The games people play

Hi, I'm AJ and I'm a boardgamegeek.

I've wanted to blog about this for a while now. This is more sharing the site than anything else but this class has made me aware about mashups.

www.boardgamegeek.com seems to be a fairly good example of a mashup.

It's not fancy. It looks very 1.0 but dig a little deeper and you have something different. Maybe Web 1.5

When you go to the main page, it looks like many other web sites, yet if you look closely, it is a wiki, disguised as a website. Sometimes, without having the word "wiki" in the description, we can't quite tell what's what.
Yet, it isn't entirely a wiki.

There are certain parts you can't edit. The main page, for instance. Yet, you can edit game info.

You can add your own images to the games, to share what you have been up to.

On the left hand side, you have a "hotness" bar for games, developers and companies.
This works a little like digg. New games being discussed "hot off the presses" shoot up the list and gain visibility. Yet, as the discussion dies down and stabilises, the actual hotness of a game can be evaluated.
There are also feeds on Ebay auctions.

Games are also actually rated based on player rankings and they have an "all time" list.

Finally, there are forums, which is quite 1.0, but where people set up trades, game meetups and share ideas.

If we had to look for a true mashup, I'd call this one. It's a blend of 1.0 and 2.0 that works very well for gamers!