Our New Proofreading and Product Oversight Process (2021) – Stonemaier Games

Our New Proofreading and Product Oversight Process (2021)

“How did they possibly miss this?”

If you’ve ever played a tabletop game, you’ve probably found a typo, glitch, inconsistency, or usability issue. When you identified it, you may have wondered, “Did they proofread this at all?” or thought, “They should have used more proofreaders.”

In all likelihood, however, at least several people did proofread the files and the publisher reviewed the components before going to print. And “more” doesn’t mean “better”–in fact, I would wager that proofreading is an area where quality matters significantly more than quantity. (If you’d like to challenge that theory, send the same PDF to 5 talented, paid proofreaders and 100 unpaid volunteers; let me know which process results in a better final document.)

The Problem

Perhaps most importantly, proofreading is only part of the process of identifying mistakes and missteps, as they only see the briefest snapshot of the files. A proofreader couldn’t have identified my poor decision to use plastic meeples in Pendulum instead of wood. A proofreader would have to be truly excellent to notice that player pawns were missing in the Pie in the Sky components list. And a proofreader couldn’t possibly have known that the final Red Rising die was different than the images of the die in the rulebook (the red helium icon is slightly different).

I’ve been trying to solve this puzzle for a long time, adding redundancies, extra eyes, and checklists. But it’s not enough. So recently I had a moment of inspiration after watching Dusty discuss the problem on The Mill.

The Solution

The big change I implemented as a result is full exposure for our copyeditors, proofreaders, employees, and others to all files at all stages. For example, instead of a proofreader getting the third version of the typeset files–that’s all they see–now they have access to every file at every stage of the process.

Not only do they have that access during their stage in the process; copyeditors and proofreaders now have full access for the entire process. To avoid overlapping comments on PDF files, if it’s not their stage, they comment on a shared Google Spreadsheet, which I review on an ongoing basis.

It’s a fairly small group of people who see the files (around 10). All copyeditors and proofreaders are very experienced, and we pay them when the process ends (after everyone has reviewed photos of the pre-production copy and mass-production copy).

We’re now midway through our first test of this process, and the results have been significant. We’ve caught a number of things that would have easily slipped through the cracks using the previous “snapshot” method. I highly, highly recommend trying some version of this to other publishers.

The Expanded Solution

While I’m on the topic, I’ll briefly list the various stages of the game publishing process used to enhance the product and catch mistakes, as it extends well beyond copyeditors and proofreaders. This is roughly in chronological order:

  1. Blind playtesters: Beyond helping us find the fun, balance, and intuition in our games, blind playtesters help to form a strong foundation for the original files. Because the designer isn’t at playtesting sessions to answer questions, blind playtesters must rely on the rulebook, cards, and other printed components–if they aren’t clear, they’ll let you know.
  2. Data analyst: The data gathered from blind playtesting is really helpful, but I’ve found that working with a professional data analyst can make a big difference in identifying balance issues.
  3. Automa: The team at Automa Factory, which makes the solo modes for our games, excels at finding broken strategies, edge cases, and infinite loops.
  4. Cultural consulting: This is another recent addition for us in our attempts to ensure that our limited perspectives don’t unintentionally cause harm to anyone in the world who just wants to find joy in our games.
  5. Copyeditors: Copyeditors revise the final files before they’re typeset using our style guide. This often results in significant changes to the text and rulebook organization, changes that would be a major burden on our graphic designer if they were made after the files are typeset into PDFs.
  6. Graphic designer: Our graphic designer, Christine, is involved from this point on. She handles layout and typesetting, she creates icons and wordmarks, and she incorporates all revisions. At the end of the process she prepares the files based on the printer’s guidelines, and she carefully reviews digital proofs to ensure that no layers have shifted or disappeared. Christine has a detailed checklist for every product box to ensure all necessary information is included.
  7. Internal review: When I first receive typeset files, I ask Joe to look over them to see if there are any glaring issues. Then I review the layout and organization–it’s easier to adjust these aspects before diving deep into the proofreader process. Sometimes I loop in the game designer at this point if there’s anything I want to run by them. On the back end, Alex is part of the final file review.
  8. Proofreaders: Proofreaders take turns reviewing the PDFs and marking changes in Acrobat as instructions to our graphic designer. I review these suggestions and either send them directly to Christine or to another proofreader (depending on how many changes are in the document). As I mentioned earlier, proofreaders and copyteditors have access to all files related to the product, and even if it’s not their turn, they can note revisions on the shared Google Spreadsheet.
  9. Game Designer: When the files are nearing completion, I send them to the game designer for their final review. I make sure to have at least one or two proofreaders review the files after incorporating any changes from the game designer.
  10. Manufacturer: After receiving our final files, our manufacturer (Panda) enters them into a pre-production process. There are various levels to this, with the early stages involving a detailed review of the files as they compare to the quote and for printing. Later in the process they’ll create digital proofs for us to review–we need to make sure they used the most recent version of the files–and a printed PPC (pre-production copy) that we can play in person. I’ve found it’s important for the PPC to include all components (tokens, dice, minis, meeples, and inserts), not just printed components, as this is when we still have the flexibility to make changes if something doesn’t fit or function as intended. We look at these components from the perspective of colorblindness, impaired vision, low lighting, and utility. Of course, at this point we should already have samples of many of those components. Near the end of the process is the MPC (mass production copy), which is essentially the first copy of the product hot off the press. This is a terrible time to find a huge mistake, as everything is printed and manufactured at this point, but it is possible–but costly–to fix a crucial change if necessary.
  11. Localization Partners: As soon as Panda approves the digital proofs, Christine uploads the source files (InDesign) and Alex informs localization partners of their availability so the translation process can begin. We try to make this happen as soon as possible, as sometimes translators catch errors that we missed during the previous 10 steps. Meanwhile, we’re still proceeding with the English print run, as it would be delayed by around 2 months if we waited for localization partners to finalize their files.

***

At the beginning of this article, I asked the question that we’ve all asked when we’ve caught a typo or inconsistency in a game: “How did they possibly miss this?” This article is not intended as an excuse for Stonemaier, me, or my fellow creators. But I hope it illustrates how often files change and how many eyes see them throughout the process. There are so many ways for mistakes to be made in places and times that people don’t even know to look for them. We do our best, and hopefully this new full-transparency proofreading system is another step in the right direction.

Am I missing any important steps? Is there anything here that surprised you or that you do differently?

***

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33 Comments on “Our New Proofreading and Product Oversight Process (2021)

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  1. 27 Types of People for Whom I’m Grateful as a Small Business Owner (2022) – Stonemaier Games says:

    […] This year we implemented a new proofreading and oversight process so that a dedicated group of proofreaders can see every step of a product’s evolution during the […]

  2. […] of mistake in the future: After releasing multiple projects with typos and errors, we implemented a much more robust oversight process to significantly reduce the chances of such errors appearing in the future. Similarly, after […]

  3. […] While I do copyedit and proofread–and often rewrite rulebooks from scratch–we have a robust oversight team of independent editors and proofreaders who catch far more mistakes than I ever […]

  4. I’ve recently been approached by some board game companies regarding proofreading rulebooks, cards, websites, etc. I come from a teaching background and while I’m familiar with proofreading essays, articles, etc. the process of editing in the board game industry is just a different ballgame, with different skillsets and attention to detail required for rules, components, etc.

    As such, the normal rates of being paid per word of proofreading feels like it’s hard to apply. How do you determine as a company what to pay your proofreaders for different projects? (I was told by Joe to post this question here so others could benefit from the answer.) Thanks!

  5. […] proofreading and oversight team provides a significant service to ensure our rules, cards, and other components are as clear and […]

  6. […] Create the best possible version of every product starting with the first print run. This includes initiatives we already have in motion, like detailed data analysis of playtester reports, full-scope proofreading and oversight, […]

  7. As a technical writer (35 years in the computer hardware and software industries) and a game player (51 years, starting with Avalon Hill’s Kriegspiel in 1971), I have a suggestion: Hire a technical writer and get them involved from the idea phase onward.

    Ideally, you should get the technical writer started in the concept phase. The designer should sit with the technical writer and have an interactive question and answer session in which the designer explains and the writer thinks like a player and asks a bunch of questions. The writer then creates the first draft (which only the designer sees) and then (once the designer has made changes) prepares a review draft for wider consumption. The writer continues to create and distribute and manage successive drafts until publication.

    I mean no offense to proofreaders (I love them), but it’s not the same job as technical writing. Proofreaders work relatively late in the process and look for typographical errors, grammatical errors, and punctuation errors. As you identify in the article, they do not consider whether the components list is complete. Technical writers do far more than that, precisely because they are trained to put themselves in someone else’s position and ask the questions that matter. (The first concern of a good technical writer is to ask penetrating questions.)

    If you open a job listing for a proofreader, you’ll get a proofreader. Open a job listing for a technical writer. You should get someone with a skill set that can better contribute early in the process.

    Keep the proofreader, by the way. Having written two books and over 10,000 pages of technical content, I can say with certainty that I still need a proofreader. A good rule (really a best practice) is that no one does the final proofreading of their own content.

    1. Thanks Jay! I’m the technical writer for Stonemaier Games, and while I also proofread our content, most proofreading is a separate skill implemented by a separate group of proofreaders.

  8. […] products. This will be the first year that all of our products benefit from the full value of the oversight/proofreading process we implemented in 2021, along with the full data analysis system for playtesting reports. So while this is something new, […]

  9. An Open Letter to Journalists Who Recently Learned of the Existence (and Popularity) of Modern Tabletop Games – Stonemaier Games says:

    […] Proofreaders: Like with any media, games need editors and proofreaders who can help to ensure that every aspect of the game is as clear, consistent, and correct as possible. This is much more than running a rulebook through a spellchecker; I’ve detailed what the process looks like in this article. […]

  10. […] This year we implemented a new proofreading and oversight process so that a dedicated group of proofreaders can see every step of a product’s evolution during […]

  11. […] errors that detract from the joy I want people to have when they play our games. This year I revamped our proofreading process to feature a full team of people who can see all files at every step of the […]

  12. Lessons Learned from Simultaneously Printing a Collector’s Edition and a Standard Version of Red Rising - DZYNR says:

    […] stand out and become the primary topic of conversation when it’s a Collector’s Edition. Our new proofreading and oversight process is designed to identify and eliminate any such issues in the future. We’re making painted […]

  13. As a professional proofreader and editor for board games, I applaud your thoughts on the issue. I’ve worked with over a dozen companies (in full transparency, includes Stonemaier Games) and having access to everything makes it so much easier for the editor to ensure a level of continuity throughout the game. For my overseas clients, I’m especially cognizant of the fact that English is not their native tongue and I need to take even greater care to when reviewing material across the entirety of a game…rules, board, cards, etc.

    As to receiving compensation for one’s work, it is a measure of trust that the editor will indeed take the requisite time to review all details of the written word; and for the client, they are both acknowledging the time necessary to proofread and edit and respecting one’s most precious resource…time. Without doing so, paraphrasing fellow rules-editor, Paul Grogan, they’re not respecting your time to perform this valuable function.

    Cheers,
    Joe

  14. Hello Jamie,
    the effort you put into finding errors is impressive, but I think many of the major publishers, put in a similar effort. And yet, I doubt you’ll find all the errors. Mistakes are human, otherwise we would be gods.
    This article has a different meaning for me, it shows very clearly how big the effort is at the publishers to offer a bug-free game to the players. If, despite all the effort, a mistake should still happen, the players should show a little more understanding for it. No one wants to deliver a game with a mistake, because everyone, whether author, publisher or producer, is proud of what they have created together.
    Lutz

  15. This kind of stuff is gold for smaller publishers like myself, and it’s why I appreciate your transparency! It just makes life a little bit easier for those that come after you. So awesome, thank you.

    I’m intrigued by your new proofreading pipeline. Just so I understand correctly: what’s different is that you are providing each person at each point in the process access to every other iteration of the files, which you keep organized in these numbered folders as snapshots. Part of that is providing photos of components as they come in at each stage, so that they could catch any inconsistencies across components, as with your dice example.

    Makes a lot of sense! One thing I didn’t understand. You said, “if it’s not their stage, they comment on a shared Google Spreadsheet” – what’s on this spreadsheet, and where are they commenting? Is this spreadsheet like a tracker for each of the stages? Why would they only need to comment there if it’s not their stage?

    Thanks again Jamey, you’re a godsend.

    1. Malachi: Yes, that summary is correct. This is compared to simply sending a proofreader the current version of the files and that’s all they see.

      The spreadsheet is just for collecting comments. The reason I have proofreaders comment there if it’s not their stage is that the alternative is for them to comment on the PDF, but at that point another proofreader has the same PDF open somewhere else. Also, the shared spreadsheet lets proofreaders see what everyone else is mentioning.

      1. Huh, interesting. Why not just have them comment on the PDF on Dropbox or another service where the comments are collected live and the active stage proofreader can also be making their notes? Or does that get too noisy?

        1. For Dropbox specifically, the preview of the PDF is solid but not perfect. Unlike Acrobat, my graphic designer can’t use the Dropbox version to check off revisions she’s made. And most importantly, what if I’m reviewing the revisions or the graphic designer is making revisions while someone else is commenting on the PDF (or they’re commenting on a PDF we’re no longer working on because there’s a more updated version in the editing process)?

          Now, there might be something out there that solves all of these issues–if you find it, please let me know. But I know for sure that the method I’ve described addresses all of these concerns.

  16. Love love love posts like this!

    I wasn’t around when Stonemaier used Kickstarter to build products and community, but I wonder if the many “Frequently Posed Complaints” or trends in production issues and such would be caught if a more Kickstarter-like, public approach to product updates and such would help crowdsource catches in production/proofreading issues?

    I haven’t personally been a part of many Kickstarter campaigns. I’ve started to back some, but am just beginning to get updates and learn about the campaign management process. Perhaps these same kinds of production complaints would’ve been similarly problematic as you mentioned proofreaders would not have even caught issues like the Red Rising die images not matching the rulebook. I also can’t imagine backers would catch issues like the Tapestry structures not fitting the city mat very well, or the colors for the Red Rising cubes seemingly to be too similar for even the non-colorblind audience (unless samples are photographed and shared).

    I do think that a backer community or backer-like community may have helped avoid as you put it, “poor decisions” like plastic Pendulum components.

    Perhaps you could tell us more about the strategy of keeping product releases under wraps until just before the game is ready to be shipped and a pre-order initiated? It seems to me that by this time, the product is already in a container headed across the ocean and there’s not much that can be done to production by this time.

    I’m thinking the under-wraps strategy has its benefits versus a multi-year process of start to finish. I seem to recall part of the strategy is to help reduce the amount of time between order/backing and the customer receiving an actual product. Conservation of excitement and momentum. I wonder if opening up product information to more sets of eyes- Champions, Ambassadors, etc could be helpful. I also realize this leads to more potential leaks!

    Just some of my thoughts. Wondering if the risk vs reward is worth the heartache of product mishaps to have the short time between order and product shipping.

    As always, a fan.
    -Cody

    1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Cody! While I think 99% of the issues I describe in this post can be found by a small group of experts with full access to all files at all stages, I agree that certain bad decisions (like the plastic Pendulum meeples) could have been caught by the crowd. If I’m ever debating such a thing in the future, I’m happy to share that specific component publicly.

      Here’s my post about why we wait to share any new product announcements until after they’re almost ready for release: https://stonemaiergames.com/the-secrets-of-mad-king-jamey/

  17. Generally I think you could boil it down to having the right people for it. In your example of 5 professionals vs 100 volunteers, I suspect you’re right because those 5 are (supposedly) good at their jobs.
    I’m an engineer, not a proofreader, but I’d like to think I’m good at proofreading too. I have (rarely) wanted to get involved enough that I’ve sat down and proofread Kickstarter rule books for campaigns I’ve backed. Many have incorporated my feedback. One didn’t publish the rules online until they admitted it was too late to make any significant changes. Which sucked because they’re German and thus English isn’t a native language for them. While I think they did a good job, it could’ve benefitted from native English speakers lending a hand.
    One company is (in my opinion) notorious for glitches and super obvious screw ups in rules, so they never seem to learn.
    I generally find Stonemaier games well done, although I will admit some level of frustration around Pendulum. The rules made sense but only after thinking about them. And I absolutely hate the color choices on the symbols at the bottom of the Province cards! I’m not color blind but I just can’t grasp the colors chosen there (yes I use the little black dot!)
    But all in all, I think some companies just care more (or less) and therefore put varying degrees of effort in.

  18. Terrific transparency here. I think the process outline is excellent. I wonder if other companies follow something similar? Regardless, the effort to catch errors is clearly extensive. It looks as if you have plenty of eyes on the text, and the most notable next step is the comparing of image files to placement in the rules text. Although it’s cumbersome, have you considered creating a master list of image files and noting when they are updated on that? Or having the person responsible for that part of the process update the list?

    As a general note on proofreading, I have professionally edited a manuscript multiple times personally and been aghast years later to find a typo in roughly 180 pages of text. So you’re absolutely right that you can do an excellent job and still miss something.

    1. Thanks, Bill! Currently the way it works with photos of actual components is that I’ll drop them into the corresponding Dropbox folder when available, and at various points in the process I ask proofreaders and copyeditors to look at all files available. Is that what you’re referring to?

      1. YW. Yes, with the question as to whether one step further would improve results. Would logging when the image file changed prompt someone viewing to make sure that it matches other documents upload dates and file names? Or would it be too much work?

        1. It’s pretty rare that a component would completely change, but if it does, I would call it out to editors so we can make sure it’s consistent across all files. I find change logs cumbersome. :)

  19. I totally agree that proofreading is an area where quality matters significantly more than quantity. But another aspect to it would be diversity of type of proofreader (which is in the same line of thought as what kirksellman above is talking about). Let me explain. I’m not a native English speaker and I have never offer my proofreading service to make sure the grammar and syntax is perfectly fine. I’m not bad at it, but there are clearly people that are way better than me on this. My area of expertise in proofreading is consistency in structure, terms used, icons used, etc. When I did some proofreading service for some game publishers in the past, I always proofread everything in the game, from the rulebook, the box, the cards, the board, the tokens, etc, in order to make sure that everything is consistent across the board (this is really important and glad that now SMG is now doing something similar). So as a concrete exemple, I would have most probably seen the error of the Helium icon between the rulebook and the dice in Red Rising. Why? Because that is exactly what I proofread as it’s my specialty, and because I’m not overly focusing on the text as most proofreaders do. That why I think that yes, you need good quality proofreader, but also a diversity of type of proofreaders focusing on different parts.

    1. Francois: Thanks for sharing! We do indeed look for a diversity of proofreaders. But none of them–including you–could have seen the dice error, because the files that proofreaders saw all had the same version of the die. Proofreaders did not see photos of the actual die, which was the problem. Hence our new system of showing proofreaders photos of the components, not just how they’re presented in the rulebook.

      1. Hello Jamey,

        I understand, and that’s why I’m glad that SMG proofreaders now have access to all the components’ final files before going into production and even photos of the PPC, as to find consistency mistakes they have to see everything, because, if not, you are right, it would have been impossible to spot. So kudos to you to upgrading the proofreading process to make your games even better.

  20. I wonder how much value would be gained in letting a person in the lowest age range read the rules, examine the components, and play the game, with a final overall analysis given. Sometimes the youngest and most inexperienced of gamers can see something the rest of us can’t.

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