"Reviews: Intersection of Science and Art" Topic

In another topic, someone made the comment that most reviews you read are first impressions of the rules book, not what you might call a 'proper review' of actually playing the game and then going back with questions to the designer, getting answers, playing again, and often needing more answers and a third time to play as the rules intended.

This is obviously time consuming. It is also word consuming as the reviewer must try to explain the system, praise its clever bits, condemn its obtuse bits, and all the while keep an open mind about what the designer is trying to accomplish versus reviewer bias about what he 'knows' is the absolute most accurate historical canon of the period AND the absolute best canon of game mechanics. Oh yeah, it should read well, allow readers to follow the game situation, and also inject a little humor and fun without being petty or rude.

To put my electrons where my mouth is, I recently started to do Reviews/AARs of new and new-to-me board wargames I picked up over the last six months. Like most, I ran into time pressures, especially when you consider the lag between game 1, Q&A with the designer, game 2, more Q&A, game 3, then the write up, and then incorporating designer feedback and the Q&A.

These went out to my own private e-mail list, but a buddy of mine on the list runs theboardgaminglife.com and wanted to post some, so after some cajoling, I said OK, and the following were posted from April through September:

Production Blocks: East Front II (Columbia, WWII)
Alarm on the Marne (TPS, WWI)
Masuria (DG, WWI)
Get a Grip on Poland: Visegrad (DG, Modern)

These contain what I'd like to see in a review.

To pick on myself, a fifth, Julius Caesar (Columbia, Ancient), also up on theboardgaminglife site, is more an AAR than review. I didn't contact the designer of East Front II because we understood (or at least believe we understood) the rules.

The other three needed Q&A sessions, but I believe I eventually understood the design, although re-reading my reviews/AARs I would swap out a word here or there, refine an explanation, and move a paragraph or two around. 20-20 hindsight, you know. In rules, we call that errata. In rules reviews, we call that corrections and addendums.

The PDF I sent out for East Front ran 6 pages (2600 words) long including static graphics (the slideshow within the web post is inserted by my buddy). The Marne, including almost turn-by-turn photos of games in progress, came out to 11 pages (4900). Masuria: 10 pages (3900). Visegrad: 12 pages (5400).

These are too long for a review in the current magazine realm -- although cutting most turn-by-turn photos would drop the page length by a third or even a half. Still, those four take up 39 pages in their current form. If you seek the detail, you need the page count, but if the topic doesn't appeal, even a 250-word column would be too long. :)

This is nothing new. Back in the 70s, the heyday of board gaming, there were several magazines which reviewed board games in the same manner as one would review a book.

What makes miniature rules difficult to review is that you need properly based figures to play them. Where as board games come with everything you need in the box.

This is the great advantage of board games. I have hundreds of board games in my collection but now a days everyone wants to play miniatures. One of the advantages of miniature games is that they all play similarity.

They are all going to have movement, combat and morale. It's the details which are different and if one or two persons know the rules well, they can teach the rest as you go along. Eventually after having to look through the rules often you begin to pick the them up.

By the way you do realize this is "The Miniatures Page" and not "The Board Gaming Page".

This is obviously time consuming. It is also word consuming as the reviewer must try to explain the system, praise its clever bits, condemn its obtuse bits, and all the while keep an open mind about what the designer is trying to accomplish versus reviewer bias about what he 'knows' is the absolute most accurate historical canon of the period AND the absolute best canon of game mechanics. Oh yeah, it should read well, allow readers to follow the game situation, and also inject a little humor and fun without being petty or rude.

Game reviews for Miniature rules suffer in comparison to reviews for board and particularly computer games for a number of reasons:

1. As you point out, it takes time. I have very rarely read a miniature review where the review has actually played more than a game or two, if that…sometimes it is just a 'first impression.' Board games can be played several times within the same time frame. Computer games scores of times.

2. That difference in actual play time is accentuated by the size of the gaming community. Board games have a much larger audience, and computer games a huge audience. There are more than one computer game company worth more than a billion dollars with dozens of glossy magazines reviewing such games. The quality and depth of reviews is obviously going to be better because of the size of the audience and the huge difference in dollars.

3. Often because of #2 you have one computer game designer reviewing another game… obviously unrelated to their niche. They bring a great deal of game design experience to that review. That is a difficult proposition for our hobby, relatively few game subjects or designers make it difficult to avoid reviewing competitors and even fewer designers to do the reviews.

4. The miniature wargame hobby is fairly provincial. Little of the methods, innovations, experience and depth developed by the Billions of dollars and decades of game designing going on nation/world-wide seeps into the miniatures hobby. Our designers often stuggle with issues that have been long addressed and solved by the much larger game design community.

5. You mentioned the issue about the reviewer keeping "an open mind about what the designer is trying to accomplish versus reviewer bias about what he 'knows' is the absolute most accurate historical canon of the period AND the absolute best canon of game mechanics." It is very, very difficult to assess what the designer is trying to accomplish based on what history when designers rarely ever provide a tenth of the information necessary to actually do that in a reasonable manner.

So, Have you ever read a review of a set of miniature wargame rules that fall in line with the criteria you provided above and your boardgame review examples?

We have started to see these sorts of more in-depth review articles appearing in Slingshot, especially several by Steven Neate on Dux Bellorum. I'd like to see more like these, and I think the readership likes them. I am thinking of writing at least one, but I need to wait until the ruleset I have in mind becomes commercially available.

A review should not be confused with a critical analysis.

A review should not be confused with a critical analysis.

Okay. What do you see as the difference, Phil? If the reviewer gives his opinion about the quality of the game and his reasons for that opinion, has he crossed the line from review to critical analysis? Are reviews then opinion/analysis free?

A magazine review needs to be short and crisp – identifying the game style and strengths and weaknesses and an indication the type of player the game might appeal to. And perhaps give a 5-star rating.

In a magazine, effective use of space is a concern. If a reader plays 28mm moderns, a lengthy description of 6mm Napoleonics rules won't even be read and might adversely impact magazine sales.

In a digital format, space isn't an issue. The article still won't be read, but it won't consume space that could be better used. Nonetheless a lengthy Napoleonics article might turn off many readers.

It is valid for a specialist publication like Slingshot to go into more depth about (ancients) rules.

Regarding the need to play a game several times, I don't think this is true. Most wargame rules are trivial in terms of conceptual structure. And most are re-hashes of old mechanisms.

For example, if the combat mechanism uses a 6 sided dice for every 4 men with 6's scoring hits, I understand fully without needing to play anything. I might also immediately understand that adding a +1 to each dice is likely to shift a 50:50 overall outcome to 95:5. So as a rules reviewer I will check this out. I'll look under the hood.

If the rules say 12 man battalions I know immediately I'm out, regardless of anything else.

A review needs to point out the facts. One of my friends bought 2 different sets of horse and musket rules, promoted in magazine reviews. One turned out to be a 12 page booklet with a glossy cover, the other took 40 pages to explain something that could have been better explained in 2. Wasted 75 quid in total. (The 40 page waffle was described as "innovative rules" by one magazine editor, despite the set being simple vanilla mechanisms. Editor or spruiker?)

So rules need to be reviewed critically. Not to do so is irresponsible. Reviews are for the consumer, not to push a product. People make buying decisions based on reviews. If a set of rules is more likely to appeal to dice-rollers, card deck handlers than someone focused on history, say so. If rules sophistication is low, then say so.

A good system for reviews is some text, followed by 5 star ratings in several categories e.g. rules clarity, historical flavor, value for money, complexity, fun etc.

A magazine review needs to be short and crisp – identifying the game style and strengths and weaknesses and an indication the type of player the game might appeal to. And perhaps give a 5-star rating.

Hawk: That sounds like a lot of analysis. So short and crisp is the difference between a review and a critical analysis?

Regarding the need to play a game several times, I don't think this is true. Most wargame rules are trivial in terms of conceptual structure. And most are re-hashes of old mechanisms.

I agree that many wargames are simply derivative, some purposely,[so much easier to learn quickly] and some unconsciously reinventing the wheel because they don't know enough about past designs. You see that in some of the recent game design threads.

However, even if the game is filled with 're-hashed' mechanics, it's how the mechanics work together that makes the game. Sometimes it as simple as having the shooting first and then movement to change the play dynamics…something that isn't really understood well until the game is played, sometimes many times before that realization. Several games came out the same time as Black Powder, all using 'old school' mechanics with a few twists. Priestly himself says that BP is a combination of game mechanics they enjoyed in other games. However, to suggest that all those games, Like Napoleon, Fields of Glory, Grand Battery and Neil Thomas's Napoleonic Wargaming play the same because they share many of the same basic, 'old school' game mechanics and approach would be a mistake.

Have you ever read a review of a set of miniature wargame rules that fall in line with the criteria you provided above and your boardgame review examples?

Often, about half a review. The glossies often include a feature article highlighting a new rules set -- often the designer writes it. This includes a walk-through of the rules, sample scenario, designer's notes, and so on. Although you'll find some discussion of a modifier or a particular aspect that caused the designer to try a couple different mechanics before settling on the one as published, it's not a 'review' in the sense of critical analysis of whether the rules 'work' or not for the reviewer (and why they do or do not work) and whether they are, um, how to put this???

Comprehensible? You can figure out how to use each mechanic. And Comprehensive -- the rules don't leave you hanging about how to apply a mechanic in a situation.

As I noted, it takes several times playing a rules set, along with designer feedback, to figure this out. Even in self-contained boardgames, interpretation varies with people reading the same passages.

Nowadays, you're more likely to find such analysis on blogs and social media sites, where Q&A can go back and forth about a particular rules set or even a specific mechanic.

MWAN was great about gamer feedback via the letters column, or scenarios that 'fixed' rules flaws (real or perceived). Wally Simon's monthly PW Review often carried AAR articles across several issues that hammered away at a set -- really stress testing a rule set…even as it inspired him to try something new in another set of rules or his own home-grown sets.

Back in the mid 80s to early 90s, I wrote lots of first looks and reviews of computer hardware, software, online, and other products.

First looks were essentially take it out of the box and bang about for five minutes, then add in the specs and whatever makes this product improved or new or whatever.

Reviews included heavy-duty usage, often coupled (hardware) with a series of quantitative tests (graphics speed, CPU speed, etc). I also made calls to tech support to resolve problems or for help tinkering with the product settings. For games, I always looked to see how easy it was to get into the game and make some progress, even if it was inept progress, and then how much the game pulled me back when I was working on something else.

My background emphasizes the difference between first look and review. Be nice to have extensive reviews in a magazine, but few appear.

Hence, reviews will remain customized, and for the reasons mentioned above in other posts (time frame, issue size, having the right minis on the right base size hanging around), is unlikely to change. While you can make loose inferences -- it's DBx with a twist, or, it's Fire & Fury with a twist, or, it's Warhammer with a twist -- reviewers still have to play it numerous times to get it. And if it turns out to be a 75 quid flop, a magazine editor will have to think long and hard about publishing a 'bad' review.

By the way you do realize this is "The Miniatures Page" and not "The Board Gaming Page".

(chuckle). The veil between miniatures and boardgames in my group is thin indeed. I used my own recent reviews as examples of what (what I consider) a review should include. If you've never heard of the games, so much the better because a review should be able to explain the system to someone who has never seen it in action.

A review needs to point out the facts. One of my friends bought 2 different sets of horse and musket rules, promoted in magazine reviews. One turned out to be a 12 page booklet with a glossy cover, the other took 40 pages to explain something that could have been better explained in 2. Wasted 75 quid in total. (The 40 page waffle was described as "innovative rules" by one magazine editor, despite the set being simple vanilla mechanisms. Editor or spruiker?)

Had to look up 'spruiker' -- a shill.

That's why 'reviews' that essentially re-list the table of contents need to be labeled 'first looks.'

But back to minis, your buddy's out 75 quid *AND* I suspect that's the last time he's going to ever believe another review from the magazine…and probably you'll find it hard to believe a word, too and anyone else he can tell. That is the 33/3 rule -- bad stuff happens and you tell 33 people, while something good will be told to 3 people. That's what TMP and other social media is good for now that magazines don't print letters to the editor -- feedback.

My personal experience has been that you have to play a set of rules at least once to understand them. I recently was reading a set of rules that I thought were going to be great, but once I started playing, realized the disorganization of the rulebook made it very difficult to learn the system, causing me to give up in frustration. The ideas may have been brilliant, but the presentation/organization was lacking. Had I written a review before playing, my conclusions about the rules would have been very different.

I consider a review in a magazine to be a review of the product, which is not the same as a review of how the game is played.

As has been said before, in order to write up a decent analysis of how the game is played, you need to play a couple of games, compare it against others etc. That is an in-depth analysis, and that takes much more time.

On the other hand, a review of the product would comment on the quality of production, number of pages, readability, photographs, army list, point values, novel ideas …
Based on that information, I have to make up my mind whether I want to *buy* the product, which is something different from *liking* the product, and which is even more different from actually *playing* it.

Although I do think there should be room for critical analysis pieces in magazines, I do not feel such an article would fall under the header of "review".

Compare it to a review of a movie. It could range from a short summary of the plot and a list of actors, all the way towards an artistic analysis and what influence the movie might have on future movies, what place it has in the history of movie making, or how we can deconstruct it as a piece of art. I do not need the latter to decide whether I go out and see the movie, but if I found the movie interesting, I might want to gain a deeper understanding.