darwinia takes a beating!

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Rkiver
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Postby Rkiver » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:51 am

Parallax you are to be commended for putting yourself in the position to be heavily slated by a community such as this. We tend to be rather loyal. I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, as to be honest Xander covered it rather nicely. The way I see it not everyone likes every game. The review that was given was based on the opinions of those whose played it. It does not reflect the overall game at all. I mean did any of the reviewers actually complete the game? If they had, while still having their issues with it, they may have looked at it in a slightly more favourable light.

That being said, you can't please all the people all the time. Thank you for coming and explaining why you gave the review what you did. We had someone from PCZone do that also a while back, it is nice to get feedback from the reviewers, as well as the developers.
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Postby The GoldFish » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:08 pm

Parallax wrote:At the end of the day though, I stand by my review, and no amount of unreasoned flaming will make me change my mind. And to the guy who thinks we're idiots because we don't like Star Wolves - every review I've read of that so far has slated it.
You can tell what he was expecting, can't you.
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Postby Chris » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:09 pm

We don't normally participate in forum discussions of this kind because its generally better to allow everyone else to have their say, but in this case I will make an exception. Overall I found your review extremely entertaining to read because it offered a different opinion, although it is clear you believed your were reviewing an RTS and scored it appropriately. However, there are a few issues which bothered me much more.

- Firstly, we've built our company very carefully and are proudly self-published. We've seen too many people writing down Pinnacle Software as our publisher. It's a basic journalistic mistake which misses the point of our company.

- Secondly, although you say "other magazines" have scored Darwinia low such as Edge and GamesTM, I think you are wrong due to the perception of those scores. I believe a 7 is perceived as average/middle of the road. Scores above 7 are viewed as good games, and scores below 7 are viewed as bad games. I would consider 5.9 to be a very bad score, certainly not "above average".

- Thirdly, and this is actually the main point of my post here, I take issue with your belief that Darwinia has "split reviewers and commentators", or that half of the reviews are good and half are bad, which I have seen you make on a few web forums now. Looking at our reviews database (see our Exposure section), it seems to me that we have the jolt review at 5.9, Edge and GamesTM at 7, and everyone else (currently 15 other reviews) scoring it 80 - 90%, including 7 scores of 90% and 3 magazine awards for game of the month, one of them from PC Zone where you work. Our average is well into the high 80s, almost 90.

Finally, i'm glad Rhianna got hold of the game at PC Zone before you did :)

Thanks for coming to these forums, that definately takes balls.
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Postby Parallax » Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:29 pm

I've always made it a personal policy to never state in print what I wouldn't be prepared to say to people's faces, so I'm happy to discuss reviews such as this with the community - too many people have a tendency to hide behind their pages.

I'd like to answer the points made by Chris if I may.

- Apologies for the Pinnacle Software error. I hate to pass the buck, but a sub-ed deals with the headers, and chances are they looked it up on GamesPress which lists them as your publisher. I'll arrange to have that corrected asap.

- Games mags such as GamesTM and PC Zone have a very specific and strict review policy which stipulates that 50% means an average game, and even goes so far as to point this out at the beginning of their reviews section each month. I stick to this reasoning when reviewing for Jolt, and therefore intended my score of 59% to indicate that the game was above average, but affected by flaws and design issues. Although some people do translate scores in the way you mentioned, this actually makes a nonsense of the percentage system, which is why we all stick to our "50% means average" philosophy. If I was to use the philosophy you believe people follow, I guess my 59% would become a 69-70%. As it stands though, my score of 59% really isn't that far removed from Edge and GamesTM's 7.

- When I said that Darwinia had split opinion, I didn't mean purely the opinions of published reviewers, but comments I've generally seen posted around the internet. I also wasn't implying that the split was 50/50 either - it would be impossible to tell. My point in saying this is that out of the reviewers of the big-three PC mag reviews that I've discussed the game with, none seem to be able to fully put their finger on why it is that they like Darwinia so much, which leads me to believe that it's the kind of game that will either make a positive connection with you, or leave you slightly cold.

Anyway, as you say, Rhianna certainly likes the game more than I do but, for the record, she finds the AI annoying too :wink:
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Postby Tortanick » Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:43 pm

We have an AI? the viruses are dumb "animals" with preditory instints. squads are quite litrally user controlled, smart squads would be like cars that drive them selves in F1 races. unrealistic and no fun.

I admit the darwinans could be better though :)
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Postby The GoldFish » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:08 pm

Ah, the "They're not people, they're polygons!" defense...
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Postby Parallax » Fri Mar 25, 2005 4:31 pm

It's been a long time since a game has come along and made me think so much about gaming and the industry in general. Yes, we put Darwinia through the pounding mill, so here's my proposal - if Chris (or any of the Introversion guys) would like to write a response to our review and put it into an article, we'll run it on Jolt. How's about that for balanced reporting :wink:

---------------------
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Postby edd8990 » Fri Mar 25, 2005 8:34 pm

^That is very fair. Good on ya.
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Postby Jonax » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:38 pm

Parallax wrote:It's been a long time since a game has come along and made me think so much about gaming and the industry in general.


It's both a curse & blessing of Introversion, really - To truly see both Uplink & Darwinia for what they are, a bit of what we know about the industry has to be disregarded for an open mind :)

As for the review, I'm kinda glad it was posted as it was. There are some parts I have doubts over (like a few others), but a "miss" review needs to be there to appreciate the "hits". The average mass-market "EA gamer" sadly isn't going to take a second look at the game, so it is good to have a review that does reflect that in part. :)

And BTW, respect on coming to the Darwinia forums to explain the outcries from the review. I can't think of many who would, but it takes a lot of balls to do so :)

The only question I really have is - How far did you get through the game? :)
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Postby The GoldFish » Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:18 am

In accord with what I think is the theme so far, I think people just want it to be obvious that this score is as it is because *you don't like* how it has been done, as opposed to saying *it is a bad game* because of how it has been done - though really they mean the same thing, the latter suggests that little effort was put in and that the whole thing is a botch job. It's like marmite, you either love it or hate it - the only way to know is to try. I have just as much a problem with reviews that say Darwinia is unbelievably fantastic - usually they don't mention how unorthadox it is and that you might not like it.

Putting "If only there was a decent game behind it…" right at the end of your initial paragraph might be considered somewhat unfair, there is a decent game behind it, you just don't like what it is. Besides, is 5.9/10 somehow indecent? I'd say that with that score, it would indeed qualify as a decent game, if your "50% means average" policy is to be believed - it just doesn't seem to tie up, and it's things not tieing up that people are going to have problems with - it's not an attack on you or anyone else for not liking the game.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!
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Postby Darksun » Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:33 am

The thing with ~50% reviews is that 50% means average. Most gamers don't want average, they want great, which means that average is somehow poor... or something.
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Postby XenoFur » Sat Mar 26, 2005 1:47 am

the point about average is: it's very difficult to actually say what an average game is. how would you measure being average? by taking all games from now to way back in 1970 and rating them against each other?

from how i have understood ratings so far it works like this: 90% is a flawlessly executed game that brings fun from the beginning to the end and has no bugs. everything above that means the game excels way beyond other games by several criterias. 0% means the game is absolutely no fun and prolly wouldn't be to any alive human and/or is hopelessly bugged to the point of being unplayable, no matter what. everything else falls in between.
is there a possibility to see an explanation of your ranking system? i'd like to find out what your definition of average is.

@star wolves: sorry, i misphrased, he didn't say it's bad because it plays like homeworld, true. he criticised points of it that can be found, almost exactly like that, in homeworld. if you're interested i could write up the specifics in a comment on your site. also, i didn't mean to imply that your reviewer spent only 30 minutes on it, it rather reads like he went into a game which he didn't like from the start-off and then was forced to endure it for a few hours.
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Postby Mr.Easy » Tue Mar 29, 2005 3:50 am

Since I am somewhat implicated in this (being the editor that approved it) and because I like to rant as much as the next person, I've posted my own take on the issues being discussed here.

http://www.jolt.co.uk/index.php?articleid=3524
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Postby elDiablo » Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:37 am

That is actually a nice post. And you are right, most of us here are fan-boys. Which is good if you ask me :)

But thank you for posting...

(Gotta rush, so no long post >_< )
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Postby The GoldFish » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:49 pm

I'm sorry, I thought I had a problem with the linguistic/numeric double standard and suggestion that, even though a good number of other people really like it, it's actually not very good and you shouldn't try it, as opposed to, 'how can you not like the game it's fantastic'.

It worries me that, when you say what the 'secret truth' (read, blatent fact) is, it fails to dawn on people that when doing a review of anything, their opinion of the game isn't what people are after, it's if the reviewer thinks that a member of the target audience should try/buy the game or not. So far as I've read (which granted isn't alot), there is not one good review of Darwinia. It would be nice if someone had the common sense to say "we really dis/like it because, we think you'll dis/like it, but TRY THE DEMO, because we *could be wrong*", rather than attempting to mark Darwinia as a good, or above-average-but-in-decent game. You can't deny (as the reviewer does) some aspects of the game, just as you shouldn't overstate them (as many of the praising reviews do), and just as importantly, vice versa for it's downfalls. Just think, if someone actually *thought* about what they were writing, maybe you'd have a review that people *could* put some stock in.
-- The GoldFish - member of former GIT and commander in chief of GALLAHAD. You could have done something, but it's been fixed. The end. Also, play bestgameever!

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