Designer ranking his own scenarios?

[vince hughes]

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.

Jay,

I am sure nobody is doubting your good intent. In fact, not even the part about "designers rating their own" is about YOU.

Its about the subject per se.

I would like you to write all you can on each of your plays because I read AAR's. I simply choose to ignore yours and any other designer ratings for reasons explained above. In fact, I am pretty sure that if you were not 'forced' to rate your own scenarios by way the HQ AAR system works, you'd happily write up all of your plays and scenarios 'view from the designer'. Seems a shame this is holding you back.

[Matt W]

I remain convinced that more data points are vastly better than fewer data points. I rarely pick a scenario based on ratings but will read through the AARs intently. To the extent that Jay, or any other designer feels uncomfortable rating their own scenarios that is unfortunate, especially since people who do not want the ratings of the designer to influence their decisions have the capability to ignore such ratings here.

Jay,

This is a plea that you do not stop rating your own scenarios or anyone else's. The data added to the total has great value and until we have hundreds of ratings per product, any are useful.

[Shad]

Out of curiosity, I wonder what Cassino '44 would rate 'if' I rated each scenario 4?

It's at 3.72 with 200 ratings right now.

Dumping in 32 more 4 votes gets you to 3.76.

[Hugmenot]

I don't care whether designers rate their own scenarios because I have the ability to toggle them off.

I do care about all AARs because they often tell me about the type of action or the plans used and their effectiveness.

[campsawyer]

One more vote for AAR's over ratings.

Ratings are just a number and do not give you the what is good or what is bad about what ever you are rating. You need to see patterns in the details to really get a good or bad view of things.

[Trotsky]

Thanks Shad - you are a statistical marvel...

[Brett Nicholson]

First off, tracking this thread back to the original post I know see that Jay started this poll and discussion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a designer promoting his work and I also understand that no monetary units are gained from doing so. Two other designers have also commented on this thread. If anyone's insight is to be treasured the most in the form of an AAR than it would have to be a designer's. In order for a designer to write an AAR here then, unless there is a way to avoid it, they have to rate it as well if I understand that correctly.

If a vote is treated like like a U.S. election then even the person running for office can cast their vote; something to the extent that every vote counts. If I made any comments that came off as brash then it was unintentional, I was just attempting to state the obvious concerns that one might have about the subject. I wasn't trying to single Jay out and I think it was quite decent of him to post a general disclaimer before writing his 'Saipan 44' AARs. Also am glad that he took the time to add some to the errata list knowing that once your work is submitted for editing that mistakes will be made; whether it's the designers error or the editors, or both. I haven't come across one PG product that doesn't have some sort of funk going on with it. Sometimes it's easily correctable prior to playing a scenario and in the worst case, a scenario is FUBAR and needs some winging or serious altering.

I do not own 'Saipan 44' and have not played a single scenario from it so I cannot vote on or judge it but I can read the AARs here. Out of 135 votes the graphs speak for themselves. The most frequent rating is a "4" while it looks as if only one or two people gave a certain scenario a "2" and maybe no-one a "1" rating. If 40 votes are taken away then that leaves 95 (assuming that Jay rated and play-tested all 40 from 'Saipan 44'). So if I were just scanning this site, looking for the best PG product then even without the designer's input it still comes up in the top 3 here. I think the question that matters is "if designers should be allowed to promote their own games" and the answer to that is a no-brainer. If you put that much thought and effort into designing then you had better promote it to some degree. If I have to be critical, though I appreciate the disclaimers, if someone is going to repeatedly tell me in their AARs that "all scenarios are rated a "4" or a "5" because I designed them and if they weren't that good I wouldn't have designed them to begin with" then I get a mixed first impression; either this person is the best damned game designer, ever; or they are blatantly boosting up the ratings; maybe they have a low self-esteem and need gratification; or, hopefully, just trying to be helpful, providing insight and are quite content with their design and finsihed product. I aspire to consider the latter but other people may get different ideas from such a disclaimer.

Once again, ratings do not affect whether I will play scenarios or buy games or not. Affordability and compatibilty with my existing collection comes first. 'Saipan 44' will have to wait until I expand upon 'Guadalcanal' and 'Eastern Front' but I will get to it in the next decade or so. By that time I don't think designer ratings will be an issue with it as it will likely have reached 1,000 plays by then. I'll end this with my most sincere and best wishes for all designers to continue to produce PG games and supplements. I wish I had the time and patience to work that hard. In the meantime I will continue to work away from the lower ranks.