Quote:
Originally Posted by Calculon
I know it's expensive to get a serious pro
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Mongoose is a major publisher, they should have one or more serious pros on staff proofreading everything they do. I quite sure any publishing house, no matter how small, has at least one professional editor on staff and knows how to solicit more on a paid by the page basis. I've known many people who worked in publishing and the companies they worked for didn't have just a serious pro, they had armies of them. QA should be a vital part of every company's publishing process especially one that charges $30 plus for a book.
What exactly is up with game companies? Do they think that because they are publishing for a hobby, they don't have to produce professional products? If you're giving away a free .pdf of your game or selling a print copy of your baby on Lulu, that's fine, it's your hobby I understand but if you have a company who exists to sell hobby content for a profit and the people working for said company are doing it as their livelihood, then I expect you to create a very professional product. It's just not acceptable in the 21st century for professional game publishers to produce amateur products and charge top dollar for them. Gone are the days of game designers mimeographing their latest creations in their basements. Today game publishing is a business and gamers are customers and we are entitled to get quality products for the money that we invest in those products and yet over the years game companies have continued to produce shoddy unprofessional merchandise from TSR on down. And just because today, with the Internet, companies are able to inform the public of errors in a publication much more quickly doesn't make it acceptable to publish multi-page errata on your Web site. I have a grand idea, what if the game company took the time to create the errata pages before the book goes to the printers, then they can actually fix the problems before they embarrass themselves and insult the customers.
I, for one, was really looking forward to Babylon 5 Universe coming out. I bought the new Traveller Core Rules only because Mongoose announced they were doing a Babylon 5 version of the game. Now, I can't help but feel just a little cheated and lied to.
ED