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Diving into BoardGameGeek

jvanelteren.github.io

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Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#61

Post by Oddskar »

mercutio2 wrote: post #58
fridek wrote: post #19

Interesting analysis. It has some signs of the author introducing variables until the ranking looks "right" though. I also disagree with some of the conclusions, based on my moderate experience with the site and its users. A few suggestions to improve: * Consider that most users rank 1-10 to stack rank their own games. BGG explicilty encourages this, insisting it's YOUR rating and there is no wrong way of arriving at…

Funny! My gamer friends love monopoly as a light warm up! A game with adults who know how to play takes ~45 minutes. Auctions are taught affairs, which is really the only decision point, but that’s why it’s such a fast play-through.

And you probably play using your own house rules to make it palatable: the hallmark of an at best mediocre game.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#62

Post by The-Bus »

hammock wrote: post #35

The ratings don't diverge around 2015 and it's not due to a hype split. They diverge around 2000 (slowly, with increasing divergence) and it's due to the fact that this is when BGG started collecting ratings. As author points out, newer games have higher ratings. If we hypothesize that brand new games get overrated when first released, we can posit that this "newness" effect would apply for games that are released du…

This also occurred with IMDB. At one point the first Harry Potter film was rated #1 on the Top 250.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#63

Post by neurotrace »

bussierem wrote: post #54

Seems odd to me that they would rate Monopoly as 1.3 complexity. This feels like "well it's an old game and so everyone probably knows it so it's not heavy". That feels wrong. Trying to explain Monopoly to someone who has never played could potentially be a very long discussion explaining how houses/hotels work, paying rent, etc.

Children can learn Monopoly fairly quickly. To me, that sounds pretty simple. Buy property, get money when people land on it, get more money if you have more house/hotels. That's just about it

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#64

Post by Oddskar »

ChrisRR wrote: post #45

It's interesting to see the lower review scores compared to video games, where every game is rated 75-100% Naturally over the years, video games have improved in visuals, design, cinematics, controls, etc. so they've ended up reviewing themselves into the corner. It's more interesting to see that games average at 6.4 which is much lower, partially because board games don't improve so drastically, and partially becaus…

Speaking from experience the span of playable boardgames ratings is pretty much 65-100, I would be very sceptical of anything below that.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#65

Post by Oddskar »

692 wrote: post #6

I look at Boardgamegeek almost ever time I make a purchase of a game and to get ideas. To see what other peoples think, their reviews about the game and game play, strategy vs luck element, type of game etc It's similar to imdb for movies, its a place full of opinions. I take everything with pinch of salt, but it's the best review site around

The more amateur reviews I've read on BGG the less I pay attention to them, honestly.

A big difference between movies and boardgames is that it's (for the most part) a group activity. And to make matters even more inconsistent, whether a group will take to a game or not will also depend a lot on who actually teaches them the game and how that person goes about it.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#66

Post by frosted-flakes »

moate wrote: post #49
mlindner wrote: post #2

> Are heavy games really 'better' than 'light' games? To serious board game players, yes, more complex games are "better" because the simple games tend to have dozens of games with almost identical feel. If the game is complex there can be more variety. > But I don't have time to play games that are very complex and take many hours! And the authors personal biases heavily stilt things.

Just here to say, as someone who both worked for a gaming company, has designed games, and has a shelf FULL of things like Fury of Dracula, Root, and Mansions of Madness, I consider myself a serious board/table top gamer. Light games are great. Ever play "The Mind" or "Exploding Kittens" at a party? Super fun. Everything is personal biases. If you have the time to set up and play Gloomhaven, great! But many people do…

For a three-year-old, Candyland is fine. After all that's the target demographic, and for them, every turn is an adventure. Have you tried playing strategy games with small children? Even something like Connect-4 can be a disaster.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#67

Post by [deleted] »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #28
scrollaway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying bigger books are better because more pages = more complexity = more interesting plot. You must be a big fan of the dictionary. I've found the best board games are often the simplest ones. 2-player vanilla Splendor is one of my favourites and all it takes to play is a deck of cards and a stack of tokens. When both players have a good level, the depth of strategy of that game is crazy good. And unli…

That's a bad take. Words in a dictionary have no interactions. It's a list of words in alphabetical order and their definitions. Well crafted board game rules are about systems that interact with each other. You don't have to be rules heavy to have an interesting game, but the interactions between systems needs to be there to be interesting beyond some number of consecutive plays. A lot of lighter games will quickly…

[deleted]

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#68

Post by treesrule »

tylrprtr wrote: post #40

One other variable I'd like to see studied is the average cost of new releases over time. I have a hunch that this price has been steadily rising in the age of Kickstarter and deluxe editions. Higher price tag means a stronger urge to justify that purchase with a higher rating.

I don't know that I buy your narrative, but I'd sure like to see price vrs rating (while controlling for other thigns ofc)

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#69

Post by dr_orpheus »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #3

> I was a bit shaken by Eat Poop You Cat, but it seems a nice game you can play with pen and paper. This looks like a marvelous game that requires no purchase and no special equipment. Why would it shake anyone except for a ridiculous name?

It's so much fun to play. Never heard it called "Eat Poop You Cat" though. We always called it Telephone Pictionary.

Re: Diving into BoardGameGeek

#70

Post by kgermino »

Oddskar wrote: post #61
mercutio2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny! My gamer friends love monopoly as a light warm up! A game with adults who know how to play takes ~45 minutes. Auctions are taught affairs, which is really the only decision point, but that’s why it’s such a fast play-through.

And you probably play using your own house rules to make it palatable: the hallmark of an at best mediocre game.

No one I know that enjoys Monopoly (I don't know anyone who loves it) has significant house rules. It's a mediocre game by almost any metric but house rules almost universally make it worse, not better.
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