02-09-2003 11:43									#1
	Re: Tell me what you think Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Kinda long reply to benstandby's "Tell me what you think" post. He raised several points that I wish to respond to.

< mega snipping engaged >

quote: Taking a step-wise approach, I think that the first major piece would be to form an advocacy group: a not-for-profit consumer development organization that would serve to advance the cause of the gamer by bringing the full force of gamers, their websites, their magazines, and most importantly their money down on the corporations that fund, design, and manufacture the games they play. The objective here would be to hold these corporations accountable for their business practices by compiling a database of those practices, publishing both an online and printed journal, and serving as a place where complaints can be synthesized and presented to corporations, the public, and- if necessary- the authorities.

While this sounds good please consider the realities of what you are asking. Look at what Ralph Nader has had to go thru to protect the public from big corporations.

quote: This would be a formidable task indeed, however. So the first thing that would have to happen is to grease the wheels of the machine we call free market. Grant money and loans would need to be secured before anything major could be done, but while the grant writing (read: waiting) is taking place, gamer’s magazines, websites, and forums could be contacted. These institutions are key to keeping the gaming community cohesive, and relationships with them would be critical to the success of any endeavors in this arena.

Here the biggest problem is that a lot of these sites and publications receive income from ads placed by the developers and the publishing houses.

quote: I have broken this step down into three areas. Each would need to be approached in slightly different ways due to the culture of each. The most formal and professional of these institutions would be the gamer’s magazines like PC Gamer, GMR Magazine, and PC Zone. With these kinds of institutions, press releases and letters to the editor would be the most effective way to get information about our organization into their publications and to their readers. Until some measure of success has been achieved, there would be no point in wasting our effort on anything other than letting them know that we exist. Later, these institutions would be a wonderful tool to direct against corporations that exploit the gaming population, but they tend to have a view of the video game scene that is magazine and industry centered. A grassroots style organization like the one I’m proposing would not be considered newsworthy until it has done something.

Here again the gamer doesn't see the game until after it is released by the publisher. The pre-released games are reviewed by staff whose job it is to help promote the games. Even publications that have rating systems say from one to five will give a very poor game a 2.5.

And once the game is out it would take over three months for a buyer's review to get to the readers. And then you have games that appeal to certain people and not others. If I reviewed some of the games my children play I'd rate them from very poor to so-so, while my children would rate them as top of the line.

I don't know how you'd remove subjectivity from the game testing and more importantly from the game reviews.

quote: This is why I would start with the more humble, but pivotal forums and websites. Sites like Civfanatics (www.civfanatics.com), Apolyton (www.Apolyton.net), and Game Rankings (www.gamerankings.com) are the water temples of this industry and its communities.

The problem with using "fan" sites is that it is too easy to start flame wars when making a bad review. And as these are fan sites the moderators are usually fans too and the reviewer faces banning or warning for making flamitory posts.

quote: These sites would have to be enticed with some kinds of incentives, but links on their sites to a website that we create for the Video Game Research Institute (or VGRI [the independent research organization/consulting firm that I would create]) would be too important to miss. This would be the most important aspect of the entire networking process.

Lofty idea here. You should consult with Ralph Nader.

quote: The VGRI seal of approval would be a program that upon implementation, absolutely creates the kind of feedback needed to truly assess the organization’s power in the industry as a force for equity and accountability. It would be a set of criteria that any game must meet in terms of both quality and honesty in how a game is designed and marketed. This seal would be totally voluntary for companies to seek out and obtain the rights to display for a game’s box, but if enough gamers were on board the mission of the organization would buy only games that are approved by a private, reputable organization as up to a certain quality, functionality (as in, “does it work?”), and that they are indeed what they are advertised as, the industry would feel the weight of VGRI. On the other hand, if we haven’t made any impact at all, we’ll know it within a year when nobody cares about our little seal and people are still getting gouged at the checkout stand.

When was the last time you bought a new car, or even a used car, and looked for the Ralph Nader seal of approval?

There is a much better way of dealing with companies like IG/Atari and QSI. A simple class action suit where it can be shown the what you payed money for was not fit for public consumption. Basis for the suit is the comparison of "BOX" games and "PC" games. How many BOX games have had updates after release to fix programming problems? How many PC games?

Simply put the publishers for PC based games are taking advantage of the buyers by releasing buggy software with the idea that they can patch it after release. Atari/QSI went way beyond this doctrine with MoO3. The only way to make the game industry publishers clean up their act is to hit them in the pocket book. There are only two ways to do this. First is to pass laws that require ALL retailers to accept game returns for a full refund of the purchase price in CASH including shipping charges which the game publisher will be responsible for covering! Second is hold the publishers accountable, in court if necessary.

	02-09-2003 17:24									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I think you are confusing the economics of the PC game business, which assumes post release support (read: patching) because they can, and consumers tolerate it, with bad business practices.

Granted Infogrames is not doing so well and is trying to screw consumers out of more by giving less, their other brands have done relatively well. Although the way they rushed Civ3 Play The World XP to the market indicates that the profit motive can and do get in the way of making a better game.

Moo3 has a poor manual. The game's UI is muddled. There are bugs (every game these days have bugs--mostly because of complexity not from the lack of trying to weed them out) Blizzard hired hundreds of testers to test their games, and they still have bugs.

At the end of the day, I still get to design my ships and blow things up. Good enough for me.

Edit: One additional comment on patches. I've seen how patching often extend beyond just fixing bugs, but also improving game AI and or tweaking how the game behaves. Often times, these things can't be seen beforehand until you have large amounts of people playing the game and giving the developer feedback.

This is especially true for games like Moo, or Civilization, where a lot of the player behavior to AI actions is often assumed in the development stage because there are only so many beta testers they can hire. When the game hits the street, the feedback is often more concrete and developers immediately find areas where changes need to be made to stop an exploit or to make the AI smarter at doing something. The vanilla Civ 3 AI that came in the box is an order of magnitude weaker than the final AI you get to play against in the last patch available for the game.

Last edited by dexters on 03-09-2003 at 00:11

	03-09-2003 09:19									#3
	Got spare money?

An additional note. Litigation can be a powerful tool to get companies to get their act together. Infogrames and generally the financially strapped big publishers have a tendcy to try to weasel things out of consumers by charging high prices, delivering products early and giving little in the box.

I was really surprised they started packaging their games without jewel cases. I mean, how cheap can you go?

That however is a corporate issue. Many many publishers in the industry do a good job of giving consumers a good deal. Again, EA and Maxis' Sim City 4 and its upcoming expansion should be noted. $20 for the expansion. $10 rebate. And the original game itself, while not without bugs, is quite good and has had solid post release support in terms of new content and add-ons.

	03-09-2003 09:27									#4
	Full PM-box? Change here!

I agree with you on the fact that there are some good publishing houses. However Atari needs to be taken down a few notches and the rest of the rip-off publisher put on notice.

	04-09-2003 09:49									#5
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

All words. Action anyone?

	06-09-2003 02:12									#6
	nice Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I am supremely happy at the response this has gererated. Admittedly, I did the project in two nights and could have done much better if I had done more research. It was for a pretty dumb class that was extremely disorganized, and it got me the B I wanted.

Video game culture and more specifically the speech communities that develop out of them (Dell Hymes) is what I am doing my graduate research on. If you guys are serious, let me know. If anyone really wants to try to organize something here's my email.

bensshow@hotmail.com

I also wrote an ethnography of communication on Counterstrike.

	06-09-2003 02:18									#7
	I didn't realize... Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I just read the old thread. Ouch. I hadn't realized. The paper is THAT bad?

Well, that's what no research and no sleep gets you.

I'm sorry for spamming. I really didn't mean to.

I really am sorry.

	06-09-2003 08:40									#8
	Re: nice Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by benstandby I am supremely happy at the response this has gererated. Admittedly, I did the project in two nights and could have done much better if I had done more research. It was for a pretty dumb class that was extremely disorganized, and it got me the B I wanted.

Congrats on the B.
(It exceeded my prediction. )

	06-09-2003 15:40									#9
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Paper must have been graded on the "Distance method". Where the papers aren't read by the grader but tossed and if they cross a given line they get that grade. The weighter the paper the further it will fly.

	07-09-2003 10:58									#10
	Grade Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I think I got a B because I was president of the stupid club that met during class time, even though I wrote a huge, meandering rant about a video game as a final project.

My room mate got an A and he did ZERO work. I think it was because he went to Africa (our professor loves Africa) for 3 months through a program the professor was part of.

So I'm not complaining