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Congratulations! Your first (second, third, fourth, etc.) game is out into the world! You went through all the steps of the process, play-tested it, finished it, did the post-production work, and now it is out in the wild and people are playing it! If you are like me, this process has taken 2-5 years of your time. However, you are now a wargame designer!



I hope you are ready for the hard part. People are not going to like your game, and they won't be afraid to tell you about it. Some of this feedback is more helpful than others and you can learn from it for your next game. Typically, it falls back into the following categories:

-None at All
-Not Helpful
-Misalignment
-A Gift

You can read all the details on the blog:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/02/wargame-design-managing-criticism.html


How do you go about managing criticism? In your hobby, side-hustle, work, or life in general. What are some of your strategies or tips?

The initial response of Conqueror was positive, in part because it was designed on a gaming forum, so users had a certain level of investment in seeing the project move forward. Great positive feedback, few naysayers, and the biggest issue was that Warseer went sideways, destroying the tiny community interested in the game.

Before that happened, I took their feedback to heart, creating the Revised Edition, which is unquestionably better. People focus on "game design" but a bunch of it is really editing for clarity. Painstaking, boring, editing.

I've done a bunch of military wargaming, and that has had a profound impact on how I approach game design. Some day (hopefully soon) the zoo that is my house will settle down long enough for me to complete some of my projects.

In terms of managing criticism, the question really comes down to if it's valid or not. I ran into a very fierce critic in the service and quickly realized he hated my work not because it was flawed, but because it encroached upon what he considered his turf. (He was also one of the most profound jerks I've ever met.)

So I think the first reaction is to go with the criticism, try to follow it, see where it leads and then examine how it would change your design. Is it a design flaw, or a design disagreement? We've seen some spirited discussion here that basically boiled down to people wanting different games.

If it isn't valid, be sure to understand (and document) why - not because you need to win the thread, but because it's a learning tool. It will also prepare you if you get a similar reaction in different quarters.

"Yes, people have brought that up, and here's my response..." helps assure potential customers that you know what you are doing.

The trick seems to be to ask for specific feedback. Otherwise there's so much home-brew and whatever out there that nobody needs to give feedback and they just pick up something else.

Great blog post. I definitely agree with the subheading/category of Misalignment. While my own experience with feedback is limited as I've only ever published house rules on my old blog and most of my (non)response was silence as a result, it's definitely an issue when I published it on the game specific forums and groups with a dedicated fanbase.

Do you feel that clearly communicating your goals in a succinct way helps to mitigate the misalignment? Obviously there will always be folks who decide that what they currently desire was clearly what you should have independently arrived at in the past regardless as well as folks who conflate preference with facts (I like X so your Y is clearly wrong/bad). I don't have enough experience to know whether stating, for example using RPGs, that your goal is to publish a rules light low fantasy RPG will weed out the negative comments from folks looking for a high crunch heroic fantasy system (and vice versa).

Design Goals and Design Notes help mitigate, BUT for them to be successful someone has to read them. In addition, many publications do not want to spend precious $$$ on such "useless" content.

In addition, as a best practices as designer we are often told to keep RAW and RAI separate. I am not 100% sure this is wise advise, but I will admit it can get tricky writing RAI into RAW.

Do what I do - if one person says something even vaguely negative just once, admit you're a hack fraud and you have no idea what you're doing and your concept is hot garbage, and abandon the project immediately.

Unless you're designing a super abbreviated ruleset like one page wargaming rules or minimalist RPGs, I don't personally find having a goal paragraph or two on a single page along with general game principles ("What is a game? What are dice and which do you use?), disclaimers, and inspirations.

I doubt that I'd personally include RAI descriptions with RAW in individual entries for a specific mechanic though (and I'm not sure that's even what you're referring to). I think that kind of stuff is better left for "how the sausage is made" articles on blogs and/or company websites giving a behind the scenes look at the game in question.

The "best" part is when you get completely opposite feedback on the same thing. For example, back when I was an Infernal at PP and we were going through some public beta, we often got feedback from one source that said "X is completely overpowered" while simultaneously getting feedback from another saying "X is completely useless and underpowered." Can't be both...

Getting feedback and criticism is definitely helpful, but I think it's also important to examine that feedback closely to determine if it's "useful." Like your blog says, there are different types, and sometimes non-response is better than conflicting responses. Just because you get one or two comments on one particular aspect doesn't mean it's necessarily something you need to rework. Think about, sure, but a one-off comment from one person doesn't indicate it's something that you absolutely need to reconsider. Now, if you get multiple comments (lucky!) about the same issue that are mostly in agreement, that's a different story.

I think the conflicting responses are best remedied by playing both sides (literally in a game) to see how it feels to both dish it out and take it. I know my own opinions on some 40k armies back in 3rd edition changed when my local group decided to swap armies on certain themed game nights to give folks the experience of playing a force they didn't own (about 90% of us were completely new to 40k with only the two people organizing it already having existing armies from 2nd edition or earlier). That's a big ask though and literally doubling the "work" load of mostly free testers so it's a better idea on paper than in practice for public testing.

As a playtester I think you have to work with the 'right' team. I tend to write and give feedback like in the office, which I have discovered is rather blunt to normal people (all hail the BLUF style). But there is also basic compatibility of approach. You will have your statement of intent, and that should guide development and playtesting, but then basic stuff like maths is still there.

I think with the volume of possible 'helpful' suggestions it can be tempting to only take feedback with playtest data. But really after a dozen or more games it is possible to use basic maths to show potential problems. By all means in response explain why the unit shouldn't be overpowered in practice, or how it fits into the army (maybe everyone is meant to have as many as they can get). But I think understanding which of your playtesters are getting the best feel for the game, which ones are matching your vison and the ones that are providing good consistent feedback is important. As then you can start to shortcut some of the testing to deal with the worse offending imbalances quickly.

I have seen designers stick their heels in, demanding copious evidence to the what are to others obvious problems and having their most useful assistants drift away as a consequence. It doesn't mean the people are right, just that you have to be understanding the people helping you and their relative utility and perhaps give their feedback more time than you would normally.

I started my higher education doing illustration and art school. It's kind of railed into you to both receive and give constructive criticism as part of all those art classes. But there comes a point where you realize that 99% of the world never received that training at all. They have no idea how to give constructive criticism and ultimately it's going to be on you to find constructive feedback in the statements of people who don't know how to give it to you.

Fast forward to when I was in my game design courses I remember taking a trip to Bungies offices for a meeting with some game designer as part of the IGDA. The topic ended up veering towards criticism at one point. Feedback and voice of the customer and such...

I got to ask a question and I asked about this thing I learned in art school. There will be books about learning to take constructive criticism (self help and such) but is there anything out there for learning how to receive it from people who don't know how to give it? Anything at all? Any tips or tricks on how to figure out something useful or meaningful from a statement like "I didn't like that."

"Not that I have ever seen." There is nothing out there guys. It's just something we need to understand happens and learn to adapt ourselves. You can attempt to ask the right questions, but you have to be careful your questions are not leading and corrupting the answers. Ultimately it's just going to come down to you. Your ability to read into the fact that x people didn't like y and you need to be able to take a neutral critical eye to you passion project and solve the problem of why.

 Lance845 wrote:
I started my higher education doing illustration and art school. It's kind of railed into you to both receive and give constructive criticism as part of all those art classes. But there comes a point where you realize that 99% of the world never received that training at all. They have no idea how to give constructive criticism and ultimately it's going to be on you to find constructive feedback in the statements of people who don't know how to give it to you.

Fast forward to when I was in my game design courses I remember taking a trip to Bungies offices for a meeting with some game designer as part of the IGDA. The topic ended up veering towards criticism at one point. Feedback and voice of the customer and such...

I got to ask a question and I asked about this thing I learned in art school. There will be books about learning to take constructive criticism (self help and such) but is there anything out there for learning how to receive it from people who don't know how to give it? Anything at all? Any tips or tricks on how to figure out something useful or meaningful from a statement like "I didn't like that."

"Not that I have ever seen." There is nothing out there guys. It's just something we need to understand happens and learn to adapt ourselves. You can attempt to ask the right questions, but you have to be careful your questions are not leading and corrupting the answers. Ultimately it's just going to come down to you. Your ability to read into the fact that x people didn't like y and you need to be able to take a neutral critical eye to you passion project and solve the problem of why.

I believe I've heard "Users are great at finding issues, and terrible at finding solutions."

Seems at least a lil' relevant to the quoted post and the thread at-large.

Good point Lance. As a corporate stooge, I have also been through a bit of training on giving and receiving feedback, probably not as much as you get in Art school though.

Despite all of that, it can be really hard. All text is read defensively, so reading feedback in text form is even harder. You have to be really aware of your bias, and try to look at the "question behind the question (QBQ)."

@Valander - That is my favorite too! Voice of the Customer can be tricky, so you have to decide which Voice you are going to lean into with your design.

 Easy E wrote:
Design Goals and Design Notes help mitigate, BUT for them to be successful someone has to read them. In addition, many publications do not want to spend precious $$$ on such "useless" content.

In addition, as a best practices as designer we are often told to keep RAW and RAI separate. I am not 100% sure this is wise advise, but I will admit it can get tricky writing RAI into RAW.

I've found it useful to publish commentary within the rules as sidebars, because knowing intent helps add clarity to the writing and as you say, not everyone bothers to read the back off the book. However, if - right after the movement rules there is a box of text explaining why they work that way - people tend to read that.