The Your Move column this month will present the comments solicited at Origins in June. The GAME NEWS booth featured paper and pens for comments by all. After we screened them (our families made all the usual remarks; some people were just silly or tasteless), the following are a representative collection.
Wants...
More coverage of Play-by-mail games.
More war game articles
More Art.
More reviews of computer games. I agree.
More Blanchard Stuff.
Have Doug Blanchard publish a book of gamer cartoons.
More Wrong Moves.
We certainly intend to continue to offer more of all the items mentioned. Doug Blanchard has already published such a book. It's available from TriTac Inc. -Editor
Reviews...
Especially like the reviews--well edited and displayed.
Received some valuable reviews in the issues. Saved me money by warning me about weak games.
Reviews are complete well written... plus I even agree with a lot of 'em!
Great Reviews! -h.e.r.-W.E.G.
(I wonder? Nab, couldn't be!)
We're glad to see such favorable comment on the reviews. We think our reviewers do very good work, it's nice to know you agree. -Editor
Lyrical Exchanges...
I mostly enjoy the magazine,
I like the reviews and articles,
I don't like the role-playing scenarios,
And I really don't like Wrong Moves.
Anonymous
Thanks for the pats on the back
Even the dislikes are appreciated
Readers should comment like this
just tell us why next time.
-Editor
Other...
Really liked issue #4.
How about comparisons of RPGs covering same topic -Superheroes, Aftermath etc.
Funny you should mention it! We do have a comparison article on post-holocaust games in preparation -Editor
Performs a great service for the hobby... keep it up!!! Fred F.
Dear Editor:
David Pope's review of Spain and Portugal is a good example of a reviewer's fallacy which is unfortunately common enough in the hobby to have acquired a name; it's called the "not the game I would have designed" syndrome. The reviewer starts with a preconceived notion of what the game should be, discovers (surprise!) that the designer had other ideas, and gives the game a bad rating purely for that reason. Previous examples include a reviewer who automatically rejected two division-level modern-era games in the belief that only brigade-level simulations can be valid, and another who was disappointed in a game from GDW (Game Designer's Workshop) because it had simple rules, and he expected a GDW game to be complex.
The Spain and Portugal review is perhaps the most extreme example of the syndrome yet: not the wrong scale or complexity, but the wrong subject! Mr. Pope wanted a game on the Spanish Civil War, and we gave him (to quote from the box cover) "a module of maps and armies for use with Europa". This is rather like criticising The Avalon Hill Game Company's D-Day for not covering the 1940 campaign. I want to emphasize that his expectations were entirely his own: we never offered him any encouragement, either on the box or in our advertising.
The reasons for not covering the Spanish Civil War were touched on in John Astell's designer's notes, but they apparently need restating. First, the extra counters, rules, and maps needed would have at least doubled the price. Second, the Europa scale and system are not well-suited to such a simulation. Third, the war just isn't part of World War II, and hence doesn't belong in Europa. Given the choice between a $25 game, half of it useless in the context of Europa, and a $12 module giving the Europa fans what they needed and wanted, we chose the latter.
Mr. Pope's only other complaint is that Spain and Portugal is not a complete game, unlike the rest of the Europa series. Considering that the very second product in the series, Unentschieden, was not a complete game, I think this can be considered just a veiled form of his main complaint, i.e. no Spanish Civil War.
P.S. A question. The review says that "Spain and Portugal's components are nice, compared to the other games in the series." Was this perhaps a typo, with the correct reading being "comparable to the other games"? It makes a big difference.
"Comparable" not "compared" is the original word used by the reviewer -Editor
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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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