Well, I am starting to get annoyed with the wave of dilettante publishers that are starting to plague the industry. It's something that has exploded in the last few weeks, both to my amusement and chagrin.
First, I write a review about one PDF: Gun Fighter Quarterly, Tools of the Trade for the Modern Gunfighter. It wasn't a nice review. I pointed out the broken rules, the lack of guns (you expect plenty of guns with that title right, since gund are a gunfighter's tools of the trade), and some promotional issues. The author didn't like the fact that anyone gave him a poor review, so he conned the folks on RPGnow to delete it.
Next, I write a review of War of the Worlds by Gold Rush Games. No response, but none was expected; I know Mark can swallow the bitter pill of criticism. After all, he's published game books for years.
Next, I write a review of Mercenary Armory - Sniper Rifles. Anoher critical review, focusing on lack of details on weapons and poor cross-platform compatibility of the PDF. The author accepts the review, somewhat. He can't accept the fact that two weapons built on the same frame can indeed actually be considered different guns, and through a forum thread, needs to be told by a half dozen people that this is actually the case.
Then came the review of Quick Shots, which I found to be a very poor and uninspired project. Again, the folks involved are professional enough to just take the critique and be done with it. Again, many of the people involved have been writing gaming products for years.
Then I noticed a 2-star review for Castleworks on rpgnow. The reviewer felt he didn't get enough for his money, and expressed his annoyance with the many irritating and pointless programming features of the worldworks website, like those lame sliding popup windows. The Castleworks creator then has a need to write a rebuttal, calling the reviewer's displeasure slander!
Now the latest incident came with my review of the Book of Drawbacks & Distinctions Modern. I reviewed the book, gave it an average rating due to the horrible layout (author didn't even bother with forced justification to create smooth lines at both sides of the columns), and to me, it reads like an outright ripoff of GURPS advantages/disadvantages system and Fuzion's Complications system. And I said as much. What happens? The author actually emails me, calling me a liar because he doesn't own any GURPS books and he's never even seen a Fuzion book. How exactly does what he has in his library or not have anything to do with my review and why on earth would it have shaped my opinion of his PDF? I tell him as much, and he delves off into an email fight, trying to tell me how to review his product.
I'd like all the new publishers of this industry, anyone who has been producing product for less than two years to read this and learn from it. To paraphrase PT Barnum, you can't please everyone all the time. You can please some of them all the time, and all of them some of the time. You're going to get bad reviews occasion. Learn to live with it, because no matter how great you may think your work is, there will always be someone who doesn't like it. And remember, reviews are done from the point of view of the reviewer. They are telling you how they see it. What you know about their claims has nothing to do with it. And last but not least, any efforts spent trying to defend your work will just make you look like a fool at worst, ans an unprofessional snot undeserving of future purchases at best.
First, I write a review about one PDF: Gun Fighter Quarterly, Tools of the Trade for the Modern Gunfighter. It wasn't a nice review. I pointed out the broken rules, the lack of guns (you expect plenty of guns with that title right, since gund are a gunfighter's tools of the trade), and some promotional issues. The author didn't like the fact that anyone gave him a poor review, so he conned the folks on RPGnow to delete it.
Next, I write a review of War of the Worlds by Gold Rush Games. No response, but none was expected; I know Mark can swallow the bitter pill of criticism. After all, he's published game books for years.
Next, I write a review of Mercenary Armory - Sniper Rifles. Anoher critical review, focusing on lack of details on weapons and poor cross-platform compatibility of the PDF. The author accepts the review, somewhat. He can't accept the fact that two weapons built on the same frame can indeed actually be considered different guns, and through a forum thread, needs to be told by a half dozen people that this is actually the case.
Then came the review of Quick Shots, which I found to be a very poor and uninspired project. Again, the folks involved are professional enough to just take the critique and be done with it. Again, many of the people involved have been writing gaming products for years.
Then I noticed a 2-star review for Castleworks on rpgnow. The reviewer felt he didn't get enough for his money, and expressed his annoyance with the many irritating and pointless programming features of the worldworks website, like those lame sliding popup windows. The Castleworks creator then has a need to write a rebuttal, calling the reviewer's displeasure slander!
Now the latest incident came with my review of the Book of Drawbacks & Distinctions Modern. I reviewed the book, gave it an average rating due to the horrible layout (author didn't even bother with forced justification to create smooth lines at both sides of the columns), and to me, it reads like an outright ripoff of GURPS advantages/disadvantages system and Fuzion's Complications system. And I said as much. What happens? The author actually emails me, calling me a liar because he doesn't own any GURPS books and he's never even seen a Fuzion book. How exactly does what he has in his library or not have anything to do with my review and why on earth would it have shaped my opinion of his PDF? I tell him as much, and he delves off into an email fight, trying to tell me how to review his product.
I'd like all the new publishers of this industry, anyone who has been producing product for less than two years to read this and learn from it. To paraphrase PT Barnum, you can't please everyone all the time. You can please some of them all the time, and all of them some of the time. You're going to get bad reviews occasion. Learn to live with it, because no matter how great you may think your work is, there will always be someone who doesn't like it. And remember, reviews are done from the point of view of the reviewer. They are telling you how they see it. What you know about their claims has nothing to do with it. And last but not least, any efforts spent trying to defend your work will just make you look like a fool at worst, ans an unprofessional snot undeserving of future purchases at best.
