Beyond games: Visualising the Riemann Hypothesis

 Posted on October 23, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  298 words  |  Markus Shepherd

This subject has nothing to do with games nor data science, but chances are that amongst the readers of this blogs are many who appreciate mathematics – and its beauty. Long before Recommend.Games, I’ve had a blog on the Riemann Hypothesis – the famous conjecture which is usually formulated in terms of the zeros of the complex Riemann \(\zeta\)-function, but is really about the distribution of prime numbers. If you’re curious to learn more, check out the blog. [Read More]
Beyond games  Mathematics  Number theory  Prime numbers  Riemann zeta function  Riemann hypothesis  Python 

Debiasing the BoardGameGeek ranking

 Posted on September 20, 2024  |  14 minutes  |  2786 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Bias is a bit of an ugly word, isn’t it? It certainly has become one of those battle phrases in the culture war, where both sides of the argument accuse the other of forcing their biases onto society. Board game reviews frequently need to justify themselves for their biases affecting their views. Dan Thurot recently wrote a very eloquent piece on the matter, diving deeper into different kinds of biases. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  Debiasing  ranking  rating  alternative rankings 

What was the best year for board games?

The highest rated years on BoardGameGeek

 Posted on August 22, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1833 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Corey Thompson (of Above Board TV and Dice Tower Dish fame) recently raised an interesting question on the Board Games Insider podcast: In what year do you think the best titles (highest rated titles) were released? He actually answered the question twice, first in episode #328 based on an analysis he ran a couple of years ago and then again in #330 with more up-to-date data. I’m not going to spoil his answer here – the podcast in general is worth a listen – so go and find those episodes on your favourite podcast platform. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  Ratings  Highest rated games  Corey Thompson  Board Games Insider  Golden age  Cult of the new 

Spiel des Jahres 2024 winners

 Posted on July 21, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  503 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced! This year’s show was… even longer… 😅 After last year I’ve hoped for a snappier show – instead it was further extended. As much as I appreciate the jury’s work (which I’ve expressed at length), the stage isn’t where they shine, so I don’t understand why we need two awkward hours of their presence. It’s understandable they want to highlight various aspects of board gaming and their activities, since those are the only two hours of attention they get all year, but just as an endless recommendation list would water down the award, the rule in showbiz is to make every minute count. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2024  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2024  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024  Winners  Game of the Year  Germany  Sky Team  Daybreak 

Spiel des Jahres 2024 predictions – Part 2!

 Posted on July 8, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1739 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 21, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024. We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards. I’ve been doing this for four years now and I’ve called seven out of the eight winners correctly. No reason to rest on any laurels – there’s another batch of awards coming up, and this year might be the closest race yet! [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2024  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2024  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres nominations  Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations  SdJ nominations  Kennerspiel nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 nominations  Captain Flip  In the Footsteps of Darwin  Sky Team  Daybreak  The Guild of Merchant Explorers  Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West 

Thoughts on Spiel des Jahres

What it is and what it isn't

 Posted on June 26, 2024  |  15 minutes  |  3144 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Some of you might have notices that I’m a bit of a Spiel des Jahres fanboy. 🙃 Every year when the award season rolls around, the discussion about the purpose and the influence of Spiel des Jahres comes up again. So I thought it’s a good idea to collect my thoughts on the subject in one handy place I can easily reference in the future. 🤓 What’s the purpose of Spiel des Jahres? [Read More]
Spiel des Jahres 

Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations

 Posted on June 11, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  593 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 21. Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2024  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2024  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres nominations  Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations  SdJ nominations  Kennerspiel nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 nominations  Captain Flip  In the Footsteps of Darwin  Sky Team  Daybreak  The Guild of Merchant Explorers  Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West 

Spiel des Jahres 2024 predictions

 Posted on May 31, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1509 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Spiel des Jahres 2024 is around the corner! As in the previous four years, I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations) and the shortlist (aka nominations) when the jury announces their picks on June 11th. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, but I’ve added something new this year: I tried to track the jury members’ reviews of all eligible1 games, in particular when they publish scores (such as in the magazine Spielbox), and fed those into the predictions. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2024  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2024  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres predictions  Spiel des Jahres 2024 predictions  SdJ predictions  Kennerspiel predictions  Kennerspiel des Jahres predictions  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 predictions 

Game Designer Hall of Fame

The best board game designers of all times – according to Spiel des Jahres

 Posted on May 17, 2024  |  11 minutes  |  2240 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations are just around the corner (watch this space for our annual predictions), but I wanted to take this opportunity for a look back over the history of the award. Specifically, I wanted to see which designers have been most successful at the Spiel, Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel des Jahres awards. The first red meeple was given out in 1979. Since 1989, the jury also awarded the Kinderspiel des Jahres for children’s games, initially as an annual special award, and from 2001 as its own award with the blue meeple. [Read More]
Spiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kinderspiel des Jahres  Game of the Year  Hall of Fame  Designers  Records  Statistics  Wolfgang Kramer  Reiner Knizia 

A brief introduction to Collaborative Filtering

Recommend.Games explained, part 1: how we recommend games to you

 Posted on May 9, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1219 words  |  Markus Shepherd

What is a good recommendation? Collaborative filtering is the workhorse powering the recommendations by Recommend.Games. Over the years, I’ve been asked every now and then how it works. So, I thought it’s high time I outlined the basic ideas behind our recommendation engine. Let’s first take a step back and talk about recommendations in general. What is it we’re trying to achieve? The answer to this question is far from trivial, and it gets harder when you want to formalise its goals. [Read More]
Recommend.Games explained  Collaborative filtering  Recommendations  Recommendation engine  Machine learning  Matrix factorisation  Embeddings  Latent factors  Cosine similarity  Alternating least squares  Linear regression  BoardGameGeek