Sooner or later, as a collector or as an afficianado, you start to make the inevitable "lists".
Best game, worst game, top 10, top 50, etc., etc.
I just finished the exercise of rating all the games we've played as a group over at BGG. It's pretty hard - you realize how relative a lot of your preferences are and how souless a simple 1-10 rating can feel.
Some games are good for quick, silly rounds, others are good for long, brain-burning sessions. How do you attach a rating to fun?
I noticed while rating games at BGG that they use a system based on how often you are willing to play a game - which might skew the ratings if you're generally an enthusiastic player or otherwise quite jaded.
There are a few games in our repetoire that, while I appreciate their technical artistry and execution, I don't feel like playing all that often. In at least two major cases (Tigris and Euphrates and El Grande) I rated games a full point lower than the majority of BGG ratings just because I don't really enjoy them as much as others seem to do. In other cases, I've rated games higher than they probably deserve from a technical standpoint, just because they have sentimental or personal elements to them which evoke a more emotional rating.
So, my ratings are a combination of technical appreciation with gut feeling like/dislikes.
What's your personal system?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
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I rate "fun" a 10.
ReplyDeleteI am very interested to see your list (but it will have to wait until tommorrow, due to "Net Nanny" at work, and WAGS tonight).
How do you put a rating on "Fun"? Good question. Similar to rating music and movies, I think that we can justify our likes and dislikes with arguments about technical merit, elegance, artistry, etc, but in the end it's all crap. I like it or I don't, arguments made only support my position (and the same argument can be used by the same person for and against two different cases). I vote for "Gut Feeling" in each case.
Still, while it's no secret that I tend to prefer the heavier games, and that you tend to prefer the more thematic games, I am willing to bet that our scoring won't be THAT different overall.
Contentious games so far, from memory (were reactions have been very different between members of our group):
Lord of the Rings
Sid Meier's Civilization
Mystery of the Abbey
Captain Park's Imaginary...
Pretty short list.
One note: My ratings at BGG are different than the ones I've done at WAGS (due to the rating system, as you've said, being related to how often you'd play... they ended up being somewhat higher because I'm a gaming whore and will play just about anything at any time), but relatively speaking I think they work out.