Board Game #50,000

As we all know, BoardGameGeek has a large database of board games, possibly including every board game every published. They rank these games, though they no longer rank game expansions. There are also a number of games that are unranked because they don't have enough individual rankings. As of today, the lowest rank game at their site is Tic-Tac-Toe, which is ranked 21,150, edged out slightly by Candyland and Chutes & Ladders.

Let's make predictions here about the 50,000th board game that will some day be published. Will there even be a 50,000th board game published, or will our current civilization collapse before then? What kind of game will it be? How much will it cost? What year will it be published?

It would be better to ask about the 50,000th game to reach the required number of people giving a game a rating.

There are a number of finished but unranked games due to a required number of votes to get a ranking. These are web-published pnps. For example, I have a pnp customizable card game (Control: The Fates of the World) which is complete (though it does not have enough testing to ensure balance). There are only 3 ratings (a 6, 5, and, painfully, a 1), so it is unranked. (Side note: I am pretty satisfied that my solution to MtG's mana problem is the same that Richard Garfield chose in Keyforge, which came out after I posted my game on BGG. However, in my game, you can play 2 colors per turn (out of 7) and you can customize your 14 card deck however you want.)

Todd Sanders has a number of web-published games, like Land of Enin. Many of his are ranked because they have received the required number of votes. If you are counting his games as "published", then I think my game should be considered "published" as well (not saying that my design is equal in quality to his in any way).

I also doubt that many of the playing card games have enough votes on BGG to get ranked, but Pagat has rules for a few hundred games I think.

If you go into the advanced search on BGG and select print and play as an option, you get 50 pages of results, with many of them having a rank of N/A.

I will tackle your questions using the modified criteria of 50,000th game to achieve a rating on BGG.

"Will there even be a 50,000th board game published, or will our current civilization collapse before then?"

There will be a 50,000th board game published.

"What kind of game will it be?"

I think it will be a solo game or one that is designed with solo mode as the primary way it is played. I would guess that it will also be a coop game. The way board games have been going, and the rising popularity of RPGs, are what make me think this. I don't think this will change over the next decade significantly.

"How much will it cost?"

Less than $10 (2021 value).

"What year will it be published?"

I think it will be published in 2031.

A few years ago a strange and unusual shockwave through time caused a forum post from my future self to appear on our club guild page discussing the future state of board gaming. Rumours that it was an overreaction to a typo are completely ridiculous and unfounded. Anyway, the gist of it was that future gaming will be largely the same as current gaming was five years ago which is largely the same as current gaming is today, and you can totally trust what future me says because I can vouch for him with at least 63% surety most of the time.

Odds are that game #50k will probably be a Eurogame about trading something somewhere in drab shades of brown. Maybe there will be an app involved but I doubt it. I read a few years back that there were now regularly over a thousand new titles at each Essen fair and rising so I suppose it will likely be in the next ten to fifteen years. Tic-Tac-Toe will still be the lowest ranked game. A co-op that is best played solo will be the top ranked game.

Speculating on #50,000 to achieve a ranking is probably a required modification here.

BGG shows 100 titles per page. The rankings run out on page 212. There are 1300 pages of games in that database, so just over 130,000 games.

That means there are about five times as many unranked games in there as ranked games.

I guess you could speculate on #150,000 or #200,000 (I seem to recall a number of 3-5000 games published per year?)

We're going to need bigger shovels.

Whenever I see someone post about how their favorite game is “only” ranked 349 or something, I think that is top 1%. Any game in the top 1000 or so is doing really well in terms of ranking.

Not Sure wrote: Speculating on #50,000 to achieve a ranking is probably a required modification here.

BGG shows 100 titles per page. The rankings run out on page 212. There are 1300 pages of games in that database, so just over 130,000 games.

That means there are about five times as many unranked games in there as ranked games.

I guess you could speculate on #150,000 or #200,000 (I seem to recall a number of 3-5000 games published per year?)

We're going to need bigger shovels.

I skimmed through many pages of the list to get to the last ranked item. From what I saw, most of the unranked items were expansions. Some were promo items, like maybe a single promo card for a game that has a deck of cards. To give a more specific example of unranked expansions... Marvel Champions is a ranked game at BGG. There are also 15 separate hero packs, 4 villain scenario packs, and 2 campaign boxes. They are all considered expanions and therefore unranked, though some have more than enough ratings to otherwise achieve ranking.

VOTE: Milch und Gherkin

It was originally scheduled to be game #25,000 but there have been some delays and then These Unprecedented Times happened…