As a member of the RPG press (something I think many more of us are than we acknowledge, but that’s a topic for another day), I think a lot about how to use my platform, and how to use Party of One, ethically.

Something important I’ve concluded: Working in the independent space, if a piece of art is not causing harm, making a purely negative review of that work almost always does more harm than good.

What I Mean When I Say “Negative Reviews”

There are some important disclaimers & definitions I want to put upfront so they don’t get lost. When I say “a negative review,” I don’t mean a critical review or a nuanced review; talking about the parts of a game that didn’t work for you or that you struggled with can be valuable insight both for the designer and audience. I also don’t mean to say you have to like everything. Quite the opposite; being able to say “I don’t like X, Y, and Z, and therefore I didn’t connect with this, but if you DO like those, you’ll love this,” is an incredibly valuable skill. Lastly, to re-emphasize, harmful work is necessarily excluded from this discussion. If a work is doing harm, or opens up the potential for harm, we should be talking about that, to help keep people safe.

Outside of those contexts, however, I ultimately don’t think there’s a ton of value in negative reviews of indie works, particularly self-published works, and especially self-published indie RPGs.

Counting in Tens & Hundreds

A few years ago, I attended a seminar on non-wrestling roles in wrestling, taught by soon-to-be AEW referee Bryce Remsburg. Alongside all of the lessons on commentary, and refereeing, and a bunch of other things, Bryce said something about existing in the indie wrestling space that stuck with me:

“When dealing with people in this space, always remember, the vast majority of us are counting in tens and hundreds, not thousands or millions.”

I truly think about this in every hobbyist space I inhabit, particularly in TTRPGs. There are so few of us doing this full time in RPGs, and even fewer entities that I’d describe as “The Establishment.” (Honestly there’s just the one, but I could see an argument for three or four.) By and large we’re an industry counting in tens and hundreds, and it’s easy to forget that.

Who Does Your Review Benefit?

No matter how much I’d like for this to not be the case, indie RPGs are a small scene. Discoverability is always an issue; most designers lack the resources (whether in the form of money or time) to commit to large-scale marketing efforts. Designers don’t have a lot of ways for audiences to find their work. This is why I find arguments of “bad reviews are important to help players decide!” unconvincing. The odds of someone stumbling onto a game are minimal, which means that a bad review pushes away people who have found the game without doing much to push them towards something else.

Which brings back the question of “who is benefitting from your hatchet job?” It’s not the designer; you’re making it harder for them to reach people. It’s rarely the audience; you’re pushing away people who would probably be interested in the thing, often without a real sense that they’re being pushed towards something better. Honestly, the person who seems to benefit most from your negative review is you, the reviewer, and harming someone else’s chances of finding their audience to lift up yourself is always going to feel incredibly suspect to me.

One Response

  1. 100% spot on. I think it’s really telling that people want to boost their own profile by publishing negative reviews. They’re also counting in tens and hundreds, so knowing they’ll step on people to get up tells you a lot about them.