Rodney Smith discussing Paid/Unpaid reviews

hotseatgames wrote: Not like I didn't already know this, but clearly it's more profitable to talk about games than it is to make them.

I'm guessing there is definitely a subset of designers making good, livable money from games. The successful patreons of the world are like that subset in the criticism space.

If you want to talk about if more designers and critics should make livable money, then we're talking about Gorilla Grody's monster post issues.

ubarose wrote: Donation Buttons - ours is at the bottom of the page BTW and you can set up reoccurring small payments and add a note if you want it to go to Josh & Al) or paying out of pocket yourself.

I dropped a year's worth in just now. I'll leave it to the TWBG Board of Directors to dole it out to Josh and Al each month based on merit. If they start doggin' it spend it on a bottle of bourbon instead, I recommend the Winchester.

Doesn't this all boil down to, "If you're not paying, then somebody is,"?

I always remembered it as "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product."

GorillaGrody wrote:
Rodney Smith is good at explaining games, provably so. I’ve used his tutorials several times, and it was well worth, say, 25 cents of my money to be able to skip some of the rulebooks he allowed me to skip. The poor guy just spent 15 minutes demonstrating what wages are--let me repeat that, what they are, not how much-- and then explaining why he should get one but probably won’t. That’s how far we’ve been reduced.

Perhaps I am missing something, but I fail to understand why someone should earn a wage for providing a service that nobody is really demanding.

Its true that we are talking about this because we have so little to say about actual games right now. But this thread is ace as entertainment.

Personally I am more or less completely amoral on this issue.

If it turned out that GF9 sent Barnes a key of coke for every positive review i'd find this funny more than anything else.

The real value in criticism or reviews is in whether the views are entertaining or interesting. Tastes are so divergent that a positive review is a poor metric for a good personal purchase.

DukeofChutney wrote: If it turned out that GF9 sent Barnes a key of coke for every positive review i'd find this funny more than anything else.

I volunteer to go full Hunter S. Thompson if it comes to that.

"What the publisher sent us was something vile. A box of horrors. I'm filled with hate and rage just thinking about it. Jesus."

For those of us who have been around a while its easy to forget that boardgaming is no longer this little hobby of ours but now a multi-billion dollar industry that keeps growing. There is capital flowing into the industry and these marketers are smart to take advantage of that. Would be cool if an honest site like TWBG could find a way to tap into these funds and grow into a paying source of news, reviews, etc without losing the moral high-ground.
Or maybe its time for a KS like Dice Tower does. The Donate button will never be as big as a KS. Make it about being able to independently pay the contributors to the site, buy some review copies instead of relying on publishers, and add some overdue video content to keep up with the industry norms. I'm aware this idea will probably be shot down faster than Josh Look turning down a game of Cthulhu Wars. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

You get to a certain critical point, THEN you do KS.

I'm sorry, but this silly unwillingness to do video content or putting more component pictures will do more harm than good. I believe these things and the so called "critical reviews" are not mutually exclusive. You need some kind of compromise. Match the market, no need to be on the Dice Tower's level, but please adapt.

Then may be we can start understand what it takes for a "totally incompetent video editing skill" like Dice Tower's.

I don't think video is necessarily a dirty word. I mean, we know you don't need to edit hardly anything to give great critical video reviews. See Mark Bigney's All The Games You Like Are Bad for an example. 95% of the runtime there is just Mark's face and interesting opinions and he did well despite, or maybe because of it. All that matters is that the actual content be of sufficient quality.

Sounds like an awful lot of volunteers to do TWBG video content!

Rodney doesn’t do reviews though, does he?

He explains rules.
It makes sense for companies to pay him for that.

The Rules Girl sells her service as well. Or sold, don’t know if she is still in business.

That’s different than selling a positive “opinion” disguised as a review to drive sales.

boothwah wrote: I always remembered it as "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product."

Yeah, it's that in Health Insurance land. Most of my group works with Payers, and they're the devil incarnate.

Gary Sax wrote: Sounds like an awful lot of volunteers to do TWBG video content!

I'm not the ones having issues with "reviewers get review copy & don't disclose", "video reviewers have it easy getting review copy", etc.

I contribute to Tom Chick's Patreon site.

He reviews games, video games, books and movies all decided on by his Patreon contributors.

I don't always agree with him but I like his funding idea.