Andy Collin's comments re censoring playtester reviews

[zoroaster100]

I just read Andy Collins' comments quoted on ENWorld's front newspage today explaining what playtesters were and were not allowed to say. I must say I am disappointed with WOTC's decision to try to provide skewed information about the game by allowing certain playtesters to comment but only if they have positive comments. I still trust that the freelancers who spoke out do honestly like the game, just as they stated, but now we know if there were four times as many freelancers who had nothing positive, and much negative to say, those people were forbidden from speaking out. I believe that is deceptive and manipulative on the part of WOTC. I'm sure there are many other companies that do similar marketing practices, but that doesn't make it right.

I read Andy's defense for the practice, which is essentially that there is no point in having negative comments shared with consumers at this point because the criticism can just be used internally to fix the problem. But that doesn't strike me as a legitimate defense. From what we've heard, most of the rules at this point are pretty much done. So if someone felt overall the game is not as fun with the new rules, I don't see how that could be fixed at this point. More importantly, if the game is still so in flux that negative comments are not relevant because things might get fixed, the same could be said for positive comments.

I still have high hopes that the fourth edition rules will be fun. But the credibility of WOTC's marketing department has taken a beating for me this day.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hey, look at it from this point of view: if it's true that criticism from the playtesters can still influence design, and can result in changes made to the system, then so can criticism from fans of the game as a whole. Which is something a lot of people posting here still kinda hope for. Cloud, silver lining, and all that.

 

[vagabundo]

I think it was completely legit of them to ask for anything negative to be directed to them. Remember that only people who asked, and were specifically trusted not to abuse it, where given some leeway to talk about their impressions.

As usual an internet storm in a teacup.

We'll get a 1000 impressions at the end of feb anyway.

 

[Mad Mac]

Think about it this way. What company, ever, ever, ever allows playtesters under NDA's to make negative comments about their game before it's released? No one does that, because it would be pure corporate stupidity. NDA's are in fact, usually applicable even after the game is released, so that no one is allowed publically to discuss the beta testing, though in practice companies will cut people a certain amount of slack in this situation.

Allowing a few betatesters to talk about their experiences at all was apparently a special approval thing given to a few people like Ari because he'd been bugging them about wanting to talk about 4th edition more.

I just don't see what people are getting all upset about. I've been a playtester a few times, and this all seems par for the course. The only unusual thing is giving a few people limited permission to give their opinion.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I still trust that the freelancers who spoke out do honestly like the game, just as they stated, but now we know if there were four times as many freelancers who had nothing positive, and much negative to say, those people were forbidden from speaking out.

No, in fact you don't know that. You can't know that without knowing how big a "handful" of playtesters asked for permission to speak. They asked first; then they were given permission to share their positive experiences but to reserve their negative comments for the proper channel-- playtest feedback.

If John, Ari, and Owen are the only ones who asked, and all three of them were given permission, and all three of them reported their positive experiences, then that tells you only that those three had positive experiences, and nothing more.

You don't know what their negative experiences were, nor do you know how many other playtesters had a positive or negative experience either way.

That being said, I agree with you that there are better ways it could have been handled. They should have anticipated a certain illogical hysteria over "that email."

Watching the roll out of 4e is like watching a toddler trying to pick up a ball that he keeps kicking away every time he bends over.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What good would posting a criticism to a message board do?

When they can just fire off an e-mail to Andy (or someone) and get it actually fixed?

And the broad, general positives they've been giving aren't very specific, either, beyond "I like it." They haven't been giving specific praise, really.

Maybe it would've been best not to say anything, but you can't beat direct word of mouth, so I can see why WotC decided to let the leash a bit slack.

Still, ENWorld or WotC.com is not the proper place to air their grievances. If I had Andy Collin's direct e-mail, I wouldn't be posting here, either, I'd be e-mailing him asking about this.

 

[Reynard]

Being the playtester coordinator guy must be the worst job ever.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Agreed.

Thaumaturge.

 

[grimslade]

Without the full rule set, forum discussion of playtester dislikes would be useless. It would be a very low signal to noise ratio. At this point of design stage, WotC is not going to reinstitute Vancian spellcasting or insert the gnome as a PHB1 race. There would be very minute nuanced fixes at this point and the chatter on these and other forums would be to rehash design decisions from a year ago.

The better decision might have been to keep playtesters and freelancers gagged until DDXP. We will have hundreds of fresh perspectives on 4E when people get to play a couple of rounds of 4E and talk specifics.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

I'm with KM on this one.

What we now know is that three people outside of WotC like it. None of them were under obligation to say anything so they could have just as easily kept quiet.

We don't even know specifics of WHY they like it. Sure, Ari has given it to us in general terms of why he likes it but we still have no hard numbers or direct data points that we can use.

Even he didn't like the feat/power "This Feat is Bad" why should he tell us that WotC made a bad ability? Maybe it isn't in the game anymore. Maybe it got changed so that it can now be called "This Feat is Good". On the other hand, maybe he didn't like but two dozen other playtesters thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

We don't know the current state of things. Ari likely doesn't know the current state of things. He didn't have to say anything.

I think hearing The Bad from a single person whoes job it is to find The Bad is more effective than hearing it from a message board where the people tend to not have the full picture. The three playtesters we've heard from could have kept quiet and no one would be the wiser.

Maybe Andy phrased the email poorly (the post here has a quotation mark as if to denote the start of a quote but I didn't see a second one to mark the end of the quote so I'm unsure if he intended to quote a passage from the email or if he accidently fat fingured the keyboard during a paraphrase of the email); but I see no problem with what the stated intentions were.

There is absolutely no use in getting upset about something that was legitametely The Bad but but was removed from the game because... well... it was legitamately The Bad.