The BGG Weight Problem

[@nathangerardy2669]

Another aspect is to consider that if a person has never played a true 5 difficulty game, they don't have a reference mentally when they are comparing a game that is less complex. I'll be honest I don't own any 4's or 5's. It is hard enough to get the 3's on the table for some people.

[@Shelfside]

Well said! -Ashton

[@icevariable9600]

Oathsworn & Hegemony enter the chat.

[@alices.7968]

additionally should some game not be rated as heavy weight just because other games are even more complex? Even though TI4 is less complex than TI3 I would rate both of those as a 5.

[@grahamturner2640]

I also wonder how often the reverse is true, where people understate the complexity of a board game if they like to play those heavier board games. On BGG, the weight rating of Campaign for North Africa is 4.75/5. The vast majority of people (around 93%) rated it as a 5, though the second most common rating was, off all ratings, a 1 (with around 5.5% popularity).

[@thecuriousboardgamer]

Weight rating definitely has a strong vibe component. Yes, TI3 is more complicated than TI4, but I'd 100% consider all games rated 4.31 and 4.26 as the same weight. And, as we can only vote whole numbers for weight, personally, I'd rate both of them a 5. So, same same.

[@TheSludgeMan]

Yeah quibbling over literally a couple of decimal points is strange. The weight mechanic is imperfect... is this really posing an important problem for people in real life? I don't think so.

[@maximjussim1024]

I wishes BGG had a score on the level of interaction in a game. That would really help bringing more people into the hobby!

[@VoidVerification]

Why so? Interaction is not the be-all, end-all of board gaming. I enjoy multi-player solitaire very much. There are lots of players out there who don't like confrontation, for whom more interaction is not better.

[@Planerary]

​@@VoidVerification because for the majority of boardgamers, interaction is really important. Especially for casual gamers.

[@maximjussim1024]

@@VoidVerification Then you will probably tend towards games that have a low interaction rating and will be very happy to discover games in that category. I personally, bounce off really hard from multiplayer solitaire games, because to me social interaction makes a big part of the fun when playing.

[@TheSludgeMan]

An accessibility score would be cool too. I would really like to know if a game is not colour blind friendly before I buy it and waste my money...

[@the_crisp9]

"maybe 30 according to my statistics class" I felt that

[@Shelfside]

haha, I had to google it again to make sure -Ashton

[@memunns]

if the P is low, reject the h0. thats the only thing i remember from Stats

[@NickBentley]

Fun fact: for every increment of 1 in weight, average rating goes up by .57 on BGG, on average

[@rikzz0r]

That makes sense, as BGG attracts boardgamers who, in general, prefer more complex games

[@memunns]

they actually don't. if you look on BGA, the most popular games are light except Ark Nova. In terms of spins, gamers prefer light. @@rikzz0r

[@GGdeTOURS37]

@@rikzz0r We are boardgamers and we hate too complex games! So our games are rarely in the top 20!

[@manfrombc5162]

I actually used these ratings to organize my game shelf. Things are organized in 0.5 increments and ones on the border between two levels are rounded up or down, by my discretion. It works great for my friends who have varying interests in board games, so when they pick a game, they see a neighborhood of similarly complex games, so they generally know what they are getting into. As long as you are happy with considering 3.3 and 3.4 pretty much the same, then I i think it works surprisingly well.

[@imchaotix5450]

I wish to do this one day, collection still to small lol

[@Cosmitzian]

It works as far as it 'works'.. but it's definitely not even objectively correct, let alone subjectively. Objectively, we've talked why, but subjectively.. i am not an AP prone gamer, i just... play. But The Wolves ruined me and i was the guy taking 10 minute per turn at the table and i wasn't even having fun.

[@icevariable9600]

I am actually using the Complexity Rating to organize the games I want to buy, from easiest to hardest, since the more complex games sit in my closet longer, unplayed.

[@tyleryoung3158]

I also wanted to come on here and echo the Mogul Scale, coined by the Board Game Moguls podcast, which weighs games based on rules complexity from 1-5 and decision complexity from A-E. Games like Chess and Go are a 1E, since there are hardly any rules but sooo many different things you can do, and games like Ticket to Ride and Pandemic might be a 2B. These ratings are subjective, too, but it breaks down weight/complexity even more.

[@RichardArpin]

If BGG wanted to show several different categories influencing weight, they could use spider graphs. Further out means heavier and closer in mean lighter, and then they could be colored based on total area of the spider graph, so a heavy large one could be red, and a small light game could be green.

[@QBG]

I view "weight" as how much of a time/effort investment a game requires before you can really understand and enjoy it. It could be learning dense iconography, encyclopedic rules overhead, wide-open strategic decision space, a massive variety and quantity of components, or any other factor that demands work from players to reach a baseline skill floor. The more of these factors a game has, the heavier it is.

[@philomorph7]

As a long-time user of BGG, I find it most useful to ignore the decimal in the weight rating, and simply look at the whole number for a general guideline. This divides games into 4 categories (since nothing is a pure 5), which is pretty useful sometimes.

[@brockmckelvey7327]

My personal optimum Difficulty/Complexity rating system would just have a bunch of fairly objective questions like: How many pages is your rulebook (if at a standard font+size)? How many different components does your game have? How many actions can a player take on their turn? Can a player take actions on another player's turn? How many elements of randomness are involved (spinners, dice, shuffled decks, etc.)?

[@danacoleman4007]

Great suggestions!

[@nathanmichael167]

I have not had too many problems with the weight system, if you don't follow it to the decimal its pretty much spot on.. THis is more of a data rounding thing than a problem with the rating system. Games should be rounded to 1 , 1.5 , 2 and 2.5 TI 4 is an 8 hour game. It involves an exceptional amount of decisions and understanding of systems. It's easily 4.5. However, if you want to fix it (or make it more detailed) forget asking more questions . Its breen proven that more questions means less responses. Instead, have only a rating of a 1 2 3 4 5, round to the .5 More importantly do like delivery services do. Considering we already know the culprits of each weight (IE 5 is either too complex or too long) put some checkboxes that open based on what you rate. make it easy. then the person just writes a number and clicks a box on why they did that number based on what we know about it.

[@CyboreoTwinkie]

This is exactly the system I use when I look up games on BGG as well. Just like any voting system, it can’t be accurate since there is always human factors (trolls, experience, confusion, etc…). However, knowledge of the mass will even it out.

[@svachalek]

People do rate 1-5 as whole numbers, that’s the only option. But on a lot of games only a handful of people have actually voted. People want to put way too much precision and importance into a number that are just the average of 5 people’s opinion. BGG really shouldn’t show two decimals here, it only encourages that nonsense. Same with ratings and top 100, it’s just an average of people’s votes, a big percentage of who haven’t even played the game. Fortunately it factors in number of votes which is usually more important than the average score if you want to see what games are popular. The best way to fix it is to keep voting. Especially things like weight and player count that only get a few votes.

[@nathanmichael167]

I can imagine a world where AI, similar to amazon, scrapes reviews and gives a few key words to justify the weight.

[@ArnoVdVelde]

I have some problems with TI being 4.5. Cause that means the only thing you can do with games more complicated than it is give them a 5, and there will be no distinction between those. Would really need to go to a 1-10 rating system. Cause with a top of 5, 4.5 is too high.

[@kyledcantrell]

How I would solve it: 1. A set designer weight 2. Crowd sourced on whether that weight feels right Kinda like “runs small” votes on Amazon clothing For example, a designer sets the weight to medium-heavy, and there is a crowd score that says it is probably actually a heavy game.

[@Cosmitzian]

I'd feel that'd work better for objective specifics, like luck or rule density.

[@CharlesWells-c5m]

Speaking for myself, I have found weight a helpful metric insofar as I have noticed that if a game is above a 3, it is generally not fun for me. That, and a quick look at an image of the game set up on the table (number of components/areas/etc) is usually enough to confirm a game is not going to be a good fit.

[@rmattbill]

I've been skeptical of weight scores for a long time, so very pleased to see this breakdown. Also, had never heard of John Company, but it looks amazing. Going to pick up a copy!

[@MagicRealmVagabond]

Objection: John Company's rulebook isn't bad, I find it very clear and easy to read ! (Try the French translation of Imperium's rules, you have more questions about the rules after reading it).

[@mercuzio711]

Sustained.

[@hizisfoo]

I was shocked to hear it's 'notoriously' bad. It's the first time I hear it. And I find it to be very good personally.

[@bradleyjones1515]

I do use the weight rating quite a bit, but only for comparing games within the same sort of genre

[@cfosburg]

In regard to this topic… I given this a lot of thought and devoted time to watch talks and read articles on the subject. In my opinion the ‘weight’ of a game is a triangle of the factors: 1. Complexity Index 2. Depth Index 3. Time Index The ‘weight’ of a game is referring to the mental capacity or the mental burden of a player. Complexity deals with how base rules interact in meaningful ways. The origin of the word is combination of simple things and interconnected parts, sometimes called Intricate. Intricate means entangled or perplex. Depth is when the consequence of a decision greatly ramifies into newly created choices Time has to do with the mental processing of the rules. How much do you need to know before you can start to play? How long to make all the mental calculations and navigate through the rules before you can make a decision? The amount of time you spend on the game are also contributing factors. Complexity limits the depth of a game, but depth is bought by complexity. You can’t have depth without some complexity. Some other factors that may influence the triangle or weight of a game are: 1. Elegance, 2) Game Management, Intuitiveness, and Immersion Elegance is high depth to complexity ratio Game Management deals with how much you have to manipulate the game often referred to ‘fiddling’ or ‘bookkeeping’. Intuitiveness deals with the level of ease for you to understand how to play optimally. Often called ‘grokking’ or ‘seeing the matrix’, it’s how well you mentally connect with the game. Immersion deals with the ratio of pleasure/engagement to the mental load a game has on a player. Some games can have both a high complex and high depth index, but the level of immersion can negate or lessen the mental toll a game has. Here are some examples of this mental capacity triangle 1. Complexity Index - The amount of rules (the size of a rulebook usually is a good indicator of this). - Learning how to play the game for the first time - reading the rules - Teaching the game to others - The amount of additional rules introduced - through cards, other mechanics, or unique variables - Games with variable dashboards, lots of cards and more complexity - Amount of knowledge needed to start playing - for me, I have to understand everything about a Ryan Lauket game before I’m able to play it for the first time. It’s like a code or puzzle I have to crake. 2.Depth Index - The amount of decisions you have to make - The degree of punishment for wrong decisions 3. Time Index - Length of playtime - over time everyone’s mental capacity begins to diminish, some faster than others - Setup time - Take Down time - Amount of time a player has to take a turn - AP, do a take 2 mins or 6 mins, how long does each turn affect the length of the game? - amount of mental decisions per second - Can affect the Pace of Play I think these 3 factors (complexity- depth - time) are more measurable than what we have on BGG, and they are all contributing factors to the ‘weight’ of a board game.

[@VampireGamer1]

When I am interested in a game, I look up a "How to Play" video. Letting the general public vote on how heavy something is will always generate bad results.

[@PabloGrazziotin]

lol a weight system based on the lenght of "how to play" video + average play time could be interesting

[@nitorishogiplayer3465]

When presenting my friends a list of board games I own to choose from, I gave every game a time category, a strategy/complete info-to-luck rating, and a complexity rating. For me, 1 games are games that you could sum up the game's rules in around 3 sentences, not counting "each piece has individual moves" or "follow the directions on each card". Santorini firmly places itself on 1/5 on my list. There are so far 2 5/5 complexity rating games in my collection, but it seems that one of them was because the manual was written in a super confusing manner and the cards functions required you to refer to the manual every time. After we understood the rules and I made custom cards as a replacement, it seems that the complexity of the game might be a little lower, so it seems that clarity of the manual and cards has influenced how hard it seemed to learn the game. But in the end, while I did have stricter definitions for the time and strategy/complete info to luck ratings, I didn't really have set definitions would what qualifies as complexity 2 to 5 either.

[@ag806]

If the weight of a game is going up because of an expansion then it isnt correct. Those people should be going to the expansion page on BGG and scoring it there, not on the base game

[@JonathonV]

I agree that there are definitely some issues to be ironed out. Another issue may to do with the age of the game. For example, I played Septima on Friday. Ten-page rulebook, took us 6 hours to teach four people and play, BGG weight of 3.58. Then today I played Caylus. Five pages of rules, three hours to teach and play, BGG weight of 3.80. My thought is that this must be because Caylus is 18 years older than Septima, and we didn’t have many games back in 2005 (when Caylus was released) that were as complex as those we have today. The lack of definition does make it very confusing. Even if you define “weight” as how long it takes you to be able to understand all the intricacies of a game, that is influenced by so many factors. Take Gutenberg, for example (BGG Weight: 2.70). I had a bear of a time learning the rules because the rulebook was translated in a way that didn’t make sense to me. Contrast that with Trickerion, which I won on my first play against seasoned players, and its weight is 4.25. Should those be reversed? How should I know? And how much of complexity comes from understanding how to play versus understanding how to play it well? Is a game more complex if there are more things to keep track of in your head but each one individually is easy to learn, or does complexity come from it being difficult to understand? I have no idea why I trust that rating so much when I’m considering buying a game! But alas …

[@deriksmith2]

Biggest discrepancy of the games I’ve played in the top 100 in terms of weight are: 1. Brass Birmingham should have a lower weight. There’s not many pages in the rule book, and all it was really missing was a player aid which you can download on BGG. 2. Oathsworn should have a way higher weight. Its weight is lower than BB, but has a tutorial video over 1h30m (vs 30min for BB), and a huge rule book.

[@dougsundseth6904]

In many of your examples, you were saying that a game was rated as heavier or lighter than some other game when the ratings were separated by less than a tenth of a point. I submit that this difference is not significant, particularly when the definitions are nebulous and the ratings are very granular. Frankly, I think that either the median or the mode might be a better choice of a number to report than an arithmetic mean. This would mean that the reported number would also be very granular, but I given the inputs, I think that might be better than the false precision of the current system.

[@timlorow2679]

I use BGG weight as a guideline, but you really can't stress about every decimal point. I do agree not to show a rating until you get at least a few ratings

[@TheOldMan-75]

Yeah it's really not that difficult. It's about as accurate as asking how complex a game is on reddit. You'll get a rough indicator but that's about it. It certainly helps you to see whether a game leans more towards TI4 or Wingspan and that's really all I need.

[@aaronhandleman7277]

I wonder if they could do an ELO based system where they ask you to compare it to other games you've played. That could help a lot with the issue of different people having different scales. If all I've played is Azul and Candyland, Azul may seem like a 4 which is misleading, but I CAN accurately say that Azul is more complicated than Candyland.

[@EarthenGames]

Great video topic! At first, I thought the BGG weight scale had more to do with amount of components + rules + playtime, but not necessarily complexity which is a subjective topic. But when I learned that it is actually a complexity rating, it confused me because some games on there are rated far heavier than they should be and vice versa

[@sylinmino]

Funnily enough, I think the exact opposite about your comparison of Rebellion and Jaws of the Lion. Rebellion takes about 40 minutes to teach, and after you've played only a couple turns, virtually all of its systems play super intuitively and naturally and components are not finicky. Jaws of the Lion, on the other hand, takes several sessions to learn all of its rules and systems, components are so finicky and overhead so high that many just recommend you only play it with an app, and it's super easy to forget rules and caveats and random bits until you've played the game for 10 or more hours. Doesn't matter if JotL is more streamlined than Gloomhaven, it's still overwhelming.

[@josephpilkus1127]

This is a great video and one near and dear to my heart. As a professional board game developer, I've had clients ask...what's the weight of my game? Part of the issue is that our hobby/industry is in its nascent form and we lack the vocabulary and professional vernacular to better define such terms as "weight" for gamers. Folks like Geoff Englestein and others are helping in this area, but we're still a few years away. For myself, I use length of rules, ease of play, and length of play as good starting points for the discussion.

[@The_Wampy]

My first step towards fixing the rating scale would be adding a 0 rating for "dead simple" for games like twister/candyland/Cards against Humanity.

[@Shelfside]

oooh, I like the 0-5 rating -Ashton

[@jokerES2]

Look. User-provided data is usually bad, especially for small sets of data. This is just a case of a self-selecting group (those BGG users committed enough to the site to provide data on specific games) and a low number of votes on any particular game. The weight rating of TI4 (the number 5 game on the BGG Top 100) is decided by a total of roughly 1000 votes. To put that into context: The population of a small, rural town is deciding the weight, player count, and so forth. Use it as what it is, a direction of preference rather than a gospel to follow. Also, long live the Mogul Scale, which separates "Depth" and "Rules Complexity".

[@benjaminl429]

I always thought the yardstick for BGG "heavy" was the brother from that song by The Hollies, so I've been rating accordingly.

[@SporadicDude]

Check out the Mogul Scale, an attempt to rate the games based on rulex complexity and strategy depth.

[@grahamturner2640]

Unfortunately, it currently only has 102 games on it.

[@4_Last_4]

The weight rating is the most useful and accurate rating IMO in bgg. MOds don't do anything ha, I tend to agree and enjoy your videos a lot... This one I can not disagree more. Though that's the beauty of free speech

[@nathangerardy2669]

Maybe add a system where the votes that are further from the average have less value. For example, if candyland is generally getting a 1 vote by 90% then as you get more than 20% in value away the value of that vote is decreased. So having a few troll votes of a 5 weight would have little actual impact. Given that they are diminished due to the distance from the average 1 vatue.

[@acerumble]

Thanks for this video! I always thought "weight" was how many kilos it weighed, not how complex it was. Guess I never looked that closely before

[@tlow5766]

As it isn’t defined by hard metrics, weight is and will always be fuzzy. It still think it’s very helpful when considering a game. Taking a look at the poll results, adds further info, if needed.

[@devincross2205]

I would love to see something like an ELO system where the value of a reviewer's weight rating is based on their peer-reviewed validity. People who rate games prior to release (for example) or rage-rate games due to delays would have minimal impacts on ratings.

[@noneyafkn]

I use it. I've found it fairly accurate for the most part

[@Original_Maverick]

It would be interesting to see individuals' votes weighted based on their voting history. If that person has a history of playing less complex games, then their 5 rating on one or two games may poll closer to a 4 in the system.

[@impi7685]

In my opinion there is strong connection between how heavy is a game and how hard is to teach it. Because of that, for me at least it is broken down to the amount of exceptions. More expections mean the game is heavier. TI4 just has a lot of things, but those are simple mechanics without significant exceptions, however Game Of Thrones 2nd edition needs an extra "chapter" during the teaching just to explain the Harboooooooors.

[@franklinbolton8730]

I wish they would let us type in any value similar to rating games. A 1.6 becomes a 2 and a 2.4 becomes a 2 as well but they are pretty different in terms of weight

[@MikewithaK]

Maybe it would make sense to have the weight system consist of multiple scores that are added/factored together to generate the weight. Giving the user the ability to click on the weight and then see the other scores. Like Time to learn, time to teach, time to setup, time to put away, number of components, time to play per player, player interaction, how many things to focus on at once, scoring methods etc... That way you can get a more consistent score, and people can look at the breakdown and decide to ignore certain factors they don't care about. I have games that have a lot of different rules, so time to teach is like 30min, but once you get around in, everything clicks and makes sense. A lot of people would say these games are easy, but they might have more weight, because they take so long to teach all the rules to play.

[@Esauofisaac]

I would say that the biggest factor that influences the weight of a game, outside of its innate complexity, is...well, the weight. As in the number of pieces. We have to remember that the majority of ratings made are done emotionally. I tend to agree with the ratings given, but I think every game tends to be weighted a little bit harder because it's not often that someone will rate someone like TI a 2 saying "eh it's not that bad, everyone was exaggerating," but it IS common that someone will emotionally see the game and rate it "5, wow I can't believe Terry made us spend 10 hours playing this 25,000 piece monster game with a billion pieces and we didn't even finish."

[@truce11]

Loving this kind of content. Informative & shining a light on things we've just taken for granted. Sounds like.... Omg science.

[@stephenrynerson5530]

In my experience, the biggest problem with BGG weight ratings (which you reference here at the end) is that you have a HUGE percentage (like probably 75%+) of users who rate a game's weight based primarily on "depth of play"/strategic options, etc. NOT on the difficulty of learning the actual rules. That's how you end up with insane things like chess, a game whose rules can fit on a single sheet of paper and which a reasonably intelligent six year-old can play a "rules perfect" game of after just a few lessons, being rated as "heavier" than Twilight Struggle, Scythe, and Churchill. (Chess: 3.65; Twilight Struggle: 3.61; Scythe: 3.44; Churchill: 3.37.) IMHO, "weight" should refer only to the difficulty of playing a "rules perfect" game without needing to refer to the rules, on the view that there is an important distinction between knowing how to play a game and knowing how to play a game well.

[@jori626]

I wish there was a gauge that showed an amount of interaction between players. For example Brass was kind of a boring game after playing nemesis. Brass has little to no interaction with other players and you are focused on your own goal. Nemesis on the other hand has plenty of it and wish it was easier to find games like nemesis.

[@GopherJoe17]

One problem of redefining the levels with more detail is it'll just push everything towards the middle. If 1 becomes "easiest game you've every played", and 5 becomes "very complex, so many rules, etc." It just means many less votes would be on 1 and 5, and everything would just end up being closer to 3, which wouldn't help the stats, only make them more muddy.

[@origenward3845]

I never gave too much "weight" to the accuracy of the "weight" value. But its nice to have something i suppose.

[@WendyGa]

The ratings are somewhat explained in the description above the numbers. Agree it's vague and influenced by who is voting, but it's still a useful metric IMO. The same way preferred player counts can be affected by the game group situation of those voting. Also, smaller decimal differences in weight aren't really meaningful. Those are just average based fluctuations. BGG could easily hide the second decimal and round. That said, I do not think the solution is to change one rating into 4. Those will end up being arbitrary in their own ways and multiple numbers tend to be more overwhelming and less useful for someone browsing a page for a quick feel of what a game is like. If they want more info, they can always scroll down and start watching/reading reviews.

[@Allthesmallteas]

i have no added valve to this conversation besides saying you do great work. i enjoy all your videos that i watch.

[@bruceulrich1231]

I just wish people would take a reasonable amount of personal responsibility on research resources. Troll voting is just petty. But also gamer snobs who rate everything lower than reality because "they played that one game that one time" that is way heavier than TI... With this poll I don't see a bell curve distribution. It should be roughly even distribution between each number. (About 20% 1's etc.)

[@biyukun]

Ok, this is fascinating! Though I don't think it's a 2 (too bad we can't vote in increments), I can kinda get why Candyland is rated a teensy bit heavier than Telestrations. In Candyland, the game does play itself, but you have to know what all the cards you draw mean. In Telestrations, knowing what anything means IS the gameplay and not required to play it correctly. But if we are saying complexity is how many decisions you have to make vs. how much info. you have to interpret, then I guess we could say Telestrations is more complex because there are more decisions you have to make--what to draw to represent words. I guess this would be fiddliness vs. decision space?

[@HeriqueMartins]

I have always seen the “weight” as how hard it is to learn. It feels like it would be better with all the 4 points you made should be separated as different categories.

[@thomasoswald4626]

This is an interesting conversation, and I think a good example here is chess. At the time of writing this, chess sits at a 3.66, with over 30% of users giving it the maximum 5/5. But actually, it takes less than five minutes to learn how to play chess. So yeah, breaking down complexity by “learning” and “depth” would be ideal. Aside from that, maybe we could use some sort of artificial intelligence to objectively measure these things, especially for the “depth” part. That’s probably more work than anyone is willing to do though. As for components and luck, I think those are separate (but important) points. I’ve always said that BGG should have clear information about the average table space a game requires. I hate unboxing and setting up a game, only to realize that my table is simply too small. That’s the components. But “luck” got me thinking that it would be pretty neat to see the ratio of luck to skill for each game. Again, A.I. would come in handy.

[@dustmagnet]

Awesome video ashton, good convo starter!

[@Shelfside]

Cheers mate! It has led to so many questions the more I looked into it -Ashton

[@crossrhodes14]

They should just make weight be an average from several categories a user can vote on: downtime, how difficult are the rules, how easy it is to teach, how long it takes to play, components, amount of upkeep, throw as many as you want in there and then calculate the average rating, or median if BGG wants.

[@bravicimo]

Kinda like IMDb ratings, anime shows get overhyped scores, TV shows tend to have more favorable scores than movies in general, Bollywood movies are scored higher than any comparable western movie, etc. It's an imperfect subjective scoring system but I still enjoy having it at my disposal to have a broad idea of a game's overall difficulty.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

Ashton For President!

[@tobyr21]

I still think these weight values are useful. Here’s my advice: pay attention to the weights of the games you like to play. For example, I found that if a game is weighted between 2.5 and 3.5 I might really enjoy it, but not outside of those that range. Also read the description of the game to see whether the weight is probably due to its complexity, It’s rules, or it’s play. you can usually tell from the description. -Toby

[@HexStarDragon]

One big issue with the rating system is that the scale isn't large enough for individual votes - as in, you can only select integers 1 through 5. The aggregate ratings are averages with decimals, but if I want to rate the most recent mid-weight Euro game, I have to rate it exactly at a 2, 3, or 4, and then hope other players vote in a way that counter-balances me so that every game between a 2.51 and 3.49 of weight don't get rated the same value.

[@TheTravelingnight]

It might be worth considering weight has having some degree of a normal distribution, where assigning 1-5 as a value more-so has to do with their relation to other games. In this way, one could look at extremely heavy or extremely light games as being similar IN THAT they are relatively extremely complex. The reason I mention this has to do with experiential bias, if that's the appropriate term. Most people with even minor experience playing classic games would understand candyland as being completely autonomous or at the very least very very simple. They would also as easily understand that twilight emperium is extremely complex relative to many other games. Also, most players would understand something twice as complex as twilight emperium as being similarly heavy, in that they are both extremely heavy relative to their experience, rather than by some objective measure. So I guess the central issue is that we have conflicting populations. There are those that are inexperienced (or at least relatively so). Then there are those that are veteran players. The importance in stating this is that I think it's valid to point out that many haven't truly played a game that would be called a weight of "5", but there are so many people that will NEVER play anything close to that. Attempting to become to objective in rating games relative complexity neglects that individuals have differing preferences and tolerances for different forms of complexity. The question is not really "How complex is this game?" It's "How does it feel to play this game?" The difference is that the latter centers our subjective understanding of games. We might not know how Twilight emperium feels to play, but we understand Pandemic, or Ticket to Ride. We understand Chess and connect four. We each have a unique vocabulary through which we interpret this information. Perhaps breaking the rating down to two distributions would also work? The casual fan will overemphasize complexity, and the experienced will likely underemphasize, simply due to enjoyment of the increased weight by some degree. If you had to identify yourself as either experienced or casual before rating, you would get more appropriate ratings for each of these populations. You could also have certified players register with BGG as an additional group, like critics vs the general population on movie rating websites. This is all an option anyway. Just thinking out loud really. I like your broken down weight rating system as well. It is much closer to objective, and critically, it provides more nuanced information that is pertinent to those using the site. That said, I do think you'll still have some amount of bimodal distribution, since casual players may have lower tolerances for how many figures and etc. are used as opposed to veteran players. That said, if you literally catalogue components, then this could be somewhat avoided. You could work with game publishers to that end as well.

[@SamuelPeg]

I think that, in a way, Weight represents the mental effort/burden of playing a game (so I'd say the playing time is a factor that adds to the complexity). Also, voters, their backgounds and expectations, as their "self-selection" to play/rate a game are key. In the TI4 example: precisely because it's a more streamlined version, more casual gamers could play it and vote it, feeling it was heavier, compared to other people who voted the TI3, which could be people with slightly different bias of what a heavy game is. That could be also the case for wargames rated lower than excpected, since it's mostly wargamers who would rate them, who are likely more accustomed to heavier games.

[@johns6177]

I don't pay much attention to the differences after in the 100ths place (0.0x), and a and a 10th place difference is practically the same (3.20 is virtually the same as a 3.30 ) I find the weight useful to choose games for certain purposes despite it not being able to be perfectly accurate.

[@SWAT6809]

Youre not even touching on games with a) asymmetrical player factions or b) games with multiple difficulty modes and yet you are still so correct. Also entry games will have a way different rating (the wallmart problem you mentioned), but on top of that, how many people go back and change their ratings of weight retroactively after playing heavier stuff?

[@Erril_Ferndal]

I think what a gamer truly wants to know about the weight rating system is "How complex/thick is the rulebook?" and "How long does it take to learn the rules?". Because think about it: if the other factors like "What proportion of time is spent thinking and planning instead of resolving actions? " or "How hard and long do you have to think to improve your chance of winning?" are taken into consideration when choosing a score, then games like Chess should all be rated 5! So, how many people tried Chess? Most people did, why? Because there are less rules / low entry barrier. That's what people like to know! Whether it takes time to get better in a game, that's much less important for people than the fact whether they can get a game to the table and find people who are willing to get through the rules complexity.

[@darioc9948]

I would also add how experienced you are in modern board games dictates how you view the weight of a game. The first time you learn a worker placement game might skew your perception as a heavier game because you've never had that experience before, but once you play other worker placement games that aspect is less daunting and thus less heavy to your perception.

[@CharlesHepburn2]

It’s only a rough guide… pictures and reviews will help clarify why it’s so heavy.

[@Tzimisce25]

The main problem is that you cannot give fractions for weight. And as you said, 2-4 are the difficult part, not the 1 and 5. We did a podcast on this topic in hungarian, we came to similar conclusions.

[@cutthr0atjake]

John Company is heavy in the same way High Frontier 4 All is heavy. The rules for both games are fairly straight forward, but there's a lot of them! Both, however, are fantastic experiences and well worth playing.

[@PsychicLord]

It could be improved by looking at the variance range, and adjusting any outliners of a given percentage. I believe that they already do something similar in the overall rating.

[@Shelfside]

ooh, I like that. -Ashton

[@JoshuaSpitaleri]

Wish I could go back in time, be your age, and live in a nerd house and play board games

[@revimfadli4666]

Complexity and depth do need to be separated, so people can know whether to expect "heavy" feel from complex rules or from deep gameplay (or both)

[@JimmySquiky]

I agree that weight not being define is an issue however when many people are what they think about a thing they tend to be close to the answer. I've seen the experienced about being asked how high they think the Eiffel tower is and if you average their answer they're not far. But I agree that some answers are weird, Voidfall isn't a 4.60 game.

[@francopdx]

I rarely pay attention to the BGG weight ratings, but I have looked at them a few times over the past few months to see how some heavy new-to-me games compared to heavy games that I know well. Including last night when I checked to see how Scholars of the South Tigris (which I just got this week) compared to Architects of the West Kingdom (which I've played around a dozen times over the past year). Anyway, I guess I didn't really know how the ratings were defined (or not defined). Thanks for the insight.

[@zs3028]

I think people rates each game individually . So it helps you take note if this particular game is a light or heavy game etc. I think it’s effective that way. However if you start comparing across games , looking at the numerical difference in terms of weight to make a decision , I think it will then be proven flawed and won’t be useful. Still the concept is good and provides some form of feedback to make a more informed purchase.

[@RolandIronfist13]

If people are using BGG ratings and weights, it's only because they're ignorant of not using the rankings and weights

[@DaleNolanJr]

The weight needs to be broken down into separate categories. Like Learning Difficulty and Play Difficulty. Sometimes a game is very easy to learn but has a high skill ceiling like Chess for example. While another game might take a lot to learn up front but becomes fairly straight forward after you learn the game.

[@funnymanfish]

While I do think that the system is very flawed I do think it is helpful in broad strokes. Way I put it is: Light - Uno-esque in rules density Medium Light - Good for beginners Medium - Best for experience playesr Medium Heavy - Steep learning curve Heavy - Difficult even for experienced players While I can gripe about how one game in my collection is heavier than another by a few points, I think taking it on this macro-lens the only thing that I truly disagree with (in my collection) is that Chess is rated 'Heavy'

[@ideohazard]

BGG alao allows users to vote on game family (war, abstract, strategy, thematic). Weight as a function of game family might improve these scores. If war games are generally heavier than family games then we really want to know weight as a function of the category. Perhaps BGG should consider weighing the weight as a function of votes in one or more categories.

[@karkosky3472]

I honestly think that waiting for 30 votes would be an impactful change on its own, if they didn't want to do the much better category complexity. I feel it'd be the easiest fix, because even if you have instances where 30 jokers put down a 5 as a 1, by that point there have already been hundreds, if not thousands, of votes. I think another easy way would be if the amount of votes in a specific rating wouldn't hold, let's say, 15% of the total vote then it won't factor in the complexity. I dunno, I never done a statistics.

[@Ivytea]

Yeah BGG weight is mostly accurate, but again, not a good predictor for what a "heavy" game is. I agree I'd love to see other measurements like (1) Rules complexity (2) Depth (3) Luck (4) Tacticality (5) Strategy (6) Component management difficulty (7) Overall complexity of decision making

[@noizeemama3697]

Not to mention that as we play more games our idea of what is heavy changes.

[@dago6410]

Great vid couldnt agree more. Givexusxmore stats weight is too wideo of a category. For me weight means "how much of a (mental) cost do I have to pay to get the benefit of having fun with this gsme" but... there is more than 1 resources to pay this cost with, so it makes no sense to cram it together.

[@TheEternal792]

I like your solution; I think breaking down weight into more, separate ratings would be ideal. My opinion on the matter is probably controversial. I see 5 as more of a threshold rather than the most complex game in existence, whereas 1 is a pretty objective baseline. A game could always be more complex, but you can't get more simple than a game that literally plays itself like Candy Land or War. I think most traditional "family" games and party games fall are 1s. Things that would typically be considered gateway games, like TTR or Marvel United, are 2s. Things that I wouldn't introduce brand new players to but would be one of the first things I show people who have been introduced and have shown interest in to the gateway games are 3s, like Concordia or Architects of the West Kingdom. I think 4s and 5s are the hardest to discern the difference between, and even harder to succinctly differentiate with text. However, I do think that games like Star Wars: Rebellion, War of the Ring, On Mars, and John Company can all be 5s even though I think it would be relatively easy to rank these 4 games in order of complexity. Just because there's a heavier game out there somewhere doesn't prevent a less heavy game from still being considered heavy.

[@Cheddarific]

Another challenge that you did not discuss and which plays a huge role in many examples you shared: you are looking at these numbers in fine resolution when the inputs are extremely low resolution. Since the options for lighter games are “1” or “2,” I don’t think we can really expect to see appropriate differences between games that are 1.05 and 1.10. For example, everyone would agree that Uno is heavier than Candyland, but in a perfect world they should both be “1.00” since nobody should be calling either of them “light-medium.” Comparing numbers beyond the decimal point, especially under 2.0 is like trying to guess the exact average height in centimeters in each country by passing around a survey “How tall are you? Short 150cm , medium 170cm, or tall 190cm?” You have at best resolution of 20cm, not 1cm. TL;DR: BGG weights have a confidence interval that’s large - you cannot expect accuracy much beyond the decimal place.

[@yardene3426]

There needs to be an alternative to BGG.

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

Facts!

[@Mark-nh2hs]

Word of mouth, watching/reading multiple different reviews, weighing up the pros and cons and more importantly does the game appeal to you. That's how I do it I've never used BGG to influence me buying a game.

[@ClippyTactical]

I'd say that there's not enough money in it to make a decent, modern website that looks like it was designed this century - and to be fair, BGG is still very good for a free hobbyist resource!

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

@@ClippyTactical - That's what I said. It's a glorified Board Game Wiki. It's good at what it does well.

[@adamanderson1979]

Recently had a discussion on our local board game discord on the difference between complexity and weight. The conclusion of that was a very granular pair of definitions. Complexity goes up when you need to consider more variables for each action. Weight goes up when your actions at any point in the game have effects on the end outcome(not quite anti-luck) or to summarize in single words complexity is variables while weight is consequences.

[@ringostarr7080]

I assume that people who own, teach and play a rather difficult game are proud of it and tend to rate it heavier than it actually is. Similar to Kickstarter games that are better rated because of the kickstarters themselves. Keep the good content up!

[@milesstone7032]

When I was very new to the hobby, I used to think that weight meant the literal weight of the game.

[@frejkster]

You could have the more detailed rating system but that would definetely discourage people from voting. I see this in my professional sphere, the more questions you ask - the less percentage of people answer them. While the system is not pefect - it is still usefull and gives a quick benchmark for buyers. I would probably just put a comment or description that this is a Community rating and not a strict system. Plus as previous comments mentioned the decimals are not that important and some rounding should happen.

[@cubist12]

Weight should be the compilation of several scores: 1. Rules (Both rulebook design and rule complexity. Is the rulebook clear and easy to navigate? Are there simple rules, or are there a lot of fiddly rules that you have to keep track of), 2. Setup (Does it take 1 minute, 5 minutes, or an hour?), 3. Decision\Action complexity(Do I just have one action per turn, with 2 two three options - or - do I have unlimited actions per turn with 20 options. This will be your AP indicator right here), 4. Symbology and board design(Is the symbology easy to decipher without going back to the rulebook? Is the board easy to read from all sides? Are there helpful player aids and/or turn reminders on the player boards?). I think those would basically tell you what you want to know before playing. If the rulebook stinks or the rules are too complex, and/or the decision complexity is high, you probably don't want to play this game with your older in-laws whose heads would explode. Whereas a game with easy rules, lower decision complexity and higher ratings for symbology and board design would be a better bet.

[@sebas1438]

i genuinely akways thought that "weight" meant "how heavy this game is physically" lol like "this game has a lot of pieces, be warned!"

[@jcw59able]

I think adding it as an option to vote on when reviewing would help get a better volume of opinions. Plus the definition BGG gives is pretty horrible like you mentioned so having more clear categories would help

[@KGeegs]

I concur that the definition of "weight" could use some fleshing out on BGG so that people can do a better job informing others on their rating. I assume (perhaps wrongly) that the reason they don't do a better job explaining what they mean by weight is because they want it to be a very simple and quick way for users to judge a game. One single number out of 5, right there at the top of the page. The biggest problem I see is separating depth of strategy from depth of complexity. Would Chess grandmasters rank Chess as a 5 in weight? It's incredibly complex strategically, but the rules are very easy to learn and you can jump in to a game after 5 minutes. On the other hand what rating do you give a game with a huge ruleset, a million different components but little actual strategy during play? This type of game I'm sure exists but I don't know any immediate examples. All this to say I think weight ought to be split at least into those two separate categories which sort of align with your #2 Ease of Play and #3 Depth.

[@visheshaneja4600]

I'd say divide the complexity in 4 or 5 different parts. (As you mentioned). Then bgg or someone comes with an algorithm or calculation ratio based on those 4/5 factors to come to a proper rating.

[@mantasignatavicius7787]

Heaviness would be just based on the feeling not the mental capacity needed to win. It includes how many components there are, is there multiple different components, how many actions you can take, how difficult is to know everything about the game and etc. As you compared Telestration game of drawing and guessing with Candyland that plays itself. Yes, the game plays itself and it is easier mentally than guessing what other person drew but based on the game heaviness I would consider Candyland to be heavier because if you are not playing with computer you need to manage the game yourself and Telestration is easier on that where everyone just grabs a drawing tool and a piece of paper

[@jblank1552]

Cutoff points are really important here. What people tend to bin together in the "1" and "5" spots. For example, War of the Ring is a 5 for me, so would The Campaign for North Africa be. The second might be more complex, but I don't bother at that point. Even worse for "1". Yahtzee is a 1 for me (same for a lot of roll and write), so is The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom. So is Candyland. But some people might draw very different lines here.

[@menchirox]

welp i'm now gonna rate a bunch of level 1s appropriately as level 1.

[@patrykzukowski7471]

If someone judges a game's weight by how long it is..... Then they surely haven't played Munchkin.