A Bad Review

[andy]

I hope that this thread is not off topic here, but I have a question/issue.

I recently published my game (BONES) on RPGNow. Within a few hours of publication, a purchaser panned it in its first (and only) review. While I think that the review is inaccurate and unfair, perhaps I am the only one who doesn't think that my child is ugly. If any Forge folk would like to look at the demo, it's on the LuLu site below.

I'm not writing to cry in my beer--I have a much more practical problem (and a day job). After the bad review appeared, lots of people read the review and sales completely dried up. In fact, my European sales have been higher than my American sales, which are now zero. I have posted a reply to the review, which does not seem to help.

What, if anything, do I do now?

I wrote BONES because I enjoyed the concept and I was looking to create the game that I wanted to run as a game master. In that I succeeded-- BONES is a joy to run and the people who have tested the game tell me that is it fun to play. This being said, I would still like to sell sufficient copies to break even. The odds of this don't look good.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Andy

( BONES is also at www.lulu.com/BONES )

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

YOU DO NOTHING.

That's my first advice. Your initial on-line sales depend wholly on your on-line image, and an image which gets bent out of shape in any way over a review is an unsellable one. If you absolutely must post, say, "Thanks for the review." Refrain from including but other people like it or clearly you don't get it or whatever as qualifiers.

Time is on your side, if your game is good. The only way people will know whether it's good is to play it, and to have fun with it. Then reviews will appear that reflect the fun of play, and those reviews will have the desired promotional effect.

I like to distinguish as well between bad and critically harsh reviews. The latter is a valuable thing, a great source of possible changes to the game or its presentation, and over time, a great way to demonstrate that you've got the balls to take it when you deservedly catch it.

(A subset of critically harsh reviews is one which is intended as I describe, but the reviewer lacks the competence or perspective to deliver trenchant criticism. It's not as useful as a source of advice, but it's still an opportunity to demonstrate one's cool.)

The former is noise. It is the product of a "reviewer" who is playing to his audience, manufacturing his image as a performance artist, with your game as the raw material (and by no means the subject of the performance). Even worse, if you lose your cool or in any way try to defend the game, you lose - his whole point is to show that he's cooler than you.

Such a review might hit sales, but again, only temporarily. If the game is playable and fun, then just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, say "Thanks for the review" if anything at all, and do whatever it was you were planning to do before the review appeared.

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Martin]

I recently published my game (BONES) on RPGNow. Within a few hours of publication, a purchaser panned it in its first (and only) review. While I think that the review is inaccurate and unfair, perhaps I am the only one who doesn't think that my child is ugly. If any Forge folk would like to look at the demo, it's on the LuLu site below.

Hi, Andy.
I read through the demo on Lulu at: http://www.lulu.com/items/72000/72924/preview/VKR001_BONES_the_RPG--demo.pdf
and read the review on RPGNow at: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_reviews_info.php?products_id=3279&reviews_id=6015&
I noticed that there were 54 reads of the review, but that the count doesn't increment for my MS IE browser with standard security settings. That's probably a problem with RPGNow and it's security settings or policies?

What, if anything, do I do now?

I'd suggest immediately addressing the accurate concerns of Paul MacDonald, your annoyed purchaser of your product. These concerns are:

[*]...take Avery lables and draw symbols on 'em then stick 'em to your dice so that they reflect your characters abilities. Just what I want to spend my time doing...
[*]Keeping track of which die applies to which character or NPC is going to be a nightmare...
[*]Keeping track of ... what each of the 20+ symbols means.
[/list:u]

For the first, this is a similar problem to when Fudge first came out in requiring players to have custom dice, but your system is worse in that each of the dice that each player has is customised. I suggest looking at providing custom dice? Or, as an interim solution, what about a web service that provides the graphics for the buyer on a piece of Europe A4 or US 8.5" x 11" paper (don't rely of automatic PDF scaling) that can be photocopied on to some convenient Avery label stock? That way the graphics are more conveniently generated and are better looking than hand painting by people that aren't skilled in painting or drawing as you are.

For the second, imagine six to eight players all rolling 4 or more dice at once to the centre of the table. How will the players discover which die belongs to them? What happens in the situation where a player rolls their dice for a critical task, fails and then discovers, "hey! these two dice are mine?!"? Or, even worse, another player says, "that's my dice you're rolling with?"?

For the third, how about making a quick reference for all the symbols in each possible orientation? I noticed that the demo PDF has separate tables and takes a short cut for a set of results (different colours), which a reference table shouldn't do. A lookup table should show all results as it's meant to be used for speed of determining results. I've found the help page for the digital dice roller on this page: http://doctorjeff98.tripod.com/dimensionsgamesoftware/bones/data/bonesdicehelp.html
At the bottom of the page, I noticed that there's a number of the icons that are missing : Weapon, Melee, Missile, Armour, Defend, Encumber, Defence and Racial. Instead, words are used. I noticed that the colour differences seem inconsistent. Sometimes green means two successes, sometimes blue means two successes and sometimes red means two successes, and sometimes blue colour means 25% less or negates 40%? Is there a method to this? A consistent association of colour to counts would be better?

I also noticed a couple of spelling errors. "aldo" should be "also". "Em" should be "'Em" (note the apostrophe). "Defense" should be "Defence". The abbreviation "M" should actually be "m", as meters are abbreviated as "m", but for a fantasy game, using metric units seems odd to me, as these are the units I associate with order, reason, and the modern age. It's probably better to use Imperial units instead, like feet and yards? I'd also remove the percentage results as well, and instead use a fraction like "1/2" or "1/4".

Also, I'd suggest fixing the JavaScript on the Dice Roller at: http://doctorjeff98.tripod.com/dimensionsgamesoftware/bones/bonesdice.html so that it will work with other browsers.

I hope that helps!

[jdagna]

Here's a play by play from the inside of my brain as I looked at the game on RPGNow.com.

First Impression: Custom dice to represent characters?  Interesting idea!

Second Impression: This reviewer only mentioned a single core aspect of the system, and it was negative.  He obviously didn't like it, but obviously didn't try to make a well-rounded review, possibly because he doesn't have well-rounded experience with the system.  I should learn more about the system.

Third Impression: The author is dismissive and insulting when people give negative feedback.  Furthermore, the author feels that 20+ symbols can be intuitive (I'm doubtful) and that two hours spent making dice is a short amount of time (ouch, I don't even want to spend that long on my whole character).

Fourth Impression: The author wants us to correct the system's weaknesses by buying something else?!  I can do that with WotC, can't I?

Fifth Impression (having seen the demo):  Looks like the reviewer had a good point - the symbols are certainly not intuitive enough to use without constant referencing, especially when combined with colors.  I suspect the author either didn't playtest much or didn't listen to them either.

In other words, your response to the review was the part I interpreted negatively.  From there, it was all downhill.

The only response I would recommend giving is to thank someone for trying the game and perhaps apologize that it didn't suit their tastes.  But silence is even better - to my mind, it shows confidence in your product.  If there's any way to erase or edit your response, I'd strongly recommend doing so.

I also wouldn't let a bad start get you down.  It's an opportunity to show some responsiveness to readers by making improvements, if you choose to do so.  And, since there's no such thing as an overnight success, the short-term impact of this review will be much less important than what you do over the next year (or two or three).

[andy]

Thank you for the collective wisdom.

Thus far, I've handled this exactly wrong.

I'll get back to work.

Still, Ouch.

Andy

[John Uckele]

I really like the idea for a system mechanic. It might need some polishing, but I can't say until I play it. Maybe I'll try buying it so see what I think. I would give you a suggestion though:

The preprinted sheets is a good idea, but even more so, I think it might be useful and wise to give a resource for cheap colored D6. If each player has a different color, it'll make the dice easier to distinguish. If Ralph is red, Greg is green, and Bruce is black, it should create less possible confusion.

[andy]

I'm still mad at myself for my response to my only review (and that was the toned-down version, believe it or not). I have asked RPGNow to delete my response.

My brief foray into game publishing has been cathartic for me in one respect. I started doing this for fun. Creating and modifying BONES was fun. Running BONES is a blast, and the playtesters told me that they had fun. The business/selling part has not been fun.

If I had it do over again, I would give BONES away. I still might....

As to the specific responses to this thread, thank all of you for your input (especially Ron, who must not sleep).

Andy

[GregS]

Though I am the proverbial virgin of RPG publishing (though that ends next month), I have been a "professional" reviewer of rpgs, video games, and movies for over a decade.  So I think I may have some useful advice as someone who has had to trash his share of labors of love (though have rarely looked forward to doing it).

The first thing to remember, always, is that the reviewer is just one guy (sic).  And no matter how good something is you will find at least one person in 100 who hates it.  Likewise, no matter how bad something is, you will find a percentage who like it.  From experience I can tell you that reviewers don't go to some special school, or have some rigorous screening process to weed them out...they're just idiots like me who happen to end up on the very sharp side of a pen.  So do your best not to take it personally...it's just one schmoe's opinion.

Secondly, don't be shy about embracing your negative reviews.  All press is good press, as the old saying goes, and I know several manufacturers, especially in this industry, who have done well doing things like putting every review they get, good or bad, up on their site.  And if you really feel the need to debunk it, do it in GOOD HUMOR, not in a hostile tone.  Being able to laugh at yourself will earn you friends, crying about it will turn people away.

Third, get some good reviews.  I know, I know, it sounds shady, but there's a number of ways to do it.  Firstly, get it out there to the media.  You get it to enough sources someone's going to like it, and you can focus on that positive review in your marketing.  Secondly, mobilize your fan base.  You said you have a number of people who thought it was a lot of fun to play, well, get one or more of them to put reviews up.  It sounds like this bad reviewer really didn't try your game anyways (from the posts here, I haven't read the review itself) so maybe some reviews by knowledgable players will help balance it out.  Believe me, when my game hits, I'm going to be all over my "fans" to spread the good word.  And while that doesn't mean you go out and write the reviews for them or make up fake accounts to glorify your products, there's no reason that Playtester X can't do a good write up for you.  No reason at all.  And, as anyone who's visited amazon knows, counter-reviews can be a critical aspect of weighing product purchases.

Finally, expand your reach.  Even if RPG now has become a dead horse for you, there's a million other retail sources out there.  Direct sell, get on with a fullfillment house, hit other websites, do what you need to.  They won't all fall victim to the machinations of this one rotten egg.

And again, most importantly of all, don't get discouraged.  It's just one bad bit of press, based on one negative opinion.  Everyone has them eventually.

Just my long winded two bits.  

Greg