RE How to Kick the Retail Habit

[Jim_Zabek]

Not to sound too contrary, Jim, but actually your column stayed on the page perpetually - you might recall your image on left hand side (5th Column) linked to your last article

These days Scott Udell's Road to War covers much of the wargaming/indie news.

[JDC]

Yeah, like they knew to click on a pic.

After reading reviews on other sites and seeing reader feedback, we may be missing a point. Are we sure readers want in-depth reviews or subjective pap? It seems the latter. They clutch at subjectivity because they need reinforcement of their own concepts - or they have short atttention spans.

[Leslie]

I think this captures it Jim

"or they have short atttention spans"

People read the way they play.

People are rarely interested in detail, they want what they want, to arrive in a sound bite.

If your opinion means squat, all you need do is come on, describe the rig required to run the game, say it was uber fantastic, and you gave up playing with the missus for the night just to enjoy testing the game out.

After that, you don't really need to say anything else.

If you found something about the game that was sufficient to declare the game blew chunks, really all you have to do is blow the whistle on that element, say it made the game refuse, and you could care less about the game in the absence of something addressing that element of its design.

If your opinion actually matters to anyone in the first place, the reader will decide, "hey my fav reviewer says it sucks, I normally like his opinion, hence the game DOES suck."

That's the way I see it at least.

[JDC]

Les,

Quite right. However, I'll still grind out the details.