Welcome to my thought experiment. It’s something I’ve been considering working on for a while, and today is the day that I’m starting to really hit it. The idea of a board game ranking site like Rotten Tomatoes is for movies. You might think, we already have Board Game Geek, and that we do. But if you look at movies and other things you have spots like LetterBoxd, IMDb, MetaCritic, Rotten Tomatoes and more all of which get used. So is there only need for one for when you talk about a board game?

The Benefits of Board Game Rating in the Binary

I think that the title right there lays out the biggest benefit for something like this. When you rate on Board Game Geek a rating means different things to different people. Yes, BGG does have it’s own standard for how you should rate games. What does a seven mean versus a six is sometimes a bit confusing.

So instead you just have that binary either good or bad. Now, a good review shows you the subtly of that. And I think that is something that Board Game Geek might lack at times. They give you so many options and honestly too many options in terms of how people now manipulate rankings.

Let’s look at the example of Gloomhaven and Brass Birmingham. People got into a fight on there about which was better and then they started hate rating stuff. Now, Rotten Tomatoes also has that problem. People review bomb things. That is going to be a problem anywhere. But I think with Rotten Tomatoes and a few distinctions in things, like Topic Critics there are ways that it keeps it cleaner than on BGG.

The Challenges of a New Board Game Site

So there are going to be a good number of challenges with this. Firstly being that BGG is already well established. Now we’ve seen new websites make a major impact. LetterBoxd is a great example of this where it burst onto the scene and got really popular quickly. I think a lot of that is because it was as much social media as it is for ranking movies. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It let people really quickly and cleanly rank things versus what IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes do.

The next thing would be keeping it simple and usable enough that people would want to use it. What features are going to be needed for something like that.

Along with that, how do you get all the information on board games that you’d want? I think that BGG is going to be one of the resources that you need to use for a game website. And that feels a little bit shady taking their information that they make public through API’s. Though as a starting point I think that could work, and let’s just talk design now.

Play or Pass Design

Yes, I do already have a name for it. I think that Play or Pass works well. Rotten Tomatoes has it’s whole thing where you are either fresh or rotten. That is a fun gimmick and I think with the history of throwing fruit at performers if they were sucking is wrong but also historically makes sense. Play or Pass are things you do in board games, so I think that makes good sense.

Let’s now just list off a number of things that you’d want on a site like this.

• Ability to sign in/sign up
• Ability to track your collection
• Ability select Play or Pass on a game
• Write Reviews
• Top Reviewers/Professional Reviewers
• New Game Ratings on Home Page
• Anticipation Meter for Crowdfunding Games
• Articles
• Forums?

Those are just some of the things that I think about when I think of how I’d want a website like this to work.

Should I Build It?

I’m asking this like it’s a question. I come from a web development background, though I’m enjoying not doing that anymore. And with AI and prompting, I think that I can build something like this. Whether or not it’s for public release ever or not, I’m not sure. But I want to see what I can create for Pass or Play and see if it’s a viable idea for a website or not.

Let me know if you’d use something like this or not? Or is Board Game Geek going to be good enough for you. Honestly, it’s probably good enough, but at the same time, we’ve seen sites like Gamefound and Backerkit push Kickstarter to do more and be better. So not letting a site become complacent isn’t a bad thing.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here