Jev's taste in board games vs BoardGameGeek users

Does Jev like the board games that BoardGameGeek users like, and where does it disagree most?

result2,497 questions

Jev's ranking of 2,497 board games agrees only loosely with BoardGameGeek users' (rank correlation 0.24). It likes family classics such as Yahtzee and Jumanji far more than they do, and new, heavy hobby games such as Deliverance (2023) and Primal: The Awakening (2024) far less.

How to read this: Each dot is a game. Across: its rank among BoardGameGeek users. Up: its rank for Jev. Dots near the diagonal are games both rank alike; the labeled ones are the biggest disagreements.

2,497 items; 90% interval 0.21 to 0.27.

In short

Jev's ranking of 2,497 board games only loosely matches BoardGameGeek users' (rank correlation 0.24).
It rates family classics like Yahtzee and Jumanji well above hobbyists, and heavy new releases like Deliverance (2023) well below.
Many games Jev underrates came out in the last few years, so unfamiliarity may read as dislike.

What the data shows

I'll Just Wait Here meme: Jev, bringing Yahtzee to BoardGameGeek game night — Jev, bringing Yahtzee to BoardGameGeek game night

Loose agreement: rank correlation 0.24 (90% interval 0.21 to 0.27).
Jev likes family classics far more than hobbyists do: Yahtzee (Jev 2.33 on the 0-to-4 scale, users 1.51), Jumanji (2.25 vs 1.02), Pop-Up Pirate!, Fluxx: The Board Game and Simon.
It likes new, heavy hobby games far less: Deliverance (2023; 1.47 vs 3.36), Primal: The Awakening (2024; 1.54 vs 3.42), Era of Tribes, Star Trek: Frontiers and Cyberion.

What it means, and what it doesn't

Jev judges board games like a casual player, not a hobbyist: the famous, simple, social games win, and the dense new releases that enthusiasts rave about lose. The same lean shows up in its head-to-head picks ("What the hobbyists see that Jev doesn't").

It doesn't settle who has better taste. Hobbyists rate the games they sought out; a family would probably side with Jev on Yahtzee.

Caveats

Hobbyists rate what they bought. BoardGameGeek users are enthusiasts who rate games they chose; a new heavy game gets rated mostly by the fans who sought it out. Jev rates everything cold.
New games are the ones Jev knows least. The games Jev likes less than hobbyists are mostly from the last few years, the ones least written about by the time Jev was trained. Low familiarity may read as low appeal.
Ratings squeezed into five levels. BoardGameGeek ratings run 1 to 10; they were binned onto the five described levels written for this project. The comparison uses ranks, not levels.

Jev on this experiment

Would a person find it interesting to read?: Yes76%
Does it describe you?: Yes52%
Would you have predicted it?: No59%
How fair is the comparison?: The comparison is shaky
How much should a reader rely on it?: A little
Which caveat matters most?: New games are the ones Jev knows least78%

Why ask this

Board-game hobbyists have a strong, shared sense of what makes a game good: deep strategy, clever mechanics, the newest releases. A family picking a game for the holidays often wants something else entirely: simple rules, a familiar name, something everyone can play.

Ask a model to recommend a board game and it has to lean one way or the other. Comparing Jev with the hobbyists shows whether it sides with the hobby or with the family game shelf, which tells you what kind of advice to expect.

How this was done

The people and the data

BoardGameGeek users: the main online community of board-game hobbyists, whose 1-to-10 ratings form the hobby's standard rankings. For each game, the people's side is its users' ratings, binned onto the same five levels Jev answers on and averaged. The 2,497 games are those with at least 500 ratings, so every one is reasonably well known; Yahtzee alone has 16,236.

What Jev was asked

Every game one at a time:

How much would you enjoy playing Medina (2001)?
You'd want to quit before the first game ended · You'd play one game and never ask for it again · You'd play it again if someone else suggested it · You'd suggest it yourself at the next game night · You'd want to own it and play it again and again

Each was also asked with the answers reversed, and the two averaged. Jev never saw the BoardGameGeek ratings.

How it was measured

All 2,497 games are ranked by Jev's average level and by the users', and the orders are compared with a rank correlation (1 means the same order, 0 means none). Ranks, because the scales differ.

Where these questions live

2,497 questions across 1 topic of the map. Each opens on the map with every question in it.

Ratings

Board Game Ratings2,497

Every question

All 2,497 questions behind this result, the telling ones first: the examples the analysis points to, then the ones where Jev misses, biggest gap first.

Jev’s own answer

Showing 0 of 2,497