I would disagree, BGG favors simple games. There is not a single hex and chit game in the top 100. Not a single 18xx game in the top 100, and I think that entir

I would disagree, BGG favors simple games. There is not a single hex and chit game in the top 100. Not a single 18xx game in the top 100, and I think that entire genre could fill up 20 of the top 25 if not penalized for their complexity. BGG is allergic to any complex games. Your mental model of BGG rankings is incorrect, the number of ratings is more important than the average rating as long as that rating is reasonably high. 10,000 players giving a game and 8 or 9 will rank higher than a game that 200 players gave a 10. Your link uses the weight score, but the problem is the concept of "weight" is ambiguous and non-normalized. For players that play complex games, a normal hex and chit game or 18xx game would be a weight of 3 or 4, so that's what those games are rated at. For the average BGG user, a game from either of those genres would be a 5 or even past that in their mental model, but they don't play complex games so only mid to mid-high complexity games get rated a 5 weight on BGG. Your third party analysis still falls victim to both this bias and the problem of only looking at popular (which also means non-complex) games