That reviewer also didn't like that you can't draw a goal where you already are. There were move-to-objective games that let you do that 20+ years ago and getting a series of objections in the same zone was an automatic win, people don't design games like that anymore.

The same reviewer also panned the game as too light, but loves Whitehall Mystery, which is lighter and has a similar objective system. The most popular boardgame reviewer today literally doesn't know what they're talking about.

The 2nd most popular reviewer is a lot better, but if you listen to their commentary on games, it's clear that they only have a superficial understanding of the game and will give reasons they like or dislike games that are objectively wrong.

There are some niche reviewers who are ok, but I haven't found anyone who's the equivalent of Rogert Ebert or some of the old board game reviewers, who actually understood the general topic.

Board game strategy is another place where there's been a huge decline for reasons that aren't obvious to me.

If you look at BGG strategy posts in the heyday of PR/RftG/Caylus/Le Havre/etc., they were often written by top players and correctly described how to play well.

If you look at the popular games today, like Ark Nova, strategy suggestions are different from top play and, IMO, wrong (e.g., standard advice is to almost always rush 2nd break CP, but top players often defer much longer).

The reason I find this mysterious is that, unlike a lot of people, I don't think that scale automatically creates some kind of "Eternal September" and/or "lowest common denominator content wins" race to the bottom, e.g., for car reviews, the information available on youtube channels in much better than anything you could get 25 years ago (and this is even more true for niche automotive content, like tire reviews).

Why is (just for example) car content better but boardgame content worse?

After looking into this further, there are multiple factors, but I think the biggest is the sheer number of games one has to review to appeal to both "the algorithm" on youtube (YT highly favors frequent releases) as well as to appeal to the largest audience.

A reviewer from a mid-sized channel (50k subs, makes ~$50k/yr, half from YT and half from Patreon) said they play 350 new games a year.

That's very different from when a reviewer might've reviewed a few games a year for a magazine.

@numist @danluu

Just because of YouTube Algorithm? It's not clear to me based on what (some) users want.