One thing I've noticed too is that heavier games tend to skew higher in the ratings. This has the affect of "tricking" new gamers into buying heavier games than they otherwise should. The first 5 games or so I bought were around 3 in weight. Now the average weight in my collection is probably like a 2.3. It took me a while to realize I prefer lighter games because they rated relatively lower compared to weightier games.
I've played tons of games before they were released. Learn the industry - review copies, playtesters, developers, digital versions, print-n-play versions, etc are all legit reasons to rate an unreleased game.
finding reviewer(s) who share your taste's is probably the biggest tip, in seeking out new games. I find in generally I align pretty well with your tastes, so it pushes me to try things that I wouldn't have considered before. There is certainly no shortage of amazing games
I think a 'niche-adjusted' rating would also be helpful, one which is weighted based in how high each rating is(e.g. a rating of 8 has a weight of 8. Each rating is squared, summed, then divided by simple sum of ratings)
Hard to do. I generally agreed with Tom Vasels and I liked that he doesn't sugar coat his opinions (one of the few). But then I found he doesn't like Brass Birmingham, which is now my favorite game...
BGG is partially what brought me into board gaming and this is how I ended buying Terraforming mars, then buying and playing Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy and I liked them all very much. However, there are other games in top 10 that I don't see myself buying and playing. And that doesn't mean, that these games are bad, but I just don't think they are for me. I think BGG is a good way to start, playing popular games that many people like and getting some taste. After that you know your tastes better and can make decisions based on that.
Also how I started, but I almost always watch TH-cam reviews and maybe one play through before I buy a game as well. The final factor for me to get a game is to think of my gaming group and can I get it to the table. It's taken me about two years to finally narrow my gaming group to a point where I can successfully play games weekly and to keep that going requires focusing on games they'll play and that will fit the player count. 5-6 people eliminates a lot of top 100 games!
BGG ratings are actively controlled by the site and moderators. I had lurked on the site for years and finally made an account to interact with the community. I went and rated some games and they didn’t like my ratings and banned my account. It was a mix of games and ratings so nothing that was completely positive or negative. And this was before I even made a single forum post on site ever. I sent emails and the only response I got was the moderators decided my actions were not acceptable - for rating games. The place is crazy toxic and cult like. I even tried making a new account and posted something about purchasing one of their products and rated the games and they insta banned me again. Don’t know any company that would ban someone for asking a question to buy something from them. Place is insane.
Good discussion! One thing I missed when you said Alex that "Kickstarters tend to fall off" is some of them tend to fall off because of accessibility. Some of them wont hit retail ever or you can just buy them from the publisher (looking at you TMB, and 7th continent). And also most of them won't get a localized version (spanish, german, french, etc...) which means also less spotlight. Had a talk recently about this with my wife and that I tend to make an advanced search on BGG listing on avarage rating and a threshhold in number of ratings, and I get quite a different list. And I also tend to look for games that have the mechanics that I like, or the theme is intriguing for me.
BGG score is a popularity contest, not an actual ratings site... Which is why we rely more on TH-camrs, such as yourself, quackalope, dice tower, etc. For actual game reviews. BGG is essential because of the community aspect, but its rating system is not perfect, although, I do believe games are getting better and loads more are coming out everyday compared to the past. Especially after the pandemic, the market grew exponentially. And so, it will most likely majorly schew popularity one way or another Still not too worried about any of this though, enough content on both TH-cam and bgg review section (which thankfully is still useful).
TH-camrs are biased too. There is a conflict of if you are too hard on a publishers game, will they reach out to you to preview or review their game? We see this in the video game realm. Being a pure reviewer on you tuber is hard. Hard to get exposure, hard to make money off of views. So the temptation to do sponsored previews is there. This isn’t bad, just the way it is.
@@dcrbdh nobody said there isn't, but at least it's not a subjective popularity contest rather than an actual attempt at a review. I was comparing to bgg ratings which do not reflect a review of the game necessarily, just general sentiment, which is the topic of the video. Also, entertaining the topic you brought up, at least you know the youtuber's taste and how well it matches yours, pretend Alex put out a 100% paid review of a bad game saying it was good, if I bought that game because of his review, I'd never trust his opinion again, so the market sort of regulates itself on that end.
Fantastic video Alex, absolutely nailed it in regards to BGG reflecting what's popular. That also has an adverse effect on people who will downrank a game just because it is popular like what happened with wingspan to a degree. And YES 100% agree reviewers need to declare there own bias. Tom did this really well on his brass Birmingham review one of the highest ranked games he didn't like because of his personal experiences regarding loans. Radho does this well with conflict heavy games. Watching your videos I would say you are definitely getting better in this respect, please tell Jesse to follow suit. I know he likes clickbait titles but it's not always the most useful. Keep up the good work!
Great article, great discussion. To your point about reviewers: one thing I wished it was easier to get a sense of from board game reviewers is the answer to a simple question with a lot of implications--Was the game fun? To a certain extent, you can infer that the reviewer enjoyed the game based on their rating, but it often feels like board games are being critiqued mechanically, or artistically, without actually addressing a core component of the experience which often is whether the "game" is actually enjoyable.
My wish on BGG Ratings would be that the ratings weren't allowed until the game is available. On many Kickstarters, a lot of backers put in 10s on games they are hyped for and then a lot of other people put in 1s to "counter" the hype. It is a silly exercise that repeats itself over and over. For example: On any CMON game, there are lots of people that hate CMON that put in 1s.
There's dozens of ways to play a game not yet commercially available - reviews, development, TTS, print-and-play, etc. I don't see why those people shouldn't be allowed to rate the game Now, I agree that you shouldn't rate a game you haven't played, but that's not exactly what you said.
14:30 Great point. I've noticed Rahdo getting a LOT of push back from people who think he "likes too many games". What I feel like they don't realize, is that Rahdo heavily scouts the games he plays, and has a pretty solid of idea of what he will and won't like.
A huge problem with the ratings are people rating a game they haven't played. They will do this for a variety of reasons. It's pretty, they are excited for it, they are interested in the theme etc...
Confirmation bias (as opposed to selection bias) is also a contributing factor in ratings trends as well: people who have paid $250-$400 (or more) for the super-duper deluxe pledges will inevitably (and subconsciously) justify their personal expenditures by ranking their purchases high.
In no other entertainment industry (video games, books, movies) is the “audience review score” the main way we see reviews. It’s always about the critic scores, the people who do play all the big stuff and give a fitting aggregate. We just aren’t there yet in board games
Really well done video sir. This is a point that I think is being more well understood but is not widely embraced quite yet, videos like this will be a great help in spreading the word. Thanks for the great breakdown.
Very good. When I'm looking for a new game, I look for a type of game I know I like. When I find one, then I take a look at BGG to be sure its a good one.
I'm glad to hear the advice near the end about choosing what is right for the individual & reading comments, not just looking at a score. There really are very few genuinely bad games (faulty production, genuinely vague / contradictory rules, etc.). Beyond those limited few, it's all about working out what works well for the individual and their gaming group(s). but my big takeaway is that I've come across someone who likes the BGG rating system. Never thought it would happen ;¬)
I love BGG ranking, it's quite smart. I enjoyed almost every game that I played from within the Top 100. If we see newer games climbing every year... it could easily be an effect of a bigger poll of ratings caused by a growing audience. In the end, if it reaches the top is because a high number of ppl consider it to be highly rated enough, and that has a amazing meaning... it means that it matters less your individual tastes, bc "your taste" is more likely to already be represented. It increases the chance that game is great, independent of what you like. Every new data point would tend to pull the average towards the average considering a normal distribution, and when that doesn't happen, you see the game rise to the ranking it should be. As for ratings being overly positive... I wonder how anyone without access to all data points thru the time can take any sort of conclusion. Is there any statistical study showing that? One would have to plot distributions (or maybe a mean to start) thru time to be able to conclude that.
Interesting video with many good points. Several comments: * I've been a gamer since the early '70s. At no time has it been possible for me to play every game then available that I was interested in. This is not a new problem, though it's even less possible now than it was in (say)1976 to play everything. * There have been many studies on perceived value. Typically, these are done by selling the same item with different badges at different price points and getting customer feedback. There is strong evidence that increasing price causes an increase in perception of value even when there is no actual difference. I have no reason to believe that this is different in the games industry than in any other industry. * Survivorship bias is important. If a game survives to get a new edition or several expansions, it's pretty likely that the game will be good for some audience. (There are obvious exceptions, often among very old games that are still in the market because of inertia. I'm looking at you, Monopoly.) And if a game has been getting ratings for a decade on BGG and is still getting good ratings, the same applies. The reverse is less likely to be true, in that it's easy for any game to be missed by its intended audience for any number of reasons and to then disappear from the public consciousness. * Finding a reviewer whose taste is very similar to yours is useful, but it can also be useful to find a reviewer whose taste is always different. That said, such a reviewer is unlikely to review many things you're likely to enjoy for exactly the selection bias reasons you mention. * Some rankings on BGG are just odd. When I was looking at backing the Dungeon Universalis 2e kickstarter, I noticed that the rating for the first edition was quite high relative to the game's ranking. Looking right now, with 511 rankings, the rating is 8.88, but the "Geek Rating" is only 5.955. I took a look at the rating history of several of the raters and found that almost all whose history I looked at had at least dozens of rated games, so it wasn't something as simple as discounting the ratings of one-rating members. Even if the ratings are salted with some large number of mean-value priors, this is still difficult to explain. (Salting with 1000 ratings of 5.5 would result in a weighted rating of 6.66, for instance.) As I say, odd. NB: I don't have the game and haven't rated it, though I did back the KS. So I _hope_ the ratings are something like correct, but have no actual idea how accurately they will reflect my eventual experience.
I can see that survivorship bias is real. The obvious exception I can think of is Monopoly (along with many Hasbro old cash cows), which has one of the lowest rankings on BGG.
I think it’s also a byproduct of new boardgame players on BGG who in the last couple of years are playing and ranking newer games. For example, i’ve never played Peurto Rico, but have played and own the top 5 games currently on BGG.
I agree with you because I have played a lot of deck builders and so far my favorite one is Shards of Infinity (with all the 3 expansions), yet it ranks on BGG at "overall"@669, "strategy"@366, to which I'm dumbfounded that it ranks that low! the game is EXTREMELY well balanced and is amazing to play, so yeah
I feel that BGG's ratings are a good starting point, but I also heavily rely on reviews and playthroughs from multiple people before pulling the trigger on any purchase. I also really love if there's a TTS version to try it out, yes it's not the same, but it really helps me to decide.
I 100% agree with what someone posted in the comments of Eric Martin's article "A game rated an 8+ on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's an 80% chance I'll like it. A game rated a 7-8 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a 50-79% chance I'll like it. A game rated 6-7 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a 20-49% chance I'll like it. And a game rated lower than 6 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a less than 20% chance I'll like it. The ratings on BGG have never been wrong for me, using this understanding."
I’m not super interested in BGG ratings these days as I’m a middle aged guy who has been into boardgames for over a decade. I know what I like at this point so I don’t need “guidance” from an aggregate site to help steer my exploration. As a database I find it useful though, and you can find a lot of answers to questions in the forums. I do think you touch on a very import aspect of reviews here though, and that is knowing the tastes of the reviewer and how those tastes overlap with your own. You learn that over time by consistently watching reviewers, but I like that you are surfacing that for people right off the top.
Another thing to think about is that BBG scores are optional. You get to choose whether to review a game or not. So yes I rarely review a 2 or a 3 out of 10 because what’s the point. It’s also harder to review a game you don’t own. So no I won’t review Monopoly Cheater edition a 3 out of 10 because it’s harder to do as I don’t own it. Concordia however is a game I don’t own but I love so maybe I will review it so it goes up the ranking and people play it. That seems worth more of my time.
I personally try to draw my conclusions about a game from the preponderance of qualitative info available on BGG and TH-cam - written & video reviews, Geeklists, rating comments, etc. You can usually see some patterns, both negative and/or positive, emerge. This type of data is far more valuable to me than a numerical rating.
Definitely a fair way to go about it, with the qualifier that you might want to let that stuff age a bit. Meaning new stuff tends to get a lot of hype, the question is whether the hype is still there a year later.
That is why I only look at the rating and not the ranking. I also refuse to have ratings for multiple editions of a game (or standalone expansions) and only keep my favorite ranked. If I rated every standalone expansion Aeon’s End would dominate my top 10 but only War Eternal represents that game. I still need to redo my rankings again but forming a bell curve with 500+ games is time consuming.
That doesn't make it superior in general. It could mean a lot of people have no interest in Midarra, but it's small fanbase loves it. It's like if you have a niche arthouse film that is praised by a small number of fans and critics, and has a better average rating than some mass-market film, but if everybody watched the two movies, most people would prefer the mass-market one.
@@brentonswenson4125 Well based on me playing through jaws of the lion and through 30 missions in gloomhaven and 3 chapters of midarra. I can say midarra is cast superior in all aspects of game play, fun, and has the best most compelling story in any game. It’s like playing a classic final fantasy game in board game format.
Gloomhaven also delivered the game reasonably soon after the promised date. This gave them the advantage of many people playing it and allowing them to blow up in their 2nd campaign. Their second campaign was in reality, a second printing. Middara was 3 years late, and for those of us who backed originally - we STILL haven't received everything from that campaign (complete Pirates of Elenia). In addition, their 2nd campaign was offering a 1.5 version (in addition to the 2nd and 3rd volume for returning backers). So I backed Gloomhaven, got my game and when another campaign came, I could ignore it b/c I had everything. Middara finally came and they immediately ran a campaign which told me my game is too easy and I really need an upgrade pack. Plus the promise of a 2nd and 3rd volume (which MIGHT get here late next year?). But the good news is that I'll finally have a complete version of Pirates of Elenia. I backed, but expected them to be 3 years late again. I really do hope they don't figure out there should have been a 1.5 version of volumes 2 & 3! By the time I get the 1.5 upgrade (and volumes 2 & 3), I will already have had Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven. So the issue often isn't how good a game is; it often comes down to accessibility (since buzz dies if people can't play the game). Had SP given us Middara on time and in the 1.5 version, there's a good chance it would be the #1 ranked game and their 2nd campaign would have been even bigger. But as it stands now, Middara will be a game sought after only by those who love dungeon crawlers and I doubt it will ever get the recognition it deserves.
@@bahasainggeris7884 I understand your points and I only got into the game as a late backer for the 2nd 1.5 campaign. So I only waited about 1.5 years for delivery. And have now been playing it with my group. I also went through the entire audio book that’s 22 hours. That is the story. I was really drawn in, and I don’t mind the spoilers. So just comparing version 1.5 to gloomhaven/jaws of the lion. Art - midarra Fun - midarra (gloomhaven makes you cycle through your cool abilities while midarra allows you to keep smashing the enemies) Length of game session - midarra (much more streamlined while most of the big decisions are outside of combat in deciding your equipment and disciplines) Tactics - gloomhaven (the cards add more tactical depth) Character choices and play style - tie (while gloomhaven has many more characters to try out then midarra has, midarra allows you to have endless combinations to design your character in many amazing ways) Story / campaign - midarra (this is midarra strength is gives me the feel of a JRPG from the 90s. Finally drama - tie in game character drama - midarra. But you have to read the whole story to really love midarra and it’s very long. It’s difficult to read during the game session and best to be enjoyed with the free audio in between game sessions.
@@siriactuallysara Yep - no arguments here. Middara is a great game. Unfortunately, with so many games being released, timing will determine if you've got a popular game (Gloomhaven) or a hidden gem (Middara). And this is why Gloomhaven continues to get publicity while we wave by Middara saying, "Hey! over here! Try this one!" LOL :)
Can you explain why please? I’m not saying you are wrong or even that I don’t agree with you. I’m honestly asking out of interest and to have a boarder knowledge of our hobby. I have heard other people say this before. I do use BGG personally but only to really keep track of game campaign scores and to find reviews and how to plays.
@@wolvz7081 - For one, opinions have become political and based on everything except the game itself. I can go on and on, but the short answer is, I trust more in reviews from those like Alex than anything on BGG. Also, the moderators are racist a-holes.
@@wolvz7081 - I’ll give you another example. Many rankers will do something like give a game, which they believe is a 5, a score of 1 if they see other people give that game a higher score, just to “balance it out.”
any time a kickstarter is big, I'll go to BGG and find a bunch of 10's by people who are excited. The rulebook hasn't even been released and the game is still in a conceptual stage, but people are spamming 10's. It's a shame that BGG allows that, and so I don't ever use BGG for reviews.
You make a good point that the ratings are based on rosy expectations and not hard experience. BGG moderates so much other material that has nothing to do with board games.
Far too often, I justify buying a game because (1) Oh, my sister whom I see twice a year will love this game (2) This will be good when I have 5 people (3) I need to get it all because I might one day want to play this obscure module (4) I like this game and I think it will be a rare gem in my collection
I think the Number of Voters rankings on BBG is also interesting. It is still very much a popularity test, but counters the 'new'. It perhaps leans towards the lighter games, but the new games of the last 10 years which has risen to the top 20 in that ranking are: Codenames, Terraforming Mars, 7 Wonders Duel, Splendor, Scythe, Azul, King of Tokyo, and Love Letter.
The house hold favorite game is street fighter. It doesn't have the highest rating... but it's every thing we want. And the minis are the greatest ever made :)
Great video when people complaint about BGG ratings on Kickstarter or reviewers this is what I think they miss. Selection bias is huge. I back around 10 kickstarters a year and yes they usually end up 8-10s for me but that is because out of the hundred kickstarters that came out those are the ten that I picked as the best fit for me and most of the time with research I am right and therefore my ratings for most games recently are much higher than they were a few years ago when I only had 10-20 popular games coming out each year and I tried more things that I knew I probably wouldn’t love
I have been following your advice to find a reason to avoid Kickstarter games that resonates. It has saved me from a number of purchases that initially seemed like I would like, but … on further examination, I decided to pass. Often on these near misses, I will find a similar game being offered that avoids whatever issue that came up and I am thankful that I passed on the first one. I agree totally that there are simply too many games being offered to ever get everything to the table, especially since I prefer the longer campaign games. Being more selective is the key. Regarding ratings, selection bias makes perfect sense. Nowadays, with the information available and the large selection, a veteran gamer should be able to select 90% of their games as a 4 or 5 on your scale for their tastes. Getting an occasional 3 might happen if something just doesn’t resonate, but if you pay attention, you should be able to pick things that resonate completely with your tastes. There are just so many to choose from! A good thing!
I guess the inverse of selection bias (or the instigator of it?) is targeted marketing. If a game producer can find their 'perfect audience' quicker and better, then wouldn't that also contribute to higher ratings?
Omg you just made my wife and I crack up with your $200 Amazon toaster example. Total bizarre coincidence we were JUST talking about a $200 toaster on Amazon (my wife asking who would pay $200 for a toaster!?)
Removal of "negative" comments on TH-cam and on Boardgamegeek,removal of video dislikes imminent on TH-cam. Just be compliant and consume content and products and everything will be alright.
I' ve seem too many bad reviews on games, and when I have the opportunity to play, it surprises me in a good way. If a game it is not on the top 100 list, I strongly sugest you to try and make your own conclusion. There is games for everyone!
Here is a common rating: "10 - Wow best game ever. I cannot believe the intensity and depth. I just started reading the rules and will update my rating after getting it to the table."
The games I buy are clearly biased, however the games I play are more often than not open to others choice, for instance, being a part of a game club opens me up to far more games than I would personally choose.
I think more important to see on ratings isn't how many positive ratings a game has, but more of the break down and especially what people say alongside the ratings. Also boardgamatlas exists and I think will surpass BGG over time.
@@rbruba The only thing BGA needs is a few more ratings. The thing BGA is lacking is bad ratings (ak bad actors). Most of the ratings you find on BGA are sincere or trying to be sincere.
I rarely trust them for a new game. Mainly as there are so many ratings before it's even released. Maybe for an older game that's been around a few years I will check the rating just to see how it's being scored :)
i don't trust BGG since Tournment Fishing review bombing and I got banned for explaining how symbolism works, but above all questioning how the hell a 4 finger frog could have WP'd. Got accused of trolling and appeal agent was ridiculous. Was clearly subjective PoV ban and he asked if I would stop posting "unwanted comments". You don't even need to own the game or prove you played it, so rating is very likely boosted one way or another.
Important to realize that BGG is not a place to actually DISCUSS issues. Get info about games, sure. The mods have one viewpoint and they will enforce it. They are not interested in debate and they embrace the 2021 philosophy that there actually aren't 2 sides to every issue, just there side and the side of hate, and hate doesn't need a platform.
I too have the problem of too many games so I tend to immediately write-off a game if it (1) Has miniatures you need to assemble (2) Involves rulers to measure distance to attack (3) If the theme has to do with trading in the Mediterranean (4) If the game has Legacy (5) If the game has a campaign (6) Abstract - Exception: Santorini Sadly, I do have exceptions to these rules but I try to stick by these to limit my scope of games. Will I miss out of great games because of this filtering criteria ? Yes, but I can barely play the ones I have so I am okay missing out on some.
I saw a game recently that was near the end of the campaign that had a theme and gameplay style that I liked. I debated whether I should give in to the fomo. Then I saw the all in cost was like $230. Made my decision a lot easier. This also happens with the miniature heavy games. I had an easier time resisting the Batmans and the Hates of the world when there were people putting in three, four, five hundred dollars for a giant pile of miniatures.
I completely agreed that reviewer needs to be more mindful of their bias. No point saying that "I dont like area control, so this game is a 5 for me". no shit sherlock! YOU are my reviewer (taste). Which is curious because somehow I identify more with Zee from DT than Sam (who is your reviewer lol) :P
People should always break down the ratings by genre when looking for a game. At that point i think it's time for BGG to have two separate eras listed in games. A silver age and a modern age of BG's.
The presentation and graphic design of the newer games is certainly much better overall than in the old games. Castles of Burgundy is a good example, if it was designed today, the tiles should actually be readable. Too bad that they kept the Anniversary edition with outdated principles.
It's why I look at reviews and particularly reviews that go into a why. I look at that for any product that I'm buying. If you know why someone is rating it bad you can work out if it will still be good for you. I remember reading one review and realising that the reason it was a 3/5 was because the shipping took too long. Nothing to do with the quality of the product. I also notice with board game geek there is a tendency towards certain styles of games being popular because it's the more serious gamers that use bgg not the hobby gamer. So I love simple games like quarto, backgammon, gekitai ... Simple games that do offer a lot but they tend not to get high rankings because they're not flashy and they're not complicated.
Very well put, many of us follow the hype train and so I did with Chronicles of Drunagor but at least I know I love campaign games and I have at least 4-5 people who would commit as well so I adjusted the hype to my needs and tastes
I think time will tell. When I get a new game from Kickstarter I am most of the times hyped. I play it and then I rate it (most of the time quite high because I liked it). This is my first rating of the game. Funny fact. I did not like Terraforming Mars at all when I played it with friends in the beginning, so it is not in my collection. During the pandamic I bought on Steam the App to play it with my friends and now I can see why it is an all time favorite on BGG. Still not as a boardgame in my collection, because if I want to play it I can ask my friends. But I think after a will you should rate your games again and there is sometimes a change in rating because you are not hyped anymore.
How about get 1000 people who say they own a ton of games and assign them 10 random titles out of the top 200 to play during a one-month period. Then force them to rank the games 1 through 10. See if these results differ from the rankings.
Left BGG a couple of years ago entirely. The toxicity of the community and the over modding drove me away. The ratings seemed so skewed too making me see how companies were manipulating the algorythmn. I stopped caring about the rankings before I left anyway. I've gotta say it was and still is liberating having left. I won't be going back either. The site is a waste of time.
bgg needs to heavily weight for age and the number of reviews per user. As well as consolidate reprints. It used to be a good list a decade ago, but now it's whatever is popular this month.
@@iansutton7416 Any older game from 5+ years ago that still rates well should have a weight added to it to compensate for the piles of new "hot this month" but no staying-power titles. 500 reviews of hot garbage is creating a dystopian average and pushing classic titles down too far, IMO.
I have tended to view that 8+ is probably a good game and can be reasonably confident about it. A 7+ should also be a fairly safe choice. A 6+ could be good if the theme and mechanics suits me. Below that be wary.
NO! I love reading reviews that go all absurd how good some new game is when these people clearly have no knowledege of board games and hardly have account in bgg. It's like an ad, without any clear indication it is an ad. But since you got your game for free, go rate the game to bgg!
Kickstarter: Look for every reason to avoid game that are not for you... Noted. Neither bgg or metacritic (Open critic) for videogames... Just a trash collection of people that hate or love something.
On the one hand games become better. And the board game community seems to still grow rapidly, so newer games tend to have more fanboys than older games. But then on BGG there are a lot of people hyping games, giving out way too many 10 ratings. And then there are a lot of people that just want to protect their investment, especially for expensive crowdfunding games.
I have never paid attention to the BGG ratings, like at all. I just cannot really bring myself to rate games there, because it simply doesn't matter. I use it to find games and get info about games and news about games and that is it. I don't even look at the reviews that content creators link to on BGG because it is easier to just go to youtube directly. BGG will never be anything but a tool and news source for me, with some solid Faqs for games and interaction with designers for rules questions. Outside of that I couldn't care less what they rate anything.
I don't know if you mention this in the video, sorry. But I think a big issue of why people are highly rating games more frequently lately is because games are getting very expensive and they need to justify it to themselves that it was worth the purchase and also to maintain its value.
It's also about having opinions on good game design. If a game very clearly does things that you think are bad design, you're not likely to try it out and you probably wouldn't have liked it either. I don't like it when everything is framed as differing tastes. No. People also have and should have opposing opinions on what is good.
I think that more and more people are discovering board games as their hobby. As the amount of reviews increase, newer games have it easier to reach higher ranks.
There are too many games, so if I buy a game I already think there is something about it that I will like. The more experienced I become, the more likely it will be that I successfully pick games I will like. There are games like Gloomhaven, Twilight Imperium, The Crew, and The Game that I will never try because I have no interest in them. As a content creator you have the blessing and curse of having to play many more games than I will ever manage to.
I will say that the gloomhaven theme doesn't appeal to me very much, BUT I ended up buying it because so many people who also don't like theme said it was brilliant.
When I first played Twilight struggle 10+ years ago I introduced it to my friends as the absolutely best boring game I've ever played haha. Ie the theme was not for me. Totally get it.
Its too bad BGG can't obtain sales figures like movie total box office sales exist for movies. Instead of relying upon number of votes BGG could use sales figures to measure popularity perhaps to minimize the impact of vote stuffing. We need more "crass" sales data to shed more light on what is "popular". I say they could use sales figures but the reality unlike movie box office total sales is that the game industry sales are likely not at all transparent. KS campaign funding is somewhat transparent but the PM can often hide a ton of sales data that aren't shown on the campaign itself. The game industry may not want to share sales data with BGG. Amazon might offer a proxy for game sales data but may not really work if the games aren't really sold on Amazon.
I don't trust BGG period. Not its ratings and definitely not its community. Aggregate sites are magnets for corporate tampering, both from actual game producers and the general advertisers that fund the site, and that makes all the scores up there suspect. Worse, it has a monopoly on the board game community, which only makes it that much more easier to control.
Well it should be important to note, the BGG rankings aren’t of the best games, they’re of the most popular games. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that newer games are more popular than older games. But it is also true that, by volume, games are getting better. Some of the best games of all time are older, so many more games come out now, that just statistically you’re bound to find more to love.
I like to follow BGG ratings, however, It's questionable how people evaluate personally and that's part of the scenario. For me, a great game mixes it up with great mechanism application, if it's fun and it's easy to go to the table. A couple of weeks ago we discuss Vital Lacerda games. They are good, nevertheless, they are awful to explain thus difficult to table it. But, he has 3 or 4 on the top 100, and for me, it doesn't fit there. In the same way, I'm playing gloomhaven with a group and it's good, but it's not amazing to fit on number 1. For me, cooperative games aren't nearly as good as competitive. It lacks the emotion and fun to beat an opponent and your previous strategy.
Having a high bgg ranking means there’s no doubt that it is a good game of that genre, so it is a good guide for people who are new to the hobby to invest and to experiment to see what kind of game one likes.
Except that is not what it means...not exactly. Now ratings over time may tell a better story, but then again BGG thinks Gloomhaven is the best game ever and I just don't get it. I accept it is a good design, even for a game I don't like. I also accept that it is not the best game of all time. So for me BGG's rankings are merely a popularity contest and there is no real way to change that
I haven't watched the video yet but yes they are. So many games come out with a cult following and just have astounding ratings and I play them and they are bad/okay. But I think most very serious hobby gamers really only pay attention to reviews and only to see what the games are like not really for opinions. They know what they like they just want to see how it works to decide for themselves. And I think that's what we need to recommend to the newer players. Figure out what you like and then watch reviews/gameplay so you can decide for yourself whether it's worth picking up
BGG ratings are of interest to me but certainly not a determining factor. There are plenty of games out there with the same mechanisms as the games I chose to purchase. While the other games may rank higher, they just didn't speak to me at the time.
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Best games have no rating e.g. "Blood Rage - The Tavern edition" done, for free, through passion by actual board gamers. Most promising games need a few tweeks in order to become great - some required major re-design.
I really wish BGG reviewers would focus more on rating the games for number of players. You can see umpteen overall reviews and a handful of ratings by player count. That needs to change big time. BGG should be forcing more accurate reporting. IE if you are going to rate it you have to break down your rating to player count.
I am not sure about others but I don't think people that don't like a game are going to bother giving a review on Bgg about it. I have 5 games I didn't like but I haven't placed a negative review or rating on Bgg about them, however when I really love a game and enjoyed it so much I will go on Bgg and right a positive review and give a positive rating. It has to do with the positive feeling I felt when I played a game I want others to share in that, but when I have a Negative experience I don't have that drive to tell them because It may be Me, and not the game itself.
One thing I've noticed too is that heavier games tend to skew higher in the ratings. This has the affect of "tricking" new gamers into buying heavier games than they otherwise should. The first 5 games or so I bought were around 3 in weight. Now the average weight in my collection is probably like a 2.3. It took me a while to realize I prefer lighter games because they rated relatively lower compared to weightier games.
Yeah it's sad that great gateway games got buried in the 6.5-7.5 range, putting them where many would dismiss them
Sooo true. Thanks
That is very true. My first board game is brass lol. Loves it still though
The fact you can leave a review on an unreleased game tells you that the ratings on BGG are fundamentally flawed.
i agree 100% it should be banned
Just look at Witcher Old World...7.9 and the game hasn't been released as yet.
I've played tons of games before they were released. Learn the industry - review copies, playtesters, developers, digital versions, print-n-play versions, etc are all legit reasons to rate an unreleased game.
finding reviewer(s) who share your taste's is probably the biggest tip, in seeking out new games. I find in generally I align pretty well with your tastes, so it pushes me to try things that I wouldn't have considered before. There is certainly no shortage of amazing games
I think a 'niche-adjusted' rating would also be helpful, one which is weighted based in how high each rating is(e.g. a rating of 8 has a weight of 8. Each rating is squared, summed, then divided by simple sum of ratings)
Hard to do. I generally agreed with Tom Vasels and I liked that he doesn't sugar coat his opinions (one of the few). But then I found he doesn't like Brass Birmingham, which is now my favorite game...
BGG is partially what brought me into board gaming and this is how I ended buying Terraforming mars, then buying and playing Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy and I liked them all very much. However, there are other games in top 10 that I don't see myself buying and playing. And that doesn't mean, that these games are bad, but I just don't think they are for me.
I think BGG is a good way to start, playing popular games that many people like and getting some taste. After that you know your tastes better and can make decisions based on that.
Also how I started, but I almost always watch TH-cam reviews and maybe one play through before I buy a game as well. The final factor for me to get a game is to think of my gaming group and can I get it to the table. It's taken me about two years to finally narrow my gaming group to a point where I can successfully play games weekly and to keep that going requires focusing on games they'll play and that will fit the player count. 5-6 people eliminates a lot of top 100 games!
Witcher Old World has a bgg rating of 7.9 ... how can this be when the game hasn't been released to the public as yet ?
Because of people who like to rate things based on excitement...which is silly.
BGG ratings are actively controlled by the site and moderators. I had lurked on the site for years and finally made an account to interact with the community. I went and rated some games and they didn’t like my ratings and banned my account. It was a mix of games and ratings so nothing that was completely positive or negative. And this was before I even made a single forum post on site ever. I sent emails and the only response I got was the moderators decided my actions were not acceptable - for rating games. The place is crazy toxic and cult like. I even tried making a new account and posted something about purchasing one of their products and rated the games and they insta banned me again. Don’t know any company that would ban someone for asking a question to buy something from them. Place is insane.
It became Woke...
excellent video, i learned a lot and will be a bit more discerning about future purchases applying this new lens you have given me!
Glad you enjoyed :)
Really great point on selection bias. Thanks for the thoughtful conversation.
Thanks Steve.
Good discussion!
One thing I missed when you said Alex that "Kickstarters tend to fall off" is some of them tend to fall off because of accessibility. Some of them wont hit retail ever or you can just buy them from the publisher (looking at you TMB, and 7th continent). And also most of them won't get a localized version (spanish, german, french, etc...) which means also less spotlight.
Had a talk recently about this with my wife and that I tend to make an advanced search on BGG listing on avarage rating and a threshhold in number of ratings, and I get quite a different list. And I also tend to look for games that have the mechanics that I like, or the theme is intriguing for me.
Alex, well done. This is great boardgame related content, highly instructive. Well thought, well explained. Thank you
Thanks!
BGG score is a popularity contest, not an actual ratings site... Which is why we rely more on TH-camrs, such as yourself, quackalope, dice tower, etc. For actual game reviews.
BGG is essential because of the community aspect, but its rating system is not perfect, although, I do believe games are getting better and loads more are coming out everyday compared to the past. Especially after the pandemic, the market grew exponentially. And so, it will most likely majorly schew popularity one way or another
Still not too worried about any of this though, enough content on both TH-cam and bgg review section (which thankfully is still useful).
Oh, and btw, popularity exists for a reason, usually the most popular stuff IS pretty good at least, so not a completely useless
+1 on relying on youtubers for more honest reviews
TH-camrs are biased too. There is a conflict of if you are too hard on a publishers game, will they reach out to you to preview or review their game? We see this in the video game realm. Being a pure reviewer on you tuber is hard. Hard to get exposure, hard to make money off of views. So the temptation to do sponsored previews is there. This isn’t bad, just the way it is.
@@dcrbdh nobody said there isn't, but at least it's not a subjective popularity contest rather than an actual attempt at a review.
I was comparing to bgg ratings which do not reflect a review of the game necessarily, just general sentiment, which is the topic of the video.
Also, entertaining the topic you brought up, at least you know the youtuber's taste and how well it matches yours, pretend Alex put out a 100% paid review of a bad game saying it was good, if I bought that game because of his review, I'd never trust his opinion again, so the market sort of regulates itself on that end.
Fantastic video Alex, absolutely nailed it in regards to BGG reflecting what's popular. That also has an adverse effect on people who will downrank a game just because it is popular like what happened with wingspan to a degree. And YES 100% agree reviewers need to declare there own bias. Tom did this really well on his brass Birmingham review one of the highest ranked games he didn't like because of his personal experiences regarding loans. Radho does this well with conflict heavy games. Watching your videos I would say you are definitely getting better in this respect, please tell Jesse to follow suit. I know he likes clickbait titles but it's not always the most useful. Keep up the good work!
Thanks! And yes check out toms review of unsettled today :)
Great article, great discussion. To your point about reviewers: one thing I wished it was easier to get a sense of from board game reviewers is the answer to a simple question with a lot of implications--Was the game fun? To a certain extent, you can infer that the reviewer enjoyed the game based on their rating, but it often feels like board games are being critiqued mechanically, or artistically, without actually addressing a core component of the experience which often is whether the "game" is actually enjoyable.
My wish on BGG Ratings would be that the ratings weren't allowed until the game is available.
On many Kickstarters, a lot of backers put in 10s on games they are hyped for and then a lot of other people put in 1s to "counter" the hype. It is a silly exercise that repeats itself over and over.
For example: On any CMON game, there are lots of people that hate CMON that put in 1s.
💯 agreed.
There's dozens of ways to play a game not yet commercially available - reviews, development, TTS, print-and-play, etc. I don't see why those people shouldn't be allowed to rate the game
Now, I agree that you shouldn't rate a game you haven't played, but that's not exactly what you said.
@@natew.7951 they probably won't be as numerous as post-release
14:30 Great point. I've noticed Rahdo getting a LOT of push back from people who think he "likes too many games". What I feel like they don't realize, is that Rahdo heavily scouts the games he plays, and has a pretty solid of idea of what he will and won't like.
Rahdo is just not for me. End of. He is far too positive even for games he doesn't like.
@@omnitheus5442 you should then watch only the runthrough and avoid the final thoughts, like Rahdo says in every video of the last 10 years ;)
Rahdo is not a reviewer anymore.. its more of a playthrough content creator..
A huge problem with the ratings are people rating a game they haven't played. They will do this for a variety of reasons. It's pretty, they are excited for it, they are interested in the theme etc...
Or they are "countering 1s or 10s"
Yes. Seen that too
Confirmation bias (as opposed to selection bias) is also a contributing factor in ratings trends as well: people who have paid $250-$400 (or more) for the super-duper deluxe pledges will inevitably (and subconsciously) justify their personal expenditures by ranking their purchases high.
In no other entertainment industry (video games, books, movies) is the “audience review score” the main way we see reviews. It’s always about the critic scores, the people who do play all the big stuff and give a fitting aggregate. We just aren’t there yet in board games
To a certain extent true....although over on rotten tomatoes I care far more about audience score vs critic score.
Until BGG quits allowing folks to rate games that haven't even published yet, or are available on TTS, the ratings system in worthless.
I mostly agree...but also keep in mind, what about playtesters? Or reviewers with early access?
Really well done video sir. This is a point that I think is being more well understood but is not widely embraced quite yet, videos like this will be a great help in spreading the word. Thanks for the great breakdown.
Is there a thousand dollars of stuff for Nemesis? (I’ve never played it but would like to very much).
If you go all in on both ks then yes
Very good. When I'm looking for a new game, I look for a type of game I know I like. When I find one, then I take a look at BGG to be sure its a good one.
I'm glad to hear the advice near the end about choosing what is right for the individual & reading comments, not just looking at a score. There really are very few genuinely bad games (faulty production, genuinely vague / contradictory rules, etc.). Beyond those limited few, it's all about working out what works well for the individual and their gaming group(s).
but my big takeaway is that I've come across someone who likes the BGG rating system. Never thought it would happen ;¬)
Will you be covering Heroes of the Shire in your Monday video?
Talking about it yes, but haven't played it.
I love BGG ranking, it's quite smart. I enjoyed almost every game that I played from within the Top 100.
If we see newer games climbing every year... it could easily be an effect of a bigger poll of ratings caused by a growing audience. In the end, if it reaches the top is because a high number of ppl consider it to be highly rated enough, and that has a amazing meaning... it means that it matters less your individual tastes, bc "your taste" is more likely to already be represented. It increases the chance that game is great, independent of what you like. Every new data point would tend to pull the average towards the average considering a normal distribution, and when that doesn't happen, you see the game rise to the ranking it should be.
As for ratings being overly positive... I wonder how anyone without access to all data points thru the time can take any sort of conclusion. Is there any statistical study showing that? One would have to plot distributions (or maybe a mean to start) thru time to be able to conclude that.
Agreed completely, on both counts.
Interesting video with many good points.
Several comments:
* I've been a gamer since the early '70s. At no time has it been possible for me to play every game then available that I was interested in. This is not a new problem, though it's even less possible now than it was in (say)1976 to play everything.
* There have been many studies on perceived value. Typically, these are done by selling the same item with different badges at different price points and getting customer feedback. There is strong evidence that increasing price causes an increase in perception of value even when there is no actual difference. I have no reason to believe that this is different in the games industry than in any other industry.
* Survivorship bias is important. If a game survives to get a new edition or several expansions, it's pretty likely that the game will be good for some audience. (There are obvious exceptions, often among very old games that are still in the market because of inertia. I'm looking at you, Monopoly.) And if a game has been getting ratings for a decade on BGG and is still getting good ratings, the same applies. The reverse is less likely to be true, in that it's easy for any game to be missed by its intended audience for any number of reasons and to then disappear from the public consciousness.
* Finding a reviewer whose taste is very similar to yours is useful, but it can also be useful to find a reviewer whose taste is always different. That said, such a reviewer is unlikely to review many things you're likely to enjoy for exactly the selection bias reasons you mention.
* Some rankings on BGG are just odd. When I was looking at backing the Dungeon Universalis 2e kickstarter, I noticed that the rating for the first edition was quite high relative to the game's ranking. Looking right now, with 511 rankings, the rating is 8.88, but the "Geek Rating" is only 5.955. I took a look at the rating history of several of the raters and found that almost all whose history I looked at had at least dozens of rated games, so it wasn't something as simple as discounting the ratings of one-rating members. Even if the ratings are salted with some large number of mean-value priors, this is still difficult to explain. (Salting with 1000 ratings of 5.5 would result in a weighted rating of 6.66, for instance.) As I say, odd. NB: I don't have the game and haven't rated it, though I did back the KS. So I _hope_ the ratings are something like correct, but have no actual idea how accurately they will reflect my eventual experience.
I can see that survivorship bias is real. The obvious exception I can think of is Monopoly (along with many Hasbro old cash cows), which has one of the lowest rankings on BGG.
I think it’s also a byproduct of new boardgame players on BGG who in the last couple of years are playing and ranking newer games. For example, i’ve never played Peurto Rico, but have played and own the top 5 games currently on BGG.
Yep, makes sense for sure, The more new players enter a growing market, the more new has the potential to outweigh the old
I agree with you because I have played a lot of deck builders and so far my favorite one is Shards of Infinity (with all the 3 expansions), yet it ranks on BGG at "overall"@669, "strategy"@366, to which I'm dumbfounded that it ranks that low! the game is EXTREMELY well balanced and is amazing to play, so yeah
Shards is excellent :)
I feel that BGG's ratings are a good starting point, but I also heavily rely on reviews and playthroughs from multiple people before pulling the trigger on any purchase. I also really love if there's a TTS version to try it out, yes it's not the same, but it really helps me to decide.
Sounds like you are a responsible adult :)
@@thereal4579 only some days.
Good discussion!
Thanks :)
I 100% agree with what someone posted in the comments of Eric Martin's article
"A game rated an 8+ on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's an 80% chance I'll like it.
A game rated a 7-8 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a 50-79% chance I'll like it.
A game rated 6-7 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a 20-49% chance I'll like it.
And a game rated lower than 6 on BGG means that if I like that type of game then there's a less than 20% chance I'll like it.
The ratings on BGG have never been wrong for me, using this understanding."
Yes! I saw that and totally agreed.
I’m not super interested in BGG ratings these days as I’m a middle aged guy who has been into boardgames for over a decade. I know what I like at this point so I don’t need “guidance” from an aggregate site to help steer my exploration. As a database I find it useful though, and you can find a lot of answers to questions in the forums.
I do think you touch on a very import aspect of reviews here though, and that is knowing the tastes of the reviewer and how those tastes overlap with your own. You learn that over time by consistently watching reviewers, but I like that you are surfacing that for people right off the top.
Same here
I stay away from anything BGG as it represents almost everything I hate about the board gaming world. There, finally got it out of my system.
Lol happy to give you an outlet
Another thing to think about is that BBG scores are optional. You get to choose whether to review a game or not.
So yes I rarely review a 2 or a 3 out of 10 because what’s the point.
It’s also harder to review a game you don’t own. So no I won’t review Monopoly Cheater edition a 3 out of 10 because it’s harder to do as I don’t own it. Concordia however is a game I don’t own but I love so maybe I will review it so it goes up the ranking and people play it. That seems worth more of my time.
I don’t even see how a 2 or 3 rating can even exist. 5 is already an F. 6 is already a D. 7 is already a C. How bad does a game have to be to get a 2?
Great video. Really interesting.
I personally try to draw my conclusions about a game from the preponderance of qualitative info available on BGG and TH-cam - written & video reviews, Geeklists, rating comments, etc. You can usually see some patterns, both negative and/or positive, emerge. This type of data is far more valuable to me than a numerical rating.
Definitely a fair way to go about it, with the qualifier that you might want to let that stuff age a bit. Meaning new stuff tends to get a lot of hype, the question is whether the hype is still there a year later.
That is why I only look at the rating and not the ranking. I also refuse to have ratings for multiple editions of a game (or standalone expansions) and only keep my favorite ranked. If I rated every standalone expansion Aeon’s End would dominate my top 10 but only War Eternal represents that game. I still need to redo my rankings again but forming a bell curve with 500+ games is time consuming.
Yep, I focus more on rating with the caveat that I do want a certain minimum number of ratings
I like philosophical contention this as much as, or even more than normal review content.
Thanks :) my personal favorite are these conversations.
The problem
Is if you compare games. Midarra is much superior to gloomhaven. But not as many people have played it
That doesn't make it superior in general. It could mean a lot of people have no interest in Midarra, but it's small fanbase loves it.
It's like if you have a niche arthouse film that is praised by a small number of fans and critics, and has a better average rating than some mass-market film, but if everybody watched the two movies, most people would prefer the mass-market one.
@@brentonswenson4125
Well based on me playing through jaws of the lion and through 30 missions in gloomhaven and 3 chapters of midarra.
I can say midarra is cast superior in all aspects of game play, fun, and has the best most compelling story in any game.
It’s like playing a classic final fantasy game in board game format.
Gloomhaven also delivered the game reasonably soon after the promised date. This gave them the advantage of many people playing it and allowing them to blow up in their 2nd campaign. Their second campaign was in reality, a second printing. Middara was 3 years late, and for those of us who backed originally - we STILL haven't received everything from that campaign (complete Pirates of Elenia). In addition, their 2nd campaign was offering a 1.5 version (in addition to the 2nd and 3rd volume for returning backers).
So I backed Gloomhaven, got my game and when another campaign came, I could ignore it b/c I had everything. Middara finally came and they immediately ran a campaign which told me my game is too easy and I really need an upgrade pack. Plus the promise of a 2nd and 3rd volume (which MIGHT get here late next year?). But the good news is that I'll finally have a complete version of Pirates of Elenia. I backed, but expected them to be 3 years late again. I really do hope they don't figure out there should have been a 1.5 version of volumes 2 & 3!
By the time I get the 1.5 upgrade (and volumes 2 & 3), I will already have had Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven. So the issue often isn't how good a game is; it often comes down to accessibility (since buzz dies if people can't play the game). Had SP given us Middara on time and in the 1.5 version, there's a good chance it would be the #1 ranked game and their 2nd campaign would have been even bigger. But as it stands now, Middara will be a game sought after only by those who love dungeon crawlers and I doubt it will ever get the recognition it deserves.
@@bahasainggeris7884
I understand your points and I only got into the game as a late backer for the 2nd 1.5 campaign. So I only waited about 1.5 years for delivery. And have now been playing it with my group. I also went through the entire audio book that’s 22 hours. That is the story. I was really drawn in, and I don’t mind the spoilers. So just comparing version 1.5 to gloomhaven/jaws of the lion.
Art - midarra
Fun - midarra (gloomhaven makes you cycle through your cool abilities while midarra allows you to keep smashing the enemies)
Length of game session - midarra (much more streamlined while most of the big decisions are outside of combat in deciding your equipment and disciplines)
Tactics - gloomhaven (the cards add more tactical depth)
Character choices and play style - tie (while gloomhaven has many more characters to try out then midarra has, midarra allows you to have endless combinations to design your character in many amazing ways)
Story / campaign - midarra (this is midarra strength is gives me the feel of a JRPG from the 90s.
Finally drama - tie in game character drama - midarra.
But you have to read the whole story to really love midarra and it’s very long. It’s difficult to read during the game session and best to be enjoyed with the free audio in between game sessions.
@@siriactuallysara Yep - no arguments here. Middara is a great game. Unfortunately, with so many games being released, timing will determine if you've got a popular game (Gloomhaven) or a hidden gem (Middara). And this is why Gloomhaven continues to get publicity while we wave by Middara saying, "Hey! over here! Try this one!" LOL :)
Actually SH was my best fit as well; glad to hear you say that as it might explain why I was drawn to your reviews.
Nice :)
I don't follow, depend on, or respect anything Board Game Geek.
Can you explain why please? I’m not saying you are wrong or even that I don’t agree with you. I’m honestly asking out of interest and to have a boarder knowledge of our hobby. I have heard other people say this before. I do use BGG personally but only to really keep track of game campaign scores and to find reviews and how to plays.
@@wolvz7081 - For one, opinions have become political and based on everything except the game itself.
I can go on and on, but the short answer is, I trust more in reviews from those like Alex than anything on BGG.
Also, the moderators are racist a-holes.
@@wolvz7081 - I’ll give you another example. Many rankers will do something like give a game, which they believe is a 5, a score of 1 if they see other people give that game a higher score, just to “balance it out.”
Is that any different than overly positive content creators on TH-cam constantly overhyping mediocre products?
any time a kickstarter is big, I'll go to BGG and find a bunch of 10's by people who are excited. The rulebook hasn't even been released and the game is still in a conceptual stage, but people are spamming 10's. It's a shame that BGG allows that, and so I don't ever use BGG for reviews.
You make a good point that the ratings are based on rosy expectations and not hard experience.
BGG moderates so much other material that has nothing to do with board games.
Far too often, I justify buying a game because (1) Oh, my sister whom I see twice a year will love this game (2) This will be good when I have 5 people (3) I need to get it all because I might one day want to play this obscure module (4) I like this game and I think it will be a rare gem in my collection
All are valid reasons, not seeing a problem :)
I think the Number of Voters rankings on BBG is also interesting. It is still very much a popularity test, but counters the 'new'. It perhaps leans towards the lighter games, but the new games of the last 10 years which has risen to the top 20 in that ranking are: Codenames, Terraforming Mars, 7 Wonders Duel, Splendor, Scythe, Azul, King of Tokyo, and Love Letter.
The house hold favorite game is street fighter. It doesn't have the highest rating... but it's every thing we want. And the minis are the greatest ever made :)
Great video when people complaint about BGG ratings on Kickstarter or reviewers this is what I think they miss. Selection bias is huge. I back around 10 kickstarters a year and yes they usually end up 8-10s for me but that is because out of the hundred kickstarters that came out those are the ten that I picked as the best fit for me and most of the time with research I am right and therefore my ratings for most games recently are much higher than they were a few years ago when I only had 10-20 popular games coming out each year and I tried more things that I knew I probably wouldn’t love
I have been following your advice to find a reason to avoid Kickstarter games that resonates. It has saved me from a number of purchases that initially seemed like I would like, but … on further examination, I decided to pass. Often on these near misses, I will find a similar game being offered that avoids whatever issue that came up and I am thankful that I passed on the first one. I agree totally that there are simply too many games being offered to ever get everything to the table, especially since I prefer the longer campaign games. Being more selective is the key.
Regarding ratings, selection bias makes perfect sense. Nowadays, with the information available and the large selection, a veteran gamer should be able to select 90% of their games as a 4 or 5 on your scale for their tastes. Getting an occasional 3 might happen if something just doesn’t resonate, but if you pay attention, you should be able to pick things that resonate completely with your tastes. There are just so many to choose from! A good thing!
I guess the inverse of selection bias (or the instigator of it?) is targeted marketing. If a game producer can find their 'perfect audience' quicker and better, then wouldn't that also contribute to higher ratings?
Absolutely :)
Omg you just made my wife and I crack up with your $200 Amazon toaster example. Total bizarre coincidence we were JUST talking about a $200 toaster on Amazon (my wife asking who would pay $200 for a toaster!?)
Removal of "negative" comments on TH-cam and on Boardgamegeek,removal of video dislikes imminent on TH-cam.
Just be compliant and consume content and products and everything will be alright.
Like something out of They Live, only they don't even hide their actions or motivations
I' ve seem too many bad reviews on games, and when I have the opportunity to play, it surprises me in a good way. If a game it is not on the top 100 list, I strongly sugest you to try and make your own conclusion. There is games for everyone!
Here is a common rating: "10 - Wow best game ever. I cannot believe the intensity and depth. I just started reading the rules and will update my rating after getting it to the table."
You have Iwari!! I just got it, what are you feelings about it?
That I should play it :)
@@BoardGameCo LOL
The games I buy are clearly biased, however the games I play are more often than not open to others choice, for instance, being a part of a game club opens me up to far more games than I would personally choose.
I think more important to see on ratings isn't how many positive ratings a game has, but more of the break down and especially what people say alongside the ratings. Also boardgamatlas exists and I think will surpass BGG over time.
Why do you think BGA will surpass BGG? Just curious.
@@rbruba The only thing BGA needs is a few more ratings. The thing BGA is lacking is bad ratings (ak bad actors). Most of the ratings you find on BGA are sincere or trying to be sincere.
I rarely trust them for a new game. Mainly as there are so many ratings before it's even released. Maybe for an older game that's been around a few years I will check the rating just to see how it's being scored :)
Fair enough.
i don't trust BGG since Tournment Fishing review bombing and I got banned for explaining how symbolism works, but above all questioning how the hell a 4 finger frog could have WP'd. Got accused of trolling and appeal agent was ridiculous. Was clearly subjective PoV ban and he asked if I would stop posting "unwanted comments".
You don't even need to own the game or prove you played it, so rating is very likely boosted one way or another.
Important to realize that BGG is not a place to actually DISCUSS issues. Get info about games, sure. The mods have one viewpoint and they will enforce it. They are not interested in debate and they embrace the 2021 philosophy that there actually aren't 2 sides to every issue, just there side and the side of hate, and hate doesn't need a platform.
I mean.... nothing about BGG is trustworthy. :)
Well sure I guess.
@@BoardGameCo Lolz
I too have the problem of too many games so I tend to immediately write-off a game if it
(1) Has miniatures you need to assemble
(2) Involves rulers to measure distance to attack
(3) If the theme has to do with trading in the Mediterranean
(4) If the game has Legacy
(5) If the game has a campaign
(6) Abstract - Exception: Santorini
Sadly, I do have exceptions to these rules but I try to stick by these to limit my scope of games. Will I miss out of great games because of this filtering criteria ? Yes, but I can barely play the ones I have so I am okay missing out on some.
I saw a game recently that was near the end of the campaign that had a theme and gameplay style that I liked. I debated whether I should give in to the fomo. Then I saw the all in cost was like $230. Made my decision a lot easier.
This also happens with the miniature heavy games. I had an easier time resisting the Batmans and the Hates of the world when there were people putting in three, four, five hundred dollars for a giant pile of miniatures.
I completely agreed that reviewer needs to be more mindful of their bias. No point saying that "I dont like area control, so this game is a 5 for me". no shit sherlock!
YOU are my reviewer (taste). Which is curious because somehow I identify more with Zee from DT than Sam (who is your reviewer lol) :P
Lol if it works it works :)
People should always break down the ratings by genre when looking for a game. At that point i think it's time for BGG to have two separate eras listed in games. A silver age and a modern age of BG's.
I think its the same in many mediums. Movies are similar, where as artwork is not.
The presentation and graphic design of the newer games is certainly much better overall than in the old games. Castles of Burgundy is a good example, if it was designed today, the tiles should actually be readable. Too bad that they kept the Anniversary edition with outdated principles.
It's why I look at reviews and particularly reviews that go into a why. I look at that for any product that I'm buying. If you know why someone is rating it bad you can work out if it will still be good for you. I remember reading one review and realising that the reason it was a 3/5 was because the shipping took too long. Nothing to do with the quality of the product.
I also notice with board game geek there is a tendency towards certain styles of games being popular because it's the more serious gamers that use bgg not the hobby gamer. So I love simple games like quarto, backgammon, gekitai ... Simple games that do offer a lot but they tend not to get high rankings because they're not flashy and they're not complicated.
Very well put, many of us follow the hype train and so I did with Chronicles of Drunagor but at least I know I love campaign games and I have at least 4-5 people who would commit as well so I adjusted the hype to my needs and tastes
It is completely understandable that gloomhaven is number 1.
It's an incredible and ambitious game.
I think time will tell. When I get a new game from Kickstarter I am most of the times hyped. I play it and then I rate it (most of the time quite high because I liked it). This is my first rating of the game. Funny fact. I did not like Terraforming Mars at all when I played it with friends in the beginning, so it is not in my collection. During the pandamic I bought on Steam the App to play it with my friends and now I can see why it is an all time favorite on BGG. Still not as a boardgame in my collection, because if I want to play it I can ask my friends. But I think after a will you should rate your games again and there is sometimes a change in rating because you are not hyped anymore.
This may be the first time I've heard anyone say "BGG is too positive".
Lol,.in the context of ratings
When i want a "real" top ten list, i look at the BGG rankings and let out anything that came out in the last 3 years. ;)
Lol that's not unreasonable.
How about get 1000 people who say they own a ton of games and assign them 10 random titles out of the top 200 to play during a one-month period. Then force them to rank the games 1 through 10. See if these results differ from the rankings.
I'm agree, also when I see on KS they say ranking 8 on BGG.... Common now test the game before.... 🤣🤣
Yep :)
@@BoardGameCo wooow i just read again what I say and i don't understand myself 🤣🤣 i mean how they can make a note on a game not going out yet.
Left BGG a couple of years ago entirely. The toxicity of the community and the over modding drove me away. The ratings seemed so skewed too making me see how companies were manipulating the algorythmn. I stopped caring about the rankings before I left anyway. I've gotta say it was and still is liberating having left. I won't be going back either. The site is a waste of time.
So...yeah...this is why I largely ignore BGG ratings. Or rather, I treat anything above a 5 as "probably worth trying once to see if I like it".
bgg needs to heavily weight for age and the number of reviews per user. As well as consolidate reprints. It used to be a good list a decade ago, but now it's whatever is popular this month.
Why would someone who is 15 not have as much weight on a rating as someone that is 50. That’s ridiculous and ageist.
@@Mrhofer age of the GAME, obviously.
@@josephoberlander I dunno though ... ;¬)
@@iansutton7416 Any older game from 5+ years ago that still rates well should have a weight added to it to compensate for the piles of new "hot this month" but no staying-power titles. 500 reviews of hot garbage is creating a dystopian average and pushing classic titles down too far, IMO.
I have tended to view that 8+ is probably a good game and can be reasonably confident about it. A 7+ should also be a fairly safe choice. A 6+ could be good if the theme and mechanics suits me. Below that be wary.
NO! I love reading reviews that go all absurd how good some new game is when these people clearly have no knowledege of board games and hardly have account in bgg. It's like an ad, without any clear indication it is an ad. But since you got your game for free, go rate the game to bgg!
Is that that much if a problem over on bgg?
Kickstarter: Look for every reason to avoid game that are not for you... Noted.
Neither bgg or metacritic (Open critic) for videogames... Just a trash collection of people that hate or love something.
Check out RyTracer's channel (Programmer Ryan Opp). He has adjusted the rating formula to better reflect which games are most popular among BGG users.
On the one hand games become better.
And the board game community seems to still grow rapidly, so newer games tend to have more fanboys than older games.
But then on BGG there are a lot of people hyping games, giving out way too many 10 ratings.
And then there are a lot of people that just want to protect their investment, especially for expensive crowdfunding games.
I have never paid attention to the BGG ratings, like at all. I just cannot really bring myself to rate games there, because it simply doesn't matter. I use it to find games and get info about games and news about games and that is it. I don't even look at the reviews that content creators link to on BGG because it is easier to just go to youtube directly. BGG will never be anything but a tool and news source for me, with some solid Faqs for games and interaction with designers for rules questions. Outside of that I couldn't care less what they rate anything.
I don't know if you mention this in the video, sorry. But I think a big issue of why people are highly rating games more frequently lately is because games are getting very expensive and they need to justify it to themselves that it was worth the purchase and also to maintain its value.
It's also about having opinions on good game design. If a game very clearly does things that you think are bad design, you're not likely to try it out and you probably wouldn't have liked it either. I don't like it when everything is framed as differing tastes. No. People also have and should have opposing opinions on what is good.
4:23 "Reviewers that are too happy about the games that they like" we all know that would be rahdo, hyping every mediocre game that gets out. lol
Yep but he's pretty clear about his policies.
The ratings are at least helpful to ne in that if game is rated under a 6,5 or 7, I'm probably not going to enjoy it, or keep it in my collection.
I think that more and more people are discovering board games as their hobby. As the amount of reviews increase, newer games have it easier to reach higher ranks.
There are too many games, so if I buy a game I already think there is something about it that I will like. The more experienced I become, the more likely it will be that I successfully pick games I will like. There are games like Gloomhaven, Twilight Imperium, The Crew, and The Game that I will never try because I have no interest in them. As a content creator you have the blessing and curse of having to play many more games than I will ever manage to.
I will say that the gloomhaven theme doesn't appeal to me very much, BUT I ended up buying it because so many people who also don't like theme said it was brilliant.
And did you ever end up playing it?
@@shanerion I ended up getting jaws of the lion which I really enjoyed despite the theme. After that I bought the full game but have yet to play it.
When I first played Twilight struggle 10+ years ago I introduced it to my friends as the absolutely best boring game I've ever played haha. Ie the theme was not for me. Totally get it.
Its too bad BGG can't obtain sales figures like movie total box office sales exist for movies. Instead of relying upon number of votes BGG could use sales figures to measure popularity perhaps to minimize the impact of vote stuffing. We need more "crass" sales data to shed more light on what is "popular". I say they could use sales figures but the reality unlike movie box office total sales is that the game industry sales are likely not at all transparent. KS campaign funding is somewhat transparent but the PM can often hide a ton of sales data that aren't shown on the campaign itself. The game industry may not want to share sales data with BGG. Amazon might offer a proxy for game sales data but may not really work if the games aren't really sold on Amazon.
I don't trust BGG period. Not its ratings and definitely not its community. Aggregate sites are magnets for corporate tampering, both from actual game producers and the general advertisers that fund the site, and that makes all the scores up there suspect. Worse, it has a monopoly on the board game community, which only makes it that much more easier to control.
Well it should be important to note, the BGG rankings aren’t of the best games, they’re of the most popular games. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that newer games are more popular than older games. But it is also true that, by volume, games are getting better. Some of the best games of all time are older, so many more games come out now, that just statistically you’re bound to find more to love.
I like to follow BGG ratings, however, It's questionable how people evaluate personally and that's part of the scenario. For me, a great game mixes it up with great mechanism application, if it's fun and it's easy to go to the table. A couple of weeks ago we discuss Vital Lacerda games. They are good, nevertheless, they are awful to explain thus difficult to table it. But, he has 3 or 4 on the top 100, and for me, it doesn't fit there. In the same way, I'm playing gloomhaven with a group and it's good, but it's not amazing to fit on number 1. For me, cooperative games aren't nearly as good as competitive. It lacks the emotion and fun to beat an opponent and your previous strategy.
Having a high bgg ranking means there’s no doubt that it is a good game of that genre, so it is a good guide for people who are new to the hobby to invest and to experiment to see what kind of game one likes.
Except that is not what it means...not exactly. Now ratings over time may tell a better story, but then again BGG thinks Gloomhaven is the best game ever and I just don't get it. I accept it is a good design, even for a game I don't like. I also accept that it is not the best game of all time. So for me BGG's rankings are merely a popularity contest and there is no real way to change that
I haven't watched the video yet but yes they are. So many games come out with a cult following and just have astounding ratings and I play them and they are bad/okay. But I think most very serious hobby gamers really only pay attention to reviews and only to see what the games are like not really for opinions. They know what they like they just want to see how it works to decide for themselves. And I think that's what we need to recommend to the newer players. Figure out what you like and then watch reviews/gameplay so you can decide for yourself whether it's worth picking up
BGG ratings are of interest to me but certainly not a determining factor. There are plenty of games out there with the same mechanisms as the games I chose to purchase. While the other games may rank higher, they just didn't speak to me at the time.
Best games have no rating e.g. "Blood Rage - The Tavern edition" done, for free, through passion by actual board gamers. Most promising games need a few tweeks in order to become great - some required major re-design.
I really wish BGG reviewers would focus more on rating the games for number of players. You can see umpteen overall reviews and a handful of ratings by player count. That needs to change big time. BGG should be forcing more accurate reporting. IE if you are going to rate it you have to break down your rating to player count.
Wingspan was basically early coordinated rating manipulation from Stonemaier
How so?
I am not sure about others but I don't think people that don't like a game are going to bother giving a review on Bgg about it. I have 5 games I didn't like but I haven't placed a negative review or rating on Bgg about them, however when I really love a game and enjoyed it so much I will go on Bgg and right a positive review and give a positive rating. It has to do with the positive feeling I felt when I played a game I want others to share in that, but when I have a Negative experience I don't have that drive to tell them because It may be Me, and not the game itself.