The world of board games

Board game rankings by country

 Posted on April 25, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1324 words  |  Markus Shepherd

BoardGameGeek (BGG) users can select their country of residence in their profile. The main purpose is to find other users in your region to play face to face or maybe trade games, but but over here at Recommend.Games we obviously cannot help ourselves but to use this information for some interesting statistics. 🤓 Let’s start with the usual disclaimer: We will have to rely on whatever information BGG provides. In particular, users can freely choose their country. [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  BGG  ranking  rating  Bayesian  dummy ratings  highest rated games  alternative rankings 

Has board game rating inequality increased over the years?

Applying the Gini coefficient to BoardGameGeek ratings

 Posted on April 14, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1662 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The number of ratings per game Perhaps one of the most controversial choices of the Shut Up & Sit Down Effect article was using the number of ratings1 on BoardGameGeek (BGG) as proxy for “attention” to a game. So let’s double down on that! 😈 If lots of ratings mean a lots of eyes on a game, we can ask questions like: What games get most of the attention? Do few games steal the spotlight? [Read More]
BoardGameGeek  Ratings  Gini coefficient  Inequality  Asmodee 

Measuring the Shut Up & Sit Down effect

Using synthetic control to make up our own counterfactual world

 Posted on March 17, 2024  |  12 minutes  |  2392 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Shut Up & Sit Down Shut Up & Sit Down (SU&SD) is arguably the largest (at over 400k subscribers) and most influential YouTube channel in board gaming. A video with a glowing recommendation by them can lead to a game sell out overnight. Or at least that’s how the anecdotes go. There’s been previous attempts at quantifying the effect, but over here at Recommend.Games is where board games and data science meet, so obviously, we have to dig a little deeper. [Read More]
Shut Up & Sit Down  SU&SD  Synthetic Control  John Company  Cole Wehrle 

How long is a game of High Society?

 Posted on February 27, 2024  |  10 minutes  |  2107 words  |  Markus Shepherd

High Society is a classic bidding game by classic designer Dr Reiner Knizia, most recently released by Osprey Games with a wonderfully classic look: The general concept is quite simple: the players are members of said “high society” and are trying to outdo each other in showing off their wealth. The game is played over a series of rounds, and in each round, a card is revealed from a deck of 16 cards. [Read More]
High Society  Reiner Knizia  Osprey Games  Game length  Negative hypergeometric distribution  Python  Simulation  numpy 

Child's play: How hard is Orchard?

 Posted on January 24, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  988 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Orchard is a beloved children’s game classic which is so old – it’s as old as myself. 👴 As one might expect from a children’s game, it’s really simple: roll a die, pick a fruit of the corresponding color, and put it in the basket. If you roll the raven, the raven moves one step closer to the orchard. If you manage to pick all the fruit before the raven reaches the orchard, you win together. [Read More]
Orchard  First Orchard  Haba  Child's play  Children's games  Win rates  Game length 

Recommend.Games is back!

Request to have your collection added to the database now

 Posted on September 23, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  492 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The hiatus is over! Already since April 2023 the recommendation engine at Recommend.Games has been back online, albeit with reduced functionality. In order to cut down serving costs, I made the recommendation model much more lightweight (this deserves its own article) and removed rarely used features as well as a bunch of bloat from the database. Most of the database was filled with users’ collection items, i.e., games they rated, owned, have played etc. [Read More]
Announcement  Hiatus  Recommend.Games  Internal  Collection  Donations 

Spiel des Jahres 2023 winners

 Posted on July 31, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  728 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced! This year’s show was… long… On the one hand, it’s nice to have all three awards (including the Kinderspiel) back together in one announcement, but on the other hand, once you add special awards, the review of the 1983 awards, interviews etc, even die hard fans (and obviously I’m one of them) have a hard time keeping their attention up. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2023  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2023  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023  Winners  Game of the Year  Germany  Dorfromantik  Challengers!  Unlock! 

Spiel des Jahres 2023 predictions – Part 2!

 Posted on July 13, 2023  |  10 minutes  |  1973 words  |  Markus Shepherd

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 16, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023. 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. After two years of calling both winners correctly, I’ve missed the Spiel des Jahres 2022 winner Cascadia last year, so I hope I’ll do better this year. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2023  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2023  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres nominations  Spiel des Jahres 2023 nominations  SdJ nominations  Kennerspiel nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023 nominations  Dorfromantik  Fun Facts  Next Station: London  Challengers!  IKI  Planet Unknown 

Spiel des Jahres 2023 nominations

 Posted on July 2, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  993 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, ten for Spiel des Jahres and five 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 16. 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 2023  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2023  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres nominations  Spiel des Jahres 2023 nominations  SdJ nominations  Kennerspiel nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023 nominations  Dorfromantik  Fun Facts  Next Station: London  Challengers!  IKI  Planet Unknown  Unlock! 

Spiel des Jahres 2023 predictions

 Posted on May 20, 2023  |  5 minutes  |  1001 words  |  Markus Shepherd

Spiel des Jahres 2023 is around the corner! As in the previous 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 May 22nd. As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak. The predictions for the longlist come directly from the recommendendations out of all eligible1 games. Our very own Kennerspiel score is then used to sort those into their respective list of the top 10 contenders for either award. [Read More]
SdJ  SdJ 2023  Spiel des Jahres  Spiel des Jahres 2023  KSdJ  Kennerspiel  Kennerspiel des Jahres  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023  Game of the Year  Germany  Predictions  Spiel des Jahres predictions  Spiel des Jahres 2023 predictions  SdJ predictions  Kennerspiel predictions  Kennerspiel des Jahres predictions  Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023 predictions