3 ms·

Well, I don't really understand the conjecture in the headline, that this game will somehow be harder to topple. Since its newly released and a niche game, onl

Well, I don't really understand the conjecture in the headline, that this game will somehow be harder to topple. Since its newly released and a niche game, only people who suspected that they would like it and would pay $200 for it have obtained and rated it. Wouldn't we expect the rating to degrade over time as more people other than the most passionate try it? Although, if the game gets a reputation as a niche game, I can see how people would continue to self-select for playing the game, and it would continue to be a top-rated game, but with a significantly lower volume of ratings.

labster 9y ago
The conjecture is based on mathematics. If the majority of ratings are 10 out of 10, most raters don't have the ability to rank a future game higher than Gloomhaven. Because it's amassed so many 10s as rankings among its fan base, rating another game as a 9 hurts its chances of being on the top of the BGG rankings, which is a shift from previous ratings distributions of top games. But yes, as the tail gets longer, we should expect to see more lower ratings assigned to Gloomhaven. What the author didn't do was compare to other top games early in their release cycle. I'm not sure how much effect this will have, though -- gamers are grognards, not so strongly influenced by the new and shiny as most people.
opencl 9y ago
I think the price significantly contributes to the self-selection of only people who already have a pretty good idea that they're going to like it buying it.
jsnell 9y ago
Not really. First, it already has over 14k ratings, which is pretty substantial and 24k people who have marked it as "owned". E.g. when Twilight Struggle made it to #1 in 2010, it had just 7k ratings. Second, rating decay from the voting population of a game doesn't seem to be that big an effect on BGG. To use TS as an example again, you'd expect that a two player wargame about the cold war would have huge problems as the more general gaming population started playing it. But as the voter numbers for Twilight Struggle increased from 7k to 30k over the years, the rating has actually gone up (8.18 to 8.20). That isn't to say that there's no rating decay in place. But I think the source is when a game is perceived as "obsoleted" by newer games.

labster 9y ago

The conjecture is based on mathematics. If the majority of ratings are 10 out of 10, most raters don't have the ability to rank a future game higher than Gloomhaven. Because it's amassed so many 10s as rankings among its fan base, rating another game as a 9 hurts its chances of being on the top of the BGG rankings, which is a shift from previous ratings distributions of top games. But yes, as the tail gets longer, we should expect to see more lower ratings assigned to Gloomhaven. What the author didn't do was compare to other top games early in their release cycle. I'm not sure how much effect this will have, though -- gamers are grognards, not so strongly influenced by the new and shiny as most people.

opencl 9y ago

I think the price significantly contributes to the self-selection of only people who already have a pretty good idea that they're going to like it buying it.

jsnell 9y ago

Not really. First, it already has over 14k ratings, which is pretty substantial and 24k people who have marked it as "owned". E.g. when Twilight Struggle made it to #1 in 2010, it had just 7k ratings. Second, rating decay from the voting population of a game doesn't seem to be that big an effect on BGG. To use TS as an example again, you'd expect that a two player wargame about the cold war would have huge problems as the more general gaming population started playing it. But as the voter numbers for Twilight Struggle increased from 7k to 30k over the years, the rating has actually gone up (8.18 to 8.20). That isn't to say that there's no rating decay in place. But I think the source is when a game is perceived as "obsoleted" by newer games.