On March 23, a foreign netizen posted on BGG, the world’s largest board game website, that the famous German game designer Reiner Knizia (also known as RK teacher, Chinese name Ni Ruinan), who designed more than 700 games in his life, designed the game. The games have all dropped out of the top 100 on the BGG charts, replaced by a new 2021 title, Journey to Cascadia.Affected by this post in the past two days, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s classic “Two Rivers Basin” has been re-raised to the 98th place by various netizens. However, looking at the BGG rankings of the past ten years, you will find Mr. Ni Ruinan. His works are coming out of the TOP100 one by one, which has become a trend. Even if “Two Rivers Basin” is still in the TOP100, it will eventually fall out of the list. So, BGG in recent years
What happened to the leaderboard? How should we look at this issue?
01
How brilliant was Mr. Ni Ruinan
Ni Ruinan was born in Germany in 1957. When he was young, he obtained a Master of Science from Syracuse University in the United States and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Ulm University in Germany. In 1997 he resigned from the board of a major international bank to become a full-time board game designer. He is a hard-working and productive person. In an interview with him in gametable in 2006, he said that he woke up at 4:30 every morning, and said that his early morning hours were his most creative times, and he chose to be during this time. exercising and thinking about his designs. With such self-discipline, Mr. Ni Ruinan has become the most prolific board game designer in the world. As of press time, Mr. Ni Ruinan has registered a total of 667 games on BGG, and on his own website, he claims that there are more than 700 games in total. The number of games published is astounding.
The most commendable thing is that under the high production, the quality of the games designed by Mr. Ni Ruinan is not bad. According to BGG, he has won the German Game of the Year Award four times. He was inducted into the Origins Awards Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2008, he won the German Annual Children’s Board Game Award for his game “Who Is That”. 》 won the most influential board game award in the world – the German Game of the Year Award (SDJ). Take the controversial BGG list as an example. At the beginning of the design of the list, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works had a terrifying dominance on the list. Taking the earliest list that can be found as an example, on November 1, 2006 In the BGG ranking from date to December 1, 2006, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works in the top 50 occupied 10 seats. At that time, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s “Two River Basin” ranked second.
The games designed by Mr. Ni Ruinan have its own unique charm. Mr. Duan Xiaohei, product manager of multi-intelligence culture, believes that Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works have its own unique mathematical beauty. Mr. Duan Xiaohei said that in most cases of Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works, players can feel the balance supported by mathematics and numerical values under the operation of the mechanism after playing a few times. Therefore, the gameplay of the game has also been greatly improved. Ascension, this is where Mr. Ni Ruinan is different from other authors. The subtlety of Mr. Ni Ruinan is that after playing his game, you will be amazed at this small mechanism or value, which has a good balance and is a refined design that players can taste. The content of the product is not very rich, but it is the mechanism and gameplay itself that can stand the test and is not easy to be outdated.
02
What is the trend of BGG in the past two years?
BGG, the full name of BoardGameGeek, is the world’s largest online forum and board game database for board game enthusiasts, containing reviews, images and videos of more than 125,600 different board games. BGG by Scott Alden
Alden) and Derk Solko (Derk Solko) founded in January 2000, the website allows users to evaluate the game from 1 to 10 points, resulting in the BGG rankings, of which the changes in the TOP100 are particularly interesting. . And now the city of Yougang, which is firmly in the top 1, has been on the top for 51 months.
If you analyze the current TOP100 list, it is not difficult to see that games after 2011 account for the absolute majority of the current TOP100, and games from 15 years and later occupy the current BGG
The throne of TOP10.
Comparing the current TOP50 game types with the 2006 TOP50 game types, it can be seen that there are really many choices for players now. In the TOP50 list in 2006, there are three variants of the ticket tour, and there are four abstract chess among them (Go is also one of them). The war chess game is better than the American game with the theme and the story. need more.
03
How Ni Ruinan’s works fell out of the TOP list step by step
In fact, the departure of Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works in the BGG TOP100 has already happened quietly. Before that, people didn’t realize this, until March 23, when “Two Rivers” completely left the TOP100, people were surprised to find that “Two Rivers” was already Mr. Ni Ruinan in the TOP100. ‘s last work.
As can be seen from the picture above, by 2009, there were only 2 works by Mr. Ni Ruinan in the TOP50, one was “Two Rivers” and the other was RA. In 2011, Game of Thrones: The Board of Directors (Second Edition) came out and moved up the ranks, taking RA’s place in the TOP50 in May 2012. After that, Mr. Ni Ruinan only left “Two River Basins” in the TOP50, until 2016, the year “Colonial Mars” and “Scythe War” were born, and “Wine Manor” and “Blood Rage” were pressing step by step. , “Two Rivers Basin” fell out of TOP50 in December 2016 after persisting for 120 months.
In fact, not only Mr. Ni Ruinan, but also Mr. Eric M. Lang (representative works of Blood Rage, Rising Sun Battle Soul) and Mr. Wolfgang Kramer (representative works of City Lord, Bull Tau King), who are contemporaries of Mr. Ni Ruinan, are gradually stepping out of the TOP100. Mr. Lang’s works Scarlet Fury is currently ranked 36th, with an average annual drop of 2-3 places, which is still safe, while the Rising Sun Battle Soul Book is already at 97th place, which is in jeopardy; Teacher Wolfgang’s “City Lord” is already in the TOP100 (testable record). It has persisted for more than 16 years, and is now ranked 85th. It has fallen rapidly in the past two years, and it is also facing the day of stepping out of the TOP100.
04
Is the glory no longer? Or become a classic?
Going back to that post, on March 23, a player discovered that Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works had all fallen out of the TOP100. One of the founders of BGG, Scott Alden, left a message under that post. “The Two Rivers changed my life in a very transformative way and led me to build BGG, which a lot of content creators and reviewers now say is too incomprehensible or too specific,” he said. Randomness and discard it, times have changed!”
Maybe yes, the era that may belong to Teacher Ni Ruinan has passed. The board game UP owner “Big Meow King Haotian” believes that for the current situation, on the one hand, because BGG has adjusted the ranking algorithm before, more and more rankings appear “new games are easier to obtain higher rankings” and “more Many players have positive comments on the game, which will also improve the overall ranking of the game.” Specific examples are family games represented by “Bright Jewels” and “Wings”, which have a considerable ranking in the BGG list. High evaluation rate.
On the other hand, due to Mr. Ni Ruinan’s PhD in mathematics, the auction trilogy of “RA”, “Modern Art” and “Mediqi” created by Mr. Ni Ruinan, as well as the games with the plate placement mechanism such as “Two River Basin” and “Servant”, are all There is a very complete mathematical model as the basis, which gives his game a good foundation. However, with the development of board games and the emergence of more new gameplay and experience, just having a good mathematical model base can no longer satisfy the game needs of contemporary consumers. ? Are there solo rules? Are game accessories attractive, etc.). At this point, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s productization and game characteristics are somewhat overshadowed.
Duan Xiaohei also expressed a similar view. He believes that from the current taste of BGG, there are two kinds of games that are more popular. One is a hardcore board game with extremely rich content. There are many model accessories, or very rich The storytelling focuses on product design and content design, and the other focuses on product performance design, such as having a clever accessory or a brilliant visual. In the case of relatively slow output, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works will appear to be a little disadvantaged. On the one hand, Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works may not be able to support enough content-heavy product design in terms of gameplay itself. On the other hand, a clever or beautiful visual product design is optional. In addition, with the continuous emergence of new product forms, gameplay, vision, etc., practitioners and players have more choices, and they are not as simple as a few years ago. Therefore, for Mr. Ni Ruinan’s works, now facing the competitive pressures are greater.
“Big Meow King Haotian” believes that this incident is actually a good thing from the industry as a whole, because it means that more players will join and rate the game, so a game that is widely praised by the public must be able to withstand test game. And even if Mr. Ni Ruinan’s work falls out of the TOP100, it does not mean that we can ignore Mr. Ni Ruinan’s great contribution to the early board game industry. Mr. Ni Ruinan is still an excellent designer. His game design was once a board game. The benchmark of design, even in recent years, the “Funny Llama” designed by it has also been nominated for the red label of the 2019 SDJ Award, which is enough to show the excellence of its design. “My City” designed by Mr. Ni Ruinan in 2020 has both the plate placement that he is good at and the inheritance mechanism that has been popular in recent years, which shows that he is also constantly absorbing the latest design concepts and advancing with the times. Therefore, Mr. Ni Ruinan Definitely an excellent game designer.
Mr. Duan Xiaohei believes that Mr. Ni Ruinan brought the beauty of mathematics to the board game industry, and he told everyone the important role of mathematical thinking in the field of game planning. It is true that for a mature and excellent game product, it will involve all aspects, such as vision, accessories, model design, user experience, supply chain, etc., but from the most core planning, mathematical thinking is still a core. Skills, just like the works designed by Mr. Ni Ruinan, the unity and coordination of gameplay runs through, and will not make players feel that several mechanisms are combined through continuous polishing. This is the precious wealth brought to us by Mr. Ni Ruinan.
Today’s topic
Frankly speaking, Mr. Ni Ruinan is one of my most respected and favorite board game designers. So, which of his works do you like the most? Leave us a message~
*This article is a work contributed by Static Forest
This article is reproduced from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9063
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.