The BGG Weight Problem

you see a game on the holy BGG then look at the weight and be like whoa that seems like a high number I think this John company is a 4.44 out of five I think that means it's pretty heavy I think how are these scores getting made this isn't exactly the most sophisticated system maybe this number isn't taken seriously by you it wasn't by me for a while but some people do use it I mean it is at the top of the web page and wrong scores could be pushing people away from games that are right for them man after having spent so many years in the hobby I wasn't even sure what a blank out of five meant so I decided to get to the bottom of it what is a Candy Land weight versus a ti4 what does this all mean for the legendary BGG top 100 could things be improved for newcomers and Veterans of the hobby with some simple fixes I've previously decoded the BGG rating system now I'm coming for you the BGG weight system this video is brought to you by ascension. this is a private freet to-play World of 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for the new season back to the video how it work essentially the BGG weight number is a community rating where literally anyone can vote between a 1 through five on how complex or heavy they think the game is and BGG doesn't strictly Define weight since it's kind of slanging anyways and so uh this is basically the most unscientific thing ever and we'll get back to that though if you actually click through this area it tells you how many people voted in each category not so popular games can have their complexity ratings be taken with a grain of salt because that could be like one to three votes this could all be the designer who might mislabel their game or their friends if we take a very popular game like ti4 sure there's a ton of ratings so some weird ones will get evened out by the masses hopefully uh this is another thing we'll get back to examples let's start with the heaviest game I've ever played according to board game geek that is John company second edition and that's going to have a weight of 4.44 out of 5 if we click through a whopping 59% of people voted this as the maximum five or heavy on the scale why is this game where you take on the roles of ambitious 18th century families within the British East India Company so heavy on the surface there's lots of components a long run time and plenty of rules the rule book is thick and while deciphering it you'll notice a lot of phases being broken down on every round there's literally nine phases and these aren't just drawing cards as your phase oh no no no no every phase has multiple headings for example the first mey phase called the family phase has everyone choose one of their six actions on their player board H it doesn't sound too bad then we go to the next phase where you start hiring but oh wait this dysfunctional corrupt company has all sorts of rules and exceptions for hiring and just take a look at this diagram here about the hierarchy of things if you think about how some games you're given special roll cards in John company you can have multiple roll cards since your family is all straddling different positions of the government and so different members will have effectively their own turns with special abilities this is just getting us started on the ridiculous ways to wheel and deal within your playgroup asking for future favors by hiring their incompetent nephews now or spending money to expand trade to your favorite parts of India or being seemingly generous towards the compy company while setting up a nasty blackmail card everything's all about how can my family become the best and remember the British East India Company is still a company with financial help and it is taking debt and has to meet its investors expectations unless you're actively rooting against the company then at the end of the round random events will happen which might need something like this to help to code and this will have potentially big changes on the game State then you all vote using one to two drawn bills then a wheel will determine additional consequences if you pass said bill this is all a very streamlined explanation of this 4.44 weight game since we got other games to cover so to end quickly we'll just point out there's additional deregulation rules you can play for different setups of the game so there's modules for more complexity an easily 4 to6 Hour game Let's jump back and cover a light game what about Cards Against Humanity yep we're going there in the lightness there is a judge that reads out a black card then everyone else chooses a white card from the hand and then puts it down to try to answer that prompt in the funniest or most appropriate way then the judge will look through all the White cards pick the one they like the most that one wins that was fast probably 30 minutes to an hour if you haven't finished the game I mean some people just get too blasted to keep playing the game and yes I just contrasted John company second edition with Cards Against Humanity never thought the day would come smack in the middle according to BGG is Dune Imperium at a 3.04 this thematic Euro has you tracking two main sources of victory points you want to win fights on the planet and be high on the alliance paths all while juggling the worker replacement plus deck building concepts with some slight asymmetry from every player then there's entry cards people can suddenly whip out during fights or other phases of the game game is about 1 to 2 hours inaccuracies okay so now that we have a feeling of the games in the 1 three and 5ish range let me reveal that the more I looked into this community rating system the more I didn't like it I thought that hey quantity of votes is not quality so people are probably voting kind of weird so I looked at Candyland for its rating of 1.10 this seems low but it should actually be lower cuz I didn't realize this growing up but the game literally plays itself there's a TTS mod to have the game just end immediately and some people ranked to A2 that means they think it's a light to medium game Candyland is ranked higher than telestrations a drawing game where you have to draw and guess what other people drew that's some brain power how is this lighter than a game that plays itself uh so then for fun I went through the BGG top games I've played to see that if things are truly that inaccurate one spreadsheet later I found that out of the 51 I've played 35 I actually agree with as in it felt Loosely within 0.3 to 0.5 range of what I would rate them obviously this is a pretty Vibe based thing but this is impressive now let's dial in what's going on with the 16 I had issues with well ti4 sticks out like a sore thumb to me because it's rated as heavier than its predecessor ti3 and this holds no weight as an idea to me because this is intentionally more streamlined than this like look at this mess of a tech web in ti3 compared to ti4 just needing a color to upgrade and components were Mega streamlined in ti4 the Moment I Saw Star Wars rebellion listed as a 3.74 I had to chuckle since that means it's only slightly heavier than Gloom Haven jaws of the lion and I will tell you that Star Wars rebellions stacks of rules in-depth Mission cards and variety of strategy is much above jaws of the lion streamlined Co-op approach to Big bux Gloom Haven good job BGG give me the reasons what's going on with these ones that feel a bit wonky if we back up remember that BGG never clearly defined weight as a term people can interpret it as a game being complicated or stressful or just having a lot of rules or just having a lot of components etc etc I don't know whatever gives my mom a headache the most within that really vague definition voting Tendencies are going to be massively different one is that the type of player rating a game truly influences how heavy they rate games and certain players are more drawn to certain games War gamers are a really different breed I figured that out after playing the World War II Naval simulator Atlantic Chase and agonizing over its rule book I'd imagine that this hugely different tolerance for complexity explains why the rating for the Cold War simulator Twilight Struggle is lower than the AFF forementioned jaws of the lion who might have people new to board games playing it since jaws of the lion is sold at Target you are not going to find war games in your normal Target store sci-fi fans also might be built different cuz look at Star Wars rebellion's listed weight versus War of the ring and both of these games are often mentioned in the same two-player epic conversation and Eclipse seems extraordinarily low for it having an entire rock paper scissors Dynamic about building your opponent's ships why is ti4 listed so heavy then well this is the most accessible version of a Space Opera so that might invite more non-hardcore players who play it and go like oh man this is definitely the biggest most heaviest game I've ever played bam five out of five h If Only They knew what this expansion did to the weight of the game oh yeah expansions let's talk about how games are waited for their expansions or in the case of lcgs their entire card pool because base game of Arkham horor lcg doesn't have that much going on except when you throw in all the deck building in all the scenario possibilities from the different packs people use extraneous SS to keep track of decks so then this higher rating makes sense same with Spirit Island I'm sure this heaviness rating is getting boosted by the expansions where you have more complic spirits to play can't forget about the learning experience either John company even though yes you are a heavy game you could not Escape me in the discussion because its rule book is notoriously bad but then when you teach the game to others it doesn't take that long basically owning the game and ranking it is a whole different experience than being asked to play by the owner art rule book navigating does not necessarily mean a game is complicated lastly timel in general seems to be strongly pushing up weight we talked about ti3 before but let's talk about Eld chore and one of the old classics battl Star Galactica and if we take a look at these games these are games where you mostly just move your character and then perform two simple actions to give a comparison these two amarit trash games are rated higher than this Eric ml area control Rising Sun rising sun is definitely heavier but can be shorter too but regardless it's a highly political Cutthroat asymmetric area control where every combat is a mini game in eldrich horror combat is literally just rolled sice ah get high number but wait you must say the time length does contribute to heaviness because the heaviness factors in the ease of play and how tired you feel after the game ends okay yes and again weight truly means things to different people and this goes perfectly into my potential solutions for this BGG weight system people aren't reading this before they vote okay divide this very broad weight term which is pretty much slang into four categories one component size self-explain two ease of play factors in the rules rule book and general first or second game experience three death of play what is the amount of stuff the players can learn about the game Beyond just the rules like different openings and build pass like how much can you strategy guide for the game and lastly four luck and random factors why not give people more information at the very top of each game's page oh and also definitely don't show the rating if there's less than a certain amount of votes maybe 30 is a good place to start according to my statistics classes granted as I said I don't disagree with too much of the BGG top 100's weight so if the system isn't going to change at the very least flesh it out with descriptors say one is simplest game I've ever played Candyland then five is extremely complicated hard to lert and tons of components and modules maybe it's time for people to get more information when they research a game and look at it at a glance or maybe there's some other way to improve it I haven't thought of I'll be reading you guys in the comments so one day one day maybe twister will be rated as less complicated as telestrations one okay I have to jump in here because I realized that while editing this the B weights would change from when I wrote the script to when I'm editing it now it's infuriating I could have sworn twister was rated as less complicated than telestrations so now I look like an idiot or at least my previous self looks like an idiot I also realized there was a ton of troll ratings see this Candyland on screen with people rating a five out of five come on guys it's not the heaviest game you played it's not heavy Candy Land is not heavy as such maybe a basian average with dummy votes like how the GE scores are calculated would work for this B way system anyways I'm having so many questions on how this will be done so hopefully you guys in comments will give me some inspiration maybe I'll make a follow-up video I love to hear what you guys have to say bye-bye for now mods help mods mods anyways that was the video on the BGG weight I didn't pay attention to this until some of my friends started pointing it out anyways thank you to our patrons for making videos like this possible we got to talk to you guys we got all you get we got all you guys right here thank you guys so much and again thank you toand that's a cardboard all right that's been a crazy January remember to like comment subscribe all that good stuff I'll see you guys soon byebye see you bye-bye

Channel: Shelfside

Views: 30,110

Keywords: tabletop, shut up and sit down, dice tower, boardgamegeek, geek and sundry, no pun included, watch it played, prozd board game, dicebreaker, rahdo runs through, actualol, jongetsgames, 3 minute board games, tom vasel, before you play, susd, quackalope, boardgameco, paula deming, our family plays games, rolling solo, The Brothers Murph, rahdo, the dragon's tomb, man vs meeple, no rolls barred, catan, bgg, bgg top 100, bgg weight, heaviest board game, bgg score, geekscore, bgg rank

Id: qy9ymg-CZX8

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024