Skip to Content
 

Rating board games

6 replies [Last post]
Fri, 08/26/2005 - 13:13
markmist
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969

One thing that I love about boardgamegeek is the ratings system. Everyone rates the games they have played and the system spits out an average rating. The rating system is purely subjective - everyone assigns 1 number to a game based on how they feel about it. However,when a game accumulates several ratings - it will give a fairly close approximation to the quality of the game.

Because I love to categorize and analyze things, I thought I would try to come up with a formula for rating a board game that would be a little more objective by splitting up the various parts of a game and rating each one. Yes, the rating will still be subjective, but it forces you to give a game ratings based on its merits and not just your personal feelings.

This is what I have come up with so far. There are 12 categories, each given a point value (the more closely the game matches the description of each category, the higher the score you should give it).

Fun Factor (20 pts) - The game invokes a sense of fun, excitement that leaves players satisfied with the experience.
Components (10 pts)- The components are of high quality, durable, and tie in well with the theme.
Accessibility (10 pts) - The game is easy to teach, learn and is accepted by non-gamers and gamers alike.
Variability (10 pts) - The gameplay contains a lot of variety that will keep the game play feeling new and fresh after several sessions.
Balance (10 pts) - There is not one sure-fire strategy that works all of the time. A player must take different approaches each game based on their opponents or in-game circumstances.
Control (10 pts) - Players have an adequate number of decisions to make so that they feel like they are playing the game, and not the game playing them.
Rule Set (5 pts) - The rules are well-written, easy to understand, and lack contradictions
Scalability (5 pts) - The game scales well for all number of players that the game permits.
Time/Quality Ratio (5 pts) - For the amount of time that you put into the game, the game is worth playing (includes set-up time).
Challenge (5 pts) - The game generally awards the players with the most skill to win a majority of the time.
Level Playing Field (5 pts) - Each player must start the game relatively at the same strength, and feel like they always have a chance to impact the game even if they fall behind early on.
Efficiency (5 pts) - The game design is clean, only as complex as it needs to be, and everything in the game feels like it should be included and doesn't feel extraneous.

The points add up to 100. To get a score based on a 1-10 scale like BGG, just divide by 10. For ease of rating categories with 10 and 20 pt scales - rate on a 5 pt scale and apply a multiplier (Example, a rating of 4.5 in fun factor would equate to 18 pts out of 20).

So, I would like to hear any comments on my methodology, the categories, or my definitions. I know it is not perfect, and I am not completely happy with it, so let me know if you have any suggestions on how to make it better.

Thanks,
Mark

Top
Fri, 08/26/2005 - 13:21
#1
doho123
doho123's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/21/2008
Rating board games

To be honest, I fail to see why you need any other category than "The game invokes a sense of fun, excitement that leaves players satisfied with the experience. "

There is very little reason to play a game that isn't fun that has great components, an easy to read rulebook, is easy to teach, is balanced, etc. etc.

Top
Fri, 08/26/2005 - 14:12
#2
Rick-Holzgrafe
Rick-Holzgrafe's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/22/2008
Rating board games

doho123 wrote:
To be honest, I fail to see why you need any other category than "The game invokes a sense of fun, excitement that leaves players satisfied with the experience. "

I liked Mark's breakdown, but doho123 has a point. I'd suggest that the "fun" rating be separate from the other items. If a game isn't fun, the rest doesn't matter. But if a game is fun, the other ratings help to categorize the game in useful ways. If I'm an experienced gamer, I might not care about accessibility, but if I'm buying for my family I might care a lot. A game with high replay factor but shoddy components might be a poor buy for me, as the game might wear out before I get tired of playing it. But I have friends who buy literally hundreds of games, most of which get few replays for lack of time; so they might not care about either the replay value or the component quality so long as the first dozen plays are fun. And so on!

Top
Fri, 08/26/2005 - 19:21
#3
larienna
larienna's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/28/2008
Rating board games

I totally disagree.

Sure fun is important, that it why it has 20/100 points in the final score. But sometimes having a balanced game is important too.

For example, Monopoly and Yugioh are fun to play but these game are really unbalanced. This is why I hate people who say that these games are good.

Now for the evaluation chart system. The idea is good, but there is a few bug. For example, in the "Control statement"

Quote:
Control (10 pts) - Players have an adequate number of decisions to make so that they feel like they are playing the game, and not the game playing them

If the player has few control of the outcome of the game, it is not bad in itself, it is just a another type of game. For example, in "Pay day" you have very few decision you can make that will change the outcome of the game. But some people like it this way. So both opposites are good. Which mean giving a penalty might not be necessary good idea.

But in general your rating system is good. And since I am a really methodic person, if all games could be rated like this, it will be good.

Another rating system I could suggest is by combining points and multiple rating.

For example, you make 5 categories of 20 points and within each of these categories, you have let say 4 sub categories rated on 6, 5, 5, and 4 points. Which gives a great total of 20 parameters.

Now you rate each parameter independantly. You totalise all the points and also totalise each category. So you endup with 6 result :

The global rating : total number of points
5 category rating : total points of the parameters in this category.

You can now make a spider web with the 5 values if you want. The idea is that the player will be able to see what kind of game it is and might make some selection according to his taste. So if the category "fair play" is low, he might not care since this is what he want. Or if the player does not mind having a cheap game, he might not bother buying a game with a low "Material quality" category.

While if you have just one number to evaluate the whole, it does not tell you much about the game. A game can have a poor score in a category and still be really a good game. So besides the good and wrong, there is also the player's taste that matters.

Top
Sat, 08/27/2005 - 01:08
#4
Johan
Johan's picture
Offline
Joined: 10/05/2008
Rating board games

The main problem with this rating is that the worst game ever could score 80/100. (an 8 on the geek list).

// Johan

Top
Sat, 08/27/2005 - 02:52
#5
Infernal
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Rating board games

Why not also have the values of each category scored. Have visitors to the site rank the value they would assign to the various categories. The score given to the categories is their weighting. It should be simple to normalise them to a score out of 100.

Top
Sat, 08/27/2005 - 05:19
#6
Scurra
Scurra's picture
Offline
Joined: 09/11/2008
Rating board games

A long time ago (in a galaxy far... wait, wrong link), we held a design competition ("Doomed Civilization" for those who can remember that far back.) In order to have some semblence of cohesion between the different judges, a marking model was used as follows:

Theme: (10 points)
Originality: (10 points)
Cohesiveness: (15 points)
Components (5 points)
Fun (25 points)

Obviously, the "theme" aspect had a higher priority than it might normally have, since the competition did have a specific thematic element, but in terms of importance of the various aspects this covers most of the bases without getting into too many subdivisions.

(Personally, I subscribe to the Duke Ellington method - there are two sorts of games: good games and bad games. This isn't wholly useful from a purely critical standpoint, but it's fine for me :-)

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut