Well. I'm still here, but my hope for a more regular blog schedule was ambitious.
Let's talk about negative reviews and how to cope with them.
I hope that all game designers are building up skills for coping with criticism during the playtesting process. That's an important time to learn how to take useful nuggets of criticism and leave behind the stuff that's not useful. If you aren't playtesting with folks that offer constructive criticism, please try to find players and other designers who will. Remember, being too nice is just as unhelpful as being too negative.
Also, as you craft your game to fit your audience you will likely run into criticism that you choose to ignore because it comes from the wrong audience. This criticism will continue after a game's release, so be prepared. IN MY OPINION, reviews that say things like "This game is too light for me," "It's not staying in my collection," and "I'll try it again if it gets an expansion" (all things said about my game) are not truly negative statements. Just because someone does not love your game does not mean the review was negative if it helped someone else decide if they wanted to buy the game.
So, in the case of tepid reviews, you need to be mentally prepared for what will likely be said about your game. Mostly because you should already know based on playtesting. However, negative reviews are a whole other beast.
I recently received a negative review of my game and a negative review of my book. My reactions to the reviews were very different. The game review came after lots of other feedback that I could balance against one bad review. Sure one reviewer called the game "crap" but it's currently ranked in the top 6k games on BGG, so how bad can it actually be?
The lesson from this review is that having a buffer of less negative feedback is helpful to coping with the negative stuff. You can even keep track of the positive feedback received in playtesting, so you can revisit the memories of people saying nice things about your game to your face.
The book review is one of only 2 full reviews I've found, one good and one bad. And boy, the bad one is bad. Like, I've never had meaner things said about me in my life bad. This sort of review does happen in the hobby where people are very passionate about the games they play. So there's a chance that you'll encounter this kind of vitriol at some point. So, how to cope?
First, decide where and how you will search for reviews. BGG has some standards about allowable content but googling yourself/your game is a little riskier. Are you going to translate foreign language reviews? If the average BGG user is outside your target audience, how much weight will you give ratings on the platform? These are all things you need to decide for yourself.
Second, once you have discovered a bad review take a step back. Your brain is going to send you a bunch of distress signals even if you intellectually know that bad reviews happen to everyone. (Go read the comments on the 4 ratings of any top 100 game.) You need 24-48 hours to let your brain emotionally regulate itself before you start posting on the internet. Breathe. Take a walk. Eat some comfort food.
Third, have someone you trust read/watch the bad review and help you process how fair/mean the criticism was. Your friend may not be objective, but they aren't going to feel targeted the way you will. If nothing else, this can be validating that, yes, that review was unnecessarily mean.
Lastly, take some time to recall why you made the choices you made. Yes, ideally your game would have included what that reviewer wanted, but it was cost prohibitive. Or, no, you chose not to go that route because that would have made the game less accessible to your target audience. Then, think about the people who have liked your game.
I genuinely find that tepid reviews have the most constructive criticism. Imposter syndrome can make it easy to distrust glowing reviews. And I do believe that negative reviews should exist—for the consumer. You, the designer, don't benefit much from negative reviews. But I hope this post gives you some ideas for how to prepare for them.
Shipboard Games is a board game design blog that updates sporadically for the foreseeable future.
