG’s navigation can be frustrating. A simple fix would be to update their guides to include this information (maybe I should send them a GeekMail about that too).

That’s all from me for now. Over and out.