By the way, I had to actually think for a moment about what the Jungle was when it was brought up just now
Always a good sign
UnbreakableVow on
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PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
I sell video games in an electronics store, and the MMO playing workers asked if I've heard of it and if we were going to stock it.
I said "The Jungle? I heard about that and laughed and laughed."
They then started talking about playing WoW on it and I decided quietly to myself that if we actually stocked it I would hurl myself from the tallest building.
Huh, so RainbowDespair gets quoted and mentioned repeatedly in a Kotaku article about some guy trying to make a cash-in game and the XBLIG community shutting him down 6 times in a row.
Media blackouts are useless against Molyneux. If he even gets near something resembling a microphone, he just starts spouting baseless crap which never happens. It's the stuff that Molyneux says that will be in his games which never shows up that pisses me off, not the stuff covered by the media. The guy would do himself and his games a big service if he would just keep his mouth shut instead of talking about non-existent features.
I've gotta wonder what Lionhead could do without Molyneux around. It's not that they can't make decent bits of game, they're just shackled to this crazy blowhard. Ape dick modeling. 'Nuff said.
I never heard a thing about what Fable 2 promised, besides being like the first game. Picked it up, had fun with it. Worked well. Never saw a trailer, read a review, preview or anything. Same for Fable 3. Shit, I didn't even know Halo Reach had jetpacks until Exodus.
Gorilla Salad on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
I quite liked Fable 2, but that's because I didn't expect it to do anything that I knew it wouldn't manage to do.
Huh, so RainbowDespair gets quoted and mentioned repeatedly in a Kotaku article about some guy trying to make a cash-in game and the XBLIG community shutting him down 6 times in a row.
J-force just got a dollar out of me after that article (not that I will actually bother to download the game). Total BS to block him for having screen shots of his previous game and then pass all the shovelware from silver dollar games with the screen shots of all there previous games.
There was also a tank game from a professional developer that some of the indie games crowd wanted to block (though in there case I don't think the call to arms was succesful)
I buy a lot of indie games, but when the developers put politics to who gets passed it makes me want to stop supporting the service.
Any design change to Dante was going to cause backlash. The guy is an ass, but the question is why he shouldn't be allowed to do things his way. I mean, isn't this where the public gets to say how they won't buy his product because they don't like it?
Instead, it's bitching and backbiting about how stupid he is because he doesn't listen to people who claim they won't buy his game unless their demands are met. I have a hard time siding with the people whose fee-fees are hurt because their 'suggestions' aren't being followed.
The difference is, some of those fans would probably get over the design after a while if he treated them nicely (and the game didn't look or sound like a steaming pile of crap). Coming out and saying he doesn't give a shit what they think is only going to ensure those fans stay pissed, even if the game turns out to be decent.
Me, I'm just unconvinced Ninja Theory are even capable of making a game of even DMC2's calibre. Ninja Theory have so far proven themselves incapable of designing gameplay with depth and keeping their games at a steady framerate so giving them the DMC franchise is to me like giving the Mario franchise to Sonic Team.
Huh, so RainbowDespair gets quoted and mentioned repeatedly in a Kotaku article about some guy trying to make a cash-in game and the XBLIG community shutting him down 6 times in a row.
Gah! Damnit man! Links! Post them! You've mentioned things that catch my interest before but you're so usually vague I can't even google them. It can all be solved with a simple copy and paste with url tags. :P The only reason I found the current article (which is here) is because frandelgearslip mentioned J-force.
As for the subject of the article, I have no sympathy for him. He's creating shovelware, showing off about it and is suddenly shocked when a community review based system fucks him over. If I were part of the XBL Indie community, I'd fail any game that was blatant shovelware. I'd treat Phoenix Games the same.
The implication is that if he had been saying stuff like, hey guys, I'm really excited about this game, I hope people like it and have fun, kind of a labor of love, etc. that he would've got in right away.
Supposedly.
Lots of shovelware gets through on XBLIG all the time, you just have to be properly doe-eyed and hopeful.
Basically, what it comes down to is that this guy was a known troll who had been doing his best to tick up other XBLIG developers for a long time and this was the last straw for a lot of people. Stuff like using 3 of his 4 game screenshots to advertise other products was extremely tacky but not what the game got failed for (although it was considered). The game was failed for legitimate reasons - for example, one of their screenshots advertised the fact that if you gave them your personal information, you'd be entered in a contest to win MS points, which violated Microsoft's ban against developers using their games to collect personal information & probably violated some gambling laws as well. When he finally decided to take out the offending stuff, the game passed.
Here's my initial response, from which I was quoted:
"For quite some time, there's been a running gag among XBLIG developers
that the only games that make any money on the service are avatar
games, zombie games, and massage apps, therefore a surefire way to
make heaps of money would be to make an avatar zombie massage game.
This was just a gag until one week, two avatar zombie massage apps
went up in peer review.
One of these apps was done by a new developer and seemed to be done in
a spirit of playfulness, so not finding any technical faults, I
happily passed it the second time it went up (the first time, it
failed for some technical problem). The other app was done by JForce
Games who simultaneously started a thread on the XNA forums that
basically said, "This is a cash grab game that will make us a lot of
money. Don't hate us because we're smarter than you and you were too
dumb to do this first. Oh and we've already spent $25,000 on our
upcoming dual stick shooter."
How arrogant can you get? This is a group of people whose only claim
to fame is that their reaction test mini-game with celebrity
likenesses was lucky enough to make a bit of money. They quit their
menial dayjobs (or in some cases, were fired) and have been working
full time on a dual stick shooter for several months. Get this,
they've spent over $25,000 and over 6 months on their "amazing" game
and not only do they not have a playable demo, but
apparently they've completely restarted development a few times on it.
It's the indie equivilent of Duke Nukem Forever except without a
popular license or any public interest. Radiangames releases an
awesome shooter every month or two and that's just one guy. What's
their excuse?
XBox Live Indie Games was originally called Community Games and to
many developers, a strong sense of community is still very important.
Most of the great developers on the service like Noogy (Dust: An
Elysian Tale), Mommy's Best Games (Weapon of Choice, Shoot 1Up,
Grapple Buggy), and Kris Steele (Hypership Out of Control) are humble
about their talents and generous with their time, offering advice to
other developers and spending time to peer review other people's
games. When a developer like JForce Games that only cares about
themselves and flaunts this fact comes up on the service, it rubs a
lot of people the wrong way. Thus, I've made a conscious decision to
not peer review any of their games, even though I passed another game
that was very similar in form to theirs."
I'll admit that it was very immature of me to post that negative comment on their peer review thread. I should not have done that and for this I apologize. I never actually failed their game, I just didn't bother to review it - peer review is an act of service that can take anywhere from 15 mins to hours that developers do because they're trying to help the community and other developers and I didn't want to take time out of my day helping someone like that.
JForce didn't get in trouble just because they were flaunting their cash grab. That was just the final straw. They got in trouble because they had repeatedly insulted (and in at least one case, even personally threatened) other developers.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
Me, I'm just unconvinced Ninja Theory are even capable of making a game of even DMC2's calibre. Ninja Theory have so far proven themselves incapable of designing gameplay with depth and keeping their games at a steady framerate so giving them the DMC franchise is to me like giving the Mario franchise to Sonic Team.
Quite possibly, but my goal is just to make enough from game development to support my family without having to do two jobs (like I'm doing now). Famous or not famous doesn't really matter.
There was also a tank game from a professional developer that some of the indie games crowd wanted to block (though in there case I don't think the call to arms was succesful)
The community as a whole didn't try and block Tank Battles - Gameloft just supported every single language, and XBLIG requires multiple reviews for each language approve it on top of the regular reviewers. There simply aren't that many reviewers for each language to get enough passes. Tank Battles got TONS of approvals from the community every time it went up - more than the average XBLIG game in fact - it's just that by adding support for every language each time, it became really hard to find reviewers for every single localization by the time the review period was up. Do you have any idea how many languages Gameloft tried to support, and how few developers that actually spend time to review games there are from certain countries? Do you know how hard it is to find, say, French reviewers? Do you know how hard it is to find Italian reviewers and German reviewers and Japanese reviewers all at the same time? It's really frickin' hard because there's not that many of them and there are tons of games in review at all times....
Every time TB went up for review, it would get to 95% complete almost immediately. Then it would stop. You know what this means? It means that a huge number of English speaking reviewers passed it almost immediately, and now it's only missing a few localization reviews; ie reviews from other supported languages. It's hard to gather up enough people from all these countries to do this.
Yes there were a few people that said "I'm going to spend my time reviewing other games instead," but really the majority of the XNA devs didn't care one way or another.
GameLoft's problem was had more to do with the fact that the system requires TONS of specific types of reviews from specific languages when so many are supported.
Pretty much everyone in the community wishes that it were easier to pass games that support multiple localizations but that's just not how it is.
I buy a lot of indie games, but when the developers put politics to who gets passed it makes me want to stop supporting the service.
There's really not that much in the way of politics. Everything passes eventually. Just some things pass sooner or later than others depending on the situation. A person like JForce can come into a community, tell everyone they're dumb assholes, then come back and ask for those people's help while breaking a bunch of rules (yes there are certain legit rules they had broken like title safe among others), then throw massive hissy fits and make personal attacks against those reviewers, get temp banned by Microsoft for 2 weeks for those personal attacks, come back and still get their game passed.
I find it pretty depressing that massage games, zombie games, and avatar games are so popular on xblive. I've played a few of those demos, and this is what people like? Ouch.
After reading that Kotaku article, seems like that Jforce person is a pretty big tool.
I find it pretty depressing that massage games, zombie games, and avatar games are so popular on xblive. I've played a few of those demos, and this is what people like? Ouch.
That's been my response to most of the XBLIG stuff I've seen, unfortunately. Maybe I'm unfairly judging things based on the abnormal 1-man/small releases like Minecraft, DF and M&B.
GameLoft's problem was had more to do with the fact that the system requires TONS of specific types of reviews from specific languages when so many are supported.
It's pretty cool of GameLoft to try and support so many languages, and pretty shitty of XBLIG to penalize them for doing so.
I find it pretty depressing that massage games, zombie games, and avatar games are so popular on xblive. I've played a few of those demos, and this is what people like? Ouch.
That's been my response to most of the XBLIG stuff I've seen, unfortunately. Maybe I'm unfairly judging things based on the abnormal 1-man/small releases like Minecraft, DF and M&B.
Ever hear that phrase 'A million (whatever) fans can't be wrong'? As it turns out, they can.
It's pretty cool of GameLoft to try and support so many languages, and pretty shitty of XBLIG to penalize them for doing so.
It is very cool of them to support so many languages. In fact many developers now and in the past have wanted to support multiple languages, but you run a huge risk when you do that.
The way the the system is set up makes it really, really hard for any game supporting multiple languages to get through peer review. The process becomes exponentially more difficult with each language added. Now imagine how hard it is to get your game out with every language supported.
It's so difficult that it practically requires luck. I can go into detail about how difficult it is and the problems associated with the system with you support multiple languages if you like but it would be rather long and I don't know if you're interested.
Anyway, the whole XNA community pretty much agrees that the system in place makes it pretty hard and relatively punishing to support mulitple languages. XNA devs want to support more languages off the bat, but it's a huge risk. You end up in review forever and you can't even vaguely estimate a release date when you do so.
Every time a game making community starts talking about 'honor' and tries to start meta-managing who is allowed to have games released, it slowly chokes out and dies. I've already seen it happen once.
Why doesn't GameLoft just put their stuff out on XBLA?
They tried and Microsoft wouldn't approve it, so they moved the game to XBLIG in its then-current form.
Unsurprisingly, since XBLIG isn't regulated by MS, it has a very different set of rules for games to pass than does XBLA. Since GL didn't change anything in the transition it had some initial fails for XBLIG reasons. After that it sat in Limbo for a month at 95% Peer Review Complete status because there just weren't enough reviewers from all the different languages all coming together for the one game, all at the same time.... That did eventually happen though, in the nick of time before TB got dropped from Review (games are dropped from review by the system automatically if they are in Review for over 1 month).
Anyway, in answer to your question, it was meant to be an XBLA game and MS refused to let it on XBLA. We don't know the reason. But right after is when GL decided to put it on XBLIG, all languages supported, and between the different rules and the language issues, it languished in review limbo for really long periods of time.
side note:
it may seem counter intuitive that XBLIG has more strict rules than XBLA. But if you think about it, it's not. XBLIG is not rated by ESRB, and MS cannot control the process directly or else it will run into ESRB issues. Essentially, MS has to provide a list of strict rules and then stay out of it. It has to be strict so that the system doesn't get MS into trouble.. It's hard to explain but hopefully that makes sense.
Every time a game making community starts talking about 'honor' and tries to start meta-managing who is allowed to have games released, it slowly chokes out and dies. I've already seen it happen once.
The honor thing was actually pretty irrelevant to this whole thing. It started because James Silva, who "Mad3 a Gam3 with Zomb1es In It!1!" created a post on his ska studios blog about the concept of honor and opportunism. Yeah he probably got the idea from the stuff going on in Indies but the problems JForce was having had relatively little to do with that at the time. His blog post wasn't an XNA community forum thing or whatever, it was an article he wanted to write for his website because he thought it was an interesting and debatable topic.
The fact is, there are a lot of people just trying to make games and help each other. Then a person comes in and tells them they're all idiots, and proceeds with conduct so absurd that MS, who is normally hands-off, had to step in and ban the guy for two weeks for his conduct and personal attacks.
The whole "honor" discussion was just a sort of musing among devs that like to follow each other's blogs. The devs in XNA generally have no problem with the "cash grab" style games, and pass them all the time --- assuming they don't break the MS rules laid down of course. Incidentally some of the obvious "cash grab" games are made by really likeable people that have great reputations in the community and are generally liked, and these groups who release games that don't break the rules and don't get banned by MS really have no issues with the XNA community.
JForce picked up on this Blog post and decided that there was a community conspiracy against them based on it. To be honest, it was more a large number of totally apathetic people and a small group of people picked on by JForce themselves. Silva incidentally put it well when he said that when you act like an asshole to your reviewers, you're begging them to "throw the book" at you.
side note:
it may seem counter intuitive that XBLIG has more strict rules than XBLA. But if you think about it, it's not. XBLIG is not rated by ESRB, and MS cannot control the process directly or else it will run into ESRB issues. Essentially, MS has to provide a list of strict rules and then stay out of it. It has to be strict so that the system doesn't get MS into trouble.. It's hard to explain but hopefully that makes sense.
Folk who might be familiar with Rock Band Network get it. Sometimes. Maybe.
Every time a game making community starts talking about 'honor' and tries to start meta-managing who is allowed to have games released, it slowly chokes out and dies. I've already seen it happen once.
The fact is, there are a lot of people just trying to make games and help each other. Then a person comes in and tells them their all idiots, and proceeds with conduct so absurd that MS, who is normally hands-off, had to step in and ban the guy for two weeks for his conduct and personal attacks.
JForce picked up on this Blog post and decided that there was a community conspiracy against them based on it. To be honest, it was more a large number of totally apathetic people and a small group of people picked on by JForce themselves. Silva incidentally put it well when he said that when you act like an asshole to your reviewers, you're begging them to "throw the book" at you.
Great. Leave the forum moderation to Microsoft then, don't get revenge on people by shitting on their games submission process.
The reviewer process should only be rating the games and making sure they don't make the Xbox catch on fire. I don't care if the person behind the games is well liked or not, when the XBLIG is letting I MAEDE A GAME and Silver Dollar Games through and not this game... no real leg to stand on.
Like I said before, I used to be part of a game making community where people that made good games couldn't get them posted because the main forum admin just didn't like them, and would continually block them or publically make fun of them so new users wanting to get 'in' woudl also join in on the fun-making. And people would make meta 'joke games' all the damn time. The community went from ~100 new posts a day down to like 3 now. It got choked out because people were too concerned about dickchecking each other and feeling a little bit of power rather than you know, just making games.
They did the right thing by blocking the guys game repeatedly, I would have done so likewise in the same situation, if nothing else because reading that article pointed out he was doing a lot of stuff that was not appropriate to be in the game.
Great. Leave the forum moderation to Microsoft then, don't get revenge on people by shitting on their games submission process.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. MS doesn't moderate the forums however, but they will respond in extreme cases of personal attacks or serious abuse.
The game in question broke legitimate rules out right, at first. Any other game would have been failed for the same reasons. At first.
I agree with you that later on there were gray areas and very questionable fails. But essentially once JForce cleaned up the problems that were legitimate rule breaking issues (stuff pointed out at first), the game passed. These were things that were noted when the game first went up on review, but were fixed in a merely piecemeal way over the course of several weeks instead of just fixing them now.
The reviewer process should only be rating the games and making sure they don't make the Xbox catch on fire.
I totally agree it is a shame when this happens. I will say that the reviewers that failed the game didn't like JForce, but they only failed initially for reasons that broke the rules. Later on there were suspect fails and that's where I agree with you -- the rules shouldn't be read in such a way. But technical fails like MS's Title Safe rule? That's totally legit.
I will also say that MS has very strict "content restriction" rules that are not merely technical. This is for ESRB-avoiding reasons. So many fails are for non-technical reasons according to MS guidelines and it has to be this way for XBLIG to exist. As an example it is a valid fail if a "game" is just a video; MS actually has this written rule that your game can't just be a straight up video and nothing else. There are also language and nudity rules and even rules on violence and rules on certain stuff that is seen as racist/prejudice. They even have a rule regarding historical documents in games.
Believe me when I say many XNA devs would like there to be only a set of rules that are for purely technical issues (make sure they don't make the Xbox catch fire type rules). But MS has to set up content restrictions and rules as well and they have to be strict so that it can be hands-free and keep the ESRB issues of their backs.
I don't care if the person behind the games is well liked or not, when the XBLIG is letting I MAEDE A GAME and Silver Dollar Games through and not this game... no real leg to stand on.
I agree with you again
Silva and Silver Dollar Games are very knowledgeable about the rules and run into fewer problems. When reviewers find problems, both of these groups quickly address as many of them as they can all at once, instead of dragging it out. Plus, they don't waste their own time by getting banned for weeks at a time... that's not very constructive of one's own time really.
There are many, many games always in peer review. Reviewers are spending personal time away from their own development to help out in the process. When they check out a list of like 40 some odd games, they have to choose, OK which one am I going to work on today? They can spend their time helping people who are extremely helpful in the community, or people that have interesting looking game concepts, or games they think will be easy to review, or whatever. I can imagine that when you are presented with a group of people all asking for your extra time and effort (sometimes hours), that you're more inclined to help the people that are nice to you and to others first. Maybe you want to help everyone, even the people that call you an asshole and make personal attacks, but in most situations that person will probably sort of drift to the lower portion of a person's "I am going to help" list of priorities.
There was also a tank game from a professional developer that some of the indie games crowd wanted to block (though in there case I don't think the call to arms was succesful)
The community as a whole didn't try and block Tank Battles - Gameloft just supported every single language, and XBLIG requires multiple reviews for each language approve it on top of the regular reviewers.
I do know that is why tank battles stayed in review for so long. But there was a vocal minority of developers who stated that tank battles should not be passed, because gameloft did not participate in the community and did not "deserve" to release a game. Also there was talk about not passing the game because indie developers had developed the space and now a big company was coming and cashing in (under the today gameloft tomorrow bungie theory). In the end they failed to rally developers against tank battles (which I noted), but it was precedent for the successful rally against j-force.
There was also a tank game from a professional developer that some of the indie games crowd wanted to block (though in there case I don't think the call to arms was succesful)
The community as a whole didn't try and block Tank Battles - Gameloft just supported every single language, and XBLIG requires multiple reviews for each language approve it on top of the regular reviewers.
I do know that is why tank battles stayed in review for so long. But there was a vocal minority of developers who stated that tank battles should not be passed, because gameloft did not participate in the community and did not "deserve" to release a game. Also there was talk about not passing the game because indie developers had developed the space and now a big company was coming and cashing in (under the today gameloft tomorrow bungie theory). In the end they failed to rally developers against tank battles (which I noted), but it was precedent for the successful rally against j-force.
I agree in that I think it was a poor decision by a few people to try and ignore Gameloft; TB is a good game and good games attract people to the channel. But I'm sorry you feel that way on the second point. It just saddens me that people will take legitimate problems associated with the system (issues regarding languages), and extrapolate a vocal minority onto the XNA community as a whole. It sucks for everyone, but you know, everyone has their opinion. I am glad to hear that at least you know that it was a little minority of people, and that this particular issues passed over relatively quickly regarding Tank Battles. (Or rather I should say that discussion passed over; the game was in Review limbo because of the language problems for quite some time).
However I don't think it was a rally point to shun J-Force. Honestly this is the first time I've heard someone say that. I would say I disagree that the Tank Battles thing turned into the JForce thing but hey, I spend most of my time just trying to help people and get my own game done. I try to stay out of politics and just stick to the rules set by MS and interpret them as reasonably as possible.
That sounds like two different situations. One where people are afraid that bigger, better funded studios will take over because they're bigger and better funded. The other is where a particular developer was being a silly goose to the same people who need to review their game.
As I said, RBN is a microcosm of it all. Some songs take a long, long time to be approved when very little is wrong with it and some speed right through multiple revisions because it's more popular. The larger difference is I've yet to hear of a chart authoring group that insulted the very people they need to review their songs.
That sounds like two different situations. One where people are afraid that bigger, better funded studios will take over because they're bigger and better funded. The other is where a particular developer was being a silly goose to the same people who need to review their game.
As I said, RBN is a microcosm of it all. Some songs take a long, long time to be approved when very little is wrong with it and some speed right through multiple revisions because it's more popular. The larger difference is I've yet to hear of a chart authoring group that insulted the very people they need to review their songs.
Ah, that's pretty interesting I haven't ever really heard much about the RBN community. I guess you could say that most communities are similar in that really cool stuff gets attention and trouble-makers tend to, well, make trouble for themselves.
The stuff that "looks really cool!" usually passes through XBLIG pretty quickly. It's not favoritism, it's just the fact that you spend all this free time and personal effort flipping through 40+ games and you see one with this kickass box art and concept and it looks like a lot of fun, so it's like, Hey I want to check this one out! Maybe that's an inherent bias in the system against boring/drab/derivative/whatever looking games and a bias in favor of cool-looking stuff. But hey this is people's free time and volunteer work, they want to spend that time checking out the stuff that looks fun to them so I can't really blame them. :P
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
This is possibly one of the most intriguing conversations I've read here. I don't have anything to add to it, but I like this kinda stuff. GOOD JOB TALKIN' 'BOUT VIDEO GAMES GUYS. <_<
Henroid on
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
I'm still really new to this 360 thing. In fact, the only game I've bought so far over Live is Breath of Death VII. (yes, I'm sucking up)
There may be better places to ask this, but what is a good price I should be paying for Live Gold? Is it better to hunt for discounts in stores, or use the deals that Microsoft is offering online? Last week they had some 1600 MS points cashin, but I didn't have the money then. Now, they're offering a year for $40, and some ungodly stupid looking hat.
I'm just trying to figure out how best to approach this thing, and my usual go-to guy for all things xbox is incommunicado for the next few days.
Edit: Agreed, this was a cool read, to see how the community of developers is building up.
I'm still really new to this 360 thing. In fact, the only game I've bought so far over Live is Breath of Death VII. (yes, I'm sucking up)
There may be better places to ask this, but what is a good price I should be paying for Live Gold? Is it better to hunt for discounts in stores, or use the deals that Microsoft is offering online? Last week they had some 1600 MS points cashin, but I didn't have the money then. Now, they're offering a year for $40, and some ungodly stupid looking hat.
I'm just trying to figure out how best to approach this thing, and my usual go-to guy for all things xbox is incommunicado for the next few days.
Edit: Agreed, this was a cool read, to see how the community of developers is building up.
Well, after you get the usual suspects telling you you're stupid for paying for Gold...
Starting in November, the price for XBL Gold goes from $50 to $60. So anytime you can find a deal less than fifty or sixty, it's a good deal. Depending on how hard you want to look, that $40 and a stupid hat sounds okay. It's not like you have to 'wear' the hat.
Interesting read on the whole Xbox indie whatchamacallit. I'm pretty much with Fyrewulff on the mess, when it comes to actual reviewing you have to remain professional regardless of whether you like the author or not, otherwise everything degenerates into a popularity/pissing contest. Even if you had good reasons/intentions in the first place.
Sides, if he's been enough of a tool with personal attacks and whatnot that MS had to step in despite the hands-off policy, sounds like he's his own worst enemy anyways.
Again, totally understand why you guys don't like the guy for acting like a tool, and why some members of that community might think blocking his games somehow is appropriate. And it's not that they're wrong, it's just that once that becomes "okay" someone else is going to try and do the same thing for 'disrespect' or something later, and the list of offenses just gets more and more nebulous until people are getting shit for looking at someone's blog wrong, and then nobody wants to participate anymore.
I'm really interested in this $25,000 indie game, and more importantly, how it will compare to the amazing stuff Luke from Radiangames puts out on a possibly crap budget.
In my opinion, one of the things that should be kept in mind is that the system as a whole fundamentally belongs to Microsoft, not the community. Microsoft has various good reasons to allow the community review system, but the intended purpose is ultimately to serve the needs of itself, with the good of the community and the customer base hopefully stemming from that.
Microsoft has provided a list of things that it gives a shit about for accepting games. Whether or not the person submitting it is an asshole is almost certainly not on that list. The community shouldn't have a right to tack on additional requirements.
jothki on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited October 2010
Damn it, I invested in Square by buying a bad game they published! I must cleanse my soul. In acid.
Edit - Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, by the way.
Posts
Total sausage fest.
Where do you work that they've even heard about it
Do you work at Panasonic
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Always a good sign
I said "The Jungle? I heard about that and laughed and laughed."
They then started talking about playing WoW on it and I decided quietly to myself that if we actually stocked it I would hurl myself from the tallest building.
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J-force just got a dollar out of me after that article (not that I will actually bother to download the game). Total BS to block him for having screen shots of his previous game and then pass all the shovelware from silver dollar games with the screen shots of all there previous games.
There was also a tank game from a professional developer that some of the indie games crowd wanted to block (though in there case I don't think the call to arms was succesful)
I buy a lot of indie games, but when the developers put politics to who gets passed it makes me want to stop supporting the service.
But but but, if they don't constantly suck developers cocks, how will they ever get that community manager job they always wanted?
The difference is, some of those fans would probably get over the design after a while if he treated them nicely (and the game didn't look or sound like a steaming pile of crap). Coming out and saying he doesn't give a shit what they think is only going to ensure those fans stay pissed, even if the game turns out to be decent.
Me, I'm just unconvinced Ninja Theory are even capable of making a game of even DMC2's calibre. Ninja Theory have so far proven themselves incapable of designing gameplay with depth and keeping their games at a steady framerate so giving them the DMC franchise is to me like giving the Mario franchise to Sonic Team.
Me too, high five! He almost tricked me into getting The Movies though...
Gah! Damnit man! Links! Post them! You've mentioned things that catch my interest before but you're so usually vague I can't even google them. It can all be solved with a simple copy and paste with url tags. :P The only reason I found the current article (which is here) is because frandelgearslip mentioned J-force.
As for the subject of the article, I have no sympathy for him. He's creating shovelware, showing off about it and is suddenly shocked when a community review based system fucks him over. If I were part of the XBL Indie community, I'd fail any game that was blatant shovelware. I'd treat Phoenix Games the same.
Supposedly.
Lots of shovelware gets through on XBLIG all the time, you just have to be properly doe-eyed and hopeful.
Here's my initial response, from which I was quoted:
"For quite some time, there's been a running gag among XBLIG developers
that the only games that make any money on the service are avatar
games, zombie games, and massage apps, therefore a surefire way to
make heaps of money would be to make an avatar zombie massage game.
This was just a gag until one week, two avatar zombie massage apps
went up in peer review.
One of these apps was done by a new developer and seemed to be done in
a spirit of playfulness, so not finding any technical faults, I
happily passed it the second time it went up (the first time, it
failed for some technical problem). The other app was done by JForce
Games who simultaneously started a thread on the XNA forums that
basically said, "This is a cash grab game that will make us a lot of
money. Don't hate us because we're smarter than you and you were too
dumb to do this first. Oh and we've already spent $25,000 on our
upcoming dual stick shooter."
How arrogant can you get? This is a group of people whose only claim
to fame is that their reaction test mini-game with celebrity
likenesses was lucky enough to make a bit of money. They quit their
menial dayjobs (or in some cases, were fired) and have been working
full time on a dual stick shooter for several months. Get this,
they've spent over $25,000 and over 6 months on their "amazing" game
and not only do they not have a playable demo, but
apparently they've completely restarted development a few times on it.
It's the indie equivilent of Duke Nukem Forever except without a
popular license or any public interest. Radiangames releases an
awesome shooter every month or two and that's just one guy. What's
their excuse?
XBox Live Indie Games was originally called Community Games and to
many developers, a strong sense of community is still very important.
Most of the great developers on the service like Noogy (Dust: An
Elysian Tale), Mommy's Best Games (Weapon of Choice, Shoot 1Up,
Grapple Buggy), and Kris Steele (Hypership Out of Control) are humble
about their talents and generous with their time, offering advice to
other developers and spending time to peer review other people's
games. When a developer like JForce Games that only cares about
themselves and flaunts this fact comes up on the service, it rubs a
lot of people the wrong way. Thus, I've made a conscious decision to
not peer review any of their games, even though I passed another game
that was very similar in form to theirs."
I'll admit that it was very immature of me to post that negative comment on their peer review thread. I should not have done that and for this I apologize. I never actually failed their game, I just didn't bother to review it - peer review is an act of service that can take anywhere from 15 mins to hours that developers do because they're trying to help the community and other developers and I didn't want to take time out of my day helping someone like that.
JForce didn't get in trouble just because they were flaunting their cash grab. That was just the final straw. They got in trouble because they had repeatedly insulted (and in at least one case, even personally threatened) other developers.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
This is a very apt analogy.
Quite possibly, but my goal is just to make enough from game development to support my family without having to do two jobs (like I'm doing now). Famous or not famous doesn't really matter.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
The community as a whole didn't try and block Tank Battles - Gameloft just supported every single language, and XBLIG requires multiple reviews for each language approve it on top of the regular reviewers. There simply aren't that many reviewers for each language to get enough passes. Tank Battles got TONS of approvals from the community every time it went up - more than the average XBLIG game in fact - it's just that by adding support for every language each time, it became really hard to find reviewers for every single localization by the time the review period was up. Do you have any idea how many languages Gameloft tried to support, and how few developers that actually spend time to review games there are from certain countries? Do you know how hard it is to find, say, French reviewers? Do you know how hard it is to find Italian reviewers and German reviewers and Japanese reviewers all at the same time? It's really frickin' hard because there's not that many of them and there are tons of games in review at all times....
Every time TB went up for review, it would get to 95% complete almost immediately. Then it would stop. You know what this means? It means that a huge number of English speaking reviewers passed it almost immediately, and now it's only missing a few localization reviews; ie reviews from other supported languages. It's hard to gather up enough people from all these countries to do this.
Yes there were a few people that said "I'm going to spend my time reviewing other games instead," but really the majority of the XNA devs didn't care one way or another.
GameLoft's problem was had more to do with the fact that the system requires TONS of specific types of reviews from specific languages when so many are supported.
Pretty much everyone in the community wishes that it were easier to pass games that support multiple localizations but that's just not how it is.
There's really not that much in the way of politics. Everything passes eventually. Just some things pass sooner or later than others depending on the situation. A person like JForce can come into a community, tell everyone they're dumb assholes, then come back and ask for those people's help while breaking a bunch of rules (yes there are certain legit rules they had broken like title safe among others), then throw massive hissy fits and make personal attacks against those reviewers, get temp banned by Microsoft for 2 weeks for those personal attacks, come back and still get their game passed.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
After reading that Kotaku article, seems like that Jforce person is a pretty big tool.
That's been my response to most of the XBLIG stuff I've seen, unfortunately. Maybe I'm unfairly judging things based on the abnormal 1-man/small releases like Minecraft, DF and M&B.
It's pretty cool of GameLoft to try and support so many languages, and pretty shitty of XBLIG to penalize them for doing so.
Ever hear that phrase 'A million (whatever) fans can't be wrong'? As it turns out, they can.
It is very cool of them to support so many languages. In fact many developers now and in the past have wanted to support multiple languages, but you run a huge risk when you do that.
The way the the system is set up makes it really, really hard for any game supporting multiple languages to get through peer review. The process becomes exponentially more difficult with each language added. Now imagine how hard it is to get your game out with every language supported.
It's so difficult that it practically requires luck. I can go into detail about how difficult it is and the problems associated with the system with you support multiple languages if you like but it would be rather long and I don't know if you're interested.
Anyway, the whole XNA community pretty much agrees that the system in place makes it pretty hard and relatively punishing to support mulitple languages. XNA devs want to support more languages off the bat, but it's a huge risk. You end up in review forever and you can't even vaguely estimate a release date when you do so.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
They tried and Microsoft wouldn't approve it, so they moved the game to XBLIG in its then-current form.
Unsurprisingly, since XBLIG isn't regulated by MS, it has a very different set of rules for games to pass than does XBLA. Since GL didn't change anything in the transition it had some initial fails for XBLIG reasons. After that it sat in Limbo for a month at 95% Peer Review Complete status because there just weren't enough reviewers from all the different languages all coming together for the one game, all at the same time.... That did eventually happen though, in the nick of time before TB got dropped from Review (games are dropped from review by the system automatically if they are in Review for over 1 month).
Anyway, in answer to your question, it was meant to be an XBLA game and MS refused to let it on XBLA. We don't know the reason. But right after is when GL decided to put it on XBLIG, all languages supported, and between the different rules and the language issues, it languished in review limbo for really long periods of time.
side note:
it may seem counter intuitive that XBLIG has more strict rules than XBLA. But if you think about it, it's not. XBLIG is not rated by ESRB, and MS cannot control the process directly or else it will run into ESRB issues. Essentially, MS has to provide a list of strict rules and then stay out of it. It has to be strict so that the system doesn't get MS into trouble.. It's hard to explain but hopefully that makes sense.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
The honor thing was actually pretty irrelevant to this whole thing. It started because James Silva, who "Mad3 a Gam3 with Zomb1es In It!1!" created a post on his ska studios blog about the concept of honor and opportunism. Yeah he probably got the idea from the stuff going on in Indies but the problems JForce was having had relatively little to do with that at the time. His blog post wasn't an XNA community forum thing or whatever, it was an article he wanted to write for his website because he thought it was an interesting and debatable topic.
The fact is, there are a lot of people just trying to make games and help each other. Then a person comes in and tells them they're all idiots, and proceeds with conduct so absurd that MS, who is normally hands-off, had to step in and ban the guy for two weeks for his conduct and personal attacks.
The whole "honor" discussion was just a sort of musing among devs that like to follow each other's blogs. The devs in XNA generally have no problem with the "cash grab" style games, and pass them all the time --- assuming they don't break the MS rules laid down of course. Incidentally some of the obvious "cash grab" games are made by really likeable people that have great reputations in the community and are generally liked, and these groups who release games that don't break the rules and don't get banned by MS really have no issues with the XNA community.
JForce picked up on this Blog post and decided that there was a community conspiracy against them based on it. To be honest, it was more a large number of totally apathetic people and a small group of people picked on by JForce themselves. Silva incidentally put it well when he said that when you act like an asshole to your reviewers, you're begging them to "throw the book" at you.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Folk who might be familiar with Rock Band Network get it. Sometimes. Maybe.
Great. Leave the forum moderation to Microsoft then, don't get revenge on people by shitting on their games submission process.
The reviewer process should only be rating the games and making sure they don't make the Xbox catch on fire. I don't care if the person behind the games is well liked or not, when the XBLIG is letting I MAEDE A GAME and Silver Dollar Games through and not this game... no real leg to stand on.
Like I said before, I used to be part of a game making community where people that made good games couldn't get them posted because the main forum admin just didn't like them, and would continually block them or publically make fun of them so new users wanting to get 'in' woudl also join in on the fun-making. And people would make meta 'joke games' all the damn time. The community went from ~100 new posts a day down to like 3 now. It got choked out because people were too concerned about dickchecking each other and feeling a little bit of power rather than you know, just making games.
The game in question broke legitimate rules out right, at first. Any other game would have been failed for the same reasons. At first.
I agree with you that later on there were gray areas and very questionable fails. But essentially once JForce cleaned up the problems that were legitimate rule breaking issues (stuff pointed out at first), the game passed. These were things that were noted when the game first went up on review, but were fixed in a merely piecemeal way over the course of several weeks instead of just fixing them now.
I totally agree it is a shame when this happens. I will say that the reviewers that failed the game didn't like JForce, but they only failed initially for reasons that broke the rules. Later on there were suspect fails and that's where I agree with you -- the rules shouldn't be read in such a way. But technical fails like MS's Title Safe rule? That's totally legit.
I will also say that MS has very strict "content restriction" rules that are not merely technical. This is for ESRB-avoiding reasons. So many fails are for non-technical reasons according to MS guidelines and it has to be this way for XBLIG to exist. As an example it is a valid fail if a "game" is just a video; MS actually has this written rule that your game can't just be a straight up video and nothing else. There are also language and nudity rules and even rules on violence and rules on certain stuff that is seen as racist/prejudice. They even have a rule regarding historical documents in games.
Believe me when I say many XNA devs would like there to be only a set of rules that are for purely technical issues (make sure they don't make the Xbox catch fire type rules). But MS has to set up content restrictions and rules as well and they have to be strict so that it can be hands-free and keep the ESRB issues of their backs.
I agree with you again
Silva and Silver Dollar Games are very knowledgeable about the rules and run into fewer problems. When reviewers find problems, both of these groups quickly address as many of them as they can all at once, instead of dragging it out. Plus, they don't waste their own time by getting banned for weeks at a time... that's not very constructive of one's own time really.
There are many, many games always in peer review. Reviewers are spending personal time away from their own development to help out in the process. When they check out a list of like 40 some odd games, they have to choose, OK which one am I going to work on today? They can spend their time helping people who are extremely helpful in the community, or people that have interesting looking game concepts, or games they think will be easy to review, or whatever. I can imagine that when you are presented with a group of people all asking for your extra time and effort (sometimes hours), that you're more inclined to help the people that are nice to you and to others first. Maybe you want to help everyone, even the people that call you an asshole and make personal attacks, but in most situations that person will probably sort of drift to the lower portion of a person's "I am going to help" list of priorities.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Good numbers for Other M...or at least better than I was expecting.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
I do know that is why tank battles stayed in review for so long. But there was a vocal minority of developers who stated that tank battles should not be passed, because gameloft did not participate in the community and did not "deserve" to release a game. Also there was talk about not passing the game because indie developers had developed the space and now a big company was coming and cashing in (under the today gameloft tomorrow bungie theory). In the end they failed to rally developers against tank battles (which I noted), but it was precedent for the successful rally against j-force.
I agree in that I think it was a poor decision by a few people to try and ignore Gameloft; TB is a good game and good games attract people to the channel. But I'm sorry you feel that way on the second point. It just saddens me that people will take legitimate problems associated with the system (issues regarding languages), and extrapolate a vocal minority onto the XNA community as a whole. It sucks for everyone, but you know, everyone has their opinion. I am glad to hear that at least you know that it was a little minority of people, and that this particular issues passed over relatively quickly regarding Tank Battles. (Or rather I should say that discussion passed over; the game was in Review limbo because of the language problems for quite some time).
However I don't think it was a rally point to shun J-Force. Honestly this is the first time I've heard someone say that. I would say I disagree that the Tank Battles thing turned into the JForce thing but hey, I spend most of my time just trying to help people and get my own game done. I try to stay out of politics and just stick to the rules set by MS and interpret them as reasonably as possible.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
As I said, RBN is a microcosm of it all. Some songs take a long, long time to be approved when very little is wrong with it and some speed right through multiple revisions because it's more popular. The larger difference is I've yet to hear of a chart authoring group that insulted the very people they need to review their songs.
Ah, that's pretty interesting
The stuff that "looks really cool!" usually passes through XBLIG pretty quickly. It's not favoritism, it's just the fact that you spend all this free time and personal effort flipping through 40+ games and you see one with this kickass box art and concept and it looks like a lot of fun, so it's like, Hey I want to check this one out! Maybe that's an inherent bias in the system against boring/drab/derivative/whatever looking games and a bias in favor of cool-looking stuff. But hey this is people's free time and volunteer work, they want to spend that time checking out the stuff that looks fun to them so I can't really blame them. :P
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
There may be better places to ask this, but what is a good price I should be paying for Live Gold? Is it better to hunt for discounts in stores, or use the deals that Microsoft is offering online? Last week they had some 1600 MS points cashin, but I didn't have the money then. Now, they're offering a year for $40, and some ungodly stupid looking hat.
I'm just trying to figure out how best to approach this thing, and my usual go-to guy for all things xbox is incommunicado for the next few days.
Edit: Agreed, this was a cool read, to see how the community of developers is building up.
Well, after you get the usual suspects telling you you're stupid for paying for Gold...
Starting in November, the price for XBL Gold goes from $50 to $60. So anytime you can find a deal less than fifty or sixty, it's a good deal. Depending on how hard you want to look, that $40 and a stupid hat sounds okay. It's not like you have to 'wear' the hat.
Sides, if he's been enough of a tool with personal attacks and whatnot that MS had to step in despite the hands-off policy, sounds like he's his own worst enemy anyways.
Again, totally understand why you guys don't like the guy for acting like a tool, and why some members of that community might think blocking his games somehow is appropriate. And it's not that they're wrong, it's just that once that becomes "okay" someone else is going to try and do the same thing for 'disrespect' or something later, and the list of offenses just gets more and more nebulous until people are getting shit for looking at someone's blog wrong, and then nobody wants to participate anymore.
It's pretty much the slippery slope argument.
But yeah, basically what Fyrewulff said.
Microsoft has provided a list of things that it gives a shit about for accepting games. Whether or not the person submitting it is an asshole is almost certainly not on that list. The community shouldn't have a right to tack on additional requirements.
Edit - Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, by the way.