SMALL FISH, BIG FISH, APOLYTON FISH
By Markos Giannopoulos
July 17, 1999
note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where primarily Markos and Dan write whatever we want :). Well, not just the two of us. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to
civ2@apolyton.net
INTRO
A more suitable title would have "site" instead of "fish", but I thought this was more intriguing. "Hey, did MarkG stated fishing?". And I'm sure Giant Squid will be one of the first people to read it :) Anyway, since nobody volunteered to write a column for this week, I'm discussing a topic this week, which is something I'm thinking for several weeks. It's about fishes (read "Fan Sites"), and what people expect from them when it comes to "attitude" or better critical (or not critical) standing towards the games it covers. I'll exaplain myself.
SMALL FISH
When you're a small fish, like the average civ2 fan site, people who visit you are fans, who love the game like you do. So, your (the webmaster's) view of the game is supposed to be an easy one: You love the game. You did anyway, but noone is expecting anything from you. You're just a fan in the very end. And a happy one as you do what you love to do (write HTML! :)), participate in the community of your favorite game(and from "higher" position of someone who does something for the community), and life goes on like a paradise... I stretched this too much, did I? :)
BIG FISH
When you're a big fish, or act as a big fish, like a gaming site that describes itself as an "indepedent news
source", with reviews that always "say the truth to the gamer", you're on the spot. The visitor expects "the truth and nothing but the truth" when it comes to news, but the bigest issue is reviews. Especially those with ratings since lots of people will
only look at it and miss any points you make. Flaming mails to the author and big debates on whether the reviewer has actually played the game are not uncommon, and at least the latter is something we have seen in our forums.
But of course, it's a job(we're talking about big fishes, remember?) that sometimes has it's bads, so one should not complain. And as a paid man(indirectly supported by the visitors), he should view a game from the angle of what is best for the gamers, not what he likes. For example, if you love the game, will you write "the game crashed several times but we like it a lot", or "it has a couple of bugs, but it's great"?
THE APOLYTON FISH
And we come to the Apolyton fish. It's not a small fish, but it's not a big one either. :) In the last year we have surpassed the level the average fan site, both in terms of visitor numbers, but also in terms of financial status, e.g. dollars :) Not that we are making a living, that we are compensated for our work, or even be in the position to... pay our helpers (hell, that last one would be great, but any payment would be a minimal amount). But we have "escaped" for the position of planing
months ahead when to spend $150US to buy the lease for the UBB script :) We can actually now lease UBB, pay for a domain, and even run "continental-wide" contets(but not world-wide ones!).
So, with that said (most important being the bigger numbers of visitors which means bigger diversity of opinions and attitude towards the games we cover), there comes a question (three actually): what is Apolyton, what is it supposed and what is expected to be? The issue is more important when it comes to C:CTP, as there is a much bigger (then SMAC) portion of civers which think it was a failure. Those civers say that we have been overly positive to the game, biased, and even in secret contacts with Activision :)
Hopefully for me, I liked the game a lot. If during the process of playing it before it's release I dislike it, what was I supposed to do? Debate with Dan on closing the section as the game "stinked", or continue to cover it serving a part of our visitors? I don't have a clear answer, and I'm happy I didn't have to answer that question. Today, 30% of our visitors play C:CTP, while a 15% considers it better than CivII and SMAC (another 15% considers SMAC better than CivII and CTP)...
A CONCLUSION
The truth is that we posted and we post all news we had about C:CTP. We spoted about every signle negative review of CTP (I can't believe I'm writing this as a positive argument :)) We posted all the columns that were sent to us about it, whether or not they were positive or not to the game. We even opened a special guestbook for a our review so that people comment on the review and the game so that other visitors get more opinions.
So, in a sense we did both. We expressed our opinion (which we considered to be right) and we let other opinions be heard too. In future reviews should we take into consideration our own opinion or the average civer's?
PS: THIS IS YOUR COLUMN!
The initial thought for this column was that it would be the way we (Dan and I) to reach out all civers but also to give this ability to the "average civer" too. Eventually. the Column would become the way ONE Civer could be heards by ALL. Almost one year after it began, mostly Dan and I (27 columns out of 50) have covered the Column. I wish in the following year this percentage will be much smaller. One can not really have so many opnions to express in public through a year guys! :)
PSS: AN UGLY TREND
This last week have had a really annoying aspect for me, discovering in 3 (three) occasions another site copying Apolyton. The situations were not identical. but the bottom line is the same: someone works for to have something on his site for hours or even months(yes, months, we have some special stuff on Apolyton which you can only get if you have damn good fan
site and keep it that way for a long period of time) and someone else simply copies the outcome. Isn't it ugly? :)
The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.
