The Why Behind

I recently received some unexpected interest in the hobby board game collection and event organizer, Kallax, from the community over at /r/selfhosted. It sparked a thoughtful discussion about the future of the project.

The discussion covered a wide range of topics, which I’ll address in another post.

One of the key questions was how the community can rest assured that the project stays online and doesn't pivot drastically. A fair concern, as it's a common fate for hobby projects like this.

Honestly, nothing can guarantee that. However, I’ll try to explain what has motivated me to keep the project going for the last four years so far and why I believe it’s unlikely to change.

Short History of Kallax.io

Back in January 2021, I discovered Diablo Web, a fully playable version of Diablo powered by WebAssembly, which inspired me to start a small project of my own. I figured an app for organizing things would be a good test case: simple enough to get up and running, but complex enough to explore the technology meaningfully. One thing I personally needed organized, and had access to data for, was board games. I launched a small survey to gauge interest and began coding.

That project launched on 23rd of March 2021 as Kallax.io and is now used to organize more than half a million board games for a few thousand users.

We’re currently working on expanding to become Meetup.com for board games, with the goal of encouraging people to get together and play. This is slowly taking shape through our events feature, which we aim to expand with local board game cafés and the ability to search for public board game events nearby.

Personal Motivation and Mission

I haven’t really shared this before, but physical board gaming holds a special place in my heart. It was 2015, and I had just moved to a new city to attend university. My girlfriend at the time and I had recently ended our relationship, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t know anyone.

I grew up with two older brothers and was chairman of the party committee in high school. From primary school through high school, I was always someone who got recognized and greeted. It might sound silly, but I didn’t truly appreciate the value of something as simple as someone saying hi until I started at university.

Anyway, I decided to drown out my emotions with work. I figured I’d eventually feel happy again, so I might as well use the time to do something productive that I could appreciate once the happiness returned.

It worked well for a while. I was excelling at work, volunteering weekly as a programming teacher for kids, helping out with the annual game development camp for high schoolers, attending talks around the city, and participating in game jams. This period laid the foundation for who and where I am today.

I also managed to find what I am sure is the best study group to ever exist. We worked together in more or less all the courses and that year we were doing a major project (15 ECTS). According to the time registration in our report, the project took 1078 hours which means we averaged nearly 15 hours a week on that project alone with a strong peak near deadline. This is time spent besides two other courses, my part-time job, my volunteering etc.

At deadline we celebrated with a couple of beers and agreed to have a little pause from each other for a few days. It was nice, I'm still proud of this project to this day. I had taken some time off work for the exams, the volunteering was on summer break and I had just turned in my last project, time for some well-deserved rest.

However, the next day I didn't get up. I had nothing I needed to do and no reason to get out of bed, so I just... didn't. I had managed to keep myself busy enough for an entire year to feel somewhat content and now all my activities had been turned off simultaneously.

One day of rest doesn't hurt, but the next day I didn't really get up either. I forced myself to leave the room to get noodles from the common kitchen. I was not hungry, but I figured the other students at the dorm would question it if my door didn't open for several days in a row. It wasn't sadness but emptiness. I had tons of social interactions but it was all tied working.

And then I got a text. It was another student from the master program that I was loosely acquainted with. He invited me to a board game event with a couple of alumni student from the university. I had never really spoken much with him and I knew no one else at the event, he just randomly thought of me because he knew I lived close to the university.

I went, had a good time. I lost Arcadia Quest because someone decided to not attack me while controlling the final boss to prevent it from dying from retaliation damage...

It wasn’t that this particular event or board game was life-changing. It was simply an unexpected gesture that stopped me from slipping into a dark place. It could have been anything, really. Kallax could have been a beer-tasting app.

Board games are just one of millions of ways to spend your time with people. They’re a great choice though because you can play with close friends or a spouse you’ve shared thousands of conversations with or with complete strangers. A board game can fill in silence that might otherwise feel awkward. They work well as a conversation starter, hell the whole conversation can revolve around them. They are accessible and there is such a vast variety that there is something for everyone.

I don’t care much what you choose to do - go for a walk together, play badminton, join a tango class, invite someone for coffee. Or invite them over for a board game night if that is your thing.

Kallax aims to nudge people into spending more time together by getting them to play physical board games. It's the intersection of two of my interests and I fool myself into thinking it does a little good somewhere out there.

I maintain it with one of my close friends from that student group, which gives us an excuse to catch up and have nerdy discussions. We live 2000 km apart, so it’s rare that we get the chance to catch up otherwise.

For (nerdy) developers, having a production environment with a substantial user base and no financial pressure is a dream scenario. One of the projects that aided me in my professional career was a complete rewrite of an admin panel for live-service games from Handlebar to Blazor with SSO. Sounds familiar?

The project is non-commercial and unlikely to ever be financially viable. However, for me, it serves as a career catalyst, a reason to catch up with a friend, a hobby, and a source of occasional compliments and internet points from strangers.

The projected operating cost for this year is US$517, which I’m fortunate enough to be able to consider the cost of having this hobby. If you want to support it, spread the word and start inviting people over.

I do appreciate contributions to cover cost, but GeekGold or a message with good vibes has the same effect on both my mood and motivation to keep going.