Silly me made one of the multiplication symbols an addition in showing the formula at 2:11 (reminds me of messing up on math tests)! This gets fixed at the actual calcuations, like at 2:54. To clarify, the formula is: (sum of ratings + number of dummies * dummy value) / (number of ratings + number of dummies). And yes, BGG doesn't use an exact bayesian average to calculate their final scores, a little more magic on their end is involved, but this formula gets you pretty far. Merry Christmas! -Ashton
Lol just started watching and had to pause to the comment section because this annoyed me so much since I thought it was a retarded formula if it was actually set up with addition like that 🙈
I have been visiting my family during Christmas time and brought Saboteur with me. Since we had people in the group who were older and younger with little to no experience with playing board games it was something I decided to try to teach them this simple concept. And oh boy, we had some incredible game sessions that took almost 4 hours, round after round until our stomach hurt from laughing because of some some late Saboteur reveals and inexplicable moves from the Diggers. This is how much we enjoyed a 6,6 game, ranked 1251 on BGG.
That's... kinda working as intended , right? A solid 6.6 means that it's not a bad game. It did not "fail class". It's just like you can have a great evening watching a stoner comedy with friends, can be a true bonding experience right there. Lovingly referenced 10 years down the line. But it'd never appear in an overall top 100 movies.
@@kenelmpijay I promise you everything you said is true, but I have more laughs with friends and family playing plunder a pirates life than I do playing viticulture and I really do like viti
Because of comments like yours, I put games on my list to buy. Saboteur is now on my list of games to buy, thanks. Interesting update: Saboteur won the “AWARDS & HONORS 2004 Japan Boardgame Prize Best Foreign Game for Beginners Nominee” award, yet dropped in its BGG score down to 6.5. Its overall ranking is 1,371. Also, it’s been “Reimplemented” by Saboteur: The Lost Mines.
Saboteur is an immensely popular game beloved among boardgamer and non boardgamers alike. There are even Saboteur tournaments despite the game having the depth of a puddle and being largely luck dependent. I would be alot more impressed by your example if you used a 6.6 rated game which was actually unknown in the community...also most games liked by non boardgamers are simple games and score lower in BGG.
@@Shelfside To me it is more important to know WHY a rating was given than the rating itself. It also is important to verify that the critic has a taste similar to mine. For example, if I see someone who loves card games or abstract games I know taste is going to diverge. I do not mind heavy card bookeeping, but it has to have miniatures. Abstract games are not my thing.
My public score reference sources: 1. The instruction vids (figuring if it's good on my own; sometimes it ends here) 2. The reviews (based on how much I know the reviewer) 3. Gameplay vids (if I'm torn between the first two; I try not to get too caught up with the actual reactions of players) 4. BGG ratings (not often) I do look up BGG ratings if I'm trying out games on BoardGameArena, coz it's low stakes.
I take BGG ratings with a grain of salt. It’s helpful to get a general consensus of the community’s overall feelings on any given game. But you also have to consider there’s a contingent of people with an axe to grind for whatever reason. For me personally, if a game is rated a 7+ I feel safe investigating further. Especially if it’s been out for a while. That way it’s had a little time to marinate.
Many people love things. But my taste is different. When everyone loved first person shooters in videogames, I loved more hardcore scifi experiences. So the overhyped FPS scores did not reflect on me.
2:15 You got the formula wrong. The second plus sign in the numerator should be a times sign. 2:53 This calculation doesn't give a good result. The average rating is 8.68, you calculate 8.62, the Geek rating is 8.45. So you are off by a factor of almost 4. By the way, it's kind of a secret what bgg does. At least it is not just a Bayesian average. This can be seen in the top 100: Foodchain magnate (no. 35 at time of writing) has less and lower votes than Marvel Champions: The Card Game (no. 36).
Hey cheers for this, didn’t see that numerator being addition until now! The calculation was using multiplication. Good point that this isn’t perfect in giving out the geek score!
I was expecting more research into the possible math, or a better explanation of why his results aren't exact. I think there's an additional part to the equation: something that tries to gauge the "BGGeekiness" of each user. I'm almost certain that if I were to create a new account and give a random game a 10/10, it wouldn't move the needle as much as a 10/10 from my active, established, financially-supportive BGG account. Which also explains why this simple equation can't determine the exact number of dummy ratings.
glad to see i am not the only dude in bay area that wears a hoddie + patagnoia jacket + beanie in doors. my friends and family think i am nuts. i blame the poor insulation of older bay are homes. good video. there use to be a site that took your bgg scores and gave you a recommended list of board games. i used that alot more than bgg 100 exactly for these concerns you metnoned. unfrotunately that website is no longer up.
Great analysis, thank you! Would love to see you look at BGG's weight / complexity rating too. Is that a good estimate for how much effort a game requires?
Thx for adressing the problems with the BGG scoring system. I started a thread about making voting impossible until the game was out on the market to get rid of the fake kickstarter scores, but the suggestion was beaten down with an explanation of how hard it would be to check all timezones for release + people wanted to take into account the few reviewers that had played the game before release. Mumbo-jumbo for me! A better way to find good games that you might like is to follow a couple of smaller independent youtube channels with similar taste as you/ your group, and get inspiration from there. //
@@nzcamel3 Agree. We need to challenge BGG with a fair and sound rating system and break their ”rating monopoly”. Maybe it’s time for other big channels to adress this as well?
Lots of good points. I still remember way back when there were actually a lot of classic games in the top 100. I remember it feeling like a Wikipedia of games when I first found it. It was amazing to me that such a thing existed. I mean one place where every game you could think of was cataloged and categorized and cross referenced. And you could go down that top 100 list and start finding all kinds of great games with interesting mechanisms you'd never seen before or even entire categories and types of games that you weren't familiar with. It was really about board games. Now it's about gamers. The top 100 is just a list of what's hot and trending. It's been years since I considered it relevant. I guess if you're someone who's looking for the new thing to buy all the time then great. But if I'm thinking of the top 100 games I'm thinking of it like the top 100 movies, the top 100 classics of all time that will stand the test of the ages. As others have mentioned it's pretty silly that the classics don't have a place on that. I really like the point about a separate rating for how much you like a thing subjectively versus how good you think it is objectively. I mean none of us are ever truly objective, but we can try and be aware of our own biases. This does exist for movies too. And IMDb I often find myself struggling with whether or not I should give a movie a 10 because I absolutely love it even though I know it's a flawed. Then there are movies that I can say are cinematic masterpieces and perfect, but that I don't want to necessarily watch more than once or twice. This may not apply to board games so much, but I kind of like the way the app Untappd does beer ratings. Every time you check in a beer you can give it a rating. Your overall rating is the average of all the ratings you've ever given that particular beer. So your opinion on it can evolve over time. And you can still go back and look at each individual check-in and rating. I wish IMDb had this feature, as my opinion on films seems to move around significantly over time with each viewing. Maybe this would work for games. If each time you play the game you rated it for that play. That way frustrating learning games can be waited against once you've gotten into the swing of things. But then so much comes down to the fact that individual people aren't consistently thoughtful and how they rate anything. You see it on Amazon you see it everywhere. This is probably why Netflix got rid of ratings all together in favor of just thumbs up thumbs down. Which I hate. But the point is we can go into all kinds of detail and thoughtful analysis about how to handle ratings and you're still going to end up with the masses giving everything either a one or a 10 based on sheer impulse. On the bright side for you this means that there is always going to be a place for professional critics and qualified influencers to provide thoughtful assessments.
That Untappd system does sound cool. Would be great to collect scores with player counts and time played and build up kind of a profile for the game. Netflix needed people to rate things when they watched DVDs offline. For streaming they just have a lot more info about what gets watched and they can create a personal recommendation list based on what other people who like the same shows as you are watching now. They don’t really have any purpose for a single score of scores like BGG tries to do. (Personally I’m coming to the conclusion that BGG shouldn’t be trying to do it either)
Great explainer, thanks! I've always wondered how the rankings would change if you only counted scores submitted starting one year after publication. I have no idea if there's any way to figure that out, but it would be cool to see the difference if it was. Happy New Year!
Nice video! I think it's hard to get any ranking to be definitive since people will always rank games differently. My husband (he made the recommendations on BGG under "Fans Also Like") played a little with the ranking algorithm to try to fix the skew towards heavier games (since a lot of people don't rate consistently). Then a bunch of party games like Codenames and Exploding Kittens ended up in the top 10.
@@Ryuuuuuk no sorry, it was just on his computer and I don’t think he has it anymore (it was using the BGG algorithm as a base so I think that was private anyway)
Here’s the thing. A lot of reviewers rated Tainted Grail as one of their favorite games of that year. As far as games on crowdfunding go, there are too many…I won’t even look at a game that isn’t at least a 7.8. BGG ratings work best for experienced gamers. Most of us understand an epic game and will only appeal to a certain crowd. The same goes for solo games and ‘heavier’ games. More casual games are going to be a little lower, but that’s why we watch top 10 lists for gateway games, and next level games, etc… That’s not to say I don’t listen to reviews, but if I’m looking at BGG first for some random game, it needs to be close to a 7.8. Good games just don’t cut it anymore. I have 200 games and I still need to cull my collection! Here is my grading scale below. 5 - X Factor / Fantastic / tickles my funny bone 4 - Wow 3 - Great 2 - Fine 1 - No Even on my grading scale I won’t go for anything 3 or less, I’m looking for 4’s and 5’s. Only exception is a game I can pick up off the market between $30-$50.
I love this guy and his team. He looks right into the camera and tells the truth with a smile. "I give Arkham Horror LCG a 5 out of 10." This guy will grow up to be President of the United States.
The people voting it a 10 or 1 without even playing is why I generally ignore all the 10s and 1s outright and also specifically look at comments from people who rated it. With films and video games, I've found that those rated an average of 8.5 or higher will likely have something I really enjoy, but with board games on BGG there's much less correlation, because the amount of people involved is relatively low, there aren't any aggregate critic scores, there's a lot of vote manipulation for crowdfunded games, and more. Games in the Top 100 that have mechanics and themes I know I enjoy? Sure, those will likely be a hit! That's how I got to TI4. But the 27 Worker Placement games in the Top 100 right now? A few have been hits for me, some were decent, half were complete misses.
Good vid. Most people who don't like the BGG rating and ranking system don't understand it and aren't familiar with statistical analysis. The major flaws with the system are not actually about the system; they're about human nature.
You're not allowed to? Is your account restricted for some reason? The ratings have an accompanying comment field. And there are always review forums to provide even more detailed feedback.
@@helxis - Years ago, a couple of people ganged up on me with racial attacks. After noticing that the moderators would not step in, I politely defended myself. They immediately banned me for life while allowing those attacking me to continue. And I got an email saying, "And don't you dare open a new account or we will block you from even navigating our website." I'm too old for this type of crap.
Great video. Statistics are incredible hard to get right. Most people get confused that a “grade” for a product or a school subject is just an estimation. How true the grade is depends on your skill to interpret it.
As someone who likes really crunchy games, the top 100 is a trap. Because there's a lot of great complex game on there.... but unless you have a bunch of equally as motivated buddies, you won't get to play each individual game much. I'm now paying way more attention to medium weight games (complexity range 2/5 to 3/5 on BGG) and even games below that because even if these games are "easier" to teach and understand, doesn't mean it's easier to win even against beginning players. I'm hosting a board game night an my company once a week and while I'd rather just play Dune Imperium or whatever, I'll happily sit down with Deception: Murder in Hong Kong or Camel Up if it means happy/excited faces.
I've never rated my collection because I never managed to decide on a consistent way to do it, I never actually realised they had a rating system listed on the site itself. Maybe I'll actually get around to doing it at some point. Useful video thankyou I enjoyed the maths part and the explanation of how it works I always wondered
I've always wondered if maybe forcing users to rank (not rate) all their games would somehow be better and then somehow derive a geek score from that. But I"m sure that has some sort of huge shortcoming that I can't see.
Awesome as always! You didn’t just said ML algorithm, but did the math behind it. I would add one more thing which I noticed in case of Nemesys: Cognitive dissonance. I saw that a bunch of people bought it for a tons of money and it went up on bgg ranking. If you spend your hard earned cash on a decision you need to strengthen your actions with a good 10 before you even try it out. It’s not about the game, but the buyer. In other hand I saw 1-2 year later people started to sell it and I don’t know if anybody ever did that, but I don’t think they changed their scoring after they stated it is not that great aka. sold it. So it is in the top100 and still decive others.
Allegedly the BGG formula has some additional "safety mechanisms" that shield it from the "1s vs 10s" kickstarter wars. I can't say I've seen it work in practice, though, expensive crowdfunded games with lots of hype still break the top 100 much more easily than more mainstream games that draw in more crowd and with them more objective, less polarised responses.
I think even with all their flaws the BGG rating system is still very useful overall, but yeah: They should work on the flaws instead of just letting them fester like infected wounds. One thing that I actually like about the system is that they actually provide tooltips for every score and that those suggest a subjective "how-much-are-willing-to-play-this"-scheme. Asking crowd-scorings to be objective at all is problematic in general and in this video you point out why it's even harder for board games than movies etc. Personally: I strictly adhere to the tooltips provided by BGG and I also go back and update my old ratings. A few suggestions I'd make: - No Ratings before retail release. (If no one can buy a game there is very little value to have ratings for it anyway because there is no purchase decision that could be based on them... No benefit except for people emotionally supporting each other while reveling in their sunk-cost-fallacy.) - Make ratings weighted by age... Ratings entered within the last 2 or 3 years or so affect the total average normally and then gradually lose impact until... Maybe ratings not edited in 6 or 7 years plateau at maybe 2% or 3% of the impact a new rating has. (Don't make it zero, because that might cause other issues with older niche games.)
My personal way of adding score to BGG is to play base game once, then once with all the possible expansions and sometimes 3rd time with alternate community mods and fixes. This is the minimum that I have set before I allow myself to add any score to the game. It gets tricky if game has distinct variants, like solo variant etc and I feel like it would affect my score, then I usually wait till I get a chance to play those as well.
A bit excessive. I usually just play a game multiple times then rate it. However, the game has to be fun or interesting during the first time. If it’s not then I won’t play it again. Just played a game yesterday and it’s one of those games I’ll be selling right away and probably rating a 5 on BGG
Seems like you're playing stuff just to rate it, instead of actually playing to enjoy it with others. If it was, the rating would come natural, but you're just being OCD about it. A base game is ready to br played and to be reviewed as it is, screw any "patching-up-afterwards" expansions.
@@kraziel I guess I wasn't clear enough, I don't force it, I just don't rate it after I have reached my set minimum. My local game group is 30+ people and we play something about every week. There is a list of suggested and already played games and I have a system of randomizing them and then everybody can vote on the next game we play out of 3 options. If a game is played 2nd time, I try to get all the expansions and so on. The group started as Twilight Imperium local tournament so that is a regular game we play 1-2 times a month. There is a bit of OCD as I like to add in my review something about the expansions and possible fixes to game.
@@shortydancer yes, makes sense, although I have a pretty large group of players and they have different preferences, some like heavy euros, some like casual games, some hate any kind of conflict, some like miniature wargames, some hate specific game or only want to play a specific game. So I didn't feel good cutting a game off on my own, so I created a randomized play system with voting. And BGG rating is my own limit to avoid first game bias, plus I like to add in the review if any expansions are good/bad investement and if some meta game fix is available.
I've backed a ton of stuff on KS but I refuse to rate games on BGG at all. The way people treat any game that isn't 7 or higher as trash annoys me no end, never mind the stupid rating wars with 1s and 10s. These days, I just tend to ignore other peoples opinions on games entirely. It's too easy for someone else to poison the well for me. I dig the way you guys review.
The scoring system used for videogames when there were videogame magazines, used graphics, sound, music and gameplay. I know gameplay is too wide, but then the article detailed why gameplay was rated that way, so the WHY matters most. It will tell you if the critic has a similar taste and what are the pros and cons.
I remember reading/listening somewhere that the year of release of a game also influences its geek rating. At the turn of the year there are a lot of changes in the ranking. Newer games benefit.
One thing that I think we may see happen in the future is that we see 2 rating groupings. These are crowd sourced, and the rest. The crowd sourcing games, I think, have a vastly inflated rating because people who have shelled out a lot of money for the game have to justify to themselves that it is a good game.
BGG needs to take a Rotten Tomatoes approach where certain users can become approved as trusted, critical reviewers that weigh into a second score. This way you can have an "audience score" and a "critic score". Maybe even something like a "1st play, 2nd play, 10th play" rating system. There are a lot of options that are better than what they have now, which is a shame because they are the one site that everyone relies on for this information. Personally, I now get what I feel is much better information via board gaming podcasts -- especially SVWAG. You want to hear from people that not only own a game, but have played it several times, and that can critically compare a given game to others. Preferably you also want them to be willing to state that a game is bad; and you need someone that isn't taking paid reviews or other incentives.
I stopped looking at critic ratings and only check user ratings. Yes there are some people that rate things out of spite but in my experience in general user ratings are much more accurate. Professional reviewers either get paid or get free games in return for a review. You can often read the review and detect that they are trying to please the company that gave them a free game. Not always but often. I particularly like board game reviews that are contrarian to the hype
@@uplift-yourdailypickup6424 The counter to this is that the masses love garbage. The BGG ratings became way less useful the moment that board games became at all popular. We're inundated with an unending stream of bad games that are more about hype and marketing than anything else, and people eat them up because Good Production Value and Minis. Sound familiar? Yea. People think Marvel movies and Disney remakes are great, too. At least there are fewer critics such that one can identify the ones they trust and that align with their tastes. It is just a shame that right now in board gaming that this means watching UA-cam and listening to podcasts for hours to try to distill a meaningful result out of all the information. I'd much rather have an aggregate score from these places that I trust than to have an ignorant population try to tell me that Tainted Grail is good.
I don't put too much weight into the review scores. I just watch how to play videos and decide from that if it sounds like a game I'd enjoy. If I do look at the reviews I'll read a few high and low scores from reviews that put some substance into their review report.
I usually find games I'm interested in and BGG is then the last place I'll look before purchasing, just to see... but it almost never sways me far from whatever my thoughts already were. I used to take the time to update my collection on BGG and give ratings but it's been many years since I bothered with that.
Nice, yeah I usually just skim a couple of reviews to get an idea of the general consensus, but it typically doesn't deter me from a game I'm already super interested in -Ashton
Every time I see that a game has very beautiful and expensive miniatures, I mentally remove 1.0 point from the BGG rating. If it's a Kickstarter game, I temporarily remove another 0.5 points until more non-backers tried it without the premium components and backer-bias. Also, as mentioned in the video, very long and heavy games also get a 0.5 points reduction. This method works quite well to get a much better evaluation of how fun a game truly is.
Using BGG's rating system can be handy for a really loose snapshot of what the larger community is enthusiastic about at any given moment and generally how large those populations of players are. However, for all the reasons you've pointed out and more, it isn't exactly any kind of objective measuring stick. Overall, I tend to find the BGG "hotness" list a more interesting figure than the all-time rankings because it shows community activity in a more fluid way and it lets you see games as they rise and fall in the most recent consciousness.
I think the survivorship bias for rereleases and expansions that you talked about also applies to Kickstarter projects - if you charge more than $200 for a game, you're pretty much guaranteeing that the only people who will buy it are those who are inclined to like it a lot. Another factor with Kickstarters is that people who spend that much money on a game will have a vested interest in the game being good - otherwise their money will have been wasted. So it's possible that, even if a game is only mediocre, some people will still try to convince themselves it's really good and rate accordingly.
If nothing else BGG should require more steps for people to taste a game. They should have to add information first like how many plays their rating is based on, whether they will pay it again, and a couple more along similar lines. Putting a few questions first before letting a rating be applied will probably put off a lot of flippant raters; and hopefully even make more genuine raters pause to consider their vote.
This is a good explanation of why the top 100 is so tilted to a certain type of game (long, heavy, campaign-like, and expensive/kickstarter hype). If that isn't your thing, you are better off looking at rankings of specific mechanics or finding a reviewer with similar tastes.
I think you broadly hit the main issues with pretty much any scale based voting system 1) The bombers that blindly go top or lowest score 2) The blind emotional voters that vote before or at least fully experiencing the game 3) People not even reading what the rating are supposed to be and thinking anything below a "7" or equivalent is unplayable garbage
Great points. All ratings suffer from silly and unhelpful users. Can’t count how many times I read review before an Amazon purchase... and read how the buyer gave a 1 star because the box was dented. Product was perfect and worked great, but 1 star for the bad delivery truck driver? Come on... so unhelpful...
It’s stuff like this that shows to me that everyone in literally any community (it’s the same with the film buffs too) put WAY too much stock in “ratings.” Like games that you enjoy, dislike games you don’t. Why does everyone feel the need to not only assign numerical values to everything, but they ALSO feel the need to make sure everyone else also has it scored at the same value as them. Ratings don’t actually mean anything. And they’re also highly HIGHLY subjective to everyone. One number scale can be interpreted and used a million different ways based on how an individual person thinks. That’s why even though different people use the 1-10 scale, you still get huge differences in scores, because people think about the scale differently. Ratings don’t make any sense to me. All right, I’m off my soap box now.
It's a decent simplified formula, but there are other things going on in the BGG rating system. Right now Gloomhaven has the same Avg Rating as Brass Birmingham and many more ratings, yet it has a significantly lower geek rating. With this formula it should be higher. I suspect there is a component to the geek rating that adds more weight to more recent ratings. It would explain why new games rise faster than old games, and why old games tend to fall out of the rankings over time (even if they maintain their average rating).
He kinda forgot to mention conventions for the games that haven't been released and kickstarters. I update my ratings after every convention and once I buy a game I change my ratings if I deem it necessary.
I rate almost ever game I play on the site. Mostly for my own culling reasons and just to keep track if I played a game or not. It is easy to track my collection and ins and outs. Also what game is at 12:00 mark?
Maybe have a hype score for upcoming games, then zero then out on release date. Even that won't be perfect, though, because there's not a sometimes global release, especially for crowdfunded games.
I definitely agree on the people rating the kickstarter rather than the actual boardgame, that is so annoying. And those that give a 4/10 for a game they highly recommend? Glad to hear the formula explained though.
Thanks for these insights! It seems like the bgg ratings are skewed towards heavier games. Your argumentation seems solid: less people try these kind of games, so the people who do are already fan of heavier games and thus inclined to rate them higher. A possible solution could be: the higher the weight of the game, the more dummy votes of value 5.5 it receives...! what are your thoughts?
Yes. Everyone has a different system of rating so the actual number is not really in a scale of 1-10. I've seen some very strange rating schemes. But, all games are graded on the same scale and are subject to the same rating limitations. - One user that rated all games a 1. - A user rated all games either a 1 OR a 10. Nothing else. Gives it a 1, then comments on how good the game is. - A user that refused to rate anything a 10 because nothing is perfect. - A user that only used 4-8. - A user that rated everything 1-6. 6 being the greatest of all time. - Then there are the ones that go thru and rate all games from a particular designer a 1 because (insert X reasons).
Aah yes, I saw a guy that was rating a TON of games a 1/10, but I'm pretty sure he was just trolling by his explanation. Cheers for sharing this! I also had a friend that refused to rate anything (not even just games) a 10/10 which I thought was bizarrrreee as heck -Ashton
I think I get why that scoring system is used. Haters and overhype people may have more reasons to rate the game than average people. So considering that, BGG smooths the final number.
This is off topic but I have the old version of Catan and I only just realized it's no longer called "Settlers of Catan" so I wonder how many people I've confused over the years by saying Settlers of Catan
Another issue I've observed light games are rated less and lower than more complex games. Something about not having the need to rate a short experience vs a long one.
Bgg is a million times better than Amazon when looking at ratings/reviews. It's also really useful for play time, suggested player count, complexity / age, etc.
Yeah for crowdfunding it should probably only be possible for rank it after it released. But they would have to retroactively delete all the ratings from before the releases of older games or otherwise no new game would reach the top (I think. Didn’t think that long about it lol)
The idea that people who wouldn't play it don't rate it so there are not many low scores is a feature not a bug. I know what kind of games I like and if I look at a score of a game like gaia project what good does it do if some casuals played and rated it 1. Doesn't help me at all in finding out if this is a good euro game.
Suggestion: the website can have a non intrusive way of asking people to rerate games. Add decay to old ratings. I'd prefer to have ratings from people that still actively play the game.
I was banging my head on the wall and constantly redoing your math but just could not get the same number as you. Only 6 (SIX) hours of TI4 with new players? how??
Hmm, I would be interested in premium BGG account having been able to parametrize the equation on my own, expanding also an equation for the purpose of processing a boundary criteria. That might be worth a premium subscription :)
This is a complex topic, and I’m not saying this is the ultimate solution, but hear me out. BGG could add a slider to the top of the page that allows users to choose the number of dummy votes being factored in. Of course, not everyone will understand the concept of dummy votes at first glance. So instead, we could call the slider a spectrum between “popular” and “underrated” or something. This way, everyone’s version of the top 100 will be different. The default number of dummy ratings (like, for users who are not logged in) could either be voted on by the community, or it could use a separate algorithm based on the number of overall profiles.
yeah, for example I dont get how Isofarian Guard is so extremly low. many reviewers and players love it, it has a 9.1. But its rank is over 2000, no kidding! it would make more sense to be in the top 200 the very least.
Everyone agrees BGG is far from the best system. And everyone also agrees it is by far the most consistent system. It does not take too long to read into the ratings and for you to learn how to interrupt them to you liking.
It always intrigued me that Shelfside give two ratings. I think people are more honest about games friends have then games they own. It gives you a good feeling if your own games score good so why not rating them a tat higher. It is the same idea as mentionned here. Damn i gave 240 euro at that KS, i'm gonna rate it high anyway. You know it is utterly garbage you bought but hey look how good it scores on bgg. Yeah because the rest that bought that sh... did the same. The amount of votes is indeed a good tip to consider how much the score is worth, also how the votes are devided.
It's silly that games like chess and go aren't in the top 100, that particular group that uses the site a lot really hates the old abstract games, and checkers' rating is abysmal lol
Hi I'm a chess lover. But to be brutally honest, it has a lot of turnoffs for many people that I can completely understand. Its only 1vs1, a player that is slightly better will win 99% of the time and it is highly abstract. That is going to be disliked by many.
@@marcogijsen5508 Well I'm just saying top 100 on the legacy of the game at least, it has stood the test of time, same with go, I would hope people could see that even if they don't personally enjoy chess
@@whalesequence Just because a game is old and has a legacy doesn't make it a better board game experience than some other game. Why should chess be in the top 100, when there are probably 100 board games a regular board gamer would rather play.
Silly me made one of the multiplication symbols an addition in showing the formula at 2:11 (reminds me of messing up on math tests)! This gets fixed at the actual calcuations, like at 2:54. To clarify, the formula is: (sum of ratings + number of dummies * dummy value) / (number of ratings + number of dummies).
And yes, BGG doesn't use an exact bayesian average to calculate their final scores, a little more magic on their end is involved, but this formula gets you pretty far.
Merry Christmas! -Ashton
I went to the comments as soon as I saw this mistake as I was about to have a heart attack if this wasn't addressed. Thanks for saving my life
Lol just started watching and had to pause to the comment section because this annoyed me so much since I thought it was a retarded formula if it was actually set up with addition like that 🙈
I also was just staring at the plus sign the whole time 😂
I have been visiting my family during Christmas time and brought Saboteur with me. Since we had people in the group who were older and younger with little to no experience with playing board games it was something I decided to try to teach them this simple concept. And oh boy, we had some incredible game sessions that took almost 4 hours, round after round until our stomach hurt from laughing because of some some late Saboteur reveals and inexplicable moves from the Diggers. This is how much we enjoyed a 6,6 game, ranked 1251 on BGG.
That's... kinda working as intended , right? A solid 6.6 means that it's not a bad game. It did not "fail class". It's just like you can have a great evening watching a stoner comedy with friends, can be a true bonding experience right there. Lovingly referenced 10 years down the line. But it'd never appear in an overall top 100 movies.
@@kenelmpijay I promise you everything you said is true, but I have more laughs with friends and family playing plunder a pirates life than I do playing viticulture and I really do like viti
Because of comments like yours, I put games on my list to buy. Saboteur is now on my list of games to buy, thanks.
Interesting update: Saboteur won the “AWARDS & HONORS 2004 Japan Boardgame Prize Best Foreign Game for Beginners Nominee” award, yet dropped in its BGG score down to 6.5. Its overall ranking is 1,371. Also, it’s been “Reimplemented” by Saboteur: The Lost Mines.
@@icevariable9600saboteur is a great party game. The expansion, saboteur 2, adds some nice additions to it.
Saboteur is an immensely popular game beloved among boardgamer and non boardgamers alike. There are even Saboteur tournaments despite the game having the depth of a puddle and being largely luck dependent. I would be alot more impressed by your example if you used a 6.6 rated game which was actually unknown in the community...also most games liked by non boardgamers are simple games and score lower in BGG.
Just got to know you guys from the hour and a half gloomhaven review and you are now my favorite BG channel. Keep it up!
Thanks! Will do!
@@Shelfside To me it is more important to know WHY a rating was given than the rating itself. It also is important to verify that the critic has a taste similar to mine. For example, if I see someone who loves card games or abstract games I know taste is going to diverge. I do not mind heavy card bookeeping, but it has to have miniatures. Abstract games are not my thing.
My public score reference sources:
1. The instruction vids (figuring if it's good on my own; sometimes it ends here)
2. The reviews (based on how much I know the reviewer)
3. Gameplay vids (if I'm torn between the first two; I try not to get too caught up with the actual reactions of players)
4. BGG ratings (not often)
I do look up BGG ratings if I'm trying out games on BoardGameArena, coz it's low stakes.
I take BGG ratings with a grain of salt. It’s helpful to get a general consensus of the community’s overall feelings on any given game. But you also have to consider there’s a contingent of people with an axe to grind for whatever reason. For me personally, if a game is rated a 7+ I feel safe investigating further. Especially if it’s been out for a while. That way it’s had a little time to marinate.
Many people love things. But my taste is different. When everyone loved first person shooters in videogames, I loved more hardcore scifi experiences. So the overhyped FPS scores did not reflect on me.
2:15 You got the formula wrong. The second plus sign in the numerator should be a times sign.
2:53 This calculation doesn't give a good result. The average rating is 8.68, you calculate 8.62, the Geek rating is 8.45. So you are off by a factor of almost 4.
By the way, it's kind of a secret what bgg does. At least it is not just a Bayesian average. This can be seen in the top 100:
Foodchain magnate (no. 35 at time of writing) has less and lower votes than Marvel Champions: The Card Game (no. 36).
Hey cheers for this, didn’t see that numerator being addition until now! The calculation was using multiplication.
Good point that this isn’t perfect in giving out the geek score!
I was expecting more research into the possible math, or a better explanation of why his results aren't exact. I think there's an additional part to the equation: something that tries to gauge the "BGGeekiness" of each user. I'm almost certain that if I were to create a new account and give a random game a 10/10, it wouldn't move the needle as much as a 10/10 from my active, established, financially-supportive BGG account. Which also explains why this simple equation can't determine the exact number of dummy ratings.
glad to see i am not the only dude in bay area that wears a hoddie + patagnoia jacket + beanie in doors. my friends and family think i am nuts. i blame the poor insulation of older bay are homes. good video. there use to be a site that took your bgg scores and gave you a recommended list of board games. i used that alot more than bgg 100 exactly for these concerns you metnoned. unfrotunately that website is no longer up.
Great analysis, thank you! Would love to see you look at BGG's weight / complexity rating too. Is that a good estimate for how much effort a game requires?
Thx for adressing the problems with the BGG scoring system. I started a thread about making voting impossible until the game was out on the market to get rid of the fake kickstarter scores, but the suggestion was beaten down with an explanation of how hard it would be to check all timezones for release + people wanted to take into account the few reviewers that had played the game before release. Mumbo-jumbo for me!
A better way to find good games that you might like is to follow a couple of smaller independent youtube channels with similar taste as you/ your group, and get inspiration from there. //
Yeah, if the publisher hasn't shipped the game to anyone, it shouldn't be able to be rated, and that doesn't require any tracking!
@@nzcamel3 Agree. We need to challenge BGG with a fair and sound rating system and break their ”rating monopoly”. Maybe it’s time for other big channels to adress this as well?
Lots of good points. I still remember way back when there were actually a lot of classic games in the top 100. I remember it feeling like a Wikipedia of games when I first found it. It was amazing to me that such a thing existed. I mean one place where every game you could think of was cataloged and categorized and cross referenced. And you could go down that top 100 list and start finding all kinds of great games with interesting mechanisms you'd never seen before or even entire categories and types of games that you weren't familiar with. It was really about board games. Now it's about gamers. The top 100 is just a list of what's hot and trending. It's been years since I considered it relevant. I guess if you're someone who's looking for the new thing to buy all the time then great. But if I'm thinking of the top 100 games I'm thinking of it like the top 100 movies, the top 100 classics of all time that will stand the test of the ages. As others have mentioned it's pretty silly that the classics don't have a place on that.
I really like the point about a separate rating for how much you like a thing subjectively versus how good you think it is objectively. I mean none of us are ever truly objective, but we can try and be aware of our own biases. This does exist for movies too. And IMDb I often find myself struggling with whether or not I should give a movie a 10 because I absolutely love it even though I know it's a flawed. Then there are movies that I can say are cinematic masterpieces and perfect, but that I don't want to necessarily watch more than once or twice.
This may not apply to board games so much, but I kind of like the way the app Untappd does beer ratings. Every time you check in a beer you can give it a rating. Your overall rating is the average of all the ratings you've ever given that particular beer. So your opinion on it can evolve over time. And you can still go back and look at each individual check-in and rating. I wish IMDb had this feature, as my opinion on films seems to move around significantly over time with each viewing. Maybe this would work for games. If each time you play the game you rated it for that play. That way frustrating learning games can be waited against once you've gotten into the swing of things.
But then so much comes down to the fact that individual people aren't consistently thoughtful and how they rate anything. You see it on Amazon you see it everywhere. This is probably why Netflix got rid of ratings all together in favor of just thumbs up thumbs down. Which I hate. But the point is we can go into all kinds of detail and thoughtful analysis about how to handle ratings and you're still going to end up with the masses giving everything either a one or a 10 based on sheer impulse. On the bright side for you this means that there is always going to be a place for professional critics and qualified influencers to provide thoughtful assessments.
That Untappd system does sound cool. Would be great to collect scores with player counts and time played and build up kind of a profile for the game.
Netflix needed people to rate things when they watched DVDs offline. For streaming they just have a lot more info about what gets watched and they can create a personal recommendation list based on what other people who like the same shows as you are watching now. They don’t really have any purpose for a single score of scores like BGG tries to do. (Personally I’m coming to the conclusion that BGG shouldn’t be trying to do it either)
You put love in what you post, love watching you guys
Really enjoyed your well thought out video on the BBG rating system. One of your best videos yet!
Another great video Ashton. You guys always have such great, thoughtful content. Much appreciated!
cheers man! More to come :) -Ashton
Great explainer, thanks! I've always wondered how the rankings would change if you only counted scores submitted starting one year after publication. I have no idea if there's any way to figure that out, but it would be cool to see the difference if it was. Happy New Year!
Nice video! I think it's hard to get any ranking to be definitive since people will always rank games differently. My husband (he made the recommendations on BGG under "Fans Also Like") played a little with the ranking algorithm to try to fix the skew towards heavier games (since a lot of people don't rate consistently). Then a bunch of party games like Codenames and Exploding Kittens ended up in the top 10.
Can I find this somewhere?
@@Ryuuuuuk no sorry, it was just on his computer and I don’t think he has it anymore (it was using the BGG algorithm as a base so I think that was private anyway)
I don't give a dead rat for the BGG scoring system or for famous/popular reviewer channels.
Thank you for this video.
Here’s the thing. A lot of reviewers rated Tainted Grail as one of their favorite games of that year.
As far as games on crowdfunding go, there are too many…I won’t even look at a game that isn’t at least a 7.8.
BGG ratings work best for experienced gamers. Most of us understand an epic game and will only appeal to a certain crowd. The same goes for solo games and ‘heavier’ games. More casual games are going to be a little lower, but that’s why we watch top 10 lists for gateway games, and next level games, etc…
That’s not to say I don’t listen to reviews, but if I’m looking at BGG first for some random game, it needs to be close to a 7.8.
Good games just don’t cut it anymore. I have 200 games and I still need to cull my collection!
Here is my grading scale below.
5 - X Factor / Fantastic / tickles my funny bone
4 - Wow
3 - Great
2 - Fine
1 - No
Even on my grading scale I won’t go for anything 3 or less, I’m looking for 4’s and 5’s. Only exception is a game I can pick up off the market between $30-$50.
The BGG rating system has never been something I refer to, but can understand why so many people do. Thanks for doing this breakdown.
I love this guy and his team. He looks right into the camera and tells the truth with a smile. "I give Arkham Horror LCG a 5 out of 10." This guy will grow up to be President of the United States.
And that's just boring..
The people voting it a 10 or 1 without even playing is why I generally ignore all the 10s and 1s outright and also specifically look at comments from people who rated it.
With films and video games, I've found that those rated an average of 8.5 or higher will likely have something I really enjoy, but with board games on BGG there's much less correlation, because the amount of people involved is relatively low, there aren't any aggregate critic scores, there's a lot of vote manipulation for crowdfunded games, and more. Games in the Top 100 that have mechanics and themes I know I enjoy? Sure, those will likely be a hit! That's how I got to TI4. But the 27 Worker Placement games in the Top 100 right now? A few have been hits for me, some were decent, half were complete misses.
Good vid. Most people who don't like the BGG rating and ranking system don't understand it and aren't familiar with statistical analysis. The major flaws with the system are not actually about the system; they're about human nature.
This is well thought out and well presented. Great video!
I stopped rating games on BGG _a long_ time ago. Plus, I'm only allowed to rate a game. I'm not allowed to write anything on their website.
You're not allowed to? Is your account restricted for some reason? The ratings have an accompanying comment field. And there are always review forums to provide even more detailed feedback.
@@helxis - Years ago, a couple of people ganged up on me with racial attacks. After noticing that the moderators would not step in, I politely defended myself. They immediately banned me for life while allowing those attacking me to continue. And I got an email saying, "And don't you dare open a new account or we will block you from even navigating our website."
I'm too old for this type of crap.
The most surprising thing about this video is that you’ve kept the insert to Great Western Train 2nd edition. 7:24
There’s a used first/original edition of GWT at a game store near me, should I get the original or the second edition?
@@paulhamrick3943 I’ve never played first edition. But I still fell 2nd edition is the way to go champ.
@@paulhamrick3943 I have the 1st edition and I'd get 2nd edition for the cover alone lol
Great video. Statistics are incredible hard to get right. Most people get confused that a “grade” for a product or a school subject is just an estimation. How true the grade is depends on your skill to interpret it.
As someone who likes really crunchy games, the top 100 is a trap. Because there's a lot of great complex game on there.... but unless you have a bunch of equally as motivated buddies, you won't get to play each individual game much.
I'm now paying way more attention to medium weight games (complexity range 2/5 to 3/5 on BGG) and even games below that because even if these games are "easier" to teach and understand, doesn't mean it's easier to win even against beginning players. I'm hosting a board game night an my company once a week and while I'd rather just play Dune Imperium or whatever, I'll happily sit down with Deception: Murder in Hong Kong or Camel Up if it means happy/excited faces.
I've never rated my collection because I never managed to decide on a consistent way to do it, I never actually realised they had a rating system listed on the site itself. Maybe I'll actually get around to doing it at some point.
Useful video thankyou I enjoyed the maths part and the explanation of how it works I always wondered
I've always wondered if maybe forcing users to rank (not rate) all their games would somehow be better and then somehow derive a geek score from that. But I"m sure that has some sort of huge shortcoming that I can't see.
I think the main issue there is that the participation rates might dive off a cliff. But i agree - ranking games would be much more effective.
Awesome as always! You didn’t just said ML algorithm, but did the math behind it.
I would add one more thing which I noticed in case of Nemesys: Cognitive dissonance. I saw that a bunch of people bought it for a tons of money and it went up on bgg ranking. If you spend your hard earned cash on a decision you need to strengthen your actions with a good 10 before you even try it out. It’s not about the game, but the buyer. In other hand I saw 1-2 year later people started to sell it and I don’t know if anybody ever did that, but I don’t think they changed their scoring after they stated it is not that great aka. sold it. So it is in the top100 and still decive others.
Allegedly the BGG formula has some additional "safety mechanisms" that shield it from the "1s vs 10s" kickstarter wars. I can't say I've seen it work in practice, though, expensive crowdfunded games with lots of hype still break the top 100 much more easily than more mainstream games that draw in more crowd and with them more objective, less polarised responses.
I think even with all their flaws the BGG rating system is still very useful overall, but yeah: They should work on the flaws instead of just letting them fester like infected wounds.
One thing that I actually like about the system is that they actually provide tooltips for every score and that those suggest a subjective "how-much-are-willing-to-play-this"-scheme. Asking crowd-scorings to be objective at all is problematic in general and in this video you point out why it's even harder for board games than movies etc.
Personally: I strictly adhere to the tooltips provided by BGG and I also go back and update my old ratings.
A few suggestions I'd make:
- No Ratings before retail release. (If no one can buy a game there is very little value to have ratings for it anyway because there is no purchase decision that could be based on them... No benefit except for people emotionally supporting each other while reveling in their sunk-cost-fallacy.)
- Make ratings weighted by age... Ratings entered within the last 2 or 3 years or so affect the total average normally and then gradually lose impact until... Maybe ratings not edited in 6 or 7 years plateau at maybe 2% or 3% of the impact a new rating has. (Don't make it zero, because that might cause other issues with older niche games.)
My personal way of adding score to BGG is to play base game once, then once with all the possible expansions and sometimes 3rd time with alternate community mods and fixes. This is the minimum that I have set before I allow myself to add any score to the game. It gets tricky if game has distinct variants, like solo variant etc and I feel like it would affect my score, then I usually wait till I get a chance to play those as well.
A bit excessive. I usually just play a game multiple times then rate it. However, the game has to be fun or interesting during the first time. If it’s not then I won’t play it again. Just played a game yesterday and it’s one of those games I’ll be selling right away and probably rating a 5 on BGG
Seems like you're playing stuff just to rate it, instead of actually playing to enjoy it with others. If it was, the rating would come natural, but you're just being OCD about it. A base game is ready to br played and to be reviewed as it is, screw any "patching-up-afterwards" expansions.
@@kraziel I guess I wasn't clear enough, I don't force it, I just don't rate it after I have reached my set minimum. My local game group is 30+ people and we play something about every week. There is a list of suggested and already played games and I have a system of randomizing them and then everybody can vote on the next game we play out of 3 options. If a game is played 2nd time, I try to get all the expansions and so on. The group started as Twilight Imperium local tournament so that is a regular game we play 1-2 times a month. There is a bit of OCD as I like to add in my review something about the expansions and possible fixes to game.
@@shortydancer yes, makes sense, although I have a pretty large group of players and they have different preferences, some like heavy euros, some like casual games, some hate any kind of conflict, some like miniature wargames, some hate specific game or only want to play a specific game. So I didn't feel good cutting a game off on my own, so I created a randomized play system with voting. And BGG rating is my own limit to avoid first game bias, plus I like to add in the review if any expansions are good/bad investement and if some meta game fix is available.
Thank you! I finally got a clear picture of how tha system works. Happy New Year 🥳
I've backed a ton of stuff on KS but I refuse to rate games on BGG at all.
The way people treat any game that isn't 7 or higher as trash annoys me no end, never mind the stupid rating wars with 1s and 10s.
These days, I just tend to ignore other peoples opinions on games entirely. It's too easy for someone else to poison the well for me.
I dig the way you guys review.
The scoring system used for videogames when there were videogame magazines, used graphics, sound, music and gameplay. I know gameplay is too wide, but then the article detailed why gameplay was rated that way, so the WHY matters most. It will tell you if the critic has a similar taste and what are the pros and cons.
That was a refreshingly satisfying video, thanks!
I remember reading/listening somewhere that the year of release of a game also influences its geek rating. At the turn of the year there are a lot of changes in the ranking. Newer games benefit.
One thing that I think we may see happen in the future is that we see 2 rating groupings. These are crowd sourced, and the rest.
The crowd sourcing games, I think, have a vastly inflated rating because people who have shelled out a lot of money for the game have to justify to themselves that it is a good game.
BGG needs to take a Rotten Tomatoes approach where certain users can become approved as trusted, critical reviewers that weigh into a second score. This way you can have an "audience score" and a "critic score". Maybe even something like a "1st play, 2nd play, 10th play" rating system. There are a lot of options that are better than what they have now, which is a shame because they are the one site that everyone relies on for this information.
Personally, I now get what I feel is much better information via board gaming podcasts -- especially SVWAG. You want to hear from people that not only own a game, but have played it several times, and that can critically compare a given game to others. Preferably you also want them to be willing to state that a game is bad; and you need someone that isn't taking paid reviews or other incentives.
Yep, this is useful on rotten tomatoes - if it’s a high critic score and low audience score, it’s 100% political agenda driven movie
Nah, RT's critics are corrupt. There scores are very political as Elros11 says.
I stopped looking at critic ratings and only check user ratings. Yes there are some people that rate things out of spite but in my experience in general user ratings are much more accurate. Professional reviewers either get paid or get free games in return for a review. You can often read the review and detect that they are trying to please the company that gave them a free game. Not always but often. I particularly like board game reviews that are contrarian to the hype
@@uplift-yourdailypickup6424 The counter to this is that the masses love garbage. The BGG ratings became way less useful the moment that board games became at all popular. We're inundated with an unending stream of bad games that are more about hype and marketing than anything else, and people eat them up because Good Production Value and Minis. Sound familiar? Yea. People think Marvel movies and Disney remakes are great, too.
At least there are fewer critics such that one can identify the ones they trust and that align with their tastes. It is just a shame that right now in board gaming that this means watching UA-cam and listening to podcasts for hours to try to distill a meaningful result out of all the information. I'd much rather have an aggregate score from these places that I trust than to have an ignorant population try to tell me that Tainted Grail is good.
One could argue that certain awards are the critic scores, like "Spiel des Jahres".
I don't put too much weight into the review scores. I just watch how to play videos and decide from that if it sounds like a game I'd enjoy. If I do look at the reviews I'll read a few high and low scores from reviews that put some substance into their review report.
You had me at the Age Of Empires background music… subscribed! 😆
TY very much for this VERY INTERESTING POST!
I usually find games I'm interested in and BGG is then the last place I'll look before purchasing, just to see... but it almost never sways me far from whatever my thoughts already were. I used to take the time to update my collection on BGG and give ratings but it's been many years since I bothered with that.
Nice, yeah I usually just skim a couple of reviews to get an idea of the general consensus, but it typically doesn't deter me from a game I'm already super interested in -Ashton
Every time I see that a game has very beautiful and expensive miniatures, I mentally remove 1.0 point from the BGG rating. If it's a Kickstarter game, I temporarily remove another 0.5 points until more non-backers tried it without the premium components and backer-bias. Also, as mentioned in the video, very long and heavy games also get a 0.5 points reduction. This method works quite well to get a much better evaluation of how fun a game truly is.
I learned that many top rated games on BGG don't resonate with my gaming group.
Gonna review my ratings for sure. Thanks for the video
Using BGG's rating system can be handy for a really loose snapshot of what the larger community is enthusiastic about at any given moment and generally how large those populations of players are. However, for all the reasons you've pointed out and more, it isn't exactly any kind of objective measuring stick. Overall, I tend to find the BGG "hotness" list a more interesting figure than the all-time rankings because it shows community activity in a more fluid way and it lets you see games as they rise and fall in the most recent consciousness.
I think the survivorship bias for rereleases and expansions that you talked about also applies to Kickstarter projects - if you charge more than $200 for a game, you're pretty much guaranteeing that the only people who will buy it are those who are inclined to like it a lot.
Another factor with Kickstarters is that people who spend that much money on a game will have a vested interest in the game being good - otherwise their money will have been wasted. So it's possible that, even if a game is only mediocre, some people will still try to convince themselves it's really good and rate accordingly.
If nothing else BGG should require more steps for people to taste a game.
They should have to add information first like how many plays their rating is based on, whether they will pay it again, and a couple more along similar lines. Putting a few questions first before letting a rating be applied will probably put off a lot of flippant raters; and hopefully even make more genuine raters pause to consider their vote.
This is a good explanation of why the top 100 is so tilted to a certain type of game (long, heavy, campaign-like, and expensive/kickstarter hype). If that isn't your thing, you are better off looking at rankings of specific mechanics or finding a reviewer with similar tastes.
I think you broadly hit the main issues with pretty much any scale based voting system
1) The bombers that blindly go top or lowest score
2) The blind emotional voters that vote before or at least fully experiencing the game
3) People not even reading what the rating are supposed to be and thinking anything below a "7" or equivalent is unplayable garbage
Great video. Very well done.
Great points. All ratings suffer from silly and unhelpful users. Can’t count how many times I read review before an Amazon purchase... and read how the buyer gave a 1 star because the box was dented. Product was perfect and worked great, but 1 star for the bad delivery truck driver? Come on... so unhelpful...
It’s stuff like this that shows to me that everyone in literally any community (it’s the same with the film buffs too) put WAY too much stock in “ratings.”
Like games that you enjoy, dislike games you don’t. Why does everyone feel the need to not only assign numerical values to everything, but they ALSO feel the need to make sure everyone else also has it scored at the same value as them. Ratings don’t actually mean anything. And they’re also highly HIGHLY subjective to everyone.
One number scale can be interpreted and used a million different ways based on how an individual person thinks. That’s why even though different people use the 1-10 scale, you still get huge differences in scores, because people think about the scale differently.
Ratings don’t make any sense to me. All right, I’m off my soap box now.
Great video! Bgg should implement your suggestions. They’re all positive.
And then you have Rahdo's scoring system.
everything is 9.01 to 9.99 hahahahaha
Just found you today, great video, love it! Subbed!
It's a decent simplified formula, but there are other things going on in the BGG rating system. Right now Gloomhaven has the same Avg Rating as Brass Birmingham and many more ratings, yet it has a significantly lower geek rating. With this formula it should be higher.
I suspect there is a component to the geek rating that adds more weight to more recent ratings. It would explain why new games rise faster than old games, and why old games tend to fall out of the rankings over time (even if they maintain their average rating).
He kinda forgot to mention conventions for the games that haven't been released and kickstarters. I update my ratings after every convention and once I buy a game I change my ratings if I deem it necessary.
I rate almost ever game I play on the site. Mostly for my own culling reasons and just to keep track if I played a game or not. It is easy to track my collection and ins and outs. Also what game is at 12:00 mark?
Maybe have a hype score for upcoming games, then zero then out on release date. Even that won't be perfect, though, because there's not a sometimes global release, especially for crowdfunded games.
It is and will continue to be a popularity contest first and foremost.
All that and I still didn’t get if brass was overrated. 😂
All jokes aside you got yourself a new sub
This why you should support your local board game shop. Go and try out games in the shop during open nights etc.
Can't wait for the ISS vanguard review!
I definitely agree on the people rating the kickstarter rather than the actual boardgame, that is so annoying. And those that give a 4/10 for a game they highly recommend? Glad to hear the formula explained though.
That was hugely helpful, wow, thank you!!
Cheers! -Ashton
Awesome video! I wish the youtube feed would give me more of your videos!
cheers! Gonna try to make more unique vids like this :) -Ashton
Great vid…. Played in TTS for kickstarter games three times before rating thwm
Thanks for these insights! It seems like the bgg ratings are skewed towards heavier games. Your argumentation seems solid: less people try these kind of games, so the people who do are already fan of heavier games and thus inclined to rate them higher. A possible solution could be: the higher the weight of the game, the more dummy votes of value 5.5 it receives...! what are your thoughts?
I'd say it's not only popularity but it also skewed for heavy games
This feels like more of a criticism of reviewing than BGG itself honestly
Yes. Everyone has a different system of rating so the actual number is not really in a scale of 1-10. I've seen some very strange rating schemes. But, all games are graded on the same scale and are subject to the same rating limitations.
- One user that rated all games a 1.
- A user rated all games either a 1 OR a 10. Nothing else. Gives it a 1, then comments on how good the game is.
- A user that refused to rate anything a 10 because nothing is perfect.
- A user that only used 4-8.
- A user that rated everything 1-6. 6 being the greatest of all time.
- Then there are the ones that go thru and rate all games from a particular designer a 1 because (insert X reasons).
Aah yes, I saw a guy that was rating a TON of games a 1/10, but I'm pretty sure he was just trolling by his explanation. Cheers for sharing this! I also had a friend that refused to rate anything (not even just games) a 10/10 which I thought was bizarrrreee as heck -Ashton
I think I get why that scoring system is used. Haters and overhype people may have more reasons to rate the game than average people. So considering that, BGG smooths the final number.
This is off topic but I have the old version of Catan and I only just realized it's no longer called "Settlers of Catan" so I wonder how many people I've confused over the years by saying Settlers of Catan
Another issue I've observed light games are rated less and lower than more complex games. Something about not having the need to rate a short experience vs a long one.
That's a good one! I find myself fixating on the longer experiences too -Ashton
Cool vid. Great points and fun math too! Cheers
Bgg is a million times better than Amazon when looking at ratings/reviews. It's also really useful for play time, suggested player count, complexity / age, etc.
For useful info thanks
Yeah for crowdfunding it should probably only be possible for rank it after it released. But they would have to retroactively delete all the ratings from before the releases of older games or otherwise no new game would reach the top (I think. Didn’t think that long about it lol)
Ark Nova made top 4 in a year
BGG needs a native dark mode.
you mean complete redesign. and mobile version
Guilds and geekbuddies are way more helpful than overall ratings, and yes mods...clean up the duplicates!
The idea that people who wouldn't play it don't rate it so there are not many low scores is a feature not a bug. I know what kind of games I like and if I look at a score of a game like gaia project what good does it do if some casuals played and rated it 1. Doesn't help me at all in finding out if this is a good euro game.
Suggestion: the website can have a non intrusive way of asking people to rerate games. Add decay to old ratings. I'd prefer to have ratings from people that still actively play the game.
I was banging my head on the wall and constantly redoing your math but just could not get the same number as you. Only 6 (SIX) hours of TI4 with new players? how??
Merry Christmas! :)
You bring up a good point. Replay ability is the most overrated factor for me and doesn’t mean much at all.
Hmm, I would be interested in premium BGG account having been able to parametrize the equation on my own, expanding also an equation for the purpose of processing a boundary criteria. That might be worth a premium subscription :)
This video has a very high ratio of good points to time.
Yes, the thumbnail is true.
Please play Aeon Trespass Odyssey! Probably the only campaign game worth the time :D
This is a complex topic, and I’m not saying this is the ultimate solution, but hear me out. BGG could add a slider to the top of the page that allows users to choose the number of dummy votes being factored in. Of course, not everyone will understand the concept of dummy votes at first glance. So instead, we could call the slider a spectrum between “popular” and “underrated” or something. This way, everyone’s version of the top 100 will be different. The default number of dummy ratings (like, for users who are not logged in) could either be voted on by the community, or it could use a separate algorithm based on the number of overall profiles.
yeah, for example I dont get how Isofarian Guard is so extremly low. many reviewers and players love it, it has a 9.1. But its rank is over 2000, no kidding! it would make more sense to be in the top 200 the very least.
Everyone agrees BGG is far from the best system. And everyone also agrees it is by far the most consistent system. It does not take too long to read into the ratings and for you to learn how to interrupt them to you liking.
It always intrigued me that Shelfside give two ratings.
I think people are more honest about games friends have then games they own. It gives you a good feeling if your own games score good so why not rating them a tat higher. It is the same idea as mentionned here. Damn i gave 240 euro at that KS, i'm gonna rate it high anyway. You know it is utterly garbage you bought but hey look how good it scores on bgg. Yeah because the rest that bought that sh... did the same.
The amount of votes is indeed a good tip to consider how much the score is worth, also how the votes are devided.
Brass is absolutly not overrated lol, its definitly a master piece
Brass is my first big 'BIG' I purchased last year.
Still didnt playdd it 😅
It's silly that games like chess and go aren't in the top 100, that particular group that uses the site a lot really hates the old abstract games, and checkers' rating is abysmal lol
Hi I'm a chess lover. But to be brutally honest, it has a lot of turnoffs for many people that I can completely understand. Its only 1vs1, a player that is slightly better will win 99% of the time and it is highly abstract. That is going to be disliked by many.
@@marcogijsen5508 Well I'm just saying top 100 on the legacy of the game at least, it has stood the test of time, same with go, I would hope people could see that even if they don't personally enjoy chess
Chess is way overrated. Go on the other hand should absolutely be in BGG's top 10
@@whalesequence Just because a game is old and has a legacy doesn't make it a better board game experience than some other game. Why should chess be in the top 100, when there are probably 100 board games a regular board gamer would rather play.
Make all chess players make a bgg account and it would rise pretty quickly.
That's why reviews are so much more useful than ratings.
Why is there an imperial assault rulebook into tigres & euphrate xD ?