The Time & Place for Criticism

Crossposted from this monster thread on Story Games.

I think one of the prominent issues in the awkward adolescence of indie roleplaying is “when and where is the best place for criticism to happen?” In my mind, if criticism happens after the game has already had several hundred copies printed, that’s far too late. Revisions and addendum and the like are all great, but not as good as having the criticism happen before games get commercially released. However, when people are not writing or designing their games in public, or when open playtests have only moderate participation, it’s really hard for that to happen, yeah? I can think of a couple of really cool games in playtest right now, Anna’s Thou Art But A Warrior and Brennan’s How We Came To Live Here, and it seems like they’ve only got a few folks actively involved in playing and offering criticism before the games get declared “done” and go to layout and commercial release.

Honestly, that’s where the tragedy is for me, not that criticism doesn’t happen after games released (because then it’s almost too late), but that people aren’t taking it upon themselves to offer criticism before mistakes or oversights become harder to fix. For my money, I’d rather be involved in and see more criticism at that stage in the game.