malladin
Explorer
I agree with Joe's last comment (in a general sense).
I think it's not only the consumers who get a help from a comparative review. As a writer/designer it's good to get an idea about what you're doing right or wrong with your product in a way that doesn't more rely on whether the reviewer thinks the general idea of your product is flakey. I know this is usually a very valid point, but if I wanted to go out and buy a book to help me play my new enchanter character I'm not going to get any use out of a reviewer who thinks the whole idea of a class book for a specialist wizard is pointless. Likewise for a designer, it allows you to know how your systems and writing compare when jotted up along side people who have similar ideas about what kind of book to write.
On another note, when I was looking for a new car earlier this year I bought a magazine that had a comparative road test for the general size/class of car I was interested in. There were something like 7-8 different models of the clas in question. The review dealt heavily with three of the cars and gave a brief passing mention to the others in the class, which I think had been reviewed at an earlier point. This could be done for a RPG comparisson and take scores from other reviews for the ones you've not got and put it in a little summary at the end (making sure you state that these are other reviewer's comments).
cheerio,
Ben
I think it's not only the consumers who get a help from a comparative review. As a writer/designer it's good to get an idea about what you're doing right or wrong with your product in a way that doesn't more rely on whether the reviewer thinks the general idea of your product is flakey. I know this is usually a very valid point, but if I wanted to go out and buy a book to help me play my new enchanter character I'm not going to get any use out of a reviewer who thinks the whole idea of a class book for a specialist wizard is pointless. Likewise for a designer, it allows you to know how your systems and writing compare when jotted up along side people who have similar ideas about what kind of book to write.
On another note, when I was looking for a new car earlier this year I bought a magazine that had a comparative road test for the general size/class of car I was interested in. There were something like 7-8 different models of the clas in question. The review dealt heavily with three of the cars and gave a brief passing mention to the others in the class, which I think had been reviewed at an earlier point. This could be done for a RPG comparisson and take scores from other reviews for the ones you've not got and put it in a little summary at the end (making sure you state that these are other reviewer's comments).
cheerio,
Ben
