BrettspielWelt

BrettSpielWelt (often abbreviated BSW) is a large, popular, and entirely free German online gaming portal. Its name translates as "Boardgame World." The portal contains online versions of over 50 popular classical and modern board games and card games, such as Backgammon, Bluff, Carcassonne, Can't Stop, Go, Lost Cities, Settlers of Catan, and Tichu.

A Java-enabled browser is required to play, and registering with the site is not required. All major aspects of the Java client and website are also available in the English language. The portal is independent, non-commercial and free from advertising, except for indirectly advertising the games themselves. As a result of the portal's popularity, some board game publishers have presented new board games on BrettSpielWelt when they are first published.

Not all games have been translated into English, but players can introduce themselves to one of the English-speaking communities for advice and help.

History

BrettspielWelt started in 1998 as a project by Alexander Zbiek to play board games with his friends over the internet. The first version ran on a workstation in the Leibniz computing centre in Munich. Zbiek then teamed up with Regina Michl, Tobias Lang and Sebastian Mellin. After developing the program to be more stable and expandable, it was released to the public in 2000.

As of March 2007, BrettspielWelt supports over 60 different board games.

Community

BrettSpielWelt has an optional meta-game for its members, in which each game played earns experience points, credits and resources for the player. The metagame facilitates the building of smaller communities, set up as towns, for players to meet, chat and play. As a player increases in rank and his or her virtual wealth increases, he or she may build a virtual home in the online "world" that includes games that will earn credits and resources for the community.

There is a large contingent of English BrettSpielWelt players, and several towns aimed primarily at English speakers. These include Concordia, EnglishTown, Smallville, BurgundyRidge, and The.Great.White.North (primarily aimed at Canadians), as well as the multilingual Emerald.City, Whitechapel and PiratesCove. There are also a ChinaTown for Chinese players, JapaneseIsle and Samurai for Japanese, KoreaTown for Koreans and LionRock for Hong Kong players. Other European language groups include DeLageLanden for Dutch and CarcassonnePlage for French players.

Games

The games available on BrettspielWelt are, for the most part, those which are known as German-style board gamescite web |url=http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,119803/printable.html |title=Game Room: From Deutschland With Love |author= |last= Arar|first=Yardena |date=2005-02-26 |work=PC World ] , with a few notable exceptions (Tichu, Go, Can’t Stop).

Some of the more notable games available are several Spiel des Jahres winners:

*Settlers of Catan
*Thurn und Taxis
*Niagara
*Carcassonne
*Manhattan
*Bluff (Liar's Dice)
*Imperial

And Deutscher Spiele Preis winners:

*Saint Petersburg
*6 nimmt!
*Caylus

Other games, including Puerto Rico, were previously offered on BSW but were removed when the respective publishers did not prolong the stay.

Awards

BrettspielWelt was nominated for a Webby Award in 2004. It won the People's Voice Award for best Game site. [ [http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/winners-2004.php Webby Awards ] ]

External links

* [http://www.brettspielwelt.de/?nation=en Brettspielwelt] English-language portal
* [http://www.brettspielwelt.de/Spiele/?nation=en BSW Games] List of games on Brettspielwelt
*bgg par
section1=geeklist|id1=4239|name1=Brettspielwelt Primer
section2=geeklist|id2=3662|name2=a list of volunteer tutors
* [http://www.emeraldcity41.net Emerald City] Town Home Page

Notes