The flip side of bad reviews

[jdagna]

With all the discussion on bad reviews recently, I thought I'd offer an insight into the flip side of it.  Even a bad review isn't all bad.

Back in June, Gaming Report published two reviews of Pax Draconis.  They weren't completely bad (2.5 and 3 stars out of 5, with some positive comments), but they certainly weren't good (nether person recommended buying the game and ended with an overall negative conclusion).  Some of their points were valid, some of them were just different gaming agendas conflicting and some were just plain wrong, where they'd obviously not read something closely.

The two reviews got about 250 views each within the first two weeks.  I had quite a few players jump to the game's defense, which was quite satisfying (though, curiously, Gaming Report has deleted those comments and won't respond to emails asking why).  In any event, I still saw measurable rewards even from a negative review – there were two purchases of the game that week through my web site that both specifically mentioned Gaming Report as the source.  (Which means that, as a return on advertising dollars, even a pair of bad reviews has been the most effective advertising yet).

I don't know if that's encouraging to anyone (RPGNow is a slightly different situation), but I hope it's a little helpful.

[daMoose_Neo]

Also too, it depends on why the review is bad.
*Note- ACTING REFERENCRES! WOOT!*
In High School, I'd compete in Forensic Speaking and Acting. By my senior year I came to literally loathe a critique that gushed, even though I knew my work was chapmpion/1st place material (experiance proved that true). What I genuinely wanted was a critique to say "Your work was horrid and here's why-" because then I could look through someone elses eyes at potential flaws. And from the beginning of one season to the end, those critques only made my work better. Even if at the start of the season I was cleaning house w/ first placre finishes, I always found the critiques and comments that helped me improve.
Reviews of this kind might be worth something financially yes, but they're worth more creativly. They can help expand ideas you might have felt needed something else, force you to look at something that is honestly weak, etc. A review that makes a better is worth a LOT.

The other half are the critques and comments that serve no purpose other than to inflame the author(s) or performer(s) and make the commentor feel better about themselves. THOSE are honestly worthless and if your work is worth it, others will stand by it. Then, you don't need to respond- the work and the supporters will speak for it and show just how much in a minority the dissenter is.
When I asked if someone could look at Twilight I did so because I didn't know which of the two it was, just that the reviewer didn't like it. Turns out he never wrote a review, "just called (the editor) and politely informed (him) that there was no way he'd be able to cast it in a good light", which tells me nothing. By getting a REAL perspective on WHY the game is or isn't decent, it makes a world of difference.

A bad review from a dick = just brush it off, a good product will still stand on its own feet.
A bad review from a professional standpoint = worth its weight in gold

[clehrich]

As a way of saying, "Yeah, Nate's right":

A friend of mine a number of years back, several years ahead of me in grad school (not my school, fortunately!), was told by his dissertation advisers that he should publish his dissertation.  So he sent it off to several publishers, and one of them took a look at it and sent the MS for review.

The review was brutal.  I've seen it.  It was destructive, attacked pretty much everything from soup to nuts, and then concluded with a very striking passage.

In short, the guy (or woman, who knows, it was anonymous) said that the problem with this thing was that it was a dissertation, not a book.  Dissertations do not get published, these days, and there are very good reasons for that, he said.  He went on to say that if any publisher were fool enough to print this thing, every journal would say more or less what he had, except wouldn't conclude about dissertations.  He advised the guy to put it back in the bag and start revising, drastically, to turn it into a book.  Cut all the defensives.  Cut all the warmed-over historiography.  Cut, in fact, to the chase and write a good book, and forget that it was ever a dissertation.

I have never, ever seen such a destructive review of anything.  Never.  It was incisive, and the guy had a penetrating intellect.  He left smoking rubble in his wake.

And he was absolutely right.  My friend eventually recovered from the blow and, after a couple years, made a pretty good book out of it.

As Nate says, a bad review by a serious professional is worth its weight in gold.

[Simon W]

In my case, I wasn't too concerned about the review, critical though it was. The reviewer made some valid points (amongst a few that were overly harsh or wrong or both and he did seem to belabour the bad points and skim over the good). If I ever do a 2nd edition (unlikely) I will certainly take account of what the reviewer said. As you all say, nothing is perfect and it takes somebody outside of our cosy spheres of influence sometimes to point out what is wrong with what we have produced.

The problem was with some nut who made a comment at the foot of the review. Luckily, I thought before responding. That would seem to be the best advice to anyone who receives a bad review or comment about a product.

Simon W

[andy]

As the unofficial Forge posterchild for bad reviews, I wanted to add my two cents and more or less agree with the conventional wisdom so far on this thread, with one caveat-- while a bad review that is merely disparaging is both annoying and potentially damaging to sales, a less-than-stellar review with real critiques is actually an opportunity to demonstrate good customer service.

While I was taken aback at first and responded brusquely to the first bad review of BONES, with some good advice from fellow Forgers, I revamped my strategy and responded positively by trying to affirmatively address concerns.

So far, the fruits of these efforts has been interesting-- while I sold fewer than ten copies after the initial bad review in the United States, I have sold far more to gamers outside the US-- I have literally sold copies of BONES to buyers accross the globe, on every continent (except Antarctica, and I'm working on that). While I can't figure this out, I'm not complaining....


Take care.

Andy

[Valamir]

Sales of any type are a numbers game.  Indie RPGs are no different.

If a bad review is posted and 2000 people read it, maybe 1500 of them say "wow that game sucks, I'm not wasting my time with that".

But of the remaining 500, 100 think "wow, no game could be that bad, I'm going to check it out" (or some other pity motivated thought.  250 say "overall it doesn't sound great but there were these one or two concepts that the reviewer mentioned that really sounded cool, I'm going to check it out".  And 150 of them will say "that reviewer is an asshole, everthing he says is good I think sux and everything he says sux I usually think is good.  I'm going to check it out"

Out of those 500 who actually are interested in checking it out you could get anywhere from 10-25% who actually buy...that's largely up to your own presentation when they get there.

10-25% of 500 is 50-125 copies.  50 to 125 copies is a huge kick in the pants for most any indie title.

And the 1500 who were incorrectly swayed by the bad review?  So what.  Most of them had never heard of your game before then so they weren't going to buy it anyway.  And some of them may yet be swayed by a future good review...and a small handful maybe by proper response to the bad one.


Therefor the REAL question of importance is NOT whether the review was good or bad...but how many people does that review site reach.  A bad review read by 2000 people is worth a hell of a lot more sales than a good review read by 50.

[M Jason Parent]

My first PDF release had a sudden sales spike when it received an inflamatory 1-star review that accused all the other reviewers of being my friends and employees or being paid by me to write the good reviews.

Of course, the spike wasn't nearly as big as the one I got when I became front-page news on E.N.World because the owner of the site was buying a copy of the PDF.

But nonetheless, at least 30 copies sold can be linked to the 1-star review.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

That is excellent information, Jason. I had a similar experience with a Sorcerer review on RPG.net, when the game was still in PDF form. I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but they were very much like yours.

For me, the breakout review was not ENWorld, of course, but Ken Hite's Out of the Box. Very same pattern, though.

Best,
Ron