BrettspielWelt

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The BrettSpielWelt Java Client
The BrettSpielWelt Java Client

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.

To play the games in English: download the client available from the website brettspielwelt.de, open the file Brettspielwelt.prop in a text editing program, and replace the line "Nation = de" with "Nation = en". Not all games have been translated, however, but players can introduce themselves to one of the English-speaking communities for advice and help.

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Games

The games available on BrettspielWelt are, for the most part, those which are known as German-style board games[1], with a few notable exceptions (Tichu, Go, Can’t Stop).

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

And Deutscher Spiele Preis winners:

[edit] Awards

BrettspielWelt was nominated for a Webby Award in 2004. It won the People's Voice Award for best Game site. [2]

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Arar, Yardena (February 26, 2005). Game Room: From Deutschland With Love. PC World.
  2. ^ Webby Awards