Conspiracy and game reviews

I don't like negative reviews of things I make. And no matter how far into the fetal position they put me, there's really nothing that can be done except hope that your product or service is good enough that, on the balance, users and reviewers will respond favorably.

The reviews on Galactic Civilizations II have been very positive overall. But we also got our share of reviews that I either wasn't happy with or felt were unfair.  But what can one really do?  In my case, if I felt a review was unfair and was able to document specific examples in the review or put together some other coherent argument as to why the revie was unfair, I'd contact the review site/magazine/whatever.

But one thing that must be done with great care -- don't attack the integrity of the reviewer or magazine publicly, because that's a lose-lose situation.

The average GalCiv II review was roughly a 4.5 out of 5.  But at the outter edges there were two reviews that were under 3.5 out of 5.  Conspiracy? No.  Were they fair reviews? Impossible to say.

Recently there was a hub-bub between the company that makes Sword of the Stars and Tom Chick.  Back in 2005, Tom was contracted for a lump sum to help write the Galactic Civilizations II manual since Tom had spent the last 4,000 years ribbing me for how craptacular our user manuals were.  Roughly a year later, Chick, as one of the best known reviewers in the industry, gave a negative review to Sword of the Stars. Kerebos, the game's developer felt there was a conflict of interest.

Maybe I'm jaded but I just don't see it.  That would be like me saying that because we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with PC Gamer (or CGW or whatever) in advertising that PC Gamer that they should knock down similar games.

From a purely business point of view, games don't compete in the sense they do in other markets. That is, a person who likes GalCiv II is likely to give Sword of the Stars or Space Empires V a serious look at. Buying GalCiv doesn't preclude a purchase of other games that are in the same remotely similar genre. 

More to the point - when it's time to put a product on retail, the # of units they'll take is largely defined by how well other games that are similar did. 

Ever sell a house? It's a lot like that.  You WANT your neighbors who sell their houses to get as much money as possible because that sets up how much you are likely to make selling yours.  If other houses do poorly on the market, it affects you. 

It's not commonly known but one of the beta testers for Galactic Civilizations II was Soren Johnson (designer of Civilization IV).  Some of the features GalCiv II has in common with Civ IV came form Soren's suggestions.  The point being, game developers usually see themselves on the same team. We want Civ IV to succeed and they wanted GalCiv II to succeed.  Similarly, we want Sword of the Stars to succeed and we want Space Empires V to succeed.

So while it is frustrating when your baby gets a negative review, it's never a good idea to impugne the character or reputation of the person doing the review.  I've written my share of frustrated emails but they've always focused on either the review or that the reviewer's perspective came across as someone who just doesn't normally like the type of game they were reviewing (i.e. a first person shooter guy getting assigned to write a 4X strategy game and saying it's "boring" and giving it a low score).

Sometimes it may not seem this way but we developers are on the same side.  We want other games to succeed.  Moreover, the best known reviewers may not always agree with us on our games but they do have a high degree of integrity in my experience.