Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Folks,
I was just over at the Amazon.com pages that feature subscription information for Dragon and Dungeon, and some of the reviews are pretty awful. I don't object to negative reviews, but it does kind of suck that anyone going to Amazon to subscribe to the magazines would think that half of all Dungeons contain Polyhedron magazine.
Given the recent "thanks" threads, I wonder if any of you with some extra time would consider dropping by Amazon and writing up a quick review on the subscription pages. I'm not asking for 5 stars, or anything, just for an honest appraisal of the magazines as they are today, not as they were two years ago.
Here are the links to the relevant pages. Any help in this regard is much appreciated.
DRAGON
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006KC4D/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1 /102-5320876-2944158?v=glance&s=magazines&n=507846&st=*
DUNGEON
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006LKCD/qid=1119229565/sr= 8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-5320876-2944158?v=glance&s=magazines&n=507846
Thanks!
Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon
Done! And thanks for the link RainofSteel. That helped a lot.
I posted a note here last night which oddly disappeared, but to say again: Done! Happy to put out the good word.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Yeah, don't I know it.
ASEO out
I posted a note here last night which oddly disappeared, but to say again: Done! Happy to put out the good word.
Actually, I posted to the Dungeon thread, and so nothing disappeared (I didn't realize there were two "Help Erik Mona" threads, even if it makes sense) ... argh, I feel stupid.
See what happens when I'm awake reading these boards when I should be sleeping? (SIGH)
Dude,
I'd love to but it's July 20th and I still haven't received my last issue. Get your subscribers taken care of and maybe we'll love you back.
There appears to be more to you than meets the eye. . .
Another interesting turn of phrase. As the barely-employed, desperate songwriter once wrote:
"Transformers!
More than meets the eye
Transformers!
Robots in Disguise!
Transformers...
Autobots wage their Battle
To destroy... the evil forces
Of... the Decepticons!
Transformers!"
Young Dammerung has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much.
(Fun game, GVD!! Okay. . . someone use my bottom line about hte "hungry look" to quote the greater literary passage. Then they can follow up with a line about ME, and so on. . . I added the part aobut quoting 80s TV shows, because I thought it would be funny.)
LOL, now I'm cursed with "More than Meets the Eye!" auto-looping through my mental ears.
"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
--Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
True, those reviews don't do the magazines justice. I'll try to whip up a 5-star review for the Dungeon side, that's my rating.
While i agree that speaking of oneself in the third person may seem unusual (especially on a message board), one thing to keep in mind is that Erik Mona posts not just his opinion, but expresses that of the magazine as its chief representative.
He could easily have written instead: "We here at Dragon/Dungeon magazine feel..." and signed his name at the end as Editr in Chief, yet no one would have questioned his use of the pronoun "we".
Besides, if we get into the habit of cross-examining individuals' speech/writing patterns, I am sure we could find all sorts of idiosyncrasies in each other's writing styles. (As a Canadian, I am sure someone would pick up, sooner or later, on little things like how I write 'honour' instead of 'honor'. or how someone likes to use smileys or whatever!)
Holy crabcakes, people!
He only refered to himself in the third person in the thread title! "Help me" would have been a sub-optimal thread title, don't you think?
We still love you, Erik!
: ]
rob
Cwslyclgh thinks that Erik refering to himself like that in the thread title is fine... GVD just likes to give Erik crap, to mess with him so to speak.
this review is probably the least helpful:
Beware of fanboys, July 22, 2005
Reviewer: Rebel Subscriber "ACE" (DE, Dover USA)
This is just a warning to those using the reviews given on this product as a source of information on whether to buy it. Erik Mona, one of the head editors of the magazine, basically went on the company's message board and told people to artificially bump up the magazine's ratings on the site by giving it 5 stars. I suggest you read some of the older reviews for more accurate depictions of the magazine as they are likely not tainted by the cookie cutter things Erik told his loyal followers to write. I suggest buying a single issue of this periodical at your local gaming store and seeing if you like it before you buy a subscription based on advertising disguised as customer reviews. Thank you.
this review is probably the least helpful:
Beware of fanboys, July 22, 2005
Reviewer: Rebel Subscriber "ACE" (DE, Dover USA)This is just a warning to those using the reviews given on this product as a source of information on whether to buy it. Erik Mona, one of the head editors of the magazine, basically went on the company's message board and told people to artificially bump up the magazine's ratings on the site by giving it 5 stars. I suggest you read some of the older reviews for more accurate depictions of the magazine as they are likely not tainted by the cookie cutter things Erik told his loyal followers to write. I suggest buying a single issue of this periodical at your local gaming store and seeing if you like it before you buy a subscription based on advertising disguised as customer reviews. Thank you.
only thing worse is the fact that people were asked to go there and pad the votes.
if you are not a customer of amazon, you shouldnt be trying to falsify information begging people to go and give good reviews.
if there is a problem with the product you might want to instead listen to or just ignore the reviews against your product.
this kind of popularity contest garbage is how people end up with poor products, cause of "paid advertisers" and not honest opinions.
try running surveys in other magazines about your products for people to have an unbiased account of the results and see what people really think instead of trying to railroad people towards a product that some feel is inadequate by artifically stimulating better reviews.
it sounds like shill bidding on eBay where you use a fake account to bid agaisnt someone just to make someone pay more.
very sad principles.
Don't mean to start a flame war, but that said, did you just post once here to complain? Do you have the magazine? Dragon and Dungeon are both excellent magazines, worthy of 20 stars each. I see no problem with Erik pointing out that people have some opinions he thinks is incorrect because of the kinds of good things people say about them on these message boards. All he is doing is asking us to post our honest opinions on the subject.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
I'm not asking for 5 stars, or anything, just for an honest appraisal of the magazines as they are today, not as they were two years ago.
Erik Mona, one of the head editors of the magazine, basically went on the company's message board and told people to artificially bump up the magazine's ratings on the site by giving it 5 stars.
Disappointing.
hello! obviously some folks did not at all read what Erik actually said in the first post.
Dear Mr Mona,
Trip not my good man. Boz merely did not read your post carefully enough. You never asked anyone to give the magazine 5 stars. You just told people to go to amazon and give a fair and up to date rating of what Dungeon and Dragon magazines are currently offering. I understood your intent.
It actually kind of pissed me off that the reviewer on Amazon would completely jake all our steam by leaving the one star rating and discrediting our review in the process. I'd be willing to say that reviewer never read Dungeon Magazine or else it might have been a four to five star rating.
I mean, hey, I understand where Boz and that reviewer are coming from, it looks like senseless pandering by using an almost cultish group of followers to do your bidding. Yeah, that would be wrong. But, when you get close to both magazines and the editors (like yourself) you realize they are cuddly, warm, pliant, not evil overlord masters at all.
And this is to Boz: tell you what Boz, if you play Daryl and Duhan (code for D&D) give Dungeon magazine one read and tell me it is not the most useful thing you've ever gotten your hands on as a DM, then you will see Erik was not forcing anyone to go give a five star rating, he was only telling us there is another place for us to gush about one of the best magazines that have ever existed (besides Quilting Quarterly, but that magazine is like ambrosia for the eyes).
Anywho, stay in school, winners don't do drugs and all that.
Love,
Hellacious Huni
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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if you are not a customer of amazon, you shouldnt be trying to falsify information begging people to go and give good reviews.
Is there such a thing, in this day and age, of someone who isn't a customer of Amazon.com?
if there is a problem with the product you might want to instead listen to or just ignore the reviews against your product.
The recent relaunches of both titles involved exactly this type of analysis. It's been more than a year since we dropped Polyhedron from Dungeon. Is it accurate, good for the magazine, or good for Amazon.com's customers if all of the reviews of Dungeon griped about how much the mini-games sucked? I think not, hence the request for honest up-to-date feedback.
this kind of popularity contest garbage is how people end up with poor products, cause of "paid advertisers" and not honest opinions.
Poor products like the ones that just won five Ennies, or poor products like the ones that have seen subscriber gains in the last eight consecutive months, for the first time in five years? Help me out, here, because I'm a bit confused.
try running surveys in other magazines about your products for people to have an unbiased account of the results and see what people really think instead of trying to railroad people towards a product that some feel is inadequate by artifically stimulating better reviews.
Not what I did. I asked for honest feedback. One poster, Jaws, answered that request with a 2-star review of Dragon. I'm not thrilled with a 2-star review of Dragon, but whatever. That's what Joe thinks it's worth.
I'd much rather see crappy reviews of the actual product than great reviews that talk about how much the reviewer loves Snarfquest and the Ares section.
very sad principles.
Meh.
--Erik
Meh.
Ibid.
Boz merely did not read your post carefully enough....
And this is to Boz: tell you what Boz, if you play Daryl and Duhan (code for D&D) give Dungeon magazine one read and tell me it is not the most useful thing you've ever gotten your hands on as a DM, then you will see Erik was not forcing anyone to go give a five star rating, he was only telling us there is another place for us to gush about one of the best magazines that have ever existed (besides Quilting Quarterly, but that magazine is like ambrosia for the eyes).
I just want to point out that Boz was merely quoting an Amazon.com poster. It was not his intention to promote the poster's viewpoint. On the contrary, he prefaced his post by saying the following review was one of the least useful.
Sorry Boz,
You didn't deserve that.
simple misunderstanding; no problem. :)
Posted a review. I think it was honest and all. I really did think that 334 was the best issue I'd seen in a very long time (and yup, I've got some Dragon mags with chessboards on the front). Excellent, high quality work that is seeing immediete use in my game. What more can I ask for?
Not what I did. I asked for honest feedback. One poster, Jaws, answered that request with a 2-star review of Dragon. I'm not thrilled with a 2-star review of Dragon, but whatever. That's what Joe thinks it's worth.
I'd much rather see crappy reviews of the actual product than great reviews that talk about how much the reviewer loves Snarfquest and the Ares section.
--Erik
Yes. I was harsh with my review of Dragon. The only articles I enjoy (sometimes) in Dragon are Ecology of ..., Bazaar of the Bizarre, and the Comics. Not good enough for me to have a subscription. I borrow a friends if it actually has something I could use.
My review is meant to say that Dragon needs alot of improvement.
On the other hand, I gave Dungeon 4 stars.
Peace and smiles :)
j.
I would have posted this review for Dungeon, but I'm not putting my visa info on the interweb just to post a review. Sorry, Erik. But, if anyone else who is already a Amazon user wants to post it... here it is!
Simply put... Dungeon is the world's best resource for busy DMs.
Dungeon has always had a good reputation for producing high-quality adventures, but now they've gone beyond just publishing adventures.
The new format gives us low, medium, and high level adventures in each issue. The some adventures can be used as stand-alone adventures or as part of an adventure arc or an entire campaign! What busy DM wouldn't appreciate this?
But, beyond the adventures, Dungeon now features articles that cater to the DM's role behind the table! Monte Cook submits a monthly feature, Dungeoncraft, which focuses on the art of dungeon mastery. Monte Cook is the authority on 3E and 3.5... he helped create the game system! His articles have always considered various play-styles, and have never failed to be useful!
And, on top of all that... the busy DM gets even more assistance from the Campaign Workbook. This feature provides all the nice details to help run a campaign! Everything from NPCs, encounters, setting suggestions... the topics covered are too varied to convey here!
All in all, these features alone are enough to keep me coming back to Dungeon magazine month after month, year after year. Pick up a copy... I'm sure you'll use it in your next game!
Don't mean to start a flame war, but that said, did you just post once here to complain? Do you have the magazine? Dragon and Dungeon are both excellent magazines, worthy of 20 stars each. I see no problem with Erik pointing out that people have some...i never did get dungeon, but had subscritions to dragon prior to 3rd edition.
and ended them when the style became something that i saw as more of an art project than presenting good information. when using a font or typesetting it should be made readable by all, not those with just 20/20 eyesight. or made to look fancy. and when 3rd became the only material as i had no need for it (3rd edition)
i just have seen so many times where instead of looking at bad reviews as an option to take readers responses and ideas to maybe change something simple to be a total bashing of the product.
it seems to say to try to devalue those opinions of those that gave bad reviews rather than get an actual picture of what readers think.
granted selling a product is good for business, but trying to hide bad reviews just to make thing look better is ridiculous; and similarily is the problem with eBay's feedback system.
and amazon is not the only place that has reviews of dragon magazine. so why only target it to bolster better reviews? nor is amazon the only place to purchase it.
so if amazon sells less issue to people who dont know of the magazine, those who do know of it and are into role playing games will not even bother with reading the reviews.
they should work to not only tell the potential customers what people who bought it think, but also the publisher, et all; to get an opinion from the buying public that visit the particular site.
it just seems like targeting amazon buyers rather than telling everoyne to visit ALL websites and give their opinions. which IMO would have been a better way to do it than just pick amazon.
Well, as I see it, Erik just was perusing Amazon, and saw the bad reviews, and told us about it. Amazon is popular, and definitely a place where people considering buying a product will scroll down to see reviews. But, that said, I think that you should check out Dungeon and Dragon, because they definitely have changed. And, you should not judge the "hiding of bad reviews" just to make it look better, because those reviews were made a long time ago, and now are out of date. Therefore, we are not hiding bad reviews, just correcting out of date ones.
WaterdhavianFlapjack
I don't see anything wrong with what Erik did. The magazines have been in uncommonly close communications with their fans and readers, and he specifically said (see quote below) that what he minded was OUTDATED negative reviews, not bad reviews in general.
I don't object to negative reviews, but it does kind of suck that anyone going to Amazon to subscribe to the magazines would think that half of all Dungeons contain Polyhedron magazine.
Yes, he did directly ask us to write reviews. However it is difficult to see the below request as an attempt to stack anything - "an honest appraisal of the magazines as they are today" seems like he's asking for current reviews, not good ones.
I wonder if any of you with some extra time would consider dropping by Amazon and writing up a quick review on the subscription pages. I'm not asking for 5 stars, or anything, just for an honest appraisal of the magazines as they are today, not as they were two years ago.
I do shop at Amazon, and I imagine most of us posting here do too. That said, I don't think everything the magazines do is perfect either. I am pleased to see ecologies evolving and I hope to see some changes in Class Acts too - I do like them, but core classes can get a boost from a number of d20 products (many of them excellent) so I'd prefer to see supplemental material for some classes that I CAN'T get material for anywhere else.
Spellcraft can be a little hit and miss at times, and I think the format for Bazaar of the Bizarre is more limiting than it needs to be. Even Ecologies, my favorite of the familiars, doesn't always hit the mark. I think sometimes that the word count limits for the articles is arbitrary, and that they should consider occassionally allowing a familiar to act as the feature with the expanded word count and support.
I haven't posted a review of the magazines at Amazon, mostly because I do not buy them from there. If I was to do so, I'd post the review here on the Paizo boards, where a casual inspection of the message boards is likely to make someone think many of us hate it.
If Eric had actually asked us to stack the review results I might agree with the negative sentiments here, but since he didn't...
Erik - I hope you know that many of us think you're doing a good job. And I'd say that even if I wasn't waiting for responses to article queries ;)
- Ashavan
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Koldoon said everything I will say more eloquently, but I will condense it into a talking point.
Erik Mona did not ask for good reviews from Dungeon or Dragon readers. He asked for current reviews from the readers of the magazine. Unsurprisingly, he came to the paizo.com boards to find readers of the magazines to ask for current reviews.
A current review is not necessarily a good review.
PS - Many of your complaints regarding illegibility of text and backgrounds have been addressed. There are a few slip ups on occasion, but they've been very good about it lately.
I just find it a little curious that after reading the Amazon reviews 17% of the review readers then purchase a Dragon subscribe , but 18% instead purchase a subscription to Curves of Men.
WTF!
WaterdhavianFlapjack