Game critiques

Part of Board Game Design

Introduction

With this page we want to help improve games (in development and existing ones, because everything can be improved).
Please take into consideration, that this page is not to insult, offend, ... people involved in game creation (see also: Wikiversity policies, Wikipedia policies and guidelines). People work in their free time to create content for the general public, so please honor this by helping: provide feedback, which helps.
This also needs to be taken into consideration for the other side (if there is something like another side - because we all work for improving the quality). So, any valuable feedback is welcome.
So, let's use our precious time for working together.

Rules

Actually from the wiki community you know already, that there are few rules, because we do not want to establish borders. But please take following into consideration:

Expectations

There are different reasons, why someone has another view than other persons.
But all depend on one thing, (s)he expected something else (see anomaly in software).

To game creators:

• So, if people are willing to invest their time in giving feedback, help them also right from the beginning by providing them as much information as possible, e.g. a readme.txt, user manual, or just some few lines.
  
• Imagine: wouldn't you like to get fast feedback too, when you have a problem? Well this counts certainly also here. Let's not lose people who are interested.
• Also keep in mind, there can be reviewed anything (not only the prototype).

To reviewers:

• Please note: there are no stupid questions. Everything can help improve the game. Imagine, if you have a problem, probably many more will have the same problem.
• Try also to give as much accurate information as possible. E.g. sometimes problems are not reproducible on other machines. Help us to handle your problem faster. Every unclear information needs a feedback by someone again. What is obvious for you, can not be for others.
• If you are missing information, please ask the author.
• You can use testing techniques to be more efficient: if you have not much info, please use non-systematic techniques.

Type of Feedback

A criticism, review, feedback,... can be categorized in:

• positive: e.g. great game, I like especially this...
• negative: e.g. well, I like the game, but this...

or:

• constructive: an assessment with modification requests, e.g. the other game I know has it implemented like this...
• destructive: e.g. this game just crashed or depreciatory (please let's not give such) comments

Well, desctructive can also be constructive, since it helps improving the quality :-)

In other words, try to provide feedback in an emotional range of neutral to positive. Negative feedback is useful and most appreciated but best received and acted upon by human developers when included in overall comments that sum to a positive experience for the developer who must receive and then be self motivated act upon the feedback to improve the design.

Tools

Tools should be used wherever they are effective, because they help us.
But before we use tools (like e.g. bug tracking system) at the beginning of the project, which also demand the time to learn, please start to write your feedback here. What counts is the idea, later we can decide, how to establish, apply more tools.

Analysis of new game concepts and development activities.

• Please consider providing input or feedback to the cisLunarFreighterCisLunarFreighter project. It is current forming at the conceptual level. Preliminary major requirements. CisLunarFreighter_Detailed_Requirements_Analysis Mirwin 05:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)