The perplexing world of BGG ratings
In this section, let’s look at the ratings of boardgames on BGG. I say boardgames, because I won’t be looking at game expansions (there is a section just for them). As you will see, there are some surprises hidden in the BGG rating. So, let’s go!
As I discuss in the Introduction section, ratings can be very idiosyncratic. There needs to be enough ratings for the average rating to be statistically relevant. I’ll also consider only games with Bayesian averages, that is games with at least 30 ratings, in the analysis for that reason
Before going to the gallery, here are a few interesting numbers. There are 91 699 boardgames in the database. Of those, only 18 560 have a Bayesian ratings, so about 20%. This means that 80% of the boardgames (not expansions!) on BGG do not have 30 user ratings. How come? Let’s find out in the gallery…
