Hate mail - How do you handle it?

Games
41

Oh, the irony… Wait, sorry, let’s start over:

I’m always in favor of a policy that rates a game as it is out of the box. I think that in the absence of an auto-updater (which Vampire lacks) the vast majority of people aren’t going to patch a game. They just don’t do it or don’t know to do it. And reviews shouldn’t let developers/publishers off the hook simply because they may or may not fix some number of bugs at some point in the future if they feel like it and can afford to. Bugs matter, and given that you can’t predict how completely, how quickly, or how well they’ll get fixed in the future, ignoring them seems to be a disservice to the reader.

42

Does game-over actually pay for their reviews? I remember way back they were famous for reviewing warez. Then again so was evilavatar and they’ve certainly come a long way in the legitimacy department.

Actually I hear that pricing for run of site is up >$2CPM these days, so maybe new small gamesites will start popping up soon.

43

Everyone loves me, so I never get any hate mail.

Actually, I did get some once, and I’m not even a game reviewer. I sent the guy a very nice thank-you note for his time.

No, really.

44

To echo Jim Preston, working at Daily Radar made me a hatemail magnet, especially since I both wrote the console RPG column AND reviewed pretty much every major PSOne RPG. Ahhh…them Squaresoft/Enix fanboys and their vitriol. I’d just dump them in a hatemail directory, then forward the best ones onto my friends.

Of course, now that I’ve vanished into the EA Megalith, subsuming my e-persona in favor of corporate anonymity, the hatemail has pretty much dried up.

45

Oh, the irony… Wait, sorry, let’s start over:

I’m always in favor of a policy that rates a game as it is out of the box. I think that in the absence of an auto-updater (which Vampire lacks) the vast majority of people aren’t going to patch a game. They just don’t do it or don’t know to do it. And reviews shouldn’t let developers/publishers off the hook simply because they may or may not fix some number of bugs at some point in the future if they feel like it and can afford to. Bugs matter, and given that you can’t predict how completely, how quickly, or how well they’ll get fixed in the future, ignoring them seems to be a disservice to the reader.[/quote]
Ha ha. Auto-updater from a Troika game. It would never stop BA-DING OOOH I KILL ME.

46

Don’t respond. At least, don’t respond in kind. It just tells the hate-mailer that they’ve “gotten to you,” gives their message a kind of validity (as does any response to such messages, really) … and encourages more of the same.

Or there’s my Mom’s response to people who flipped her off in traffic. She always smiled and waved. (This sounds like Rimbo’s tactic.) It drove them absolutely nuts.

There seems to be more hate mail in the games field than in other writing fields–probably because the audience tends to be younger and hence less “verbal.” The ones I received when I was a music and movie critic and a newspaper reporter were a lot more literate and fun.

I got a bunch when, writing a review on deadline, I mixed up (and misspelled, I think) Janet Leigh and Vivien Leigh. I wound up doing a column about the letters.

Among the gaming ones, I especially liked the vitriolic, subscription-cancelling letter that misinterpreted my pretentious reference to a game (Silmarils’ Deus, possibly?) being an “action game-cum-RPG” as a reference to semen.

Peter

47

I agree, sorta.

Keep in mind, though, that the vast majority of people who don’t patch a game also don’t read game magazines or visit gaming websites. So if you take into account your actual audience rather than some person who probably doesn’t know you exist, I think it’s okay to include patches.

Having said that, bugs matter, but if patches occur in a reasonable period (i.e. a couple of weeks after release), I’ve come to the opinion that you can take the patch into account and not just review solely out of the box.

But I’d never tell anyone it’s okay to say, “It’s bad now, but it’ll be great after patches!” since we’re not in the business of predicting the future in a review. That patch may never happen.

48

She’d get shot in L.A.

There seems to be more hate mail in the games field than in other writing fields–probably because the audience tends to be younger and hence less “verbal.” The ones I received when I was a music and movie critic and a newspaper reporter were a lot more literate and fun.

How long ago was that? I traded some e-mails with Roger Ebert a few years ago, and he said he got tons of illiterate hate mail. E-mail, in general, has made it a whole lot easier to contact people, and it’s usually tossed off.

I wish more of my hate mail was literate and fun. But I always try to respond, usually politely. And in most cases, they apoligize for being buttheads.

49

Steve,

You’re right; this was pre-email. I was a movie critic from 1980 to 1989, when I started writing about games. :)

Peter

50

I’m always in favor of a policy that rates a game as it is out of the box. I think that in the absence of an auto-updater (which Vampire lacks) the vast majority of people aren’t going to patch a game. They just don’t do it or don’t know to do it. And reviews shouldn’t let developers/publishers off the hook simply because they may or may not fix some number of bugs at some point in the future if they feel like it and can afford to. Bugs matter, and given that you can’t predict how completely, how quickly, or how well they’ll get fixed in the future, ignoring them seems to be a disservice to the reader.[/quote]
Yeah, so we’re on the same page here? That a consumer needs to hear the initial bug report even thoug that’s likely to change. I played this on a system that does computer steroids so I had no problem. Though there have been many play issues like studdering ( I even got some of this on my better system during the intro ), it wouldn’t run well on a system that ran HL2 (STOLEN I WILL BURN IN HELL) Alpha fine, loading times, and crashes and all that. I think on the merits of a finished working game it fails. The dialog was nice, and the manual didn’t have any recipes in the back, so it’s my favorite Troika game so far.

51

Except that I think bugs out of the box should factor into the score. Unless I’m misunderstanding your posts, you think they shouldn’t.

52

Well since it’s Monday, I received 2,714 email. Of which 2,100 of it was caught as spam.

Of the remaining 700 or so, about 300 of it was various notices or uncaught spam.

Leaving 400 or so email I had to read and potentially answer.

Of the 400, 6 of them would be “hate mail” of which only 1 was serious hate mail (“I hope you die!”) type stuff.

I used to respond to these things but now that I’m married with kids I tend to be a bit more careful as some of these people are deranged.

Awhile back I got an email that said:

“I’ve met some nipples in my life but you take the biscuit. I want you to know, Brad, that each day for the rest of my life when I wake up I’m going to pray that you die. And die horribly. So when you someday discover that you have cancer, and that it’s going to hurt like a bastard, you can be assured that I’ll be laughing my ass off at your pain.”

So if you think magazine editors get hate mail, try being a software developer. ;)

53

Email has killed the well written hate mail.

Chet

54

Email has killed the well written.

55

I received the following in the postal mail last week. Transcribed precisely as written, including all caps, broken english, and the bold at the end. It’s hanging on my office wall now.

56

That should go in a museum somewhere.

57

Jason,

Nobody should get hate mail, but I’d mark your review as a C+. (I presume that, since you criticise other people’s work, you have no objections if your own efforts are likewise reviewed).

Like many reviewers, you waste your opening paragraphs on cute but irrelevant comments which have little or nothing to do with the game itself, but seem designed, as others have noted, to make you look good.

For instance: “When Troika released Bloodlines, most people saw a game… but not me. I know a social experiment when I see one.”

That’s a typically unfair comment. The game is a game, and while Goths might well like it, the game should be reviewed on it’s own merits. If you want to make shallow social comment, that should be done in a separate article.

The comment: "Also, apparently in vampire fashion there are no such things as top buttons on shirts. Seriously, people, button up your shirts. "

This strikes me as trying just a little too hard to find things not like. Your overall opinions of the modelling/artwork, though somewhat floridly expressed, are your subjective opinion and cannot be criticised as such.

I do agree though that you should mention bugs that you have personally experienced in your review. Perhaps you could junk the opening pars, and devote the space to giving concrete examples, that way people could look at the fix lists with the patches and see what’s already been addressed.

If you’re just reporting forum traffic in your comments about bugs, then you should also make this clear in your review.

Overall, I’d say your writing style was workmanlike, without reaching any great heights of fluency or expression.

Gregor

58

Here’s a pointer: if you want to criticize somebody’s writing style, you might want to work a bit on your own. You know, simple stuff like writing paragraphs containing more than one sentance, making proper use of apostrophes, and having some sort of beginning, middle, and end to your missive.

59

Except that I think bugs out of the box should factor into the score. Unless I’m misunderstanding your posts, you think they shouldn’t.[/quote]
Yeah, at birth I was to be named wormnigma, though it was ruled child abuse.

I received the following in the postal mail last week. Transcribed precisely as written, including all caps, broken english, and the bold at the end. It’s hanging on my office wall now.

[/quote]
PIX!

Jason, maybe you should make a new poll to decide if you’re going to respond to this or not.

60

That’s not a pefectly valid and specific criticism of an artistic aspect of the game? Is art spared from critique?