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Chaddyboy
United States
Olathe
Kansas
Bloooooop.
Bluuuuuurp.
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That's a lot of library action.
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Steve Duff
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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Awesome.
Heh, a bunch of those 1x's are me. Took out Comuni, Before the Wind, Uruk, but the right time or group never came up to play, so put them back so I didn't have them out for too long.
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TxGowan
United States
Houston
Texas
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Multiple copies of games are not combined, so some of the counts are kinda off.
For instance, Kingburg, Dominion:Intrigue and Android are listed twice.
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Rusty Ballinger
United States
Arcata
California
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Aldie wrote:
Strangely, the guy who checked that out was all by himself.
The stats I'd like to see are A) how many games were checked out, but never checked back in, and B) how many games didn't make it back from the convention. (However, I would only like those stats to be posted if we're sure there's no way to prove that those discrepancies occurred during my shift.)
It would also be interesting to have some kind of contest for identifying the pile of lonely components which were returned without their games.
chaddyboy_2000 wrote: That's a lot of library action.
I believe a full 20% of it occurred during a 15-minute period on Thursday night, right after someone asked me to find & print out English instructions for Spiel nicht in Englisch. The place is dead; the guy steps up with a reasonable request; suddenly a hundred angry people appear, my fingers swell into fat sausages on the dainty little elf-keyboard, the hotel wireless password expires, and I start pouring sweat & jabbering incoherently. "Back of the line!" I shout at the guy, and at anyone else who asked a question, or whose check-in or check-out caused an error.
Finally we had to start shining the laser bar-code reader into peoples' eyes to get them to back off. It may not have been Fair, but I think everyone recognized that we were all well beyond that point.
After that, we locked the door and hid among the shelves, and slipped out the next morning when the library reopened. I sure hope you guys do a better job of vetting your library volunteer list next year.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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A scatter plot with trendline showing number of checkouts per game by year of release would be nice. :)
Was there a check-in function? Are the out and in times stamped in the system? If so, you could get some interesting stats on how long a game takes to play (and return). Who was the most active user of the library? So many quesitons for which I'm sure there are answers...
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Sean Tompkins
United States
San Antonio
Texas
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Randy Cox wrote: A scatter plot with trendline showing number of checkouts per game by year of release would be nice.  Was there a check-in function? Are the out and in times stamped in the system? If so, you could get some interesting stats on how long a game takes to play (and return). Who was the most active user of the library? So many quesitons for which I'm sure there are answers...
Spoken like a true data junkie... You and I could be great friends...
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Tom Anderson
United States
West Jordan
Utah
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Here's the top 68 games, with at least 10 checkouts recorded:
( I did some consolidation of Aldie's list, and put "The" at the end, as in "Adventurers, The")
Remember, this doesn't include the Hot Games rooms...
Checkouts Game
32 Savannah Tails
28 Dominion
26 Small World
24 Cable Car
23 Day & Night
23 Endeavor
23 Ubongo 3D
21 a la Carte
21 Infinite City
20 Adventurers, The
20 Gonzaga
19 Automobile
19 BoardGameGeek Game, The
19 Ghost Stories
19 Ramses Pyramid
19 Rush n' Crush
18 Revolution!
18 Saturn
18 Tobago
17 Alhambra
17 Dominion: Intrigue
17 Pony Express
16 Aargh!Tect
16 Castle Panic
16 FITS
15 Arena - Roma II
15 Le Havre
14 Campaign Manager 2008
14 Factory Fun
14 Galaxy Trucker
14 Kingsburg
14 Polizei-Alarm!
13 Dixit
13 Finca
13 Opera
13 Peloponnes
13 Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age
12 Agricola
12 Bunny Bunny Moose Moose
12 Havana
12 Loopin' Louie
12 Pandemic
12 Shipyard
12 Snow Tails
12 Stone Age
12 Thunderstone
11 Battlestar Galactica
11 Dungeon Lords
11 Fluch der Mumie
11 Fzzzt!
11 Monkey Lab
11 Skyline 3000
11 Tichu
11 Ubongo Extreme
11 Warhammer: Invasion
10 Ants!
10 BasketBoss
10 Das Magische Labyrinth
10 Days of Steam
10 Hive
10 Homesteaders
10 Jamaica
10 Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game
10 Middle-Earth Quest
10 Monkey Dash
10 Ubongo
10 Valdora
10 Wasabi!
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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I'd be interested to see how many games were checked out for... oh... more than 5 hours? I feel certain there was quite a bit of hoarding going on with popular games and I wonder just how prevalent that was. Heck, maybe I just had abysmal luck trying to find certain titles and everything was being played and returned quite promptly. But I'm skeptical...
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Everyone wants to be Chad Thriftington III
United States
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
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I checked out Smallworld for the sole reason of getting my picture taken with it and I checked out Tannhauser but checked it back in when we couldn't find a table to play it on.
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Stephen Sanders
United States
Henderson
Texas
25% Scottish, 25% Dutch, 18% English, 15% Irish, 9% German, 5% French, 3% "Black Dutch" (?) = 100% American!
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Gowan wrote:
Multiple copies of games are not combined, so some of the counts are kinda off.
For instance, Kingburg, Dominion:Intrigue and Android are listed twice.
And Jamaica - 7x and 3x
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Scott Alden
United States
Dallas
Texas
Aldie's Full of Love!
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Sorry I grouped by our barcodes, and not the gameid. Jeff is going to release a public spreadsheet of all the data.
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Stephen Gassett
United States
Fort Worth
Texas
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Why are all the games I'm not interested in ones with names or phrases (with a smidge of poetic license) like rush, crush, crash, zap, bang, pow, fits, alarm, loopin', fzzzz, bongo, was-a-booby, ubangi, tabasco, antz, hive, dash, panic, tails, trucker, bunny, moose, boss, zombie, board, game, geek, car, 3D, steam, louie, carte, small, aargh!, dixit, campaign, and f__k the mumie?
Maybe I'm just getting old!  (or maybe I need to design a game with one of these 'words' in the title?) 
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Jeff Anderson
United States
Midlothian
Texas
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All you data-junkies, enjoy!
BGG.Con 2009 Library
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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OK, let's get right to the bit we all want to know. Why the $&@# couldn't I ever find my favorite game in the library? In my opinion, at least 1 in 4 checkouts were abusing their library privileges. 1 IN 4! 25%!
@2400 checkouts
284 of them were out 6-12 hrs
333 of them were out 12-24 hrs
40 of them were out 24-48 hrs
7 of them were out longer than 48 hrs!
To my mind, these are all blatantly too long. Yeah, OK, I can think of a few cases to excuse some of those in the 6-12 hr bracket, but that's not going to change the stats that much.
664 check-outs by people with no conscience. (Or one especially evil bastard with a gigantic pile of games in his hotel room.)
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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While we're waiting to lynch the 664, here are some happy stats.
These are the 10 games that saw the most play time.
Dungeon Lords 142 hrs
Aargh!Tect 129 hrs
Endeavor 123 hrs
Gonzaga 114 hrs
Small World 110 hrs
Automobile 104 hrs
Le Havre 93 hrs
Imperial 2030 87 hrs
Alhambra 85 hrs
Battlestar Galactica 82 hrs
Of course, I use the phrase "play time" loosely. That's the total time these games were checked out. If one of the 664 checked any of these out, that'll skew how much the game was actually getting played. 
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Steve Duff
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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Did you subtract when the Library was closed?
You can't count the hours where it's physically impossible to return a game.
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Michael Denman
United States
Katy
Texas
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If you're talking about checkout times, then yeah, that'd be an exception in the 6-12 hr category that I mentioned. I have not filtered out those instances, but let's just say EVERY case in that category was a result of the library being closed. We still have FAR too many long checkouts in my opinion.
If you're talking about total hours played for the games, then you have to realize those numbers are bogus anyway. I'm adding up checkout time there and I'm sure the games weren't being played every second they were out of the library. Still, those numbers do give you a relative idea of which games were seeing a lot of action.
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Daniel Brown
United States
Cumming
Georgia
But don't be fooled by the radio, the TV, or the magazines. They'll show you photographs of how your life should be but they're just someone else's fantasies.
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I agree there is a problem here. What I am wondering is what is the solution to the problem. Does anyone have any reasonable ideas for handling this issue? There are lots of harsh solutions that I can think of like announcing the person name from the front and ask them to return a game that has been out for 12+ hours. But there should be someway to encourage the swift return of games that fits better with the spirit of the convention.
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Steve Duff
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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Trump wrote: If you're talking about checkout times, then yeah, that'd be an exception in the 6-12 hr category that I mentioned.
Just pointing out that someone checking out a game at midnight, playing it, then returning it when the library opens again is perfectly normal, and not an "11 hour abuser with no conscience". In fact, he's probably a model citizen, better than most in that he took it out, played it, then returned it at first possibility.
The important thing here is what folks were doing with the games when they had them out. The guy with Die Macher for 2 days was probably struggling through the rules and first game the entire time.
Maybe the guy who had Settlers for two days was playing it constantly, and unselfishly taught the game to 48 other people during that time. Is that worse than that UnknownParkerBrother guy who had Comuni out for 4 hours and ended up never playing it at all? I don't think it is.
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Artistic Trickster
United States
Colorado
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UnknownParkerBrother wrote: Did you subtract when the Library was closed?
You can't count the hours where it's physically impossible to return a game.
Sort of true, but only if that was the principle reason the game stayed out. If there were a pent up demand to return games while the Library was closed, you would expect a surge of returns when it opens.
The surge isn't evident, but that spike at 12:00 may be it if you suppose the returners are late sleepers (really?).
My gut feeling is that the few hours the Library was closed had little effect on the check in/out habits of the patrons who hoarded games. Other more squishy factors like sleep patterns and selfishness probably dominated.
In the three hours I was on duty, I think I had two instances where someone asked about a game and research revealed possible abuse. Enforcement of a rule would be hard, so I think for starters next year we need to remind folks of library guidelines and not to be selfish. Maybe just a prominent sign at the check-out desk would be enough.
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Nikki Ebright
United States
Centennial
Colorado
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Well, here's a story to add to the fire*:
At the end of the con, when a lot of the "out for a long time games" were coming back, a fellow brought in one of the popular games and did fess up that he had it most the weekend (don't ask - I don't remember which game it was). Someone from the library side perspective (volunteer or staff, again I don't remember the detail here) said that a lot of people had been asking for that game, and the fellow's response was that there was a copy in the library every time he came in, so why did he need to bring the one he had checked out back any sooner?
On the one hand, I can see his point in that in his eyes, another copy of the game was available when he looked.
On the other hand, the game was apparently not available enough other times for it to be at least worth a conversation, and was possibly an issue.
My personal philosophy? If you're not playing it, return it. Every game I checked out, I returned as soon as I was done, and before getting into another game, basically because I didn't want to be "that guy", the one hoarding a game.
How do you stop people from holding onto games they aren't playing? I don't know. Maybe use one of the white boards for people to be able to put games they're looking for, so the hoarders know they've got it and someone else wants it? Would they care? Peer pressure? Have Derk announce every night which games have been out "too long"? Unfortunately, I doubt there's an easy answer to that one. Buy more games?
* Hey, I didn't get this Certified Instigator avatar for nothin'!
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Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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These are mine (as best as I can reconstruct from memory):
40628 Finca 11/19/2009 14:30:56 11/19/2009 15:30:36
24800 Conflict of Heroes: 11/19/2009 12:43:32 11/19/2009 14:22:50
43868 The Adventurers 11/19/2009 15:35:27 11/19/2009 16:39:43
27833 Steam 11/19/2009 21:03:51 11/19/2009 23:46:32
42 Tigris & Euphrates 11/20/2009 12:53:30 11/20/2009 14:31:05
57163 Gonzaga 11/21/2009 16:00:25 11/21/2009 17:23:19
34599 Toledo 11/21/2009 18:10:41 11/21/2009 19:45:06
That equates to about:
Finca 1:00
Conflict of Heroes 1:39
The Adventurers 1:04
Steam 2:43
Tigris & Euphrates 1:38
Gonzaga 1:23
Toledo 1:35
I honestly don't remember Gonzaga being out that long. But that's the only entry that matches the time frame I would have played it. Anyway, I'm not the culprit. I make a point of not keeping games checked out unless I'm playing them.
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United States
Danbury
Connecticut
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StyxParadox wrote: I agree there is a problem here. What I am wondering is what is the solution to the problem. Does anyone have any reasonable ideas for handling this issue? There are lots of harsh solutions that I can think of like announcing the person name from the front and ask them to return a game that has been out for 12+ hours. But there should be someway to encourage the swift return of games that fits better with the spirit of the convention.
The only reasonable solution that has any chance of changing behavior is a fine. You'll need to take credit card info from all borrowers and start dinging them for every hour past, say, 4 (not including time the library is closed).
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Marshall P.
United States
Wichita
Kansas
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is grandeur in this view of life, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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Lil Red Head wrote:
On the one hand, I can see his point in that in his eyes, another copy of the game was available when he looked.
I can't see his point.
In going through the database there are some real egregious ones in there.
Endeavor 8:53
Endeavor 21:31
Endeavor 2:54
Endeavor 6:38
Endeavor 11:13 (overnight, but still no excuse. The library is only closed for 7 hours)
Endeavor 13:09
Endeavor 13:39 (overnight, see above)
Endeavor 13:03 (overnight, see above)
Those first four entries for Endeavor are the first 4 checkouts and basically meant that Endeavor wasn't available until Friday at 8:00 pm. Even after that it was checked out for long stretches.
Hansa Teutonica 27:17!!!!
Hansa Teutonica 16:07
Hansa Teutonica 3:39 (these are the first three checkouts)
Hansa Teutonica 8:27
Looks like there was only one copy of this game in the library and it looks like it was basically checked out the hole time by a few people.
These two examples really piss me off because I wanted to try both games and I NEVER saw them in the library.
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