Made at home
Hi, we're Jurgens and Rebekah.
A husband and wife, both developers, with a shelf of board games that keeps getting fuller. Board Game Metrics is the app we wanted for our own table.
Two developers, one games shelf.
We both write software for a living. Jurgens tends to end up in the plumbing: the database, the syncing, the parts nobody sees. Rebekah is by far the creative one of the two. If something in the app makes you smile, it was probably her idea.
There's no company behind Board Game Metrics and no team. It's the two of us, building it around our jobs and our game nights, from home in Australia.
It started with the score sheets.
Scores scribbled on the back of a rulebook, in a note on someone's phone, on a scrap of paper that went into the box and never came out again. We wanted to remember our game nights: who won the long campaign, how often we'd played a favourite, which game had sat on the shelf for a year.
So we built a place to keep all of that, quick enough to log a game in the time it takes to pack the box away.
We've never launched an app before.
This is the first app we've put on the App Store and Google Play, and we're learning how launching works as we go. We don't have a marketing team or a playbook. We have an app we're proud of, a list of ideas longer than our games shelf, and a lot of questions.
Things we don't know yet
- How to pay for the app: a subscription, ads, donations or a mix, and which of those you’d be happy with.
- Which features you'd miss most, and which you'd never touch.
- What's missing for the way your group plays.
- How to tell people about the app without being the annoying ones at the table.
- Whether it works on every phone. (It works on ours, which is not the same thing.)
Free while we work out the rest.
Board Game Metrics costs money to run every month: the database that keeps your games, the pictures, the emails and the app stores' fees. For now we pay for it ourselves, and everything in the app is free, including the bigger features the app calls Plus: hosting groups, ranking your games and your taste in full.
We haven't decided how to cover it in the long run. It could be a subscription for Plus, ads, donations, or a mix of those. We'd rather decide with you than for you, so tell us what you'd be happy with, and what would put you off.
Whatever we choose, you'll get at least 30 days' notice in the app first, we'll never sell your data, and nothing you've logged is deleted because of it.
Tell us what you think.
What works, what doesn't, what confused you, what you wish it did. Bug reports, feature ideas and "have you thought about…" are all welcome, and so is "this is great".
And if you know a thing or two about launching an app, or about getting the word out in the board game community, we'd really love to hear from you.
Write to support@boardgamemetrics.com. It comes straight to the two of us, not to a help desk.
What we can promise
- We read every email ourselves.
- We never sell your data.
- Logging games, your library and joining groups stay free.
- Everything, Plus included, is free while the beta runs, and you'll get at least 30 days' notice before that changes.