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937 posts and 35128 comments from roughly Apr 13, 2017 to Apr 24, 2017 have been downloaded via the Reddit API.

Game names are often mentioned in **bold** on /r/boardgames. This gave us an approximation of what should we consider a game: if it appears at least 3 times in bold, it is probably a name of a game. This rule had false positives and negatives, which were fixed manually.

on /r/boardgames. This gave us an approximation of what should we consider a game: if it appears at least 3 times in bold, it is probably a name of a game. This rule had false positives and negatives, which were fixed manually. For each Reddit user and each game the number of posts/comments where the given user has mentioned the given game is counted.

We try to make sure that we count the game when it is mentioned and we don't count it if it is not. Many names of especially older games are common words that either naturally appear when discussing games ( Risk , Diplomacy , Clue , and obviously Go ) or are used in phrases not really related to the game ( poker face , monopoly money ), so we have manually marked which mentions should be counted and which ones should not.

, , , and obviously ) or are used in phrases not really related to the game ( , ), so we have manually marked which mentions should be counted and which ones should not. If a user U mentions game A n A times and game B n B times, the games A and B attract themselves with force n A n B /f U , where f U is chosen so that the total contribution of user U is proportional to the square root of their total number of mentions.

times and game B n times, the games A and B attract themselves with force n n /f , where f is chosen so that the total contribution of user U is proportional to the square root of their total number of mentions. The algorithm optimizes the sum of d AB a AB over all pairs of games, where d AB is the distance and a AB is the total attraction.

a over all pairs of games, where d is the distance and a is the total attraction. We have colored each popular game with manually assigned categories. We do not know every game, and mny games fall in several categories, so some categories might be not perfect. Less clear categories: secret (secret identity), deck (deck builders including MtG), worker (worker placement), route (route building), adventure (RPGs and games with similar theme), building (you build something but the game does not conform to any more specific categories).

The visualization can be zoomed (e.g. Ctrl+numpad plus or Ctrl+mousewheel up in Firefox).

This follows the same general idea as our earlier visualization of /r/roguelikes. We use a fork of HyperRogue named RogueViz; download RogueViz for raw data and more details and interactivity. Hyperbolic geometry is used to give a decent amount of space for each game. Play HyperRogue and other roguelikes, in many aspects they are closer to board games like Chess than to typical computer games :)

This is a visualization of relationships among the games discussed on /r/boardgames , by Zeno and Tehora Rogue.