Shrapnel to Take on Wargamer.com?

[Annette]

Hi, Jim,

I sincerely welcome you to our forums and am pleased that you have taken the time to voice your opinions, particularly on such an unpleasant topic which seems to be turning more unpleasant by the moment. Please allow me to openly address some of the points you�ve made.

I appreciate your invitation to send early review code for hot titles. Our policy is to ship review copies only after shipment of all pre-orders have been made.. We feel strongly about this commitment to our customers who have demonstrated faith in our games and made a purchase having never read a review.

I�m not sure I understand your conclusion that my comments here demonstrate a belief that all reviews published by The Wargamer are biased or there�s a �conspiracy� on the part of The Wargamer against Shrapnel Games. Surely if I were to make such claims for the general public to read, I would back them up with more documentation than excerpts from two game reviews. My intent was to demonstrate, as War_Oberst says, a review is ultimately the writer�s opinion. It is up to the editors to ensure the review is helpful to the reader. I think he has every right to expect a high set of standards from all sources of news and reviews and that sites such as The Wargamer and TGN should be held to even higher scrutiny as they both could easily be perceived as biased. I think The Wargamer�s editorial policy and peer review process fell apart on the Raging Tiger review.

I disagree with Tim on the relevance of your reference to Dominions II. I�d like to thank you for quoting the Documentation portion of that review. I believe it further illustrates my point. With all due respect, however, it was not the last of our titles reviewed by The Wargamer prior to Raging Tiger. Mario Kroll reviewed StarFury on Feb 19, 2004, and Jim Cobb reviewed Dragoon: The Prussian War Machine in December �04 (which was also given The Wargamer Award for Excellence). In these three reviews (under general sub-headings such as �Documentation and Installation�), the reader is given an in-depth explanation of why the writer draws his overall conclusion of the documentation. This explanation is clearly lacking in the Raging Tiger review. You say yourself that �criticism of a manual usually isn�t limited to its length but rather its quality and, more importantly, the need for it.� In the Raging Tiger review, the writer admits the manual is �crammed full of essential detail� but later concludes the game,"...is incredibly detailed, yes, and the potential for play is vast, once the player gets past the flunky controls, poor graphics, and big manual.� I think your readers are left to wonder if the detail in the manual is essential, why is it something they must �get past�?

I�m not asking that you alter your writers� opinions or only publish favorable reviews. I�m asking that you hold your writers� to the standards The Wargamer has set for itself. Mr. McKenna quite clearly did not like the game. That�s okay. Cheap shots like saying in his footnote bio he needed new eye glasses after playing the game are not. In your most recent post you indicate that such comments are intended to be �witty.� It seems War_Oberst�s advise to me, ��a sense of humor like that may just make you seem less objectiv,� may be helpful to us both.

I�m sure I would be able to search The Wargamer site and find many, many examples of objectivity, balance and fairness. I�m sure I would also find other examples of bias. What I know I would not find is any disclosure that The Wargamer is owned by David Heath who also owns Matrix Games. Only long-time readers would understand the implication of the merger between MilitaryGamer and The Wargamer mentioned it's "Site History" section. For the rest of us, it�s pretty much a secret.

[Jim_Zabek]

Thanks for the feedback Annette. It's well taken and I'll do my best to ensure that any such witty comments are reigned in, especially with regard to Shrapnel's titles. Aaron's comments about a 100 page manual putting the fear of God into you were intended to be humorous: many wargamers have seen lengthy manuals before and often relish the thought. Clearly the humor was lost in the context of the negative review.

And I appreciate you correcting me on the other games we recently reviewed; we have indeed reviewed several other of Shrapnel's games. I would hope you will see the fact that those others didn't immediately spring to mind helps illustrate the point that we (and I in particular) don't mentally categorize our reviews by publisher in our heads. They are written at face value.

I can understand your policy regarding not releasing code early. Send us what you can when you can. And don't forget to keep sending the free stuff - I'd still love to publish an AAR for Raging Tiger, or any other title. Just because we write a review on something doesn't make that the final word. An AAR would let readers have an even better look at the gameplay involved and help them make their own minds up.

[JDC]

For the record, Matrix has never interfered with any Wargammer reviews and has strenuously taken a "Caesar's wife" approach. I have a problem with Aaron McKenna's work but that's two very different approaches to our hobby/industry and writing in general. I doubt that I'll agree with him on "Raging Tigers" but, who knows, Patrick may have slipped up. I will be as stringent with him as I am with anybody else.

Frankly, I find this thread unseeemly and counterproductive. I really don't think two of the best publishers/ sites should go after each other. I may started this with my post on McKenna's review but that was between two authors, not companies.

[Joe 98]

Tim Brooks said:

Thanks, but no thanks.

This will need to be reviewed by wargamers for wargamers. Not by �strategy� gamers and not by mainstream reviewers.


As for Raging Tiger, here is a screen shot for those wargamers who may have missed it.


http://www.shrapnelgames.com/prosim/Raging_Tiger/Screen14.jpg


-

[AMK]

Evening all,


Allow me to introduce myself - I'm the somewhat infamous Aaron McKenna, author of the Raging Tiger review which has been taking so much flak over here in the past days and weeks since its publication. I'm afraid I'm not a regular on Shrapnel's forums or website and so a lot of this may have gone over my head, and so I do apologise, as I do like to respond to criticism of my reviews.

Raging Tiger is an interesting case, as I think a few things have clashed - the deadly trio of Shrapnel, Matrix and Wargamer, the review of a game which is close to some of your hearts and my own sense of humour and style of writing. If I can I'll address these issues one by one, and do excuse me if I'm rather forthright on some of these.

On the issue of Wargamer being affected in its work by Matrix, well I can certainly say I've never encountered any systemic bias within The Wargamers editorial process, and consider it one of the "cleanest" places I've worked at during my career in journalism.

On Raging Tiger, as I stated in my review, I thought it was, to be frank, a terrible game with some minor appeals to the truly hardcore. Beyond that really inner circle it was a face only a mother could love (which is what I think the problem here may stem from :-). On the issue of the manual which has been gathering such criticism over the last while, it's not so much the size of the Raging Tiger manual that drew such attentions from me, but rather the fact that it was so poorly written - my apologies to the author of the manual, but I've read better by a stretch, and especially considering the complicated nature of the game (no bad thing in itself, when it's pulled off correctly), this is particularly inexcusable. The title of the section is more my own sense of humour at play (which you may notice through a lot of my reviews) highlighting the poor nature of the manual, albeit not in a precise fashion (the term of phrase being more for effect than description - read the review for the actual impressions, as they say ;-)

On the issue of "who" should review games, well, I think in this instance the folks here at Shrapnel are throwing a bit of a tantrum because of an opinion - back to the "face only a mother could love" idea. Whilst reviewers are always going to be biased to a degree, a good reviewer looks at a game from all angles, putting himself first in his own shoes, then in the position of the "masses", with the "masses" being a relative term to the game itself - for example "the masses" for a first person shooter are going to be different to the masses for a strategy game, or a niche game such as Raging Tiger. However, Raging Tiger was, from all views... well, terrible, and just because you may want to look past any imperfections to see the very rough diamond beneath... well, I just think this is lazy design and excuses.

The fact of the matter is, Raging Tiger is not a good game, and I'm far from the only reviewer to confirm this. I think the developers here need to get off their collective soapbox for a bit and instead look at making Raging Tigers successors better titles, rather than attempting to make cheap shots at the media who review your games when they do not give the impression that all developers want to see given of their games. I appreciate the toil that goes into many games, and that a lot of the time failure can be due to anything but lazy design, but the bottom line is this title is a poor one and no whinging can change that.

I'm sorry to have to lay it down this thick, but I think that Shrapnel is getting increasingly *****ey about who and what gets to review its games, damn well near expecting the developers to get to review the games as Mr. Brooks suggests above. Really, get a bloody grip.



Once again, sorry for the strong tones, but I'm sure we all appreciate frankness over hissy footing...



Aaron McKenna


(PS, On the bit of a writers rivalry myself and Dr. Cobb, well, I wouldn't miss that party for the world :-)

[Annette]

Welcome to our forums, Aaron, and thank you for letting us know what you think. As always, I am awestruck by the level of professionalism with which you write. I apologize for allowing the topic of this thread to become centered on your review of Raging Tiger. I hope if you read through the previous posts you will see that I simply used an excerpt from your review to illustrate a point in our discussion of whether or not review sites are able to remain free of bias regardless of their alliances.

Personally, I am not concerned with whether or not you liked Raging Tiger. We appreciate all reviews written with thoughtful evaluation and which ultimately help gamers determine if a particular game is right for them. My concern is with disparity of treatment which sometimes occurs and is often not apparent to readers. You see, I did �read the review for the actual impressions� but could only determine that the Raging Tiger manual�s page count was too high for your liking. This simply did not make sense to me when another game review posted within one week�s time gave high praise to a 120-page manual. Had your review revealed what you felt were shortcomings with the content of the manual, I am certain we would not be having this discussion today.

As much as I appreciate Dr. Cobb�s offer to take the fall for inspiring this thread, I think we started off on a sour note with �Beverly��s choice of titles and initial post. And it was I who threw the switch, causing this trainwreck. The developers of Raging Tiger have not made a post in this thread, so if anyone needs to dismount a soapbox, it would be me. And if anyone is �*****y�, it also is me � just ask our staff.

I think if any of us would like to continue a discussion of Raging Tiger, including the positive reviews which have been published, I recommend we take it to the Raging Tiger portion of our forums. Otherwise, I hope we have demonstrated to �Beverly� that our announcement of TheGamingNews has nothing to do with The Wargamer. And I hope if there�s anyone else still reading, they have learned that writing game reviews is tricky business, indeed.

[Leslie]

Excellent read.

Not sure I will offer much of use to the conversation here. And I hope I am not regarded as sticking my nose in to much.

But I have a long history (well a handful of years isn't really long in some ways) of reading and contributing to Matrix Games as well as Wargamer.
Both have seen a lot of evolution in the last 5 years.

I am not concerned at this moment claiming it to be good or bad. Not the reason for my post.

I don't have much history with Shrapnel games, but that is not a limitation either.

I have a fairly good history though, with an additional separate forum entity. They don't make games, and to my knowledge they are wholely independent of any operation that does makes games.
And they have the added bonus of also owning a print publication that is most definitely wargamer friendly.

This reader is of the opinion also, that reviewers are human. And being on staff at a widely recognised web site, really is no real garantee of anything essentially speaking.
A person needs to be able to write competently, and that is about the size of it for a competent review.

Ideally the reviewer needs to have the game, the full game, a system built with the preferred specs, and enough time to play the game properly, several times through.

If a reviewer is truely unbiased, they don't really have to be a fan of the genre, but it helps. I for instance, would be a bad choice to review a sports title indeed. No aptitude whatsoever.

But back to the "other forum". I refer to Warfare HQ, which I think everyone here is familiar with.
Yes I am a big fan of theirs admittedly.
But the place is entirely independent to my knowledge.
They provide a great forum. They provide timely news. And I get just as much out of visiting there, as you could hope to give me at either Wargamer, or the site you have under construction.

Only downside I can see with Warfare HQ, is they are currently focused specifically on military titles.

Wargamer isn't quite so focused, but I am willing to put my hand up, and say, this person is willing to go on the record as saying, it's just not possible to just write off people as being incapable of wondering about owner bias.

I am pro Matrix Games, but I am still able to wonder all the same.
It's a curse that comes with it being public knowledge of who the owner is.

I have a private personal forum myself. A small little gathering place for a small handful of friends.
It would be illogical for me to expect anyone out there to think the site didn't suffer from at least some bias from me.

I can't see anyone truely and honestly extending a blank cheque to either Wargamer aka Matrix Games, or a site built by Shrapnel.

The only really important detail here, is Wargamer exists now, it's very well established, and it will be hard to make the Shrapnel equivalent anything but redundant.

You will have a very hard uphill climb getting any respectable traffic. Especially without all the accumulated indulgences that make up Wargamer.
They possess substantial linkages, enormous quantities of file downloads.
And that isn't built up over a small span of time.

I don't know why anything more than your forum here is reguired actually.
Wargamer to me, is a forum with a newspage/website wrapped around it.
Once people realise Shrapnel owns the site, they will just see it as an extension of here at any rate.

I hope I haven't muddied the waters with my thoughts on this.

[Combat Wombat]

So it is now summer does this mean we get a more specfic date on when the site will have its grand opening?

[Richard]

Probably closer to the end of summer, but the site is coming along.

[geodetic]

Interesting thread. As a reader of games reviews (with a little experience of writing them too) I've always felt that one of the most useful and trust-cultivating features a review site can offer is a prominent 'reviewer's track-record' section embedded in every review.

This section would contain info on and links to the previous 5? 10? reviews that writer had produced for the site. A hypothetical example:

I'm reading a review of Operation Bent Javelin on www.grogland.com. It's written by Ivor Chiponmyshoulder. One click away from this review is a list revealing that Ivor has written 13 reviews for Grogland of which the last 10 were:

Storm Over Suez (Detonation Software) 88%
Kursk '43 (Powder Monkey Games) 15%
Mailed Fist (Detonation Software) 95%
Viking Raiders (Powder Monkey Games) 23%
The Washing of the Spears (Hex House) 55%
Vimy Ridge (Hex House) 62%
Spitfire Summer (Inferno Interactive) 68%
The Battle of Omdurman (Detonation Software) 87%
Waterloo 3D (Inferno Interactive) 71%
Austerlitz 3D (Inferno Interactive) 73%

(In the event that scores aren't used then links would have to suffice)

Naturally I've played a few of the titles on this list and can compare Ivor's analysis with my own. In no time at all I can see whether Ivor is a reviewer I can trust and relate to.

Speculating about a site's bias or lack of it is ultimately pointless as nothing can ever be proved. At the end of the day the reviewer's (ergo, the site's) track-record tell you everything you need to know about their trustworthiness/competence.