Designer ranking his own scenarios?

[vince hughes]

Now, does anyone outside of the three of us care?

Well one of the upsides of this forum is that it tends to be a bit tighter than the 'biggies'. I mean that as we are a small specialist clientele, we refrain from some of the utmost rudeness we see elsewhere.

But taking those bigger sites into account, this is one of those topic that usually descend into 'heated' and sometimes mud-slinging debates. So it appears that a lot of gamers 'do care' on this subject ?

We ALL know the enthusiasm Jay has for his products. It would be a shame that for the sake of him 'HAVING' to assign a rating, he reared away from writing anymore AAR's on his own subject that he has done what ? ... 2 years work for minimum on ?

[vince hughes]

To tell you the truth Andrew, I am having a hard time rating anyone's scenarios anymore, as I know how much hard work go into each one of them.

Jay.

Working on South-East Asian subjects has made you go all Buddhist on us !

[Brett Nicholson]

It's kind of ironic that Vince and I were discussing this a few days ago during our skype session and that this thread has come to surface again. I won't go into detail of the conversation but will say I think it's okay to rate one's product but here we have 'Saipan 44' as the highest rated PG game with every scenario getting a 4 or 5 from the designer which adds up to at least 40 votes at 4-5. Jay does make a disclaimer on his AARs stating that if they weren't that good he wouldn't of designed them in the first place, or something like that. Well there is a lot of criteria for ranking a scenario. I must really love PG because I have yet to rank a scenario less than a 2. Anyway, time will tell if 'Saipan 44' truly is the best PG game you could possibly ever want to play or own with its overall ranking as others play and rank it individually. I hope 'Saipan 44' is as good as it is ranked currently but with a game that good there is also an incredible amount of errata tagged into it at the library; most of it from Jay himself. Personally, high or low rankings don't encourage or deter me from playing a scenario. There have been quite a few ranked overall less than 3 that I got a 4 out of. Of course if someone is looking at the stats here at the site and are in the market to buy a new game they will have 'Saipan 44' in mind with it's ranking. Honestly, if the intention is to promote it then of course I want to own it to see for myself. I made my mind up to start with 'Guadalcanal' first though but the more I play that the more I keep 'Saipan 44' in mind for a future purchase. My concern about ranking one's own game highly is the intention behind it; are you bragging as in saying "look what I can do", trying to boost sales or is it a genuine, honest rating? There, that's my two cents worth.

[leonard]

your proposal has perfect logic in a world where the PG designer has the final say in his scenario content and what he turns in to Avalanche is exactly what is published, but that is not the world we live in.

I also strongly doubt that Jay (or anyone, I'm not singling you out buddy) is play-testing every single scenario that gets turned in.

I do agree with these comments.
Maybe this discussion was born out the AAR and rating I've posted some days ago for "Rommel crosses the Meuse" from Fall of France. I gave it a 4 indicating my feelings about the scenario being a bit pro-German. Maybe the title of the AAR ("emblematic") was not very discreet...

Of course, I had never played that scenario before, even if I have designed it and I truly enjoyed it. So, yes, even the designer's rating can be genuine and I wouldn't hesitate to give it a "1" if a particular scenario turned out to be wrong.
In ASL, we were designing 8 or 12 scenarios per module and they were playtested up to boredom. In PG, the average number of scenarios is 40 or 50 ; why would you ever think that each one of them should be a masterpiece ?

[Shad]

I think it's okay to rate one's product but here we have 'Saipan 44' as the highest rated PG game with every scenario getting a 4 or 5 from the designer which adds up to at least 40 votes at 4-5.

Excluding the designer ratings, Saipan is 3rd overall with a 3.59 average from 95 votes.

Including the designer ratings, Saipan is 1st overall with a 3.8 average from 135 votes.

One member can only provide one rating per scenario, no matter how many times the scenario is played. Jay comprises 30% of the ratings for Saipan today. I think that's more an indictment of everyone else's laziness than it is high self-appreciation!

And of course, as already mentioned, the choice of world you want to live in is entirely in your hands via your My PG-HQ > Profile page.

[Brett Nicholson]

Anyway, I voted "yes", that designers should be able to rate their own games and/or scenarios. I wasn't giving a specific opinion on the designer's intentions, just stating how those designer's ratings may be interpreted by different people -why else would this thread have been posted in the first place? The individual ratings shown by the graph at each scenario display whether or not everyone is in accordance with the designer's rating. I just found that out that you cannot rate a scenario more than once but you can change your initial rating later. I've dropped a few ratings after shared matches compared to solo. I only commented to show that I do care enough to give my opinion.

Ratings and AARs have not influenced my PG purchases. If I only bought or played the highest rated games or scenarios then 'Airborne' and 'Guadalcanal' wouldn't exist in my modest collection. In fact, sometimes I am more prompted to play a lower rated or broken scenario just to see for myself -if it's a flop then no surprise or real disappointment there. Anyway, I am wasting time when I still have a potential 77 turns of "Tulagi" to finish ... I take my leave and bow out gracefully now ;-)

[Trotsky]

Out of curiosity, I wonder what Cassino '44 would rate 'if' I rated each scenario 4? I have no problem with Jay rating his own scenarios, i would not do so, but really it matters not.

I did an AAR on Cassino scenario #6 which was a play-test game. I wrote it up when PGHQ had just started - there was no facility not to rate the scenario so I chose a middle value,3. If there was anyway to delete my entry or remove its rating I would.

[JayTownsend]

Let me state this once, but I do not get paid by AP for anything, my only motive is to present battles in the PG format that gamers enjoy playing and that includes every scenario I design or why design them? The scenarios I turn in are fun to play! I like to complete battles/wars, that is why Saipan will have Tinian & Guam to follow it up and complete the whole Mariana Island Campaign and the Pusan Perimeter will be followed up with two more games and a supplement to complete the whole Korean War. I like to complete things but trust me for the hundreds of hours of work for EACH game designed, getting one free game copy and your name on a box isn't worth it if the gamers don't enjoy playing your game designs. So my goal is to make sure they do enjoy them. I do enjoy telling the history of the battles however and think by gaming them we are not forgetting the memories of the battles and men who fought them.

Away I am looking forward to not only to my designs being published but all the others as well. I know I have some really good products coming out but I'll let the gamers here decide for themselves.

[Trotsky]

Would really like to pick up the Korea games but it is difficult to get the new pg stuff over in the UK for a reasonable price.

[vince hughes]

Excluding the designer ratings, Saipan is 3rd overall with a 3.59 average from 95 votes.

Including the designer ratings, Saipan is 1st overall with a 3.8 average from 135 votes.

In your own post is the proof in the eating of the pudding. For me, designers ratings are pointless so I leave them out of My PGHQ so as not to skew the neutral 'users' ratings.