BoardGameGeek Ratings - How & Where They Don't Work, And Why It Should Be Better

[@walkingtheland1]

I was under the impression that BGG rules were that you couldn't offer incentives for people to rate games which is a valid line to draw.

[@desireegreverud3723]

yes, this is a BGG rule.

[@eighty6d233]

Unless it's flat out blatant manipulation, I think BGG should just sit back and let people rate games how they want to rate them. I followed Rotten Tomatoes reviews for a long time until they decided that they needed to adjust scores on certain movies. It just all feels fake after that.

[@OriginalAdMan]

Completely agree. The moment it stops being a public forum and it transforms into editorial via invisible behind the curtain manipulation, it stops being useful and attractive as a place I want to get info from. If I wanted that would just read professional critic reviews. RIP Rotten Tomatoes.

[@Darthus]

As a person who works professionally as a data analyst, I agree with you Alex that modifying individual ratings is not the best path forward. Whenever talking about surveys, I always caution to be mindful of what they are asking, because whatever you get back IS an accurate representation of how the people who filled out the question feel about what you’re asking them. With enough volume, those answers begin approximate how the total population would answer the question. But then (which is where you land) it instead asks you to beg the utility of the question you’re asking and the potential answer’s your giving and whether it actually represents the insight you want. Are we asking, “Is this game considered ‘good’ by people who’ve played it” (ala for example Amazon reviews) or are we wanting to know, “How much do people in general like this game?” Or “Are people excited about the game”. Getting as much clarify about the insight you’re trying to glean and making that explicit, then designing your entire approach around that is step 1. I’m not even sure I know what specific insight BGG is trying to obtain and feel like part of the issue with both the interpretation of the rating and how people are answering is they think the rating says one thing, (How good is this game?) where in fact, it’s something more like “How do the people who chose to rate this game on this site feel about this game, past a certain escape velocity of initial rating?” Which is interesting, but maybe not the insight many people want for, for example informing a purchase decision.

[@whalesequence]

Simple fix, disable the rank of a game until it has been out for a week

[@rK4n3]

One way to split the difference might be to implement multiple rating aggregation methods and let people choose the one they want. So maybe the default scoring is what's applied now, but you can switch to the "weight people with logged plays higher" algo or the "downweight people who give lots of 1s" algo or something. It makes for a fractured view but it might be more useful to people!

[@terry3733H]

maybe split critics & users' reviews like movies?

[@terry3733H]

Algo definitely would help flag suspect-ratings e.g. when a game like Gloomhaven that has been out for a while, it would be unusual to get a slew of ratings especially when it's an extreme # (1 or 10) and without comments.

[@terry3733H]

BGG does state # users along with the rating. So, if a game is "10" but there's only 3 users, that's obviously down to buyer beware. I try to read into comments of previous or current owners.

[@terry3733H]

In the end, ranking is not as important as the game designer and publisher. Just like movies, people watch movies ranked highly, but also follow certain directors, actors and genre critics.

[@desireegreverud3723]

@@terry3733H from the BGG Wiki How do I report fake game reviews? The short answer: you don't, unless they are a bot. We cannot and should not dictate how you rate your collection. Everyone is allowed to rate any game whatever they want for whatever reason. We are aware of the nefarious practices some individuals employ as a way to troll the site and ruffle the feathers of game devs. To combat this we have an algorithm in place that filters out ratings from individuals who rate large numbers of games very low/high. Overall ratings are also not displayed on a game page until there are at least 30 ratings.

[@bigd5773]

I haven’t really used BGG much lately and have moved over to Atlas, but iirc, the problem with BGG rankings is that they use personal rankings for public scores. This is part of the reason people score games they haven’t played - not to manipulate the BGG ranking, but for their own personal reference. Some people check their BGG rankings when they go to the store and sort their highest ranked games to guide their purchases, in which case, ranking a game a 9 three months ago before it came out is useful for that person, but not for an aggregate score. Last I checked, their wasn’t a way to toggle if you wanted to share individual game ratings for the public rating. Also, individual people like to follow their own format for scores and not BGGs scoring. Again, my memory is hazy on their official ranking meanings, but imo, in practice, people rate games much higher than I do. They tend to rate on an American school system, where 5 (50%) is an F (failing), 6 a D, 7 a C (average), etc. I personally find this ranking system fairly useless (I’d rather have the letter grades with pluses and minuses honestly, compared to the way these people use it). I don’t need 6 levels of “I don’t really ever want to play this game again” and only 4 levels to differentiate a good game. There should be better info on the ranking at the very least, with keywords, pros/cons, etc. A thumbs down with the box checked “just not my style” instead of the “too much downtime” or “bad game with no redeeming qualities” buttons selected is WAY more useful than a “5” rating and trying to scan through the comments. Seriously, lots of places to this. “Cons: 36% too much conflict; 24% Fiddly; 23% too long”, etc

[@egolend2]

Great video - but think there is one aspect you have overlooked. I know I am going to sound a bit like a maths geek - I work with stats. There is an idea in stats that if you have a lot of indvidual data points (e.g. ratings) then there will be 1000 stories as to why. If you look at everything relative than as 'wrong' as a lot of these points our in the bigger picture most of the time they average out. When a publisher says that is a strech goal is enough people vote 10 then that introduces a systemic bias which doesn't average out. I supect that for the same reason they also keep an eye out for bots (I don't see bots posting 'adverts' in the comments). Often if you try to do something about the indvidual cases you just get people to hide it better (don't comment) or introduce new bias for little improvement. If I could make one change it would be for the rating to be the average of the middle 50% of ratings (with some dummy ones still). This limits the effect a 1 or 10 can have because it will just be one of the discarded votes. It is the approach taken in gynamstics to stop one judge (bribed/political/personal grudge etc) knocking a gynmnast out of medel contention on their own.

[@KissellMissile]

The "problem is resolution: there are too many reasons for each individual rating. For instance, there might be 1000 different motivations for rating a movie, but there is one "reason," the quality of the movie. For BGG, there are at least 4 different "reasons" that I can think of, and individual motivations within each of those. It makes the data not completely meaningless, but far less meaningful than if everyone knew what was being rated.

[@srpad]

I have said that BGG's ratings are a five point scale masquerading as a ten point scale because that's how people actually use it. It should just have 1-2 are bad/meh, 3 is average/okay and 4-5 are good/great because that is how everyone treats 1-6, 7-8 and 9-10 respectively.

[@garylangford6755]

Hold an 8 on bgg is average/okay???

[@srpad]

​@@garylangford6755 When a game gets a 7 you will see people ask, "What's wrong with this game that it's rated so low?". So what does that make an 8?

[@KissellMissile]

As long as the US education system is 80 = B = "okay," then an 7.5-8.0 will be "okay" on BGG (I say that as an educator that is annoyed by this). I like a 6 point scale because there is no "average" rating, which forces people to decide. You basically have "Good" (4), "Great" (5), "Hall of Fame" (6), plus "Below Average" (3) and two shades of Bad.

[@garylangford6755]

@@srpad I'm not taking about a 7. I agree a 7 is average/okay. But an 8 is a good rating

[@Dvaun1]

Another fantastic video! I absolutely agree with almost everything you mentioned. My biggest problem is people rating a game that they haven't played....makes zero sense to me! I'm working on a site for reviews and I'm hoping to incorporate a section to have reviewers verify their purchase of a game before being able to put up a review. We shall see how that goes. It's far from perfect, but a step in the right direction as far as I see it.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

I sincerely wish you the best. I dream of a day when a new website dethrones BGG.

[@GameBrigade]

Is a review of a product I didn't purchase invalid?

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

@@GameBrigade - I believe he said a game you have not played. This means if you used the product, the review is valid regardless of purchasing it. But how can you review a product if you have never used it?

[@GameBrigade]

@@EfrainRiveraJunior he said "I'm hoping to incorporate a section of reviewers at verify their purchase of a game before they're able to put up a review."

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

@@GameBrigade - I missed that. To be fair, Temu works that way. Only verified purchases are allowed to review. Amazon tags you with a Verified Purchaser icon. There are different ways to go.

[@Koshak87]

Critic score only works if before viewing this score I can decide, which critics are going to count for me. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a dumpster fire like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.

[@johninnaperville]

The external companies being told to stop asking for high ratings differs in that it is external and can not be dealt with internally. Why BGG does not state that they have any measures in place to fix some of the other things you mentioned, their ratings are somewhat mysterious and there is no guarantee that they aren’t doing something about these things and merely not saying anything to prevent active sabotage.

[@Mr47the]

People take the rating system too seriously! All ratings are just opinions. I love bbg for the forums, especially for rules. I also find it useful when i get a new game or a new game is on board game arena and i want to know the recommend amount of players.

[@markwatson8714]

The problem with any rating system is that there's no widely accepted criteria for what makes a good game to begin with. Aggregation sites simply switch one set of problems out for another - you don't need to go far on Rotten Tomatoes to find movies where the critics are at one extreme and the fans at the other.

[@TabletopTurtle]

Board Game Geek is a database that is almost entirely based on user contributions and the ratings should be based on whatever the heck system people want to rate them on. If you want to rate Frosthaven a 1 because you stubbed your toe on the game, go for it. Who becomes the arbiter of what is and is not worthy of a 1 or 10? I've always viewed the site as a community for users to engage with one another and share their reviews, photos, and just general passion for gaming. I don't care if some publisher got downrated into oblivion because it messed up shipping. It shouldn't be some shill marketing hub for publishers. In my opinion, Board Game Geek is for the players, not the publishers.

[@StevenH4684]

Yeah but if the ratings are hurt by someone who has not played the game or for another bias then a player looking at ratings to buy the game won't know how good the game is.

[@EggmanBrawler]

I think you are completely right! BGG should be informative and if people are not happy with a vertain aspect of the game, it should show!

[@TabletopTurtle]

@@StevenH4684 I agree it's flawed, but who is it that decides whether or not a person has played a game? How would they have that information? And who wants to spend their time moderating people's reviews? And perhaps most importantly, do we want to head down the slippery slope of ratting moderation? You know that after that step the next one is publishers paying BGG to moderate bad reviews on their games or moderators getting salty over someone ratting their favorite game a 1. The person using BGG ratings to dictate if they should buy a game will just have to do a bit more work and to me that seems a blessing in disguise. It will expose them to more user content like reviews, playthroughs, strategy discussion, etc. That's awesome!

[@StevenH4684]

Yeah I agree BGG should change how they are doing their ratings, but they don't have competition to force them to do better.

[@BoardGameCo]

Yes. 100% this.

[@KissellMissile]

I've started to try to use Board Game Atlas more, just because the industry would be better if BGG was forced to improve by some competition (or was just replaced).

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

I agree.

[@GameBrigade]

There is competition, but it's hard to dethrone a Goliath

[@terry3733H]

If Amazon Google or MS runs BGG with its super algorithms 😅 it boils down to $ & efforts to fix BGG... I guess that's why BGG has annual fundraising to keep itself independent...

[@shachna]

You're assuming that they don't take action in the other cases. Have they spoken publicly about the algorithm and tools they use to calculate the rating? It's a user contribution based right knit community. I'm sure there are other times they get involved, but it's not obvious to us.

[@lonewolfvc3575]

Rotten Tomatoes system is not comparable, the sample of critics and offer is way bigger, and it is far for being perfect, I have watched 99% movies which I hated and in many cases I have been close to miss great movies because the did poorly in Rotten Tomatoes. Eventually it is up to you, do you want to trust blindly a single source of information or do you want to spend more time researching if a game, record, movie, wine… the list is endless, is for you? Personally I focus on people I think have similar tastes with me, i.e. your channel, Rahdo’s…and try to avoid toxic opinions. BGG rating is just another factor, but an important one, with all its flaws it gets a big sample of the hobby enthusiasts opinions.

[@nerdyjawsh]

I don't know if you know what the tomato meter is. If you didn't like a 99% movie all that means is you are in the 1% of people that don't like it. A 99% movie doesn't mean it's 9/10 or almost a perfect film. It means out of all the critics who reviewed that movie. 99% percent of them gave it a passing score. Meaning a 6 or higher on a number scale. So a movie that has 99% percent could potentially have the average review score of a 6 which is almost bad. It's also how the people's score works as well. If it has a 97% for people. Guess what statically you will like it as well. But you could fall into that 3 percent that doesn't. People say they don't like rotten tomatoes. It's because they don't actually understand it.

[@eriklindqvist3284]

I would like to see some more data analysis options. Like having ratings deteriorate over time due to most people not going back and re-rating things years later when they have a different perspective for example. So a data view that has a logarithmic curve that makes rating value less over time from the date last updated (as that is something which is already stored), and/or latest play registered by that user for each game. That would be an interesting list to look at in comparison to the current one. They have lots and lots of data, as BGG is primarily a database for most users, so a lot can be done by just accessing that and analysing it in more ways.

[@eriklindqvist3284]

Oh, another thing I'd like to see tested is using the "reimplemented" link better. That could be a way to can easily filter so there are no duplicates in the rankings by only allowing one of the titles that are linked in such a way, just use the currently highest rates title. Once again, this is data that exists in the database so would be interesting to see used.

[@KSpllr]

My main issue is that Brass has a lower user rating than Gloomhaven and fewer votes, but a higher Geekrating. That doesnt make sense at all, unless BGG has a syytem in place that disregards some users votes or weighs the votes of some users higher than others, like they do for the categories voting.

[@draphsor]

That definitely does seem to violate our common-sense understanding of what these ratings should represent. Sounds like there's probably also some recency-bias in the geekrating, similar to the hotness.

[@fy8798]

There's a big difference in coordinated efforts to get ratings versus users doing ratings you don't agree with. BGG should act against the former (ie, companies doing coordinated efforts to push ratings), but not the latter (because it's a bottomless barrel, and inherently bad to enforce). Like take your Ark nova thing. Isn't it a bit of a ridiculous claim? A popular game has more people playing, so more people feel like they can rate it. That's organic ratings, and completely normal. I don't think most of these are people who just rate to be "part of something". The argument sounds more like a dismissal of positive buzz for something you don't like. And I don't particularly care for versus games like that, being mainly coop nowadays, but it seems like such a weird argument to make. Looking through the BGG rating doesn't make me see more unusual ratings than for other games.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

One thing that would make the ratings more credible is only allowing you to rate a game if you leave a long enough review. Another option is to have an influencers' ratings/reviews and a seperate general audience ratings/reviews. Something similar to Rotten Tomatoes.

[@davidmarowske4243]

You could just leave gibberish that does not align with your actual rating to get around that.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

@@davidmarowske4243 - For some reason, KZbin keeps deleting my comment. I'll just say that I disagree.

[@monomundo]

Thank you Alex. They may apply a kind of "bell curve" for each user's ratings. For example, if my average rating is 7,8, my "9" for a game should have more weight compared to someone who's average rating is 9,5.

[@draphsor]

Trivially game-able by users creating more fake ratings so as to skew their curve.

[@morgaknightgames]

As someone newer to the board game hobby, I stopped looking at the rating because I noticed the number of comments saying "Kickstarter was late" or "counteracting the one reviews" etc, instead of rating the game itself. I end up going through the forums to see how people feel about the game instead, since at least there people tend to explain in a bit more detail. But it means that the ratings are practically useless in any game that has a strong degree of hype, or had delivery/Kickstarter issues. Heck, I saw one that said "Miniature Market damaged the box in shipping" with a 2 rating. That has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself!

[@draphsor]

The way I typically use ratings is as a filter to "should I bother looking into this game more?" If you're already investigating the game, the aggregate rating isn't really useful, and individual ratings are only useful if they provide commentary (ie mini-reviews) or you know the person doing the rating.

[@ewertbellingan7450]

A way I think to possibly reduce 'fake' ratings is to simply make it more effort to rate games. People are lazy by nature so the more hoops they have to jump through to do something the less likely they are to do it. Make it so you can only rate a game if you've added it your collection (takes effort) or logged plays (takes even more effort) of it. Yes, some legit votes will also be lost but I think this will by far reduce more of the fake ones.

[@KissellMissile]

Aldie (the owner of BGG) is extremely anti-confrontational, and that is the biggest problem with the site as a whole. He never wants to get involved in any controversy, but his moderators are not the same, which leads to the inconsistency where it doesn't want to get involved except when they do (on a great many issues).

[@Kamion991]

This one is the biggest downside of BGG. You really cant have any kind of even little bit controversial topic with other people and if you have another point of view, your comments get deleted.

[@KissellMissile]

@@Kamion991 The official site policy is that you are not allowed to disagree on certain issues, no matter how pleasantly your post is phrased, which I think is just wrong. However, I have had to work with BGG professionally too, and some mods are just as draconian in that context. It's a problem across the board, so Aldie's desire to not ever make a ruling just means it is made for him.

[@theonemarlowe9117]

So the problem with the ratings (and the internet) is people. Welcome to 1999.

[@FrogOnBoards]

I love bgg as well. It sounds like most of these issues could be easily fixed by multiple layers of weighting on ratings. I think they don't want to change it because the rank and rating of games would change significantly once they set up a new rating system and they don't want to deal with the hassle of the repercussions.

[@DaleNolanJr]

I would love to see the site add something like: users who rated this highly also have these common games rated highly and users who rated this game lower have these games in common that they rated lower. That way you can see the type of games players may or might not like in comparable taste to yourself.

[@KissellMissile]

It has this feature with Geekbuddies and Fans, but so few people use both. On the menu for a game, click "More" then "Fans Also Like."

[@Poiuytrew.Q]

@@KissellMissile Fans Also Like is usually featured after reviews on the game page.

[@prototypep4]

For fun go to any good game and turn on the 1 stars. You get shit like "game isn't translated in my language". This NEEDS to be able to be reported. Ratings need to be based on people who have actually played the damn games.

[@kimklisiak6421]

I found a guy that rated games based on the inserts, every game that didn't come with an insert got a 1

[@prototypep4]

@@kimklisiak6421 see that kind of shit needs to be addressed. And don't get me started on the gloomhaven/Brass fanboi war. I legit seen "just downvoting to dethrone gloomhaven" reviews. Like come on

[@prototypep4]

@@kimklisiak6421 I just saw this on ISS Vanguards ratings. Like... HOW?! " Pandorzecza Dec 2020 Not available but ranked 9,5? Just to lower it a bit give 1. Besides not my type "

[@JonoNZBoardGamer]

My biggest gripe is one that has been discussed many times about duplicate games. In this hobby many people seem to put a lot of stock into the bgg top 100, but until they implement a way to mark games as unranked/replaced/duplicate then it is a flawed top 100 IMO. It wouldn't be hard for a game to keep its high rating but not be eligible for a rank if a revised edition comes out that replaces it. Maybe it could be a question to the company when they mark a game as a reimplementation of another game that one of those two games can no longer be eligible... I dunno, just my thoughts on the topic

[@jogumby]

In some cases though the duplicate is different from it's predecessor. My own example is "Through the ages: A story of Civilization" Vs. "Through the Ages: A NEW Story of Civilization". Both are solid games but the second corrected some flaws that made the first less playable or fun. I would rank the second higher than the first. I think if a new version makes enough change to an old then it deserves separate consideration.

[@rmiller6975]

I think there needs to be a distinction between ratings and rankings on BGG. Rankings are misleading and borderline useless. Ratings are pretty useful if you completely ignore the ranking. You just need to have some knowledge of what types of games you like. Generally if a game is rated 7 or higher and is in a category you like, it is probably a good game for you. You still need to do your research. No rating system will ever be useful as more than a general guide and really isn't a problem until you start using it as more than a general guideline. Personally, I like and want to play maybe 6-8 games in the top 100. It is pretty euro heavy where I prefer co-ops and dungeon crawlers.

[@DumahAtreides]

I do like the idea of an alternative rating based on a binary liked enough to want to play again or not liked enough to want to play again. This could be the primary basis for rankings, but keep the 10 point scale for average score and personal ratings. Beyond that though - they should have an algorithmic way of ranking games for YOU. Meaning taking the games you rate and then determining how likely you'd like other games. Netflix has had similar systems for a long time and it should be easy to do. Then they could have top 100 of segments of gamers. For example, those who rate highest the mid to light weight games, ones who focus on campaign games, ones who do a mix, etc.

[@CHIPSSALTY]

I usually go into the comments and read what people actually like or dislike about a game. For example, I was picking 1 of these 3 games: 1) Pandemic Cthulhu. 2) Pandemic Rome, 3) WoW: WoLC. All 3 game has very similar scores on BGG. By reading people's comments, I concluded that: 1) Shortest of the Pandemics. Very similar to the original, maybe too similar. 2) More chance/luck driven, dropping army cubes off mechanic might not be for everyone, doesn't look that great. 3) Fun experience for nearly everyone, coolest minitures, but easiest of the Pandemic games so might lack challenge. From that, I concluded that WOW: WoLC is the best choice for my situation. This is what I suggest everyone to do. Read the comments, and see how a game might or might not fit your group. Don't just look at the highest score/ranking and buy blindly. For example, I bought Gloomhaven: JOTL because this system was so high rated. After playing the first 4 "tutorial" missions, I do understand why it is fun. However, the game is too weighty/heavy for my group. That top half bottom half card system is innovative, but it also means every single turn requires a lot of thinking. Some classes like the Voidmaidan requires even more thinking because most of her "cool" skills burns that card. TBH I won't have put Voidmaidan in JOTL if it was up to me, since this was supposed to be a beginner-friendly package. Sure there is that base move base attack, but obviously we can't do this if we want to win. We have to take a break from it. Maybe 1 day we will go back to it, but for now we are doing less heavy games.

[@marksteelman7747]

I think they don’t want to put the manpower into censorship. I would assume that for every fanboy there is a hater and they balance each other out. I would say that the games in the top one hundred are all good and popular games. Games that you could only get in kickstarter for $300 is not going to break the top 100 because that is not accessible to enough people.

[@panoti4264]

There is simple solution for extreme ratings -> replace taking the mean by taking the median as simple statistcal solution

[@jimalexander687]

I'm sure the ratings are skewered both ways on many (if not most games). However, as I have never paid attention to ratings as far what I purchase or play, it doesn't matter too much to me. I don't purchase games I haven't played or watched others play. That generally tells me all I need to know as to whether or not I would like it. If I like it, it doesn't matter to me if it's rated #23,000. Likewise, if I don't like it, doesn't matter to me if it's rated #1.

[@goldsmeeth2771]

My reasoning is that there are trolls in every pouplar game so all evens out. I pay attention to average rating more than BGG after 300 votes. I also consider a games rankings + or - ten games as the same class ranking. I also read the mini reviews from the voters ignoring 10 and 1s

[@kaos1109]

The underlying issue for me is "what the ranking is good for?" Defining the top 100 games is useful to find great games that are worth trying, but the regular games with a score, to what degree do they benefit from the ranking?, because only 100 gane can be in the top 100 and kit all games aim to be there. A game in the top 100 will be bought at the store because it popular and people wants to check what's it all about, and more controversial games that are being fought over that "should be higher" or "should be in the top" are bought to see if they are actually tahr good, so in the end it's a win-win situation for games battling for a spot in the top. But regular games far removed from interest of being in the top 100, Does the ranking offer any meaningful value as to warrant the doctoring tactics by publishers to fabricate scores? Being in the top 100 before publishing makes no sense (being in 'The Hotness' makes sense but not in the top). I am not sure what to make out of these situations

[@LeeroyPorkins]

That explains Cult of the New so much better.

[@mithrandir510]

I don't understand why the block ratings on a game until it's available for everyone (either delivered or in retail)

[@RaduStanculescu]

Sometimes those games are being tested on TTS/Tabletopia, other times even on Boardgamearena (I've see more and more implementations released there before the game was published physically), and the release date on BGG doesn't track those. Even in the pre-TTS/Tabletopia days you'd get ratings from people who tested the game physically. Should those count or not? Who knows...

[@mithrandir510]

@@RaduStanculescu I don't think they should count unless it's stated that's the final version of the rules (which I think is very rare)

[@Darkjin7]

Not just the ratings being controlled but BGG as a whole is broken because of their moderators. I tried using their rating system (BGG does in fact control and manipulate the game ratings - my interaction and BBB complaint is proof) and they IMMEDIATELY perma banned my home IP. The only explanation based upon my actions were from the ratings I had selected since this was before I even posted a single comment or made a single topic on the website. I tried making an account and posted some nice posts and then tried rating games and BOOM banned again. I even tried making an account just to inquire and purchase some geekbit upgrades for a game and they banned the account right away for no reason. I emailed them over and over again and I finally got 1 reply that said "Our moderator team has decided that your conduct conflicts with the values of our community - that is why your have been permanently banned." - Octavian. And then no follow up about why, what happened, or anything. Even with the BBB complaint I was open to resolving the situation and wanted clarification on why they banned me about the ratings but they never replied after that. That place is insane. All because they did not like my game ratings.

[@iqweaver]

How do you know why someone rated a game in any manner? You can't tell if someone hate-rated a game, or down-rated because of the publisher or crowd funding etc etc.

[@tobyr21]

Alex, remarkably, there's an easy way to improve BGG ratings! Make them more like the challenge of guessing how many jelly bans are in a jar. It is well-established that the "wisdom of crowds" operates when trying to guess the number of jelly beans. The people guessing are all trying to win a prize, and the mean average of the guesses turns out to be pretty accurate. BGG should offer a serious prize to one of the people whose guess is closest to the average (picked randomly, there will be many) say, 18 months AFTER a game is delivered and has received a certain minimum of votes. The potential for winning the prize will make more people try to vote realistically. Also, before voting, people should have to affirm that they have played the game for at least 30 minutes and are trying to assess its quality and difficulty. There is real value in the votes people cast BEFORE a game is delivered, but after it is delivered, BGG should throw those votes away and let people begin over, voting for a game after they have played it. But BGG should still allow each of us to decide: we can vote on a game before it is delivered or after, but not both. -toby

[@draphsor]

Not convinced those things are comparable-number of jelly beans in a jar is objectively verifiable and it's easy for the crowd to understand the parameters. The rating of a board game is absolutely not either of those things.

[@tobyr21]

@@draphsor The point is that people who have a reason to guess accurately will, on avergage, guess very accurately. BGG needs to give people a reason to guess well rather than to display their bias or grudge. -toby

[@draphsor]

@@tobyr21 I think I understand the concept, I'm just not convinced that guessing against a broad range of unknown variables is comparable in terms of distribution than guessing against a much more restricted set of variables. To the extent that motivation helps, it seems to me that it would likely just exacerbate the existing problem of piling on. Would be interesting to see an experiment in the area.

[@Torkeep]

Is this from when Brass finally overtook Gloomhaven as the #1 game, suddenly a whole bunch of people rated one game high or low (I forget which) in order to push Gloomhaven to the top again? Which seemed to be fixed not that long afterwards?

[@DedoPorno]

It's more likely because of people review-bombing "6: Siege" as they are being required to pay ransom to maybe get their pledges. But the Brass vs Gloomhaven definitely is another angle in this whole predicament so this topic has been brewing for a while and now just found its catalyst.

[@Torkeep]

@DedoPorno happened with Darkest Dungeon, too. Probably a lot of other games if we looked into it.

[@elementz301]

I like what steam does, where they don't count reviews from a period of review bombing. Not sure exactly how they do it, I imagine an employee actually has to go in and do it manually. But it's annoying on BGG when games like Darkest Dungeon get review bombed, then will never have a real honest score

[@maxf.7262]

Ty for this video!

[@draphsor]

Seems clear to me that the number of publishers is vastly smaller than the number of contributors, and attempting to police the former does not require you to tackle the latter. Also there's a much clearer tie between the motivations of a publisher and direct benefit to the publisher vs attempting to assign motives to any individual. It's a system with humans and thus any rules put in place are subject to gaming. In particular, using analysis of what people put in comments as a way of moderating ratings is clearly a non-starter to my mind given how easy it is to obfuscate, change, or just not use those comments.

[@harvsk.4181]

I view public polled rating (whether for boardgames, movies, video games etc) as mostly useless because of its inherent susceptibility to be manipulated and spammed. I agree a Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes aggregate of critics (collection of KZbin, Blog, Online, Print) rating system would be nice.

[@kenkosten2257]

I would agree with what you have said. There is no great solution, but I would suggest one fix to happen ASAP. No one is allowed to rate a game until it is actually available (show a website where you can purchase the game as part of your listing). That should be pretty easy to control. There are plenty of ways to hype a game without a BGG rating. But this would have the added advantage of lighting a fire for those companies that are dragging their feet to put out a game. You want ratings, then release your three year old kickstarter games. You don't get ratings until you have an actual game in the market! With so many third party ways to buy a game, I think it would be pretty hard to require verified purchase and I am not sure that would be a good solution. If I play a game at a friends house and really like it, shouldn't I be able to rate it on BGG as a gamer. I have plenty of games I play with others that I do not own, but I think I should be allowed to post an opinion if I have played the game. Confirming that someone has actually played a game would be impossible to enforce. You could prohibit people from giving a rating unless they also post a short comment about the game. Then at least you could evaluate the reason for someone's rating. Without requiring a comment with a rating it is really hard to know why someone is rating the game the way that they do.

[@KissellMissile]

How do you define "available" with the advent of TTS, Tabletopia, and BGA mods? That is a major issue. I play a lot of games on TTS now, and feel I can rate them just as well after a play on there as a play on the table.

[@kenkosten2257]

Fair point. But I would suggest that often TTS, and Tabletopia are prototype games not the final version, so I would consider this play testing the game and not actually playing the final version. I would also suggest that it is BOARD GAME geek not digital geek, so that digital games of any kind are excluded as listing on BGG. Once a final version of the game is released as a board game, then digital plays could be compared to the actual final version and count as plays of the final version.

[@twentysides]

I'm involved in multiple active threads about this topic on BGG right now. I think any rating that reflects how much the player enjoyed/enjoys the game is a good and fair rating, and anything else harms the community's understanding of the game. Didn't enjoy it because you had trouble discerning between colors on cards? Didn't enjoy it because you found the anime girl art style distracting during play? Didn't enjoy it because you were tired and couldn't pay enough attention to the game state? Sure! All have something to do with the experience of playing the game. Want to up-rate it because you like the designer's other games? Want to down-rate it because you think the publisher mismanaged backer money? Want to down-rate it because the retailer send you a copy with box damage? No, those have nothing to do with your experience of playing the game.

[@BoardGameCo]

I mostly agree...I think rating a game poorly because you were tired starts getting iffy. Once we're policing ratings that is.

[@Poiuytrew.Q]

1. Larger sample size should eliminate “bias” although ratings are inherently biased…and if it was easier and simpler to leave ratings, then people would be more inclined to rate. Unless a person is familiar with the site they won’t figure out how to rate easily. Or encouraging ratings could be advertised more. 2. Ratings of ratings! There should be a thumbs up or down in ratings. Some ratings are more insightful than others and deserve to be seen first. 3. Open ratings after a game has been released. So we lose a few playtester ratings that I suspect are biased anyway and their ratings are of prototypes so it isn't even "accurate". Or the awkward rating by the designer who gives their game a 10… 4. I care less about negative ratings based off kickstarter customers, but while I generally agree a game shouldn’t be rated until it’s been played, if a game/kickstarter has emotionally affected a person so much that they honestly would rather burn a game, drive over it twice, and hack it to bits than play it one time, then that’s their honest opinion and it’s a valid opinion.

[@FrancoisLandryCorbin]

I don't think that BGG need to check for a few people rating things a 1 or a 10 for any good or bad reasons, because the system behind the BGG ranking using dummy votes is there to cancel these votes without any active supervision from them. But yes, thus then make it a bit of a popularity contest, but let's be honest, most games that is worth it do check out do receive the attention of at least a few thousands people and thus are represented in the ranking at a relatively good ranking overall (also ranking is not everything, as this beg the other question how do you compare an great epic game to a great 10 minutes filler?). Also, nobody actually really know how the algorithm works for the BGG ranking, and maybe they do stuff that we don't even know about, but they can't talk about it in order to make the system work (like maybe they do weight in the user votes depending on if they did log a play or not, or maybe even how many plays they logged in, who knows!?!?) So the idea is just to make sure all BGG users do actually rate the games they play, mostly according to the scale they suggest, to make it mostly comparable. This way everybody contribute to the database and in the end it will even out by the sheer number of people that have voted on these games. But a lot of users still don't rate the games played, and to me this is part of the problem (and the best would that with every ratings at least a comment would be present to let other users why you rate this game this rating). This brings me to my second point, about having two ratings, a critic and normal people rating. Personally, I don't think this would work because, as I already said, a lot of people actually don't rate their played games on BGG, including most critics/content creators (including you Alex, and I'm not saying this to target you, as I really love what you do). I never understand why they don't at least put the rating they gave to a game back into BGG to contribute to the database. Anyhow, it still a good video but there is no simple answers to this and I'm sure that the BGG folks have though a lot about it and that what we have, although not perfect, may still be the best we can have for now.

[@zak1090]

Whew! Rating publishers would be sweet! Roxley - 9, InSideUp - 8, Awaken Realms - 9, BoardAndDice - 8, CMON - 5, Mythic - 2, Portal - 6.

[@ortizlzitro]

I agree with you. I don't get how games that aren't released are being rated. That's just dumb.

[@joopiegoldberg5091]

I live BGG, because it is a great place to learn about games. On ratings: Internet 101: Do not trust information without reference. Especially user ratings or critics. There is no objectivity to this, no matter how you make the system. If you try to make it more legit it will only become worse as companies might want to "meta" the score, creating copies of high rated games. BGG ratings are flawed, this is obvious and this is a good thing. Make your own ratings, watch boardgame plays and reviews to learn more instead of buying 8,5 over 8,3.

[@ScytheNoire]

I agree that BGG needs to look at their policies around ratings and make some changes. I would be very happy if it was changed to just a Rotten Tomatoes / Meta Critic system. I think a lot can be fixed with some changes to their current system: 1) Require a minimal written amount of comments, such as 1,000 words. Make this retroactive, so old reviews without the word limit get flagged, reviewers notified, and taken down. 2) Implement a reporting system on reviews. If enough people report a review as an issue, it gets flagged for review and taken down. This is no different than the forum system. 3) Remove ability to report from people who illegitimately flag reviews. If a review gets flagged by enough people to be reviewed, and the review finds the review to be legit, it puts a strike again the account who reported the review as spam. Three strikes for falsely flagging a review and you lose your ability to flag reviews.

[@sethwinslow]

One problem with making changes is backward compatibility. For example, let’s say they require people to input info about their gameplay before rating (i.e., “we played on May 10, 2023, three players, the game took 14 hours”) No need to verify, but if you are asked point-blank whether you played, when, with how many players, and how long the game was, SOME people might hesitate before rating. Either because this takes more time than just inputting a 1 or 10, and also, because it is an explicit lie. (I still think SOME people have integrity. Or rather I HOPE some people have some integrity.) OK, let’s pretend most people are honest and that this system works really well moving forward. But now you have to rank this game relative to some other game that has 50,000 ratings, some dating as far back as 2004. Can’t be done. Anyway, I agree with your inconclusive ending. It’s a tough nut to crack. Well done.

[@MattD007]

The database is great, but nobody has really attempted to compete with them on a level that matters, which is sad. With that said, the ratings system is just the beginning, or should I say a component of, the poor user experience that the site offers when it comes to anything where humans need to interact with the site. Whenever BGG does step in it's a mess as well. Yep, it's a wonderful site to gather info and get questions answered, but that's about as far as I'd go. If you use many other of the functions of the site it's clunky, off-putting in many ways, and actively works against many of the people interacting with the site. Again, it's the best site of this type, it's just not saying much because nobody has really made an attempt to get in on a similar level. If you need the site for much other than a Wiki like experience you likely won't enjoy what occurs next. I'd rate the site a 5.5 out of 10.

[@beneisen6982]

There are many flaws with BGG ratings, but like many things, it's just a guide. There are many methods to make it so a singular rating of a game doesn't throw off the top 10. Ironically, being open about the rating system serves as a method to undermine it. The current method that BGG uses has people over/underrating games to offset the average of dummy votes. If it were a system where the number of dummy votes decreases as actual votes increase would be undermined by spamming votes with multiple accounts. In theory, BGG telling use that there is a method that votes are being regulated would be great, but not going into the details (or even rotating the method) would help reduce gamers from gaming the system. The bigger flaw, in my opinion, is how the games are categorized with expansions and different editions being rated against previous editions and base games. This information is useful, but for the overview (i.e. top 100), this pollutes the results. If people like Catan, that's great, but then seeing Knights & Cities, Seafarers, Explorers & Pirates, all the 5-6 player expansions for those, the IP skins for Catan, that would easily take up a largeg portion of a list. The back end would be very ugly, but tagging all of those as Catan and averaging them for the overview would reduce that issue. Then when clicking on it, you'd see how each version is rated, and can determine which expansions are necessary and which edition is the best. Is that worth it? Depends on how strongly you put faith in BGG vs your own rating.

[@pogdog69]

What if ratings were linked to number of games played and recorded on bgg.

[@pillinjer]

I disagree with your complaint about BGG stopping Kickstarter review pushing. If BGG doesn’t stop it hard, well why wouldn’t every game do that. So BGG needs to clamp down hard. They don’t threaten to remove some ratings. They threaten to remove them all. A delete all isn’t the same as a targeted approach. You seem to want a targeted approach, but it’s harder than you think. Plus how do you distinguish between a 10 for review inflation and a 10 for BrassHaven due to excitement/good gameplay. Do you remove the 1s because they might be review bombing, or just Canal based dungeon crawlers is just not your thing. If you go for the nuclear option, well then Trolls can target your favourite games just to remove all the ratings until just Monopoly survives.

[@NetanelKleinman]

The rating system is flawed but the fact that BGG has rules that the votes must 1) be an actual person voting & 2) can't be paid/pushed by a company to rate a game a certain way makes absolute sense and doesn't contradict not getting involved in other places at all. I may feel that the person rating Gloomhaven a 1 doesn't mean it or their reasons aren't good enough, but ultimately it's a public rating system and a member of the public voted that way. The ratings just show how lots of people felt, and that was a real person who actually (for whatever reason) felt that way. It's doing its job at that point. Is it useful? Not really, but the BGG top 100 is definitively unrepresentative of the average game player anyway and always has been (favouring heavy games, those who are most invested vote so few party games in the top 100 etc).

[@nimblegoat]

BGG , Amazon, Steam. IMDB whatever - You need to learn how to extract info - a batch of ones can time specific problem - eg a bad batch of hard drives - top ratings all in a small time period are suspect for being fake - sites need to give tools to analyse . the most interesting are the ones in the middle with well thought out comments and critiques - plus you have YT to watch how it's played. With BGG I'm aware of the bias against popular mass market games - Also I aware of games with high complexity but devoted followers - You see something similar in book series - those that don't like book one fall out - so book 2 should tend upwards . Also where few ratings ( this applies to court juries ) dominant opinions stand out - People who collect kick backs off say cruise ships are very good at praising 2 shops - but ensuring most people visit the one who gives them a kick back - ie wording matters - Lies even if not true are powerful even if you know it's a lie - Look both Mark and John are excellent choices - but I'm going to tell you a lie - Mark likes to kill and bury kittens - It's a complete lie . So politicians brazenly lying again again can work against unprepared minds

[@kissgg666]

Here are my thoughts: this is the least of my problems with BGG. Sure, they could at least block ratings for not yet published games, that sounds reasonable and doable, but they won’t implement even that, they made it clear multiple times in the past. Killing of the Geekmarket(!!!), the entire website “design” and organization - I mean, the organic mess, the usability of the UI and their moderation practices are much bigger issues. If someone , using the API, implemented a simple but well working UI for it just to manage my collection, I would not open BGG more often than once or twice per year.

[@Kentchangar]

The way that they screwed up the most is obvious from the Gloomhaven and Brass's ratings. Brass has 38103 votes with an average rating of 8.61 and the BG rating is 8.423. Gloomhaven has 58035 (higher) votes with an average rating of 8.63 (higher) and the BG rating is 8.392, lower by 0.031. WHY? It has more ratings, a higher average rating but the BG rating is way lower than Brass?!!! That makes no sense!!! PS. I agree that people who rate everything a 1 should be blocked from rating. Especially people who rate a category of games, like coops a 1 with the same comment.

[@draphsor]

I assume they have some recency bias on the ratings in their algorithm, and that Brass has more recent positive ratings, either in absolute or proportional terms.

[@Kentchangar]

@@draphsor Whatever the reason is, it's stupid. Not saying that Brass shouldn't be number 1 over GH, but this way it shouldn't have been.

[@thecuriousboardgamer]

​@@draphsor A temporal factor would be nonsensical, if not actively damaging. The more likely scenario is that distribution of scores matter, i.e. different standard deviation = different score.

[@jbirzer]

I'm not sure pointing to Rotten Tomatoes as good example is all that great, since it doesn't seem to be liked by film critics or by film KZbin. Personally, I don't pay that much attention to the ratings for a game. What is more important to me are the reviews for a game, and seeing if it is the type of game that I would like. That being said, I don't think ratings for games should be active until the official release. That should be easy enough to implement.

[@aeryellae5837]

When I saw the title, it immediately brought to mind the Mythic 6: Siege fiasco. I think 6: Siege is now rated as one of the top 100 worst games per BGG rankings, even though the game itself is good according to those who have played it on TTS or otherwise.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

I use BGG as a Board Game Encyclopedia, FAQs for games with Rulebooks that suck, and to see what is popular. I _never_ look at the ratings. Their ratings are worthless to me.

[@billtodd2194]

I would love to see it being only rating games you have played, but I also get why they don't. Most people who use the site do not log their plays. I did not even log my own plays until about 3 years ago and I'm a pretty hard core board gamer. There is a lot of years of historical ratings that already exist. If they switched to ratings from plays only most ratings from older titles would vanish and you'd likely still be left with the new hotness dominating. I do wonder about the mentality of people who rate products based on outside circumstances. A lot of Amazon reviews are like that, "delivery was late, 1 star". Go rate UPS, don't rate the item. Why do you think that is helpful to anyone? OTOH, readers are dumb too. I had a product I rated poorly and detailed how the dye rubbed off, discolored everything that touched it, and the company didn't respond. Next day someone else added one, "5 stars, I think my grandson would like this!" And it got more "this review is helpful" votes than mine, so, whatever, enjoy your stains... :P

[@draphsor]

Requiring logged plays before allowing rating would (a) reduce the number of ratings logged, probably not what one wants, and (b) increase the number of fake plays being logged, also not really aligned with what one wants.

[@draphsor]

"Helpful" up/down applied to ratings with comments would potentially help though. Also displaying ratings with comments as reviews (perhaps opt-in by the rater) could be interesting.

[@nikosmessis]

My view on this is that BGG rating was never actually about the quality of the games but about the hype of the games. The top 100 games are definitely good games (it's nearly impossible to have a really bad game be popular ) but I don't think they are the best and definitely not in that order. In my opinion there should also be categories for the games. I might believe Brass is a 10 and Saboteur is a 10 but they are different types of 10s. You can't have them in the same rank system. The rating of the games before release is a joke.

[@erupendragon7376]

The whole KS system is the source of all problems. In addition to what you covered: people who rate things they backed are highly biased and part of an already biased group. The solution is simple: Crowdfunded games cannot have a review until X number of months after retail release. Until then There should be a huge disclaimer on BGG page: Crowdfunded game reviews are not reliable.

[@xBbQz]

The problem is if they took extra steps to "fix" the rating it wouldn't change much. Other then take the voice away a valid customers. You also you didn't directly say it but assume a rating should exclusively be about the board game. Maybe it's quality. Maybe it's price but there's millions of things People can write a game on. Maybe shipping is one of them. Maybe even getting the game after buying It is one of them. Maybe the person watched a KZbin play through and it's not a fun game to watch and that's why they rated it low because that's a variable that they find important when rating a game. As for a publisher rating, I think until games can be sold and made by multiple publishers rating a publisher through the games they make is completely valid, a. Newcomer could read that review and do some investigations about that publisher. I think the time and energy for BGG to get involved isn't worth it. I'm sure they've done tests on what happens if they remove all the 1s and 10s and I'm sure the actual rating of the game remains pretty similar. I'm also a firm believer that review bombs are a valid form of costumer expression even for preorder or Kickstarter scenarios a big red number on the top of the page can give an unsuspecting newcomer the first red flag. They need to see what the current happenings is while a big green number can indicate a neutral or at least the fans are happy Even if that person clicks on those reviews and sees the only ones on it, are people not liking come on games, the person can look at that Kickstarter with a fresh preceptive you your self Alex on big over the top campaigns tell people they absolutely don't need all theses plastic and expansions when you your self haven't played them but most people don't have your reach so BGG ratings is what they can do

[@desireegreverud3723]

BGG Mod here. Will try to address a number of comments all at once. First, as has been mentioned, BGG allows anyone to rate any game for any reason provided it isn't fraudulent (i.e. bots). This is unlikely to change. We simply don't want to police the ratings. It's not worth it and as Alex mentioned it becomes a never-ending task of "why didn't you do X here when you did it over there?" and it would mean drawing some arbitrary lines such as "is the game released? or "do we know if you played it?"" What does that even mean? Not all games are released in all places or at the same time. Also, TTS exists and playtesters and early review copies et al. exist and we are no going to arbitrate what counts as "playing the game." Nor are we are going to define when a game that exists in the database is eligible for being rated. If it's in the database, a user can rate it. We will not require a written review or some nebulous "proof it was played" which serve to reduce the number of ratings (the opposite of what we want to make average ratings more useful) and would require yet more policing. A very small percentage of users log plays compared to users who rate games and BGG isn't going to do anything that limits a users ability to interact with the site. Ultimately, the ratings are personal. They are for each individual users benefit. Any aggregate data gleaned from them is a bonus, an extra. More data points will generally lead to more useful data but really, the rankings (which is really what people seem to get up in arms about, not the ratings) are only of marginally value. Is the 234th ranked game really better than the 235th? Probably not. The numbers separating the 1000s of ranked games are so tiny as to basically be irrelevant except in the broadest of terms (i.e. a game ranked 3 is probably better than a game ranked 203). As for any issues with moderation at BGG, feel free to Geekmail me on BGG and I will do my best to answer any questions you may have (I'm user DragonsDream)

[@draphsor]

Thanks for the commentary and insights-I generally find myself in agreement with how BGG handles these things given the noted challenges.

[@Darkjin7]

I wish I could believe you but unfortunately I am the living proof that BGG does control ratings and manipulate them. I even made an inquiry that turned into a complaint with the Better Business Bureau when BGG would not discuss or want to work towards any resolution when I showed proof with emails and testing that for some "reason" I was permanently banned because I rated games (complaint is still posted up on the BBB publicly for anyone to read/view). I had not made a single post at the time of the incident and then when I even attempted to post first (nice posts, nothing conflicting) and then rate games got banned immediately. Even tried making an account to purchase things from the store and posted a question about one of the items and rated games and then banned again. No idea why any company would ban someone that inquired about purchasing something from them which leaves just the one other action of rating games. Sent numerous emails and the only reply was I was banned for my "conduct". Silly thing to block people from the "community" for rating games. And to clarify - you mentioned with moderation issues to try and send you a message on BGG but as that is impossible for me to do since I can not even make an account on the website... again for some "reason". And this being a public space I wanted to post info for people to see both sides of BGG.

[@yogibbear]

I disagree with the argument you presented and had a longer comment for the algorithm. Anyway of the 3 options, it is definitely closer to #1.

[@shawns3911]

1. I like seeing games I like go up in ratings, but I also don’t buy a game or like a game based on a rating. 2. Rating a game without playing it is so lame.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

If the person who rated 7,000 games was required to write 7,000 reviews, this person would undoubtedly stop doing so. And have a system that will not allow Copy/Paste reviews. I wrote a review on Amazon. Thinking that the review did not go through, I submitted it again. I almost immediately received an email from Amazon letting me know that the duplicate review was against their spamming policies. My point is that a good rating system can be done if you care enough.

[@billtodd2194]

Also, I still like BGG ratings more than say Rotten Tomatoes. Unless I'm mistaken, RT is straight positive/negative, right? So when RT proclaims 96% Fresh, that doesn't mean reviewers gave it a 96% and think it is an amazing movie, that means 96% thought it was tolerable enough to sit through. I don't find that particularly useful in this age of choice. Why sit at a movie or 2 hour board game that is merely tolerable when there is a great option out there for you?

[@justanerd1138]

This was a risky video considering how capricious BGG moderation can be you could find yourself banned for valid criticism.

[@sirenspear]

The trolls will adapt - they'll just reword their low ratings to work within the expected standards, sadly.

[@emmanuelrodriguez1693]

Limit a users rating to once a year. If you rate in January 2023 you can’t rate again until January 2024. That keeps you from joining a bandwagon and makes you hesitate to put a false one. Let users vote but don’t uploads the effect until January of the following year.

[@steveowen7508]

Hello, algorithm!

[@ThisIsDavin]

I'm here still wondering how I rate a game that I've played but DON'T OWN. BanGameGeek for some reason makes you add games to your collection before you can rate them... If I rate a game I've played under a 3, why the hell would I buy a copy?!

[@ThisIsDavin]

Being forced to add it to the collection before you can rate it puts you into Choice-supportive bias / post-purchase rationalization.... You need to justify to yourself (and others) that it was a good buy, even though it probably isn't

[@draphsor]

You do know that something being in your collection doesn't mean you own it, right? There's a separate "own" flag you can set to describe your relationship with the game. The reason it's in your "collection" (perhaps bad choice of words on their part) is so there's a place for you to store your information about the game.

[@velveteenv76]

Stop watching them along time ago, forgot they existed.

[@SenseiJae]

A company threatened me with litigation for rating their game a 3…

[@draphsor]

Unless you were bound by an NDA or had some other existing legal relationship with the company they don't have a leg to stand on under US law. (not legal advice, IANAL)

[@SenseiJae]

@@draphsor that may be so, but they have deeper pockets than I do, so even a frivolous lawsuit would cause harm.

[@draphsor]

@@SenseiJae absolutely fair, and one of the things I really hate about our legal system.

[@GrimLocke161]

If a company has had bad after-sale and customer servicing, that probably should effect the game's rating. And, how a company runs their kickstarters falls under customer service to me, though I am obviously trying to stretch an edge case, because that's what I am often want to do. 🙃 And, as I think you allude to in the final speculation as to why BGG stays hands off, they could weight reviews based on a user's activity and the diversity of their ratings, but then you start to essentially create a user blacklist, and that could start a new BGG: Board Gamer Gate! 🤣 And, we defintely don't need that while, for some examples, evil people like Ian Miles Cheong, Milo Yiannapolis, and Nicholas Feuntes still stalk the earth. Anyway, at that uplifting note, I'm off to continue to re-explore Hyrule!

[@twentysides]

Are you rating the game or the publisher at that point? The game doesn't give customer service.

[@Catchafire2000]

I've yet to see bad reviews of games being promoted for KS by KZbinrs... Everything is good, but hardly played when released. Games still in plastic wrap.

[@robertcrist6059]

It doesn't make any sense to me to rate a game you haven't played. Idk how BGG would know you have played a game to rate it but personally why would someone rate a game they haven't played? There are plenty of reasons, but overall it's a silly topic that shouldn't have issues but hey broken people

[@RiHa_Games]

Algorithm second 🐦

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

The only thing that BGG had that I loved was their Marketplace, and they managed to screw that up too.

[@VVL5678]

This is the worst take by Alex I've come across. By his logic, if he's ever responded to a viewer comment on any platform then he should require himself to respond to every viewer comment or explain his reason why not.

[@BoardGameCo]

That's not at all an accurate comparison. In no way am I saying that if you take an action, you have to always take that action. And responding to comments isn't a public ratings system. I'm saying they have a public rating system, and they nearly always take a stance of "we don't interfere" except when they do....which calls into question why they don't other times.

[@VVL5678]

@@BoardGameCo Thank you for clarifying that a public rating system isn't responding to comments. I'm sorry you doubted my ability to discern the two. If I understand your video correctly, bgg doesn't allow publishers to incentive ratings, and they also don't modify any rating that's been given or go after users who rate in a specific way. Are you looking for them to state that explicitly? If so, I don't understand why you feel that's at all necessary. The distinction seems very clear and natural to me.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

If I ever win the lotto, I would Elon Musk BGG or create a new website that will put BGG to shame.