"I've been thinking..."
"A dangerous pastime-"
"I know."
But what I've been recently thinking about is how we often associate the quality of a game (and its gameplay) on the rankings found on BGG. However, In thinking about it, I've noticed that the games that are truly played by a lot of people aren't often found near the top of the list.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to play 7 Wonders more often, or find people to play Power Grid or Twilight Struggle with, but many of the games at the top of the BGG rankings are strategy- and complexity-intense: so much so that most players aren't willing to play. I hypothesize that the reason that they're ranked so highly is that the BGG page serves as a location for people to look for strategy advice, and while there, people share their rating of the game. It attracts its own following, which in turn leads to more rankings, allowing such games to be boosted higher than others.
Additionally, strategy-light, micro, co-operative or casual games attract a lighter audience: people who don't spend time on board gaming forums to rate the games they play against other games. For instance, many people regard Pandemic as a great game, and it is, but it's ranked in the 80s, far below other games that most people aren't willing to get into.
I guess that I'm trying to get at is that I feel that the Board Game Geek ratings, while a helpful approximation, might not reflect the number of times a game is played, or really reflect the audience count. Do others here feel that this is the case? Is my hypothesis unfounded?
