I was thinking about this for a while, especially because I have this cool shelf with lots of compartments. Most people just organize by size of box, which isn't great. I thought about doing length of play, but that can be pretty variable with some games. I also thought about thematically (party game, euro-style game, etc), but those categories can be wishy-washy, so I eventually settled on number of players (first by minimum, then by maximum). It seems good, but might not be the best.
What do you think?
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
Two options you haven't mentioned are alphabetical order by title and chronological order by date of publication. For the latter, you could sort traditional games, like chess and checkers, using estimates of when they were invented.
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"Generally the plan was to get away from government and allow the natural virtue of man to assert itself. What more can you ask for as an explanation of failure?" —B. F. Skinner (as Frazier in Walden Two)
I'd focus on organizing them in an aesthetically pleasing way, because board game boxes are generally so recognizable that you can find the one you want at a glance and not rely on the organization scheme.
Whatever you use most often goes on top, and what you play less goes on the bottom. If you play pretty much everything...then you are quite the board game connoisseur.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
I would do optimal player number then expected play time. That way you when you're like "we have five people and two and a half hours, let's brainstorm" you can do a quick scan of the five player section. No one has enough games to subdivide but if you did then you could totally get crazy with it.
I see the argument for popularity, but access is only meaningfully easier for the top. Rapidly diminishing returns.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I thought about optimal player (for example, right now Last Night on Earth is in the 2-6 section, but I would really rather not play it with 6, 5 is better), but that's harder to quantify for many games, I think, than minimum/maximum number of players.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
By size of box (largest on bottom) is great from a functional standpoint as well.
I am not a creative man.
Thinking on it, a person is as creative as their canvas allows. If I had one or two shelves to organize on, I might have stuck with size of box. But the shelves that are built into my walls have multiple smaller and uniquely shaped compartments, so I worked with that.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)