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Spil

Real-world datasets from the BoardGameGeek XML API, built for teaching at the Industrial Engineering Department, University of Iceland.

Status

Placeholder — awaiting approval of our BGG XML API application.

Why spil?

Spil is the Icelandic word for a game, covering board games and card games alike — exactly the range of data this project works with. Board gamers will recognize its German cousin Spiel, familiar from the Spiel des Jahres award and the SPIEL fair in Essen. A short name from home, for a project built at the University of Iceland.

Aim

Show students how a real-world API becomes a real-world dataset: requesting data from the BGG XML API, parsing it, and shaping it into datasets ready for analysis — graphs, networks, ratings, and play statistics — for use in course material and assignments, e.g. Information Engineering (IÐN302G) and Business Intelligence (IÐN610M).

Scope

  • Fetch scripts that download board game data (plays, collections, game metadata) from the BGG XML API. The scripts contain no credentials: anyone running them must supply their own API token from their own registered BGG application.
  • Derived datasets (CSV) committed to the repository and refreshed roughly once a year before semester start. Students work with these prepared datasets and do not query the API themselves.
  • A report of worked examples built from the datasets — this site — updated on the same yearly cadence.

Out of scope

No dynamic service, no live API-backed website, and no mirror of BGG's database — this site is static content regenerated at each refresh, alongside scripts, datasets, and teaching examples.

Data attribution

Data is sourced from BoardGameGeek via their XML API under a non-commercial license, in accordance with the BGG XML API terms of use.