Independent Adventuring column back on-line

[scourge]

Look. I've always been nice to everyone, i try and play most AGS games released. I always give compliments (never afraid of things like that as some others) and i accept all the critique given for my game in my page since you people know a lot of adventure games. I really love the feedback. I generally don't mind what people say about my game. I've never complained on these forums.

But i don't care who this jozef is. He said something that cuts me deep. Sure it might not be a game you like, but i'ts playable. I don't appreciate his comment on that and i think it foolish. I have been waiting for the older members to jump on my back as soon as i say something like that since that's what they do even though i'm nice to them and play there games.

I have nothing more to say.

[modgeulator]

I wouldn't want to discourage anyone who takes the time to play, evaluate and review amateur games but I think you should turn the cynicism level right down. I think your reviews have the tone of commercial game reviews, with an unspoken belief that you as a player are in someway entitled to high-quality entertainment. You can make value judgments and tell of your experiences but you must remember that ultimately you are entitled to nothing from a freeware amateur game.

"January offered a mix of very good games and titles, which were a disgrace to the adventure gaming community."

Here you are straight out stating that some of the games released this month, reviewed on your page, are "a disgrace to the adventure gaming community." I think you should consider what an aggressive statement that is. This is not the work of large companies being paid you are talking about, it is the work of amateurs who are doing this simply because they have a passion for it.

"January was a month of good news and a few good titles. Unfortunately, it also featured a few sub-par games. This time, however, the production value stayed way above average, and instead it was the scripting that hurt those titles. I remain very hopeful, though. For me, it indicates that new authors are playing with adventure engines, and that soon they'll deliver much better titles."

Again you are implying that none of these titles meet some level or standard you are demanding. Again there is an expectation that you feel entitled to be entertained. I am not surprised buloght took offence.

I think what you are doing is great, but you need to reconsider how you sometimes come across. These are not commercial games. You are reviewing the fruits of someone's hobby. I think serious care must be taken to appreciate the time and dedication put into these projects.

[Helm]

Buloght, please calm down, don't blow this out of proportion. There's no conspiracy against you. You can't ask someone to take down a review of your game just because you are hurt by it, it doesn't work this way. You're free to disagree with his review as much as he's free to write it and post it.  I haven't played your game but I hear it IS playable and it is good, but that doesn't mean someone can't disagree.


Jozef: No I'm not kidding, the readme was part of the 'theme' me and ghormak went for. We were trying to capture the ambience of an old c64 game, that sort of thing.

Now, I know that you play a boatload of these free adventure games every month, and you can't afford to dig deep in each and every one, but what I see is that maybe you should make more of an effort on the investigation side of the review. The games aren't made in a vacuum, so if they're orow games, that should be mentioned, if they're 'theme' games, that should be mentioned. If you disregard that aspect of reviewing, what you're left with is 'I played this, it was ok/bad/great/unplayable' which I guess IS a needed service to people who want to play the 'good' AGS games out of the pile and trust your opinion, but the issue is, do you want your reviews to be just that, or do you want to give constructive criticism back to the creators, and also inform the readers of more specific traits of the games? There's fine lines, and boy, do you have a workload on your hands that concern them.

If you find yourself pressured for time and you have to play an ags game to test it, don't. That's not a good mindset to sit down with an adventure game, you will quickly grow impatient at first stuckage and might rush to conclusions about how 'playable' it is. If you're trying to give your readers an unbiased opinion of the merits of these games, give them a fresh chance, every one of them. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's the honest thing to do.

[Barbarian]

Buloght:Ã,  Amateur or Hobby Adventure Game Making is something that should be enjoyable, regardless of positive or negative critisisim that a game might receive. Just learn from it and strive to keep improving your game-makin' skills.Ã, 

Ã,  Ã,  I don't always agree with some of Jozef's opinions / comments regarding some of the games he reviews as well, and yes, sometimes his comments does seem to come off as a bit blunt / harsh or unhelpful / un-constructive.Ã, 

Ã,  Ã, Sometimes he has given some of my past projects positive comments, and sometimes negative comments (or comments I don't quite agree with or perhaps don't quite understand why), and sometimes he will give a project a mix of both positive & negative comments.Ã,  I appreciate the time he takes to play all these adventure games, and I appreciate and respect his opinions & comments, even if I don't always agree with what he says.

Ã,  Ã,  What it comes down too is, it should NOT really matter too much what just one person may say about your game. He's not an all-authority-all-knowing-entity. He's just one guy who seems to love playing adventure games, and likes to share some of his comments / opinions, even though perhaps sometimes his comments at times seem harsh or may make little-sense.Ã,  Regardless, everyone should feel welcome to express their thoughts / opinions as they like.Ã,  Just look at it as a learning experience and move on, and go to make even better games.

Ã,  Ã, There's an old saying that comes to mind: "You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

Ã,  Ã, Anyways, if you look at the overall majority of what people had to say about your game, from what I seen most of the people that played your game really enjoyed it and said positive comments.Ã,  I myself thought your game was wonderful and much enjoyed it... however, I did find using the Map a bit awkward too, but not to the point that I would say it's "unplayable", just for me it was a bit "awkward".Ã,  Ã, Anyways, no worries, you had fun making your game, people had fun playing your game, and not everything in a game can always be "perfect".Ã,  I, and I'm sure many adventure-gaming-fans around here, would very much enjoy to play any future games you care to make and share with us.Ã,  Ã, 

Ã,  Ã, Don't give up at it, as I think that would be a shame.Ã,  I think you obviously have a LOT of talent and potential, so don't throw it all away just on the odd "negative" comment, kay?Ã,  ;)Ã,  Hey, if you get like like aroundÃ,  90% comments like "Wow! Great! Awesome! Loved it!", and maybe around 10% Comments like "It sucked! Bah! Unplayable!"... Geee, man, I'd be happy with a percentage like that.Ã, 

[SSH]

I'd neve have noticed that bad review of buloght's game if he hadn't made such a fuss about it.

[Afflict]

Heh, this guy never probably made it off the raft of the ship. But as they say everybody has a right to their own opinion. I read this very depressing thread and moved along to

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24728.msg317889#msg317889

this one and was happy again.    see my colgate smile?

In anycase moving along; Bulloght tried something new, hes interface may or may not be accepted by some
and altough he had a very short time of production he released one of the games I can easily rate in my top ten
AGS.

Buloght : Well I must say that you are one in few, you do what many others wish to do and you will get burned for it... (at the stake like witches were ) bat alas me matey these land lubbers do not know what ye be holding in ye heart is the key to true adventure treasure! Thas be waiting great success on you Buloght.

Anyway what I am saying is that few dare to change what they already perceive as perfect, for there minds are
to shallow and weak to see beyond the limitation that there once were (in there cases still are) So no sweat of your back Buloght as many of us respect your game your skill and your efforts at producing these wonderfull titles!

Cheerz

Afflict

[Mordalles]

well, i totally aggree with modgelator. calling people's hobbies "sub-par" is pretty rude. im sorry i disappointed josef, but then again, i didn't make the game for him, i made it for me.

i think calling buloght's game unplayable just because you can't solve one (really easy puzzle), is ridiculous.

now, i have read most of his reviews, and having played all the games myself, i have to say josef is really inconsistent in his reviews, and some of his views are just completely unprofessional. actually, i don't know if there is any use in reading his reviews, since he makes a lot of uninformed remarks and sometimes it just seems he doesn't know a lot about what he is reviewing. i hope he doesn't get offended, i'm just reviewing the reviewer. so just an opinion. i hope im entitled to it.

[Afflict]

Well I cant even get into the website as it keeps on timing out? Dunno doesnt sound like that big of a los to me anyway...

Maybe Jozef should get someone else to help him do reviews, so that there are two people writing reviews.. IMO someone completely oppposite of him that would help. Cause people relate to different people,

[scourge]

Thanks helm, i am glad you're are not simply dismussing my argument I don't mean to be angry towards the older members but they were pretty quick to back josef.

Thansk barbarian and afflict and mordalles Ã, 

and say this. I don't mind bad or good reviews. It's fine saying my interface isn't all that good (i see that too) and will learn from it. I thank Grundi and Zooty for telling me about it.

But saying someone's game is unplayable is ridicuous if it's not, I haven't found one AGS game this year unplayable. I spent too much effort on my game and trying to make it user-friendly for josef to make that comment.

If you can't finish a puzzle (it's not even a hardf puzzle IMO) it's completely unfair calling the game unplayable and I refuse to accept that. That is the worst kind of comment you can receive for a game. I'm not some 5-year old imbecile that made a game that crashes each time the inventory opens.

He should change what he wrote, i don't care if he didn't like my game, i don't care if he gives me constructive criticism, i love that, thanks to all the people in the community who has given me this in my thread. I want to learn from that and become a better game maker. But Josef, that comment doesn't apply and i don't like it you calling it that on your public independent site, rather give it a bad review.

PS. Cedric and The Revolution is not a sup-par game Jozef. If i understand your website correctly.

[MrColossal]

As I see it Jozef, reviews games as his hobby in his free time, why does "professional" apply to him and not to us game makers?

And because you think I was dismissing your arguement is just another reason why you just don't understand what is going on or what Jozef wrote in that particular review. You didn't appear to read anything I wrote since you think everyone else can have an opinion and tell you about your game BUT Jozef. You keep leaving off the word "personally", that he could not complete the game.

Let's see your last comment with a little edit:

"But saying someone's game is personally unplayable is ridicuous if it's not, I haven't found one AGS game this year personally unplayable. I spent too much effort on my game and trying to make it user-friendly for josef to make that comment."

Every AGS game that came out you were able to beat, no problems? I can think some I couldn't beat and they were just in the OROW competitions.

He also couldn't beat 1213 because he isn't good at fast reaction arcade like games, that makes 1213 personally unplayable.

"MrColossal i don't think you would have played it anyway. "

Why? Because I'm a member of some Anti-Buloght League?

[Snarky]

Look, buloght, you realize that a reviewer can't just remove a review because the creator of the game doesn't like it, right? That would make the whole exercise pointless.

Now, apparently what happened to Jozef was that at some point early in the game, he was supposed to do one thing, but he thought he was supposed to do something else. Since he wasn't able to do what he thought he had to do, no matter how hard he tried, the game appeared unplayable to him. It would be like someone playing a platform game and trying to shoot the enemies when you're just supposed to jump on them.

Now, the wonderful thing about adventure games you make yourself is that any problem with the game, you can fix! A couple of other people have also said they had problems with this bit, so maybe there's something confusing about it? It could be a really easy puzzle if you look at it the right way, but really difficult if you look at it the wrong way. (I don't know, I haven't played it. I downloaded it and was planning to, but your behavior hasn't really encouraged me to try it.) Maybe you should provide a hint, or rephrase the instructions to be clearer, or allow multiple solutions... It's up to you.

I don't understand why "unplayable" is the one thing we're not allowed to call your game. Is it really that much worse than, say: "This is a really bad game that isn't fun to play at all. Totally useless"? Jozef's review was so hedged in its criticism that it really didn't make me want to play the game any less at all, which the example would have.

I think everyone who's played a few games Jozef has reviewed knows that his opinions are not the ultimate authority, and that he sometimes just doesn't get it. He completely failed to understand META, for example. Hey, Roger Ebert didn't get Blade Runner, it happens to the best! His reviews are really useful for drawing attention to little-seen games that are actually quite good (and for that I think he provides a great service to players and creators alike), but they don't make me stay away from games that have been praised in the forums or that look promising.

So chill. If the worst thing said about your game is "a lot of people think it's really good, but I never got past the first screen, so I found it unplayable," you should count yourself lucky. Saying you'll never make another adventure game, or never publish them, that's just throwing a tantrum.

[Pesty]

"MrColossal i don't think you would have played it anyway. "

Why? Because I'm a member of some Anti-Buloght League?

No, you are the leader of the Anti-Everybody League! Haven't you noticed that you don't like anyone ever and you have personal vendettas against them all!?

[Snarky]

"MrColossal i don't think you would have played it anyway. "

Why? Because I'm a member of some Anti-Buloght League?

Hey! Don't talk as if all anti-buloght leagues are the same. That kind of thinking is buloghtian. There are important doctrinal differences between for example Mothers Against Buloght, the Resist Buloght (Trotskyite Chapter) underground movement, www.buloghtbad.org, Fatwa al-Buloght, the government-sponsored Parents: The Anti-Buloght, and People For Being Against Buloght.

[Helm]

Whereas I understand all the points you guys are making and generally I agree, I do not think you can pretty up the world 'unplayable' from a point and onwards. It's not the same as saying 'this game, personally, I found it to not be my cup of tea'. I don't see the need to twist words around. Unplayable, personally or not, means the game is significantly broken in ways that PROBABLY will annoy or confuse most users. This is an unsaid assumption that is very easy to make. Should jozef have the right to say this or that game is broken? Sure, I'm not saying any different. But the discussion of whether it actually is broken is warranted as well.

[MrColossal]

I don't understand what you're saying Helm. It seems like "I don't agree one on point of what you guys are saying but I do agree on that point also..."

If a user gets stuck because of a game design element, wouldn't you consider that a problem and from a user's stand point to be "broken" or "personally unplayable"?

It's not about the game being someone's cup of tea or not. That's content more often than not. I'm not interested in games like Guild Wars because it isn't my cup of tea. I am interested in AGS gamse and if I play them then more often than not they are my cup of tea. If I can't complete the game then it becomes unplayable for me. Excuse me if I'm confused, because...

I am!

[Helm]

I agree that buloght should take it easy, stop asking for the comment to be removed because life doesn't work that way.

I disagree that 'personally unplayable' conveys what you and snarky are saying it conveys. I understand how someone would take offense to 'unplayable' and not to 'I didn't like it'. Even if both are admittedly subjective views, the first seems to imply that the problems encountered were problems of design, whereas the latter can mean a lot of things, usually that the game is well done but didn't suit one's fancy.

The review says 'a lot of people say this is a good game' and then 'for this and that reason I found it personally unplayable'. The fact of the matter is, the problem which rendered the game 'personally unplayable' for jozef, was getting stuck in a puzzle. If -especially before the internet- that counted to make adventure games personally unplayable, then I guess me getting stuck on a Fate of Atlantis puzzle for A FULL MONTH would make the game quite 'personally unplayable', right?

[Afflict]

In laymans terms

Broken: out of working order.

How many people did complete the game due to not giving up on puzzles?

IOW : Couldnt due to the fact that the game crashed (not the system)
           The game not being in working order aka BROKEN (see detials above.)

By those terms which Helm so nicely put means that 80% of the worlds population
find the Rubic cube "personaly unplayable"

[MrColossal]

How does this relate to Jozef?

Because he wrote something on his blog means that now everyone who gets stuck in a game has to call the game personally unplayable?

He said that he tried to do exactly what people on these forums said to do to pass the first screen and it still didn't work.

I've tried playing Discworld Noir many times and each time I get to 1 part where I can't progress. I follow all the walkthroughs and it just stops. Unplayable to me, other people have beat it. Same difference. Your FoA bit and Rubik's cube don't apply.

[Helm]

I'm sorry, I think you're being needlessly argumentative.

How does this relate to Jozef?

Quite directly. A reviewer reviews stuff, he should be careful with the distinction outlined above.

Because he wrote something on his blog

Because he has taken it upon him to play all these freeware games and share his reviews of them with the community, yes, he should take care of what he says and how valid it is. This is not an unreasonable request. By strawman-ing this, "some guy wrote on his blog", you neglect the specifics of the issue.

means that now everyone who gets stuck in a game has to call the game personally unplayable?

No. It means that Jozef should perhaps consider what is actually broken/unplayable, and what simply proved to be a challenge for him to solve. If there's bad puzzle design, cool, that's critique. If it's actually broken, cool, that's critique, fix it. If he just got stuck early and gave up, that's neither broken, nor bad puzzle (yet).

He said that he tried to do exactly what people on these forums said to do to pass the first screen and it still didn't work.

Fuzz mentioned on irc that it might actually be a bug. An actual bug. If this is the case that a bug exists, then the broken/unplayable thing is very valid! Is it, though? And I agree that when you know what you have to do and the game seems to resist that's usually bad game design. But bad game design isn't the same as unplayable game design.

[Afflict]

How does this relate to Jozef?

This relates to him because he said "Unplayable" I dont see how still but whatever.

Because he wrote something on his blog means that now everyone who gets stuck in a game has to call the game personally unplayable?

He did, and according to you, you did the same thing... as follows

I've tried playing Discworld Noir many times and each time I get to 1 part where I can't progress. I follow all the walkthroughs and it just stops. Unplayable to me, other people have beat it.

and its like you said...

Same difference.

Your FoA bit and Rubik's cube don't apply.

Huh ok so you say if you cant solve something its "personaly unplayable" so how does this not apply?
once again...

Same difference.

Ps helm and I posted same time..