Solidly mediocre: Games almost noone thinks are great or awful
Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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The Geek tends to be focused on the games everyone loves, or occasionally the games everyone hates. But what about the games "everyone" agrees are just sort of mediocre. This list catalogs the games that very uniformly get ratings of 4, 5 or 6 and relatively infrequently outside this bound.
Specifically, the games are those where the average plus standard deviation is under 7 and the average minus a standard deviation is above 4. For games with a gaussian rating distributions, this means roughly 68% of the ratings fall between 4 and 7. Game ratings don't tend to be quite gaussian, but they're close. In most cases, these games earn almost no 10s and almost no 1s. In many cases, they're even more tightly grouped around the center. Games have to be rated by at least 125 people to get on the list.
So, where are the strong opinions, positive or negative, on these games? Or will everyone just say "Enh, they're ok."?
Games are listed in average rating order, starting with the "best of the mediocre".
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Over half the ratings of this game are 5 or 6.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Another "consensus 6" from Dr. Knizia.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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A couple haters, one 9, and a lot of "enh".
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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This always looked sort of mediocre, but I've never tried it.
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5.
Board Game: T-Rex
[Average Rating:5.59 Overall Rank:5648]

Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Only a single rating (a 2) on the edges. No 1s, 9s or 10s.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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No 1s, 9s or 10s for this one.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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And this game gives each of the designers, Schacht (of Knights) and Faidutti (of Democrazy) their second game on the list, joining Knizia in the "sufficiently prolific to have 2 games few people have strong opinions of" category.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Another dice game. Is this a trend?
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Wow, given some of the things I've heard about this one, I expected more low ratings.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Noone hates it and only a few are particularly fond of it.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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My view is with 2 this is a little better than mediocre and with more players, worse than mediocre.
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12.
Board Game: Orcz
[Average Rating:5.49 Overall Rank:6054]

Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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More 6s than any 2 other ratings combined. I sense consensus.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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A Reiner Knizia game noone thinks is great and almost noone thinks is awful?
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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This one gets a reasonable showing of 7s, but a lot of 4s 5s and 6s.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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I'm confident if this were shorter it would get some people who actually really liked it.
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Matthew Gray
United States Reading Massachusetts
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Also a reasonable number of 7s, but almost nothing above that.
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