Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Alright guys, real talk about Tabletopia, because if I'm going to sign up for this thing I'd like it to not be a big disappointment.
It says 800 games are available, which is... a lot! But then I'm looking through the games list and I see... okay, Scythe, good stuff, I like Scythe. I like Champions of Midgard too. Terra Mystica isn't usually a game I play, but I recognize its qualities, and the same is true for Brass. They have Everdell and Wingspan, which are popular, even though I thought Wingspan was a touch overrated. Vast isn't bad. I like Secret Hitler, but basically everything I like about it is eliminated by playing it online...
... And that's sort of it, really. I tried looking for any of the games I like, and pretty much nothing is on there. There's no Blood Rage, no TFM, no Fantasy Flight games of any description (perhaps not surprisingly), no Dead of Winter, basically nothing co-op that I want to play. Strikingly absent are euro classics like Puerto Rico and Power Grid. In fact, besides Scythe, I don't think there's a single game in my games cabinet (which is neither excessive nor modest) that appears in this library.
So I guess my question is, does "800 games" really mean 800 games, or does it mean maybe 20 games and then 780 crappy pieces of filler that no one would actually want to play? Because when the #4 and #6 recommended games are Chess and Texas Hold'em, I'm skeptical that this thing is actually as developed as it needs to be to truly call itself an online board gaming platform. I was sort of hoping for Board Games Steam, here...
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Online platforms for boardgame have been around forever. I started playing on
Yucata 15 years ago. Tabletopia is just the latest. But like digital streaming platforms, none of them have everything you want. For instance Puerto Rico is on Board Game Arena.
As for the Fantasy Flight Games you enjoy, they aren't available on any online platform. Part of that is licensing issues, but mainly it's because they're far, far more complex than euro games. You'd need a dedicated team of developers to port something like Bloodrage into a digital platform. And FFG/Asmodee have not shown the inclination to make that investment. GMT Games has ported a couple of their games, like Twilight Struggle and Dominant Species, into iOS. You can also find other top games like Le Havre and Through the Ages in the app store.
Lastly, there's VASSAL, an open-source tool for digitizing boardgames. It's not browser based, and the modules usually don't handle rules beyond the basics. Originally designed for wargames, it's a tool for sending move file back and forth. Fans have created VASSAL modules for a crap-tonne of games:
http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Category:Modules
But no, there's no boardgame equivalent of Steam. And I wouldn't get your hopes up that there will be anytime soon.