This morning when I entered the iOS App Store to check for updates to my installed apps I noticed on the home page a curated list titled “Our top 10 board games”.

So once I’d started the downloads for the updates (there did seem a lot this morning), curiosity got the better of me and I checked out this top 10.

To say I was a bit disappointed by their choices was an understatement. With Carcassonne being the only “modern” or “hobby” board game to make the list, I thought this wasn’t a list chosen by gamers.

Even if I didn’t chose some of the more “hardcore” hobby games that have app versions. Where is Catan, Tokaido, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Charterstone, Sagrada, Roll for the Galaxy, to name a handful of modern, accessible, light or gateway games?

Even with my recent rediscovery of Chess, would or should it make a top 10? It depends what the point of the list is.

With a big clue being “our favourites” then this list is a list of favourite boardgames of whoever compiled the list. I’m assuming this curation was by a human and not some code.

What can we deduce about the author of the list? They may have scratched the surface of modern boardgames as hinted by the presence of Carcassonne. However the rest of the selections being the more mainstream titles that most people play growing up. So I’d guess they don’t play boardgames on a regular basis, maybe during the traditional family holidays with other family members during a family get together. They had to compile this list so fell back on games they played growing up.

I don’t think any boardgamer when asked to do this list would come up with this top 10. I’ll do my top 10 in another post I think.