A guy was considering writing a review site for Oblivion mods. I offered to help. Here's the results.

I'm BSG, and I'm offering to help with the review site. All of the modders are afraid of a review site, and are against it. If you don't read the thread, don't bother posting in this one.

I agree with you completely.

One of the first levels I made was really quite poor, I enjoyed making it and it fell in line with what I set out to do, but it just wasn't very good. I came across a review of it a few months later (I was suprised that someone had reviewed it given that hardly anyone had even downloaded it, but unexpected things happen) which basically outlined all the problems.

I didn't take any offense, I went and completely remade the level instead. To be fair it was still a load of rubbish but it was much better.

The guys on those forums seem to be scared that someone's opinion isn't worthwhile unless they fully understand the mission of the mod developer. But reviews are always subjective and you'll always find reviewers you disagree with. A review you disagree with isn't a bad review as long as any arguments it makes are well thought out. I'm genuinely suprised at how the people on those forums can speak so clearly and eloquently yet be so short-sighted and idiot. I haven't always agreed with criticism of my work but i've always taken into consideration every remark that's made. I remade entire sections of my MLP4 map just because one person had some minor complaints about flow.

Go ahead and make a review site, it's been a while since i've seen a decent mod review site.

I say go for it. You might want to link them to the Admirals Command Chamber as an example of what you're talking about. They're the best example of a review site that I know of.

I kind of agree with the naysayers in that thread; especially Shezrie.

The whole point of reviews is that they're biased, just reading a list of technical merits is boring. When a new album comes out I don't just read one review, I read every review so that I can better understand the album, different people have different takes on the same thing - that's the whole beauty of it!

Obviously there'll be people who don't "get" the vision of the creator, but that doesn't mean that what they have to say is any less valid. The only thing that matters is that any opinions in reviews are properly justified.

As a former JK/Mots map reviewer, I see them as very helpful and a positive influence on editors to create high quality product.

But do you agree the author's permission should be required to post a review of his mod? Frankly I don't have a problem with review sites as long as the author approves the review.

I don't think an author's permission should be required.

No, I don't agree that the author's permission should be required. The most an author should expect is being notified of any reviews.

As long as you aren't hosting the content without their permission, you should be able to review the content without their permission.

But I'm a sadistic *******, even if they told me to take down a review they didn't like, I'd leave it up. As far as I recall, having an opinion isn't illegal... yet.

If authors could remove them, thered only be things on there with high scores..

I think reviews (or any constructive feedback) are valuable to helping the creators improve their output. I made several MP maps for JK, and each one improved over the last thanks to comments from people who played them. Sometimes I solicited the comments, sometimes I didn't.

My Morrowind mods were also improved by comments left by the people who tried them, allowing me to fix bugs or improve them in other ways.

If there will be any division, it will be between people who care about improving what they produce, and those who don't. That's my opinion anyway. My name on the ES boards is stormless, which is also the name I released the MW mods under (they're slightly flawed, but I don't know where my MW disc is to repair them years after their initial release).

Seeing as I'm a reviewer at Map-Review.com, I can tell you that there's a lot of people that actually don't quite mind the reviews. Furthermore, a lot of players are actually happy because we gave them some good maps to check out. Other mappers have also profited from it, by not making the mistakes others made. In the end, it's pretty much win-win.

Also, Map-Review.com does not ask mappers for permission to review their work. We're simply reviewing a 'product' that's been put out there for free download. This can lead to trouble, but so far, that's only happened once, and that was Casper spamming our forums.

All in all; go for it.

What old man Gothix sagely said.

It's not like 85.303 local and global newspapers from everywhere around the world would send Universal a letter asking for a permission to review their movie, each time a Universal movie is released. Even if that's an extreme example compared to the game modding world, the principle is still the same.

I love reading reviews. However, the best review sites would be those where multiple reviewers can review the same item.

Do it. People who don't want their stuff reviewed are wimpy losers.

Wow. I knew massassi would completely understand where I was coming from. I'm not the only one shocked by their delecate egoes, I guess?

Oh, and I said pretty much the same thing, Rob.