Why do people give a game a 1 on BoardGameGeek?

It’s a question I’ve been mulling over for years, and one that tends to pop into my head whenever I’m browsing an upcoming release and trying to get a sense of what people are thinking. I scroll past the preview images, maybe skim a few comments, and then my eyes drift over to the rating… only to see that bar graph with a giant foot, the 1 ratings outnumbering every other number by a large margin. Also, why the heck are there ratings on this game if it isn’t even out yet? These 1s aren’t low scores from disappointed players, they aren’t thoughtful critiques explaining why something didn’t land. These 1s feel more of a punishment than anything else. And I always find myself wondering: what is that number actually trying to say?

Because, at least in my mind, a rating is supposed to represent an experience. It’s meant to capture what it felt like to sit down, learn the rules, fumble through a first play, and how much joy someone had during their play. But when a number gets assigned before any of that has happened, it starts to mean something else entirely. It’s less about the game, and more about the drama surrounding the production, or perhaps one of the people involved.

Two recent examples of unreleased games with a large number of 1 ratings

The Things We’re Really Rating

In my experience, a lot of these early 1s don’t come out of nowhere. They’re reactions to decisions made long before a game ever reaches players. Recently, AI-generated art has been a flashpoint. People see something that feels off, or read a comment suggesting shortcuts were taken, and suddenly the rating becomes a place to push back. The most recent case of this was Concordia Special Edition by Awakened Realms. The cover looked a little Ai generated, people reacted, and Awakened Realms responded by saying “No AI art will be in the final game“

Sidebar: I’m surprised people continue to be surprised every time Awakened Realms uses AI images, considering Awakened Realms used AI art in their pre-production images many of their projects, including the special editions of Agricola, Puerto Rico, and more. They always publicly state that there will be “no AI art in the final products”, but it seems like every time they release a new product, there’s a new backlash over their continued use of AI promotional images.

No AI in my copy of Agricola

But honestly, I’m glad that people are willing to raise a stink over AI images. I don’t have the patience for it and I end up silently voting with my wallet instead of grandstanding on social media. But without vocal pushback, how is a company supposed to know what they’re doing is wrong? That said, I do dislike when those concerns get funnelled into a single number on Board Game Geek, especially in a context where a rating is for an entire game. It feels like it distorts the purpose of that number and platform.

What makes it even harder to untangle is when a game is getting slammed for multiple reasons. Some people give it a 1 for using AI art, others give it a 1 for being too expensive, packed with unnecessary deluxe components and premium materials. All of these concerns are valid, but is it worth dragging the entire production through the mud for it? Does Concordia designer Mac Gerdts get mud on his face by association because a publisher made the choice to use AI artwork for a promotional cover?

When Numbers Stop Meaning What We Think They Mean

The tricky part is that once ratings start being used this way, the meaning of the numbers begins to shift. A 1 no longer necessarily means “this game is terrible to play.” or “It’s utterly broken”, like in the recent case of RoboRover 2077. It now might just mean “I disagree with how this was made,” or “I don’t like what this represents,” or even “I’m frustrated with the publisher.”

And to be clear, those feelings aren’t inherently wrong. People engage with games for all kinds of reasons, and the hobby doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Themes matter. Production choices matter. The broader industry matters. But when all of those things get compressed into a single score, it becomes harder to extract useful information, especially for someone who just wants to know: is this a good game to play?

Sometimes just looking at a game cover or back of box picture won’t let you know if a game is for you or not

That’s ultimately why I look at ratings in the first place. Not as a verdict, but as a rough barometer. Sometimes I’ll be standing in my friendly local game store and I’ll pick up a box I hadn’t heard of. A quick search on BGG will sometimes tell me that a game might be a diamond in the rough, or, that a game isn’t really worth a second look. When that signal gets overwhelmed by reactions that aren’t rooted in gameplay, it becomes harder to trust what I’m seeing.

And people weaponizing their 1 ratings can go a step too far. The brigading between fans of Gloomhaven and Brass: Birmingham didn’t just stay in comment threads, it spilled directly into ratings, with people boosting one and tanking the other in a kind of ongoing tug-of-war. At that point, the numbers stop reflecting experience altogether and start reflecting the zealotry of the fanbase.

Can You Even Fix This?

Whenever I feel dissatisfaction with a system, my brain always shifts to trying to figure out a solution, even when I am powerless to make changes. I know BGG does take action against review bombing, and it can be challenging sifting out the actions of bad actors vs the legitimist grievances. But beyond that, I can’t help but wonder if ratings should be weighted differently? Should people who log plays have more influence than those who don’t? Could the system identify and limit users who consistently “review bomb” games before release? Should there be a separate rating for ‘verified’ reviewers, like Rotten Tomatoes has for movies?

But the moment you start going down that road, you run into a different kind of problem. Not a technical one, but a philosophical one. Who gets to have a voice?

Because there are infinite edge cases that don’t fit neatly into these solutions. What if you’ve played one edition of a game and want to rate another? What if you have strong objections to a game’s theme or message? Should those perspectives be excluded entirely just because they’re not tied to logged plays?

There’s also the simple reality that any system designed to police behaviour will eventually be gamed. If ratings required comments, people would leave empty ones. If they required play logs, people would log plays they didn’t have. At a certain point, you’re not solving the problem, you’re just moving it around.

Maybe the System Isn’t the Only Issue

Another idea that comes up fairly often is whether the rating system itself is part of the problem. A single number is a blunt tool. It tries to capture too many things at once: gameplay, components, art, rules clarity, personal taste, and compress everything into a single data point.

Would it be worth breaking the rating system apart? Would a system where you rate different aspects separately: gameplay, components, art, rules, overall experience. A composite score could still exist, but it would be built from multiple perspectives rather than a single gut reaction. Maybe that would make it harder to use the system as a blunt instrument.

Or maybe it would just give people more places to express the same frustrations.

A simpler, more immediate change might be to restrict ratings before release. Let previews be previews. Let early impressions live in comments and reviews. And let ratings reflect actual time spent with the game as it’s intended to be played. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it might curb the knee-jerk reactions to pre-production decisions.

Sometimes I wonder just how many people are turned away from Bullet because of the anime artwork.

Or Maybe This Is Just Who We Are

There’s a part of me that keeps coming back to a less satisfying answer: maybe this isn’t a systems problem. In my previous job as a Systems Administrator, I used to tell managers all the time “IT are really bad managers.” It’s not about building a system resilient to abuse, but it’s about how people choose to engage with the systems.

Some people will always use ratings as a way to express frustration, or to push back against trends they don’t like, or to support the things they care about. Others will treat them as carefully considered reflections of their experiences. Hell, I read one account of someone who used the rating system as a reminder of how many times he played each game in his collection (so a game he played twice got a 2, etc)

No system can really account for every use case that the public will invent.

Where I Personally Land

For my part, I don’t include ratings in my reviews. And even when I do rate games on BGG, I try to be mindful of what that number represents. Not just how I felt in the moment, but how the game held up over time, how it played across multiple sessions, how much joy it brought me each time it hit the table.

I also tend to avoid the extremes. A 1 or a 10 should mean something, at least to me. They’re not just expressions of dislike or hype, they’re markers of something truly exceptional, whether good or bad. Most games I play fall somewhere between a 6 and a 9, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. Any game that would hit those lower scores get weeded out before they even hit my table, so they don’t even get a chance to get a score.

But more than anything, I find myself relying less on the number on the BGG page or it’s placement in the overall top games list, and more on the opinions of people I trust. The written reviews, the YouTube Videos, and posts people share after actually playing the game. That’s where I find the real value.

Because at the end of the day, I don’t think the BGG top games list is a objectively correct measure of the quality of a game, but it does serve as a barometer for me. And the more people use the ratings to talk about everything, the less value the BGG ratings has for me.