I am sure we all have received 1 star reviews at some point. I was wondering if we should reply to these reviews in a professional manner so it makes us look better for example " We are continuously working to improve our game. Thank you for your feedback."
Some of these 1 star reviews consist of single or few words such as “Terrible game!” or “garbage”! etc. Now should we just bite our tongue and ignore these pathetic beings giving 1 star reviews without any form of critical feedback or reply to them in a courteous manner that may sway their decision?
When I read reviews on the asset store or steam and the owner responds (professionally) to bad reviews I tend to think better of them.
You cannot respond professionally to “garbage!”. You need a post with actual complaints and your response needs to address those complaints as best possible.
Maybe you can respond to one word posts, but I would be careful. I think it would also depend on the ratio of good to bad reviews. If it’s generally very positive I think you have more leeway.
Courtesy is always good. You could ask them, in polite and patient words, in what they find your content is “garbage” or “terrible”. Generally, they won’t even answer, proving that they have, in fact, no reason to downrate your work.
As Anne Schmidt said, courtesy is important. Don’t get into a mud slinging contest.
I would also add if you do respond, do it individually, don’t use a canned response. I’ve seen plenty of replies by manufacturers or developers that are obviously cut & paste.
This. It’s incredibly easy to make their comments seem silly (not that that’s your intention, but still) by asking for more specific feedback.
“Thanks for the feedback, but “garbage!” does tell me anything about why the game is bad. Can you explain why you think the game is garbage? If you do, I can make the game better, and that’s what we all want.”
For someone writing “garbage” I think I would just write “Thanks for checking out the game!” and possibly (along the lines of what @EternalAmbiguity just said above) expand it to “Thanks for checking out the game! We all know that no game will be liked by everyone but if you have specific suggestions for improving the game feel free to let me know.”
I’m with the above people. If you get reviews in at a slow rate, I’d like to respond to all of them. The problem is if you have too many and can’t take that kind of time. I would agree completely with attempting to respond to the lower star reviews politely asking if you can get specifics so you can improve your game and not make the same mistakes in future games you make. The most common thing will be a lack of response, as the majority of people who are interested in giving feedback would probably already have done so. At the least it shows to anybody who is paying attention to such things that you personally are paying attention. One of the things that get good reviews on communities/developers is community interaction with said developers, and review response is one form of this interaction.
You can potentially turn around a total disaster if you treat the person right. Blowing them off or glossing over their concern or not listening isn’t really professional. Your example feedback sentence doesn’t address what the player said. Nothing is negative when you are open minded and are willing to be wrong.
Always act professional and do not try to take anything personally otherwise it will look bad on your part even though they are leaving awful ratings on your game.
After thinking about it a bit, I think I’d rather ask “How could I have managed your expectations better to prevent you from buying a product that doesn’t suite your taste? I strive for a high rate of happy customers, without compromising on my vision of the game. It is not possible to make a game that everyone likes, but ideally I’d like to only sell it to the people that would enjoy it. Please get yourself a refund and let me know where my expectation-management failed.”
If someone only writes “garbage”, I don’t think that’s the kind of person you should aim to please by changing the product, you should aim to prevent these people from buying it in the first place. That way you maintain a higher level of overall player satisfaction imho. Just look at the super-niche programming-games with ascii-only graphics. No casual gamer is going to buy such a game on a whim and give it a bad review because they expected something totally different.
That seems reasonable too. I was more just thinking what I would write in the situation fully expecting to never hear anything back from the person OR for them to come back with guns blazing attacking again… and the small possibility that it was just one small thing that was ruining the game experience for them.
So my reply would basically be for image management as a business person / developer while also having the potential to maybe be able to improve the game. Maybe it was just some silly thing that annoyed them to no end that could be made into an option. On by default but can be turned off. That kind of thing.
Really depends. In the early stages, it’s important to be responsive. This helps you build your community.
However there is only so much time in the day. Once your community is rolling, you can restrict yourself to responding to the most worthwhile reviews, and leave the rest.
Yep that is basically how I view it as well. I’ve always looked at it like I only care what my target audience thinks. Like @Martin_H mentioned… the person did buy the game. You’d think they must have at least thought they were in the target market. Or maybe it was someone just spending a bit of money just to be an a-hole. I can’t really see a gamer doing that so in that case would likely be some game dev who really doesn’t like you on the forums or something like that.
If I am about to buy a game and I see a few one word ´ garbage´ reviews, I think nothing of it. But when I see a detailed negative review, then I know what is wrong with the game. Do you really want that person to sit down and think of all the things they didn´t like about your game and advertise the flaws to potential buyers?
You want your constructive negative feedback to be private so it doesn´t prevent people from buying, and it doesn´t put ideas in your players heads. If someone says something negative about a game, and I play that game, I am more likely to focus on that negative aspect where without the other persons input, I maybe would not notice. The same can be said of other reviews, it is very easy to say ´ and like the other reviews said, the UI is clunky´…
This is great advice. Most likely the person who writes ‘garbage’ comments has already uninstalled the game and will NEVER be back to check it out again. But providing a professional response will show your existing customers you are serious about supporting the community and I think that has a lasting effect.
Tough decision.
This is mandatory on Youtube - responding in any manner to “garbage” feedback is a sure fire way to rile up the riotous trolls, common in all youtube comments area, who will drown out the minority of commenters who are well intentioned.
Oh my bad big time. You know I never consider that. Yeah if someone came along on a free web game or free mobile game and made those comments. I doubt I would respond at all. Just depends I might just have fun with it and say “Thanks for checking it out!”.
But when it’s free and people have to make virtually no effort / expense to comment then you’re likely to get more morons just harassing just because it is fun to them. Maybe they are bored. Maybe they truly hate it.
I thought it was in regard to an actual game being sold for money and a paying customer had wrote that.
