I think my high ratings are something more like:
but of course a 9 I gave five years ago may not be the same as a 9 I give now…
I mean it’s Champions of Midgard, come on. (Want a game right now?)
So yeah with my rant over. I think rating systems are kind of inherently flawed as you’re trying to make a subjective evaluation into and objective criteria.
And yes there is the dilemma of does 10/10 mean? a perfect game because it’s 100%?
But I won’t be the guy to cast stones and not try to do it himself so here’s the criteria I use for my ratings.
10 - Masterpiece -an exemplar of the gaming hobby and I love it
9 - amazing - I think everyone should play it once
8 great game - would recommend to a friend
7 - good game - would mostly recommend
6 - Alright game
5 - fine game
4 - has some problems
3 - bad game - going to be difficult to have a good time
2 - terrible game - I probably won’t play this again
1 - this shouldn’t exist
It certainly isn’t perfect but it’s what I base my ratings off of
P.S. Champions of Midgard was/is my favourite game. I just haven’t seriously evaluated/ranked my games in almost a while (usually do it around the end of the year)
But also does everyone know about the PubMeeple ranking engine? I use it all the time to help me decide things/rank things and it’s a useful tool for ranking your collection and helping you sort out which are really your favourites
I take it more along the lines of “always willing to suggest it at a game night, or always willing to play if offered.” But your complaint is understandable.
Yeah, there is a difference between “I always want to play it” and “I always want to play it more than anything”, but always is still a bit overkill 
I might always want to play it to some extent, but I’m not gonna be at a funeral and be like, “man, I wish I was playing Dominion right now…”
But people could say “Gabriel’s always playing Dominion” and it would fit with the use of that phrase, which is more what they mean
I do love the PubMeeple ranking engine 
I have never played Dominion. That said, I would totally want to be playing that instead of being at a funeral. 
Just preface them with ‘At a games night…’ where necessary
Also works for fortune cookies. (Do those even happen any more?)
I just realized that I have different ratings for many games in my head.
I noticed that I had rated some games higher than 7 because I have no intent of getting rid of them anytime soon (below 7 is my cut-off and 7 itself is already doubtful for longterm collection stay) but at the same time I wouldn’t recommend them to others or at l least want to warn them that my rating does not reflect a recommendation per se. (Case in point Burgle Bros 2, Ankh vs Kemet)
Some of these differences are also due to me feeling there are games that are better than others and so I would possibly not recommend anyone to buy this game if they have that other game or I would recommend they only get this game after they have tried that other game.
Recommendations are too personal for me to include in my rating. I might recommend a particular game to Gamer A, but tell Gamer B to stay away because of the differences between what Gamer A and what Gamer B likes.
I know I know. I agree. Just today I looked at my ratings and thought “hopefully person X views my rating of 8 for game Y not as the endorsement it might seem… because there is more to that rating than meets the eye.”
which is the reason I try to also write comments on almost all games I have in my BGG collection. I am only now getting to the older ones.
PS: work just makes me want to procrastinate today
This is why I’m a bit wary of the geekbuddy comparison thing. For example I rate Pandemic low because there is basically no situation in which I wouldn’t rather play Flash Point Fire Rescue, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t enjoy Pandemic (and I know some people who avoid FPFR for various reasons, such as having children for whom being hurt in a house fire is an immediate and scary thing compared with whizzing around the world fighting abstract disease). Can’t sum that up in a rating.
I think we all understand that numerical ratings are inherently flawed. You really have to read the review to understand that “7/10” means. Writing reviews is time consuming and can be especially difficult for “middling” games, so folks just slap a number on the game without any nuance or context into what that number means to them. Roger Ebert fought against giving “star ratings” to his movie reviews, but it was required by the newspaper because it was expected by the readership.
I am starting to see a split on my ratings between how much I like a game (in theory) and how much I would like to play it at any given time. I have discovered over the last couple of years I have bought games that I’d like to have, but it is unlikely that I will play them (Blood Rage, Battle for Rokugan, or even Gloomhaven) for different circumstances like gaming group preferences, complexity, set up or theme, and games that I would play no matter when you ask, like Architects of the West Kingdom, Firefly, Werewords or Just One.
Then there is the middle ground. Sorta.
So I see one system on the BGG scores reflects how much I like them in concept, but when I do a Pub Meeple run, how much I would like to play one game against another messes my ranking big time. Games that I like a lot like Brass: Lancashire suffer, and games that I know are nothing out of this world like Detective Club or Splendor go up big time.
Ahh the magic of board games…
I started rating my games now based on relativity. How much do I want to play this game in relative to the other games I have played? Rating by gut feeling is easier than I expected. And it works for me. I started doing it because I am lazy, and I don’t want to keep re-rating hundreds of entries
Now I only keep games I rate 10 or 9 - with exception. And I’ll still end up selling within this range. But that’s fine. It works.
I’ve got a basic 5 point scale that I apply to everything:
1 - Of no worth. No one should like this (my opinion)
2 - I don’t like this, but I can understand other people might
3 - I like this, but I can see that other people might not
4 - I think everyone should like this, or at least appreciate / respect / acknowledge it for some inherent quality
5 - Transcendent. There is a spark of genius and beauty in this thing
Yeah, it’s a bit fuzzy and me focused but it works for me. For a 10 point scale I just add in an upper half / lower half to each one.
This creates that bimodal thing others were talking about - 5/6 (3, above) are things that I like but for more personal reasons. Sometimes I like those things more than things in the 7/8 (4, above) category which I feel have more universal value but drive less personal enjoyment. So there’s this pocket of 6’s in my collection that are safer than the 7’s. (say, Dominion or Samurai over Railroad Ink… though as I write that I’m wondering if Samurai and Railroad Ink need to swap ratings…).
It’s an absolute scale rather than a relative one, so it is rare to find a 1. As others have cited, most of those get culled from the market.
I don’t have time today, but I’ve been meaning to document my ratings adjustment calculation as well. Various analyses have cited several effects:
There’s also an effect where people with only one or two ratings in their account rate higher - this is how things like Ticket to Ride end up so high. For many people it is their only game and only rating. So there’s a bit of a hump where games with <2,000 ratings or >50,000 ratings are inflated. Rough numbers.
Nothing too scientific, but I just massaged some counterbalancing numbers into place based on year of release and number of ratings. The results echo my own sensibilities a bit better and I’ve used them ever since to get a better bead on new games.
More thread necromancy.
I had an interesting discussion about ratings with my partner today. Ratings are not just an issue on BGG obviously.
Thesis 1: Culture influences ratings:
This was all triggered by a round of self-assessment stuff in a recent work meeting that I did not enjoy. Why? Because I tend to rate myself far lower in a publicly visible system than how I feel and I cannot overcome this discrepancy. It has been this way for 40+ years. It is mostly me, but it is also where I am from. Most of the team barely rated themselves above average on anything even when we all know they are an expert.
So basically we all do all the roles… which in a scrum team… not too bad?
My partner works for an American company. He has noticed this when he is the only German on a US based team. The culture of self-praise is vastly different between our countries. They were rating stuff on a scale of 1-5 and he gave something a 4 and was asked:
“why are you unhappy with this?”
“if I was unhappy I would have rated this a 2”
“2? how could you…”
He is having to learn to advocate for himself in a different manner.
Just food for thought. How is it where you live?
Thesis 2: Hobbies generate particular methods
My partner has started to get into wine. There is a lengthy history to this that I may one day write up in the What Are You Drinking thread when I feel like it. As with any hobby he has started accumulating weird domain knowledge…
These generally go on scale from 1-100. I am always confused when he asks me to rate a wine and I default back to 1-10 ratings and say “this is a 75” and he is going like “Nononono, this is a 90!” and I am like “This is not the Leaving Earth of wines, this is more El Dorado.” And then I get a lengthy explanation how wines are usually rated:
I tend to feel that if there’s a scale the entire span of the scale is there to be used. But I know other people feel differently.
At university assignments were nominally marked on a 1-20 scale but in practice it was 9-13. This was called “close marking” but they never stated the methodology, if any.