Board Game Weight Ratings Decoded: What a 3.2 Complexity Score Actually Tells You

Board Game Weight Ratings Decoded: What a 3.2 Complexity Score Actually Tells You

BoardGameGeek’s “Weight” rating is a crowd-voted system meant to encapsulate a game's complexity, but it ends up being a bit of a moving target. The board game community site acknowledges that the term lacks a precise definition.

The weight-rating has some specific meaning - but also some notable caveats you should know. Namely: it's not a clean measure of rules overhead or gaming experience. Nor is it a guarantee of strategic depth, despite being billed as “complexity.” Let's unpack it.

What the Weight Number Actually Is

BoardGameGeek has two numeric ratings, the Geek Rating and the Weight. Voting users choose the weight of each game for BoardGameGeek, but this is not based on a fixed definition. The Weight or Complexity rating instead represents the community’s overall impression of how hard the game is to learn and understand.

How a weight rating might look on BGG

The process is nominally coded in the BoardGameGeek wiki, though the exact wording of how weight ratings are calculated may vary.

But in practice...

What the Weight Score Is Not

Weight is not the same as a game’s actual teach time with a group, nor is it exactly the size of the rulebook. What feels complex with one group in one sitting may not read those same to another. The site’s dataset analysts set out the pitfalls in their analysis:

People may and do rate difficulty differently. Someone might find a particular game terribly scary, and say it's a 4. Their friend might totally get it but say it's a 2. That happens......

That gets at a hint at the term's slipperiness in practice - different factorsmeet to give a game a weight. One group used it “as to how hard or not a game is to cover in a given period of time. Some can be/are more complex than others.” But many saw it in a larger way: “Person A rates [weight as the number of elements a game has], person B rates [weight as the complexity of the rules], and person C rates [weight as how long it takes to learn].”

The answer? All the above, without clean validation or comparison between measures. In this fuzzy system, weight is not a singular concrete classification, but a gestalt gossip of community impressions. That has an upside...

The Upside: Readings on the Distribution and Trends

The analysts note that the site’s mean complexity of a game is quite low - the mean is 2.04, and 75% of games range 2.56 or below. As someone shopping, it's somewhat useful that most games are lower weight, if not deeply helpful on its own. That might tend to push you towards heavier game when you want it, or look harder at the number when considering multiple-board game purchases If you were hoping the weight would indicate good games, pulling scores for lower weight show 75% of games are below 2.56.

The number also shows a modest correlation with the Geek Rating, 0.28, which could work its way into some serious reporting. But with its fuzzy nature and a quarterly update...

Is Weight Serializable? How To Use It

At its most useful, the Weight rating might be included as one of the determining factors in whether a group likes a game. The number might correlate with Geek Rating, but it’s better combined with other metrics — especially if the group itself has some history of play. In general terms: board game groups new to gaming might want to set a single 3 as a filter.

But that's a rough guideline. The weight often (but not always) reflects the decision space of the game, which might be a consideration for a strategic player, but not a calorie-conscious board game buyer. And it’s not the only thing to use — weight doesn’t predict teach time, nor rulebook or component size. And many games have publishers teach videos or online guides that offer something a bit more concrete.

Ultimately, BoardGameGeek’s weight is useful as a signal of overall social value for the savvy board game shopper, but probably not enough to take as a sole determinant of game fit. For most shoppers, the site’s weight ratings are helpful snapshots spun by the community. Use it: but look deeper, too.