Discussion: Non-European participation in BSW

[mueckchen]

Today I had one of my occasional conversations with some of the other organizing people here on BrettspielWelt. One of the most important topics was the Städteliga / City League.

• The 2nd round has started, days 16 and 17 are to be played this week. Our players should have been composed for both days, not only day 16. An info email should have been send to you, Lepidus.
  
  
• There will be an anulment of all our missing matches  from the first round by the end of this week. Is this what we want
  About 8 or 9 matches are missing. In the list of missing matches, I read myc (2x), mabraham (2x) and BarkingIguana (3x). Did you leave your opponents a message, did you post in their forum? I can't believe that it's impossible to talk to them once in 10 weeks....
  Come on! Other players also live outside the european time zone... other players don't want to see their own fights  fruitless because of anulments! Why should single players  fight - when it's impossible to win for the team ? Ok, there is a time difference, ok, there are mainly two different languages spoken. But we had months of time.
  To be honest - I am asking myself right now if I should  participate in another season for ET. Looks quite useless, and I'm getting angry.
  
  
• Most players don't know, that there is a global password for the City League homepage, valid for all ET participants. With this password, every player can post his game results on this official site. Of course it is important to have our central result thread in the forum, but maybe we could add an additional line in our result posting to indicate whether we entered the information on the City League homepage, too. For me there is no problem to make an additional posting there. Could reduce Lepidus' CPU load He would have to enter only those results the player did not enter himself.
  Of course, the players nominations etc. can not be done by citizens using our global password. Only Lepidus can do that.
  
  
• I have been asked to suggest ET to have an additional official contact person for the City League organizers who lives in the european time zone and is capable of speaking english and german quite well. ET seems to be one of the more "complicated" City League participants... This  could reduce difficulties coming from these two potential problems.
  

mueckchen

[Lepidus]

Hi,

Nikita was our other contact.

I'd like to nominate you, if you don't mind. Maybe you can get us back in shape.

Most of our good CCE players are from Australia and California.

We've lost our Dvonn player and our second CS player to the schism.

We're covering as best as we can.

I'm a bit overloaded with everything else.
(Ambassador, Olympics, TA guild, new son, etc.)

Lepidus

[mueckchen]

Hi Lepidus,

aaah... ok, I see the problem(s)...
Sure, I will support you and ET where and when I can.

der mueck

[mueckchen]

So the officials decided, what some of our players left to them.

day 7
Phantasia - EnglishTown 0:10 (victory for ET, but only 0:1 points for the ranking because of exceeding the deadline)

day 11
Babylon - EnglishTown 2:8 (victory for ET, but only 0:1 points for the ranking because of exceeding the deadline)

day 13
Mittelerde - EnglishTown 2:10 ((victory for ET, but only 0:1 points for the ranking because of exceeding the deadline)

day 14
Besserwisserminsterium - EnglishTown 6:6 (regular tie as claimed by BWM) -  without the missing matches, we had been leading by 6:2 !

So all in all, we lose 4 important points. I don't think the decision is too fair, but we can't do anything against it. They dislike ET beacuse it is so unreliable, I guess. At least I can understand that they will not tolerate exceeded deadlines any longer. Be aware of the fact that there are deadlines for every single day and that they will watch these deadlines exactly now - especially for ET.

Because I don't like losing without even having tried to win, I also made a personal decision. If we lose points like this in the second half of the league because of matches not played, I will discontinue my league participation for ET. This is not a threat... I know that nobody can change things if not all of the ET players feel some kind of engagement for their town after they have  been asked and nominated for the league. It is the last appeal to everybodies sportsmanship from my side.

der mueck

[TheBoomer]

I think the basic problem here is that to have a team, you need to have a captain to organize it.  You also a pool of players.  It's the captain's job to organize things, arrange with players to get them involved.

This never happened in ET, as far as know.  A decision was made to be involved, and then later people were asked to play.

It should be done the other way around, get a full set of players and then decided to enter the event.

Most of the Non-european citizens in ET don't get involved in the various competitions due mostly to time zone zone issues, and to a lesser extent language issues.  I think language issues are not really valid excuses.  However the time zone issues are valid.  Most of the North American players feel like all the various competitions are Euro-centric.  The olympics being a perfect example.  Out of approximately 260 North American citizens in ET, 6 signed up for the olympics and of those I think 2 signed up for a single event.

[Lepidus]

Hi,

It would also help if the the City Liga would communicate to us in English.  Most of what I receive - and the web page - is all in German.  So I'm cluelss at times, since the translation programs tend to fail miserably when dealing with misspellings and technical (gaming) vocabulary).

[halyn(Ω15.7.07 0:25)]

Hi.   I am not from ET, but I am Canadian, and I have watched ET for a couple of years now.. it has grown very well, and it is strong in good players, and I don't see the griping I used to see regarding resources, etc.  It has matured - good on you!

However seeing this stadtliga withdrawal hurts.  Even though I am not from ET, it really bugs me!

I think the German folks have been very accommodating of non-germans by and large, and I have seen them ask for english translation to rules, and be downright obsequious trying to accommodate english speakers.. so much so that I joined a german stadt (Phantasia) to do my bit for cross cultural relationships.

I play stadtliga.. this is my second season.   I am top player in my small (40+) and tichu/CC* obsessed city for Halali, Attika, Yinsh and Dvonn (not a big accomplishment, my city doesn't like these games, I have no competition), which means I pretty much play every week, and out of Toronto, Canada.   Time zones are not a valid excuse.  Morning, lunch and weekends are more than adequate.   If your opponent doesn't feel like playing you, you drop a forum note on their captain (or yours) and other people do the harassing for you.   And nothing prevents you from doing games as soon as they are posted to avoid deadlines.   I have been contacted by email at least 4 times this season by overeager opponents to set up playing times.  It's not like they don't try.

Posting results is a snap.  Doing it on the stadtliga web site (where a couple of very busy towns spent ridiculous amounts of time making a kick ass site - and no, I don't speak German) saves your captain tons of admin work.   You see immediately who is late, who owes games, where you stand.  Language is not an excuse, folks.   I wrote the english rules for settlers after a couple of germans spent 2 HOURS walking me through a settlers game, where I knew neither the interface nor the rules, and they didn't know english.   Hellen Keller Settlers.  It was awful, but we got through it.  So please don't accept or use language as an excuse.   Most germans speak near perfect english anyway, unless they are teaching you settlers (*g*).

You're in 2nd place in the top division!!!!!!   That is no place to withdraw from, especially if (I didn't confirm) daveb02 says you have some 300+ players to choose from to field a team of 6.   It's about playing, anyway.  There are plenty of teams out there fielding people who suck, just to participate.  bsw is supposed to be for fun, right?

Please get someone in your city to fix this mess, and field a team of interested players, if not for the end of this season, at least for the next one.  It looks terrible for english speaking folks that a town of 300+ members cannot put up 6 players.  It looks bad for the rest of the english speaking folks, too, even if they are not in ET.

Sorry for anyone who feels I have overstepped my bounds as a non ET player, or feels offended.   It's just that this is such a shame in my opinion, I had to speak my peace.

Best of luck..

[TheBoomer]

halyn:

No, you haven't overstepped any boundary in your comments.

The points of contention can be debated and reasonable people can draw opposite opinions looking at the same set of facts.  

What is clear, I thimk, is that the tone in the last week or so became a little to hot. At least thats my opinion.

The reason why I pushed for our withdrawl, is I don't see enough people in ET willing to commit to the event.  The fact that we have 350 people is meaningless, we could 3000 people , but If people aren't going to sign up for the team and then actually play it's not going to work.

Remaining in the liga just seemed a recipe for making things worse.  All that would happen is it would subject the entire city-liga to another 6 weeks or so of these problems.
To me, it didn't seem fair to all of the other players

Even if I could, which I can't, force people to play , what good would that do?  As you said, BSW is about fun.

ET doesn't have anyone , at the current time, that is interested in being our team captain and on a good day, we can field 5 players( one of which is a student with limited availability when school is in session).

Often times perceptions are what drive people and are more important than the facts.

I don't even know all the facts, because I've heard and read conflicting accounts from different people, so debating who did what when, seems pointless.

A more productive question would be "how to do a better job of involving the North American players in bsw events?"

I don't have an answer to that question.  I wish I did.

Boomer

[halyn(Ω15.7.07 0:25)]

Boomer, thank you for your thoughts.   You raise an interesting question regarding involving North American players on BSW events.  I already spend so much time on bsw, that going for olympics, or running for mayor, etc would make things even worse for me personally.   Liga is about as far as I can take it.  

However, having said that, I have played a pile of North American players at ungodly hours.  They are not limited to ET.. I have found them in Emerald City, Woodstock, Armfeld..

Maybe it's time ET consider signing up talent from Armfeld who is also interested in bsw events?   Build your liga team much like how you build college footbal teams?   I am serious.  Perhaps a 300 person city has become a tad impersonal, so at least you would get to know your new recruits?   So even if you lose the games, you may build up a tradition.

Maybe you could give your Liga members some taeler money for their castles?  Much like the payment of game guild leaders?  I'm trying to be creative here, it may all be nonsense.

halyn

[TheBoomer]

Constructive ideas are never nonsense.

I'd say we do actively seek out English speaking ARMfelders, that's part of the reason why we as large as we are.
We routinely add about 20-30 ARMfelders each month.  In November we added 32 people from ARMfeld, of which 25 were from North America. I Know from talking to the mayors of Pirates Cove and The Great White North, that they've added several ARMfelders in november also.

So, I'm thinking that the bulk of the ARMfelders that have an interest in joining a town are being picked up already.

I don't think there is really a way for a town to pay people talers.  If there was we would just have rapid point inflation at towns paid people to help them get to w15 faster.

It's interesting that you mention signing up ARMfelders.  Our first liga captain, who got ET into the liga in the first place was Machimo, whom I recruited personally from ARMfeld.

We've activity promoted both the city-liga and the olympics in the town, but still haven't generated much interest.

Boomer

[Ulkomaalainen]

Hi halyn and Boomer,

please excuse my bumping into your discussion. But the question raised truly is interesting. I am not talking too much about Städteliga which I consider being difficult to a lesser extent (as it is a 2-players-per-match-competition, more detailed see below), but more about the general problems of BSW being perceived as (and in a way not only being perceived, but just being) Eurocentric. Talk about the Olympic Games...

The Brettspielwelt becomes more and more known, liked and used by people all over the world, which is a good thing. Our world tends to be roughly ball shaped (soccer ball, not football ball ), which is a good thing as well. Jumping some more detailed physics, we have the fact that different areas on earth get their share of the sunlight as different times of the day. This, combined with mankind's tendency to live mainly during daytime, and have spare time for their hobbies mostly on evening's, is where the problems start. (Please excuse me again, I know I've said nothing new here, but rambling on is a good way for me to collect my thoughts).

It is virtually impossible to organize intercontinental multi-player-events on BSW. At the moment, we seem to have three major areas of the world, where player density is high: the Americas, Europe and Eastern Asia. While it is still possible for people out of two different areas to meet and compete (though it would mean a schedule, where the american has to be online before noon to play a European who's here on the early evening, the European to get up early to play the Asian and the Asian... well you get the picture), it is nasty. A tournament involving all three areas would be really difficult. I see only one feasible way in theory: play on weekends, let the Americans get up early and the asians stay awake until after midnight (this may seem Eurocentric too, but it s owed to the fact of the definition of time zones, where Europe is in the center. Shifting it by 8 hours may still be possible though, this would mean Asians playing on a sunday morning - actually, I do not even know whether sunday is a free day in eastern Asia). Even this would have to fail, if a couple of Samoans joined up (who may freak out anyway, as all server reboots would take place during their main playing time).

So how to handle this in terms of organized "sporting events" (and it's not just about finding out who's best, I love this "meeting people from all over the world" thingy at least as much)? I see some possibilities, but all suffer from major drawbacks:

1. "Let's stay home". I mean, the majority of players is based in Europe, the organizers are based in Europe. So all things should be organized according to European needs. Others (read: Americans, Asians) have to cope with it. This is (to a lesser extent than in this rough description, but still) the way BSW is run right now. And it is the easiest way. But I just do not like it. We miss a lot of lovely opportunities with it. I'm not even talking about perceived discrimination here.

2. "Let's stay home - reloaded". Basically the same as above, but with major events being held for every zone, having "official approval" (meaning: BSW links to those pages, collects informations and stuff on their home page, which is not a major issue, but still an issue imo). This would be better, but despite the large number of players from America or Asia, they are still considerably less than Europeans, and I doubt that there will be enough players to make as many enjoyable competitions in as many different disciplines as it is the way now, let alone find enough people to organize it. An additional problem in finding players or helpers may be that non German speakers are way less involved in all those issues which leave the plain level of playing a game or two, due to the difficulties they face with all those language problems. E.g.: even if there is an English bulletin board right now, the system works in German only, most informations are collected throughout the whole bulletin board structure, and even if they are given in English (which often they aren't) at least I'd feel uncomfortable surfing through hundreds of German posts to find the one that's interesting (and the only one I can understand, anyway). Plus: three olympic games somehow degrades the event.

3. Still I think, this may be a solution. Rotating the games every six months (e.g. - I think Olympics every three years in your home zone are just too few for a fast paced medium like the internet). This would in practical application be not too different from variation 2, but still it may help spread the spirit of BSW. Plus, some lunatics from the other areas may turn up and add a shade of colour to the event (at least that's what I hope as opposed to everyone staying with "their" tourney). This would probably need a major improvement of BSW's English language infrastructure though, starting with the home page, the bulletin boards and so on. Plus, it would need active work from those Non-Europeans who are already included, to raise people's awareness. By the way: the language barrier probably exists anyway, apart from time zone issues. I doubt that too many French or British or Spanish know too much about this whole meta game thing. We Europeans may need to work, too.

So much for the Olympics. Still - Städteliga is up on the table. The difficulty still is, that most players have their fixed online times. Germans usually meet during those times without much ado, Americans possibly too, but intercontinental matchups need talk and contact more often than not. Which leaves, apart from the fact that at least one player has to be quite flexible about time issues, the language problem: not all Germans do speak English, not all non Germans do speak German. Which leaves the possibility of people not being able to communicate (or maybe worse: to communicate and misunderstand). I see no way to solve this. At least not at the moment. The only way right now probably really is fielding only players who are flexible to German needs and demands.

Plus, of course, you need an involved captain (who may have lotsandlotsandlots to do). Some other towns already failed, when they lost their captain. But this may be a totally different issue.

Please excuse the long post, I hope my English is understandable enough.

Terveisiä, Ulkomaalainen

[TheBoomer]

Ulko:

As always, you make thoughtful points.

Maybe the way to look at these is in terms of involvement in bsw other than playing.

The questions we need to answer might be:

1) Is the involvement of non-european players higher/lower/same as their percentage of the total active gaming population?

I think most people would agree the answer to question 1 is lower.

2) What are the reasons it is lower?

We probably need someone much smarter than me to answer question 2.

3) Do we want raise that involvement?

I suspect that some people will answer yes and others answer no to this.  I can say with almost 100% certainty that TAMM would answer yes.

4) What steps can be taken, without negatively impacting the European players, to raise the involvement of non-European players?

This is the 64,000 taler question.

-------------------------------------------

I'm not sure of the exact numbers and not even sure we could calculate them.  However, I'd would guess that the North/South American players represent less than 10% of the active players on bsw.
I would think the East Asian players are less than 3%.  The remainer of our glorious soccer ball(including our friends in both Western Samoa and American Samoa) are most likely under 1%.  That leaves Europe(mostly Western Europe and Scandanavia) with at least 86%.  Europe is probably more like 90%.

My best guesses would be Americas 7%, East Asian 2%, Europe 91%.

For the sake of discussion, I'll define active as players that average 25 or more MU games a month.

Now, lets look at involvement levels.

Obviously, we can't expect them to be reading a contributing to the YELL, since it's 99% in german and in PDF format, can't easily be run through web based translations.
Twice, attempts were made to start an English Language newsletter, like the YELL.  Neither generated any real interest.

Forum participation among the non-european players is extremely low.  Most of the towns outside of Europe, don't even use the bsw forum at all.  This group includes Terra Brasilis, The Great White North and Pirate's Cove.

As best I know, we've never had a non European as a mediator, I don't even know if anyone has been a candidate.  The same goes for Aldermann.

Have we had any North Americans as mayor of any European based towns?  I can't think of any.  Have any run?  I would have no way of knowing that.

Did we have any North Americans on the BSW olympic committee this year or during the first?  I didn't see any.

Did any Non-Europeans submit event proposals for the Olympics?  I know of 2 that were submitted.  Since I didn't see them all, I can't say if there were more.

I checked the city-liga players list(only for liga-1) I counted 9 North American(3 Canadian, 6 US) out of 182 players.  Of course I don't know where every single person is from, so perhaps I missed one or two.

Among TM's as best I can tell 2 are from North America.
And those 2 haven't done much other than start and draw lotteries. Neither of those guilds have leagues and neither
TM is running events in the olympics, or ran an event last time.

I counted 3 American GM.  Attribut, Fuersten and Transamerica.  Not exactly the most active guilds.

There are 142 cities, 5 are based in the Americas, plus a 6th Emerald City is probably half Euro/half America.  And remember that for most of it's history EnglishTown had a European mayor and for it's early history also had a European Botschafter.

--------------------------------

No we get back to the important questions, like how to change things?

Boomer

[halyn(Ω15.7.07 0:25)]

This is fascinating stuff.  Thanks to all for your input!

Three things I need to mention, after reading the above posts:

1/ BSW is a German creation.  Us non-germans are in it because, quite frankly, the folks who created this fine site let us join it, free of charge, and go through the inconvenience to have us on it for the sake of whatever makes them feel good.  I am glad they still feel this way, because I use the chat functions, I meet people, I game uncontrollably, and it is free

2/ Some of my german city fellows have asked me to run for office in Phantasia, they also have asked me to run for Liga team captain.   I declined both on the basis that I don't speak german, and that was seen as a poor excuse.  Basically I am on notice that I will be asked to captain the team for Liga 3, and my not running for office still has people wondering.  I have noted that I add to the Phantasia forum in English, and it works.  They were quite unimpressed when I first joined the city, because I didn't participate, even in English.  I think our gracious hosts are extremely culturally open minded.  I have lived in South America, Europe and North America, so I don't say this lightly.

3/ The Asian population % and timezone business.. I used to play inordinate amounts of Starcraft / Brood War.   The best players in the world were Korean.  And while Blizzard kept game servers on east USA, west USA, Europe and Asia, it was generally acknowledged that the best of the best, bar none, were the Korean players.  Which meant if you wanted to test your skill, you logged on to the Korean server when the Koreans were up for battle.  North Americans like myself did that regularly.  It can be done.

When it is all said and done, the fundamental crux of the problem is: what are people in bsw for?  If you are here to game, who cares with whom, then language is not an issue.  If you care to game and be social, then time zones are not an issue either.   But if you want to hang out with only English speaking people and only on convenient hours, then at some point the site host may be wondering what value he gets from you, and may be passing you a bill for his services, or leaving you out altogether.  I am basing this on "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".

I have had discussions with people in the past regarding the flexibility or lack of, of our hosts.  Topics such as whether Settlers' should have a tournier option or not.   My answer is still the same.  You can provide all the feedback and input you like, hopefully in a convincing and professional manner.  But in the end, it is someone else's site, and those of us who mainly benefit by using it, ought to (in my opinion), demonstrate some gratitude and flexibility.  And it would seem that what they want from us, for whatever reason, is our participation

Thanks,
halyn

[Ulkomaalainen]

Hi,

unfortunately I don't have much time right now (my non Samoan time zone tells me I should work right now), so just the answer to two of Boomers participation statistics questions:

One non German speaker has run as a candidate (bliss of ET). She came out 5th unfortunately (as I was a mediator at that time I can only say that the team hoped for her to get elected). But bliss lives in Denmark, so she's European (so much for time zone issues). Unfortunately she seems to have left BSW alltogether.

One non German citizen has been Aldermann in Rincewind. Well, he's Dutch, but he speaks perfect German and to the best of my knowledge lives in Germany, so this really is only a statistical curiosity which we may well overlook.

Okay, back to work for now.

Nähdään, Ulkomaalainen

[NaokiAiba]

Please excuse my bumping into your discussion.

I would like to say there are many intended levels of participations in BSW:

Just playing games;
Joining events like tournaments/olympic/liga;
Concerning about and managing the personal account; (concerning when they can have their game rooms)
Concerning about the BSW world;
(participating in debates)
Helping organizing events;
Running for Offices

While nobody will disagree that the ultimate goal for all players here is for fun, the problem is how to achieve it and how to maximize the achievement. Undoubtably, there are players who just want to play and don't want any problem about the world to bother them. There are also players who want a better gaming environment and are ambitious to solve the problems. (Sorry for the negative wordings.) There are the most in between. Existence of different intended participation level (but not actual) should be presumed. Hope this is a common point among everybody.

I think the problem now is how to bring the non-European players from the actual participation level to the intended one. Here are some of my thoughts:

While fully understand that it is a German site, most players are welcome to a better gaming environment, as well as suggestions on it. The subproblem here is how to facilitate the communication process. Although bulletin is the best way, the whole page german scares many non-german speakers off. (Try getting into this page through English homepage). The first part of the solution is to make the bulletin site, at least for the five options page and the desciption of pages, bilingual, though we can't ask everybody speak biligually. The second part is to promote, ie make other know, of the bulletin and other important notices. Although we cannot go too far to expect this site to accept all languages, German/English seem mandatory. (Please see how JapaneseIsle (C55) and ChinaTown (C124) communicate in their city bulletin. They can't type Japanese (even hiragana) or Chinese there.) Being bilingual if possible for public notices and the page structures is very crucial to solve the language problem.

It seems that BSW has a translator team. However I have not much knowledge of it. Whatever, it is hard to think of mediators or other officers know only one language. I have played a game with two other players argue in an European language that I don't know, ending up in one leaving the game immediate before the end. I have failed to presuade him/her back because s/he didn't know my English (I am an oriental). Without the help of translators, it is hard to have a non-european to take up any office. Here is a problem I can't think of any solution where the translators come from.

For the timezone problem, the only solution is to put all events to the Saturdays' night in Central Europe Time. Sad to say, this problem is deadlocked.