The PDF Review Project
- Thread starter Crothian
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nightprowler4321
First Post
Crothian said:
Thanks for answering all my questions.I guess I'm alittle leary with our company getting frauded a couple of years ago. Thank god for Paypal sticking up for us and prosecuting the frauder. In short, the guy was trying to sell our halfway done product at the time to a few hundred persons on an angelfire website for astonomical amount. We found out, turned it over to Paypal, and they stood behind us. We thought we was going to have to pay back all those people, but they understood and instead we gave them free pdfs (1st version). It was more like a hundred instead of a few hundred, but still...
But what the guy did, we had trade secret information out there that couldn't be retrieved. Some people offered to return the unfinished product, others had said they had already printed it out and gave to friends and so forth. Some of the stuff I and my editor found on various websites, not alot mind you, but the occasional snippit of information here and there and most of it was a race or a class the user had used and posted. So that was a mess proving what was ours, most offered apologies saying they had picked it up here and there. Others were more stubborn and threats to inform WOTC and other measures did the job.
That prompted us to change our contract putting in a web designer clause. Ok I digress. So if the actual reviewer agreed to sign a confidentality agreement your fine with it. I'm assuming a publisher gets in contact with you, you both make some formal arrangements by email, then you hand off the reviewed material to whoever gets it.
Ok, so it seems the preferred method is published vs unpublished. I keep forgetting that if your product is up somewhere else and someone has bought a book or three with that company it becomes published. This is probably safer in the long run, as my related pargraph explained, since the material was unpublished at the time, it made it difficult to retrieve some of the product.
Maybe I didn't explain myself clearly, we gave away the pdf after a review was generated on a website, giving them permission to keep the pdf for their review. Still as you said, this can generate problems of its own, though the few I have encountered have been far and few between. This is where the confidentality agreement has helped us. You for your part have a valid credability behind you, stated by the amount of pdfs you have reviewed versus the number of confidentality agreements you been asked to sign. The reviewer you hand it off to may or may not have your same credits. Although, I post occasionaly at enworld I do keep a close eye on messageboards when I can, so I have seen your name mentioned in good faith by some of the more prominent game designs, so as I said your credabilty speaks for itself.
As a side note, and I can see your point, you, afterall are the brainchild of this project, so it would only be fair to offer you a comp pdf as well. I can also see a point since you came up with this project to only offer you the comp pdf and perhaps offer the reviewer a major (50%) discount on the product. A sorta touchy subject, I personally, if I decided to have my product reviewed would give you a comp pdf for just offering your services, you should be able to get something other then satisfaction out of this and probably the reviewer(s) a comp pdf. They would most likely be locked copies to ensure as much trade secretcy as I could.
Again, thanks for answering the questions. I or my design team have not fully decided to get a preview yet from here, it is not ruled out, there is other things on the table at the moment. But rest assured if we decide to go that route, we would most certainly consider getting a review from you or (your staff). I think you have a very good ideal here and hopefully this will stay around quite along time.
Crothian
First Post
nightprowler4321 said:
I'm here for the publishers and for the fans, so I make it a point to asner any and all question thrown my way. There is nothing prvate about what I do so I have no problem and am glad to filed questions. You don't have to take part in the project if you don't want to. You can send something to me and have only me review it. That is what most companies do. I have no problem giving feedback on something unfinshed. You can e-mail at cgath@insight.rr.com if there's anything you want to say that you don't want on a public board or for just the fun of it.
nightprowler4321
First Post
HellHound said:
I understand the rules of 2's, but there is some companies (people) out there, that will continue to make absurd races or what have you by using threes and and fives. They may not garner repect, reviews may not even affect them, as they keep churning out products time after time, because they know some schmuck will buy their product. Your or me give them a bad review, they then get 100 bad reviews, they shrug and keep going. This is where I say they have money to burn. I believe you that most of the rpg companies out there do not waste their money this way. The bottom line, is if a company really wants to put out a product, no matter how tasteless, how bad or how incompentant, if they have the money and or equipment they will do that and the rest of the world be damned.
I read a few of the bad reviews you sent me, but yet even with the bad reviews, some of those companies continue to thrive. They may not be in the top 100, they may have only sold 50 booksks at 20 apeice took their 1000 dollars and made another crappy product, but none the less their still here. My original point is people can always find away around a review and sometimes around companies that sell their product for them.
I'm not particular advocate of these ways, and again I would say that 95%, if not more, of the rpg companies out there do not go this way. Again, I'm just saying where there is a will, there is a way. I might of given poor example by using the rules of two, its the one rule that comes to mind that is much abused. As for the 500 books for 5k I was being extreme to show that someone could do that if they had the money.
Rich people put out books all the time, not necessacary rpg books, but they put the books they want to put out and the hell with the public, they do not care one eyeota, somewhere some print company will publish their books, money talks, its sad, but it does. One particular singer who put out children's books that had terrible reviews comes to mind, No matter what the book still came out, and fame probably has alot to do with it, but there are still alot of rich people in the world that are not famous and they could do the same thing in the rpg industry if they wanted.
Anyway, I was just pointing out what a company might do in face of a bad review or what they might do to overcome the bad review. I'm not saying that hey if you get a bad review to use these methods.
nightprowler4321
First Post
Crothian said:
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to scare anyone from not doing this, I was just pointing out the bad with the good. But these two paragraphs and the paragraph you quoted are hitting the nail on the head, squarely I might add.
HellHound
ENnies winner and NOT Scrappy Doo
nightprowler4321 said:
I disagree - what d20 publisher that is still publishing d20 books is doing this? I think all of them have either thrown in the towel completely, moved out of d20, or are not selling worth beans in the first place (in other words, schmucks aren't buying the products).
To make $1000 from selling 50 copies of a book, a print company would have to have to have it listing at a price of over $60 (after distribution and channel costs, the revenue from a book in this industry is 40% if you are very well off - and then you still have to pay for production on this book).
Effectively, the only people who don't have to worry about quality are the ones who are also not worried about selling products.
As for the bad reviews - of course many of the companies involved continue to thrive - because some of those companies are the same ones that release many of the best RPGs in the field - that's why I was showing you those reviews - to show that RPG.net's review system isn't any better than the one in place here, and that no matter how good or bad a product is, you will find reviews at the other end of the spectrum. One of the worst RPGs I ever played has a 4/5 review at RPG.net - and it is utter and complete trash.
That's right, it's called vanity press, and the public doesn't buy it. Vanity press does no harm to the system, it just syphons money away from those willing to pay to have stuff printed.
I think where we are going here is a discussion of how important reviews are.
And they aren't THAT important. In my opinion and experience, a majority of gamers don't read them. They go into stores and make up their own minds flipping through the products, and especially from word of mouth - from either playing the game in question, or from friends who have. And those reviews don't lie. What published reviews do is give a product that no one has heard about a second chance at publicity, or to give accolades or throw bricks at a truly amazing or paltry product.
Review up of d20 Past:
http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2463359
http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2463359
reveal
Adventurer
I hate to do it, but I'm going to have to pull out of the reviewing process. At first, I thought it would be a great thing to do for the community, and I still think it is, but I find myself simply disinterested in what I have been provided. That's not a knock against anything Crothian or RangerWickett has given me, but I'm just genuinely not interested in either product.
I think it would be better to review things I have purchased. That way, I know I have interest in them and can be more open-minded about the product.
I think it would be better to review things I have purchased. That way, I know I have interest in them and can be more open-minded about the product.
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