After reading through a thread on rpg.net about people not reviewing
products over at rpgnow, I’ve finally made up my mind about something.

I cannot believe the quality of critical review in our industry. We have
nothing even resembling the level of quality in film and literature.
However, just bitching about won’t change
anything. Therefore, I’ve decided to do something about it.

I will write my own reviews.

I will use three guidelines for my review process.

1) I only write reviews for products I’ve paid for.
None of this “I’ll only review your product if you give me a
free copy” bullshit. If I write a review, I write it because I paid
cold cash for it, just like a regular customer.

2) I only write reviews in E-Prime.
For those of you who don’t know, E-Prime doesn’t employ any iteration of the verb “to be.” (In fact, I wrote this entire post using E-Prime.) That means I cannot use the following words in any review:

• be
• being
• been
• am
• is; isn’t
• are; aren’t
• was; wasn’t
• were; weren’t

This way, I cannot say things like “This game is good,” “This game is
bad,” “The art is awful,” or “The rules are too complicated.” I have to
explain exactly why I have an opinion, not just make it and move on.

3) If I don’t like a product, I don’t review it.
The old “Mom Rule” in effect: If you don’t have anything nice to
say, don’t say anything at all. Sure, criticisms surface, but if the
product doesn’t impress me at all, I won’t say anything about it.

When the first one goes up, I’ll post a link here.