Board Game Arena

Its about Complexity, Strategy, Luck and Interaction and its values, used to describe any game on its game page.

Anyone know what that categories actually mean, who add values to them, and based on what criteria?

No. Not even those who assign the values (the developer, usually, I guess). So they are pretty much useless.

Jellby wrote: ↑20 June 2026, 18:02 No. Not even those who assign the values (the developer, usually, I guess). So they are pretty much useless.

I believe a dev has said that those have default values unless a dev changes it. And because you can't tell for any given game whether any thought was put into it or it's just the default, your assessment that it's pretty much useless is accurate.

If we knew the default values, then we could at least know that someone changed it if it differs.

tarongot wrote: ↑20 June 2026, 17:33 Its about Complexity, Strategy, Luck and Interaction and its values, used to describe any game on its game page.
Anyone know what that categories actually mean, who add values to them, and based on what criteria?

You can find a long discussion here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30423

In short:
- There is no definition of the categories.
- There is no clear definition of the allowed values (1-5 or 0-5, integers or decimals).
- The default value (at least for some of them) is 3.
- The value is set by the developer (who is not necessarily an experienced player), sometimes copying the values from Bordgamegeek.

It's a shame!

Given how meaningless they currently are, I don't know why they don't allow the community to either edit them (like the Wiki) or at least submit suggestions for changes to them. Generally people seem to do ok with the Wiki, so editing directly would probably be fine.

nik592 wrote: ↑21 June 2026, 00:50 Given how meaningless they currently are, I don't know why they don't allow the community to either edit them (like the Wiki) or at least submit suggestions for changes to them. Generally people seem to do ok with the Wiki, so editing directly would probably be fine.

Exactly. Seems like something game "gurus" could handle, for example by voting. BGA reviewers could also do that, but not by current selection of those.
But now it is a feature added with possible big plans in mind, that was left abandon. Lot of those on BGA if person starts looking closer.

The Luck number in particular seems poorly understood. It seems that they base it on how much random events there are in the game, like rolls of dice and draws of cards, without applying critical thinking on whether this actually translates to all that much luck in reality.

Some games have none of the randomness described above, but are very luck based because for example they require you to guess what your opponents are going to do, which often is unknowable. Some games on the other hand have a lot of randomness integrated in their process, but are actually a lot more skill based because there is a lot of variance in how proficient players are at exploiting and mastering that randomness.