Silly me made one of the multiplication symbols an addition in showing the formula at 2:11 (reminds me of messing up on math tests)! This gets fixed at the actual calcuations, like at 2:54. To clarify, the formula is: (sum of ratings + number of dummies * dummy value) / (number of ratings + number of dummies). And yes, BGG doesn't use an exact bayesian average to calculate their final scores, a little more magic on their end is involved, but this formula gets you pretty far. Merry Christmas! -Ashton

I have been visiting my family during Christmas time and brought Saboteur with me. Since we had people in the group who were older and younger with little to no experience with playing board games it was something I decided to try to teach them this simple concept. And oh boy, we had some incredible game sessions that took almost 4 hours, round after round until our stomach hurt from laughing because of some some late Saboteur reveals and inexplicable moves from the Diggers. This is how much we enjoyed a 6,6 game, ranked 1251 on BGG.

I take BGG ratings with a grain of salt. It’s helpful to get a general consensus of the community’s overall feelings on any given game. But you also have to consider there’s a contingent of people with an axe to grind for whatever reason. For me personally, if a game is rated a 7+ I feel safe investigating further. Especially if it’s been out for a while. That way it’s had a little time to marinate.

Just got to know you guys from the hour and a half gloomhaven review and you are now my favorite BG channel. Keep it up!

2:15 You got the formula wrong. The second plus sign in the numerator should be a times sign. 2:53 This calculation doesn't give a good result. The average rating is 8.68, you calculate 8.62, the Geek rating is 8.45. So you are off by a factor of almost 4. By the way, it's kind of a secret what bgg does. At least it is not just a Bayesian average. This can be seen in the top 100: Foodchain magnate (no. 35 at time of writing) has less and lower votes than Marvel Champions: The Card Game (no. 36).

My public score reference sources: 1. The instruction vids (figuring if it's good on my own; sometimes it ends here) 2. The reviews (based on how much I know the reviewer) 3. Gameplay vids (if I'm torn between the first two; I try not to get too caught up with the actual reactions of players) 4. BGG ratings (not often) I do look up BGG ratings if I'm trying out games on BoardGameArena, coz it's low stakes.

glad to see i am not the only dude in bay area that wears a hoddie + patagnoia jacket + beanie in doors. my friends and family think i am nuts. i blame the poor insulation of older bay are homes. good video. there use to be a site that took your bgg scores and gave you a recommended list of board games. i used that alot more than bgg 100 exactly for these concerns you metnoned. unfrotunately that website is no longer up.

Great analysis, thank you! Would love to see you look at BGG's weight / complexity rating too. Is that a good estimate for how much effort a game requires?

Thx for adressing the problems with the BGG scoring system. I started a thread about making voting impossible until the game was out on the market to get rid of the fake kickstarter scores, but the suggestion was beaten down with an explanation of how hard it would be to check all timezones for release + people wanted to take into account the few reviewers that had played the game before release. Mumbo-jumbo for me! A better way to find good games that you might like is to follow a couple of smaller independent youtube channels with similar taste as you/ your group, and get inspiration from there. //

Really enjoyed your well thought out video on the BBG rating system. One of your best videos yet!

Great explainer, thanks! I've always wondered how the rankings would change if you only counted scores submitted starting one year after publication. I have no idea if there's any way to figure that out, but it would be cool to see the difference if it was. Happy New Year!

I love this guy and his team. He looks right into the camera and tells the truth with a smile. "I give Arkham Horror LCG a 5 out of 10." This guy will grow up to be President of the United States.

Nice video! I think it's hard to get any ranking to be definitive since people will always rank games differently. My husband (he made the recommendations on BGG under "Fans Also Like") played a little with the ranking algorithm to try to fix the skew towards heavier games (since a lot of people don't rate consistently). Then a bunch of party games like Codenames and Exploding Kittens ended up in the top 10.

Lots of good points. I still remember way back when there were actually a lot of classic games in the top 100. I remember it feeling like a Wikipedia of games when I first found it. It was amazing to me that such a thing existed. I mean one place where every game you could think of was cataloged and categorized and cross referenced. And you could go down that top 100 list and start finding all kinds of great games with interesting mechanisms you'd never seen before or even entire categories and types of games that you weren't familiar with. It was really about board games. Now it's about gamers. The top 100 is just a list of what's hot and trending. It's been years since I considered it relevant. I guess if you're someone who's looking for the new thing to buy all the time then great. But if I'm thinking of the top 100 games I'm thinking of it like the top 100 movies, the top 100 classics of all time that will stand the test of the ages. As others have mentioned it's pretty silly that the classics don't have a place on that. I really like the point about a separate rating for how much you like a thing subjectively versus how good you think it is objectively. I mean none of us are ever truly objective, but we can try and be aware of our own biases. This does exist for movies too. And IMDb I often find myself struggling with whether or not I should give a movie a 10 because I absolutely love it even though I know it's a flawed. Then there are movies that I can say are cinematic masterpieces and perfect, but that I don't want to necessarily watch more than once or twice. This may not apply to board games so much, but I kind of like the way the app Untappd does beer ratings. Every time you check in a beer you can give it a rating. Your overall rating is the average of all the ratings you've ever given that particular beer. So your opinion on it can evolve over time. And you can still go back and look at each individual check-in and rating. I wish IMDb had this feature, as my opinion on films seems to move around significantly over time with each viewing. Maybe this would work for games. If each time you play the game you rated it for that play. That way frustrating learning games can be waited against once you've gotten into the swing of things. But then so much comes down to the fact that individual people aren't consistently thoughtful and how they rate anything. You see it on Amazon you see it everywhere. This is probably why Netflix got rid of ratings all together in favor of just thumbs up thumbs down. Which I hate. But the point is we can go into all kinds of detail and thoughtful analysis about how to handle ratings and you're still going to end up with the masses giving everything either a one or a 10 based on sheer impulse. On the bright side for you this means that there is always going to be a place for professional critics and qualified influencers to provide thoughtful assessments.

You put love in what you post, love watching you guys

Another great video Ashton. You guys always have such great, thoughtful content. Much appreciated!

I stopped rating games on BGG _a long_ time ago. Plus, I'm only allowed to rate a game. I'm not allowed to write anything on their website.

Good vid. Most people who don't like the BGG rating and ranking system don't understand it and aren't familiar with statistical analysis. The major flaws with the system are not actually about the system; they're about human nature.

The most surprising thing about this video is that you’ve kept the insert to Great Western Train 2nd edition. 7:24

The BGG rating system has never been something I refer to, but can understand why so many people do. Thanks for doing this breakdown.

Here’s the thing. A lot of reviewers rated Tainted Grail as one of their favorite games of that year. As far as games on crowdfunding go, there are too many…I won’t even look at a game that isn’t at least a 7.8. BGG ratings work best for experienced gamers. Most of us understand an epic game and will only appeal to a certain crowd. The same goes for solo games and ‘heavier’ games. More casual games are going to be a little lower, but that’s why we watch top 10 lists for gateway games, and next level games, etc… That’s not to say I don’t listen to reviews, but if I’m looking at BGG first for some random game, it needs to be close to a 7.8. Good games just don’t cut it anymore. I have 200 games and I still need to cull my collection! Here is my grading scale below. 5 - X Factor / Fantastic / tickles my funny bone 4 - Wow 3 - Great 2 - Fine 1 - No Even on my grading scale I won’t go for anything 3 or less, I’m looking for 4’s and 5’s. Only exception is a game I can pick up off the market between $30-$50.

The scoring system used for videogames when there were videogame magazines, used graphics, sound, music and gameplay. I know gameplay is too wide, but then the article detailed why gameplay was rated that way, so the WHY matters most. It will tell you if the critic has a similar taste and what are the pros and cons.

This is well thought out and well presented. Great video!

Allegedly the BGG formula has some additional "safety mechanisms" that shield it from the "1s vs 10s" kickstarter wars. I can't say I've seen it work in practice, though, expensive crowdfunded games with lots of hype still break the top 100 much more easily than more mainstream games that draw in more crowd and with them more objective, less polarised responses.

I don't give a dead rat for the BGG scoring system or for famous/popular reviewer channels. Thank you for this video.

I've always wondered if maybe forcing users to rank (not rate) all their games would somehow be better and then somehow derive a geek score from that. But I"m sure that has some sort of huge shortcoming that I can't see.

Great video. Statistics are incredible hard to get right. Most people get confused that a “grade” for a product or a school subject is just an estimation. How true the grade is depends on your skill to interpret it.

As someone who likes really crunchy games, the top 100 is a trap. Because there's a lot of great complex game on there.... but unless you have a bunch of equally as motivated buddies, you won't get to play each individual game much. I'm now paying way more attention to medium weight games (complexity range 2/5 to 3/5 on BGG) and even games below that because even if these games are "easier" to teach and understand, doesn't mean it's easier to win even against beginning players. I'm hosting a board game night an my company once a week and while I'd rather just play Dune Imperium or whatever, I'll happily sit down with Deception: Murder in Hong Kong or Camel Up if it means happy/excited faces.

I've never rated my collection because I never managed to decide on a consistent way to do it, I never actually realised they had a rating system listed on the site itself. Maybe I'll actually get around to doing it at some point. Useful video thankyou I enjoyed the maths part and the explanation of how it works I always wondered

I think even with all their flaws the BGG rating system is still very useful overall, but yeah: They should work on the flaws instead of just letting them fester like infected wounds. One thing that I actually like about the system is that they actually provide tooltips for every score and that those suggest a subjective "how-much-are-willing-to-play-this"-scheme. Asking crowd-scorings to be objective at all is problematic in general and in this video you point out why it's even harder for board games than movies etc. Personally: I strictly adhere to the tooltips provided by BGG and I also go back and update my old ratings. A few suggestions I'd make: - No Ratings before retail release. (If no one can buy a game there is very little value to have ratings for it anyway because there is no purchase decision that could be based on them... No benefit except for people emotionally supporting each other while reveling in their sunk-cost-fallacy.) - Make ratings weighted by age... Ratings entered within the last 2 or 3 years or so affect the total average normally and then gradually lose impact until... Maybe ratings not edited in 6 or 7 years plateau at maybe 2% or 3% of the impact a new rating has. (Don't make it zero, because that might cause other issues with older niche games.)

The people voting it a 10 or 1 without even playing is why I generally ignore all the 10s and 1s outright and also specifically look at comments from people who rated it. With films and video games, I've found that those rated an average of 8.5 or higher will likely have something I really enjoy, but with board games on BGG there's much less correlation, because the amount of people involved is relatively low, there aren't any aggregate critic scores, there's a lot of vote manipulation for crowdfunded games, and more. Games in the Top 100 that have mechanics and themes I know I enjoy? Sure, those will likely be a hit! That's how I got to TI4. But the 27 Worker Placement games in the Top 100 right now? A few have been hits for me, some were decent, half were complete misses.

Thank you! I finally got a clear picture of how tha system works. Happy New Year 🥳

One thing that I think we may see happen in the future is that we see 2 rating groupings. These are crowd sourced, and the rest. The crowd sourcing games, I think, have a vastly inflated rating because people who have shelled out a lot of money for the game have to justify to themselves that it is a good game.

I think you broadly hit the main issues with pretty much any scale based voting system 1) The bombers that blindly go top or lowest score 2) The blind emotional voters that vote before or at least fully experiencing the game 3) People not even reading what the rating are supposed to be and thinking anything below a "7" or equivalent is unplayable garbage

I've backed a ton of stuff on KS but I refuse to rate games on BGG at all. The way people treat any game that isn't 7 or higher as trash annoys me no end, never mind the stupid rating wars with 1s and 10s. These days, I just tend to ignore other peoples opinions on games entirely. It's too easy for someone else to poison the well for me. I dig the way you guys review.

My personal way of adding score to BGG is to play base game once, then once with all the possible expansions and sometimes 3rd time with alternate community mods and fixes. This is the minimum that I have set before I allow myself to add any score to the game. It gets tricky if game has distinct variants, like solo variant etc and I feel like it would affect my score, then I usually wait till I get a chance to play those as well.

Great video. Very well done.

It's a decent simplified formula, but there are other things going on in the BGG rating system. Right now Gloomhaven has the same Avg Rating as Brass Birmingham and many more ratings, yet it has a significantly lower geek rating. With this formula it should be higher. I suspect there is a component to the geek rating that adds more weight to more recent ratings. It would explain why new games rise faster than old games, and why old games tend to fall out of the rankings over time (even if they maintain their average rating).

This is a good explanation of why the top 100 is so tilted to a certain type of game (long, heavy, campaign-like, and expensive/kickstarter hype). If that isn't your thing, you are better off looking at rankings of specific mechanics or finding a reviewer with similar tastes.

All that and I still didn’t get if brass was overrated. 😂 All jokes aside you got yourself a new sub

That was a refreshingly satisfying video, thanks!

I remember reading/listening somewhere that the year of release of a game also influences its geek rating. At the turn of the year there are a lot of changes in the ranking. Newer games benefit.

This is a complex topic, and I’m not saying this is the ultimate solution, but hear me out. BGG could add a slider to the top of the page that allows users to choose the number of dummy votes being factored in. Of course, not everyone will understand the concept of dummy votes at first glance. So instead, we could call the slider a spectrum between “popular” and “underrated” or something. This way, everyone’s version of the top 100 will be different. The default number of dummy ratings (like, for users who are not logged in) could either be voted on by the community, or it could use a separate algorithm based on the number of overall profiles.

You had me at the Age Of Empires background music… subscribed! 😆

That was hugely helpful, wow, thank you!!

This feels like more of a criticism of reviewing than BGG itself honestly

I definitely agree on the people rating the kickstarter rather than the actual boardgame, that is so annoying. And those that give a 4/10 for a game they highly recommend? Glad to hear the formula explained though.

Awesome video! I wish the youtube feed would give me more of your videos!

I don't put too much weight into the review scores. I just watch how to play videos and decide from that if it sounds like a game I'd enjoy. If I do look at the reviews I'll read a few high and low scores from reviews that put some substance into their review report.

It is and will continue to be a popularity contest first and foremost.

Maybe have a hype score for upcoming games, then zero then out on release date. Even that won't be perfect, though, because there's not a sometimes global release, especially for crowdfunded games.

Great points. All ratings suffer from silly and unhelpful users. Can’t count how many times I read review before an Amazon purchase... and read how the buyer gave a 1 star because the box was dented. Product was perfect and worked great, but 1 star for the bad delivery truck driver? Come on... so unhelpful...

Awesome as always! You didn’t just said ML algorithm, but did the math behind it. I would add one more thing which I noticed in case of Nemesys: Cognitive dissonance. I saw that a bunch of people bought it for a tons of money and it went up on bgg ranking. If you spend your hard earned cash on a decision you need to strengthen your actions with a good 10 before you even try it out. It’s not about the game, but the buyer. In other hand I saw 1-2 year later people started to sell it and I don’t know if anybody ever did that, but I don’t think they changed their scoring after they stated it is not that great aka. sold it. So it is in the top100 and still decive others.

Gonna review my ratings for sure. Thanks for the video

TY very much for this VERY INTERESTING POST!

Using BGG's rating system can be handy for a really loose snapshot of what the larger community is enthusiastic about at any given moment and generally how large those populations of players are. However, for all the reasons you've pointed out and more, it isn't exactly any kind of objective measuring stick. Overall, I tend to find the BGG "hotness" list a more interesting figure than the all-time rankings because it shows community activity in a more fluid way and it lets you see games as they rise and fall in the most recent consciousness.

I learned that many top rated games on BGG don't resonate with my gaming group.

Can't wait for the ISS vanguard review!

BGG needs to take a Rotten Tomatoes approach where certain users can become approved as trusted, critical reviewers that weigh into a second score. This way you can have an "audience score" and a "critic score". Maybe even something like a "1st play, 2nd play, 10th play" rating system. There are a lot of options that are better than what they have now, which is a shame because they are the one site that everyone relies on for this information. Personally, I now get what I feel is much better information via board gaming podcasts -- especially SVWAG. You want to hear from people that not only own a game, but have played it several times, and that can critically compare a given game to others. Preferably you also want them to be willing to state that a game is bad; and you need someone that isn't taking paid reviews or other incentives.

Great vid…. Played in TTS for kickstarter games three times before rating thwm

Thanks for these insights! It seems like the bgg ratings are skewed towards heavier games. Your argumentation seems solid: less people try these kind of games, so the people who do are already fan of heavier games and thus inclined to rate them higher. A possible solution could be: the higher the weight of the game, the more dummy votes of value 5.5 it receives...! what are your thoughts?

Just found you today, great video, love it! Subbed!

I think the survivorship bias for rereleases and expansions that you talked about also applies to Kickstarter projects - if you charge more than $200 for a game, you're pretty much guaranteeing that the only people who will buy it are those who are inclined to like it a lot. Another factor with Kickstarters is that people who spend that much money on a game will have a vested interest in the game being good - otherwise their money will have been wasted. So it's possible that, even if a game is only mediocre, some people will still try to convince themselves it's really good and rate accordingly.

If nothing else BGG should require more steps for people to taste a game. They should have to add information first like how many plays their rating is based on, whether they will pay it again, and a couple more along similar lines. Putting a few questions first before letting a rating be applied will probably put off a lot of flippant raters; and hopefully even make more genuine raters pause to consider their vote.

For useful info thanks

Yes. Everyone has a different system of rating so the actual number is not really in a scale of 1-10. I've seen some very strange rating schemes. But, all games are graded on the same scale and are subject to the same rating limitations. - One user that rated all games a 1. - A user rated all games either a 1 OR a 10. Nothing else. Gives it a 1, then comments on how good the game is. - A user that refused to rate anything a 10 because nothing is perfect. - A user that only used 4-8. - A user that rated everything 1-6. 6 being the greatest of all time. - Then there are the ones that go thru and rate all games from a particular designer a 1 because (insert X reasons).

And then you have Rahdo's scoring system. everything is 9.01 to 9.99 hahahahaha

Great video! Bgg should implement your suggestions. They’re all positive.

Every time I see that a game has very beautiful and expensive miniatures, I mentally remove 1.0 point from the BGG rating. If it's a Kickstarter game, I temporarily remove another 0.5 points until more non-backers tried it without the premium components and backer-bias. Also, as mentioned in the video, very long and heavy games also get a 0.5 points reduction. This method works quite well to get a much better evaluation of how fun a game truly is.

Cool vid. Great points and fun math too! Cheers

I think I get why that scoring system is used. Haters and overhype people may have more reasons to rate the game than average people. So considering that, BGG smooths the final number.

I usually find games I'm interested in and BGG is then the last place I'll look before purchasing, just to see... but it almost never sways me far from whatever my thoughts already were. I used to take the time to update my collection on BGG and give ratings but it's been many years since I bothered with that.

It’s stuff like this that shows to me that everyone in literally any community (it’s the same with the film buffs too) put WAY too much stock in “ratings.” Like games that you enjoy, dislike games you don’t. Why does everyone feel the need to not only assign numerical values to everything, but they ALSO feel the need to make sure everyone else also has it scored at the same value as them. Ratings don’t actually mean anything. And they’re also highly HIGHLY subjective to everyone. One number scale can be interpreted and used a million different ways based on how an individual person thinks. That’s why even though different people use the 1-10 scale, you still get huge differences in scores, because people think about the scale differently. Ratings don’t make any sense to me. All right, I’m off my soap box now.

Another issue I've observed light games are rated less and lower than more complex games. Something about not having the need to rate a short experience vs a long one.

Great content!

I rate almost ever game I play on the site. Mostly for my own culling reasons and just to keep track if I played a game or not. It is easy to track my collection and ins and outs. Also what game is at 12:00 mark?

The idea that people who wouldn't play it don't rate it so there are not many low scores is a feature not a bug. I know what kind of games I like and if I look at a score of a game like gaia project what good does it do if some casuals played and rated it 1. Doesn't help me at all in finding out if this is a good euro game.

Great Video! Like u I have two games I really like Wendake and Seeland off the top of my head. Both good games and Seeland is awesome two player. However neither game got much hype so alot of people have not played ... . Should start a video series with great games that were never popular. Sound like school. Lol

He kinda forgot to mention conventions for the games that haven't been released and kickstarters. I update my ratings after every convention and once I buy a game I change my ratings if I deem it necessary.

It's silly that games like chess and go aren't in the top 100, that particular group that uses the site a lot really hates the old abstract games, and checkers' rating is abysmal lol

Yeah for crowdfunding it should probably only be possible for rank it after it released. But they would have to retroactively delete all the ratings from before the releases of older games or otherwise no new game would reach the top (I think. Didn’t think that long about it lol)

This is off topic but I have the old version of Catan and I only just realized it's no longer called "Settlers of Catan" so I wonder how many people I've confused over the years by saying Settlers of Catan

BGG needs a native dark mode.

I was banging my head on the wall and constantly redoing your math but just could not get the same number as you. Only 6 (SIX) hours of TI4 with new players? how??

I am _so_ glad that you did this video. Thanks!

This why you should support your local board game shop. Go and try out games in the shop during open nights etc.

Merry Christmas! :)

I have that exact same ruler

Suggestion: the website can have a non intrusive way of asking people to rerate games. Add decay to old ratings. I'd prefer to have ratings from people that still actively play the game.

Hmm, I would be interested in premium BGG account having been able to parametrize the equation on my own, expanding also an equation for the purpose of processing a boundary criteria. That might be worth a premium subscription :)

I'd say it's not only popularity but it also skewed for heavy games

yeah, for example I dont get how Isofarian Guard is so extremly low. many reviewers and players love it, it has a 9.1. But its rank is over 2000, no kidding! it would make more sense to be in the top 200 the very least.

Everyone agrees BGG is far from the best system. And everyone also agrees it is by far the most consistent system. It does not take too long to read into the ratings and for you to learn how to interrupt them to you liking.

Brass is my first big 'BIG' I purchased last year. Still didnt playdd it 😅

You bring up a good point. Replay ability is the most overrated factor for me and doesn’t mean much at all.

Guilds and geekbuddies are way more helpful than overall ratings, and yes mods...clean up the duplicates!

Please play Aeon Trespass Odyssey! Probably the only campaign game worth the time :D

I would implement a system in which: 1. You can't rate a game without leaving a review (like Amazon). 2. There was a rating from the gaming community, and another from content creators like you guys, the Dice Tower, etc. (Like IMDB, and Rotten Tomatoes) 3. Create a user-friendly system that would encourage honest reviews, making reviewers express their opinions on the different aspects of the game. Not only, "this is amazing," or " this sucks."

I legit thought there was an "elite" geek team thats playing and rating the games themselves XD

What game is that at 11:59?