1.Handle Bad Game Reviews With Grace- Years ago when we first started Gameinatrix.com, two young companies sent us more games that we could review in a month.We played through them all with a smile and reported to our readers how good or how bad they were.One company, Alawar Games, repeatedly suffered at the hands of Master Blasters, virtual pen.He deemed all of their games, except ONE to be the worst creations ever.Through all of this, Alawar Games remains one of the companies we have a deep respect and admiration for and also the reason for our zero tolerance policy for bad games.Even though we gave them terrible reviews, they kept coming back, they LISTENED to us and our readers and learned from what we said we didn’t like.
The other company, Play First got mediocre reviews from us, simply because we didn’t know what to do with them.There was no such term as Casual Gaming when the head PR haunch called to discuss with me the unfairness of our reviews.At first we were a little miffed, but her call was professional, never insulting, never personal, and so WE listened and learned.We learned that not all games were Halo.The then new, type of game deserved its own classification and so we created one.We didn’t call it Casual Gaming, we called it Lunch Time gaming.Meaning they were so short and sweet, they fit perfectly within a lunch break.We fostered a great relationship with Play First who went on to create the blockbuster Diner Dash franchise and we firmly believe we played a small part in their success.
2.Accept that game reviews are an opinion-While one game reviewer may love your game, another will hate it.It is the one that hates it that you’ll need to pay more attention to. Study the reasons why and use them to make your game better.Improper etiquette is calling to argue with the reviewer and disagree with their review. Worse is stalking them on their website especially when they’ve been around longer than your own company has been in existence (and yes we have personally had this happen-we have since banned this company from our site and reported their harassment to their ISP). This doesn’t mean the reviewer knows best, but they do most likely know more people than you. A wrong word to a BIG company can mean you’re scrutinized more when trying to get the backing of oh say...Microsoft?Who wants to back developers who are in serious need of Prozac. This brings us to our next point…
3.Never assume a smaller website is not just as well connected as a larger one-In some cases smaller websites are more intimately connected, because companies like Microsoft sometimes take a personal interest in smaller sites, most times staffers of smaller sites are personal friends with people who are pretty high on the gaming industry food chain. Just because a gaming site is not IGN, doesn’t mean they don’t have a friend, family member, spouse there.Said spouse would only be too happy to shy away from reviewing your game for making inappropriate personal remarks about their loved one.
4.Lastly, know that if you manage to get a good review, especially from a site such as ours, then know you earned it-We’re not easy on developers. Because markets like the Apple App store and Android Market are so saturated with games, we tend to be extra hard on them. Any code junkie can pick up and make a game, but to make an ‘Angry Birds’ takes skill.But that doesn’t mean you don’t have skill, it means try again and leave the stalking out of it.
