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No Publisher Love For Darwinia
Next Generation has a conversation with the lead designer of the much lauded game Darwinia. From the article: "It sports astonishing graphics and original gameplay elements that weave their way around a decent story. Reviewers like it but, as is so often the case, publishers can't seem able to convince themselves it has anything other than niche market value. We spoke to Chris Delay about the frustrations and challenges of independence and originality..."
This game should be at least tried out, especially by retro fans even though it's not a retro game at all. It's very respectful of old games in its style.
It's a shocking indication of the state of the game industry that no publisher will pick this up. It is a superb game, exactly the type that people are clamouring for at games keynote speeches and such like.
Someone needs to fire all marketing departments across the whole industry. What chance does the industry have to mature and develop if chances like this get blankly refused every time.
It's the base story of Planescape:Torment all over again.
Once you make a game that's awesome for a certain type of people (let's stereotype "Slashdotter" here a bit), you're pretty much locked in that demographic.
Publishers hate niche products, even if they would be embraced by 90+% of that niche and a bit of the "neighbouring" ones... it's just not "profitable enough" for them.
On the other hand, the fact that the game is so small (and has no shred of decent copy-protection) makes it a prime candidate for "pirating".
Heck, they should just release it as shareware than bother with a publisher.
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Hm, at seems already perfectly purchasable at a quite sharewarely pricing.
p roducts_id=52
http://store.introversion.co.uk/product_info.php?
MfG Lobosch
I've seen the game on sale in most, if not all, games shops and in some it makes it into the #10 (though maybe this is the review chart and not the sales chart?)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
... that really sucks, darwina is a *great* game, I had a total ball with it. Unfortunete that the new xcom's and privateers aren't going to see the light of day in a big way because publishers are afraid to step a half inch outside the formula of unoriginal duplicate games they've been selling for two years. It's a large part of whats hurting the game industry at this point. sad really. :(
Shadus
Shareware, as in "download now, pay later if you like". And 20 pounds (30 USD or 30 Euro) is hardly "sharewarly pricing"... cut it down by a factor of 4 or 5 to get it right.
The reason behind my personal opinion of "do it shareware" ? As I said, a game that's FULL VERSION at around 30 MB and has no copy protection... what's there to stop you from downloading it ilegally other than your consicence ? I'd rather see them get 20 shareware donations of 5 euro average than sell 3 copies for 30 euros each.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
Everyone has been waiting for an successful game to be developed and distributed independently. Well, here it is (maybe...)! I sincerely hope they can get distribution in the US market without a publisher, and possibly show the way for other developers. In time this can create a new development and distribution model that does not rely so heavily on marketing and fiscal-year concerns.
Publishers pass on most of the creatie and unique titles in favor of "safe" ones. I've been on this side of the industry and it really begins to piss you off when you see great, innovative project after project get scrapped or turned away time and time again from publishers. It is so frustrating.
The next-gen 360 and PS3 aren't going to help matters either. The development costs and efforts are going to be big risk and no one is going to stray much from the center. This is a loss for all gamers everywhere.
I get bashed for saying it, but these two consoles need to fail and fail big. If they are massive successes the game industry is going to become even more fractured and broken. They are doing nothing but perpetuating the core problem of the industry, and amazingly making it worse.
I am hoping Nintendo can buck the trend, not out of fanboyism or love for Nintendo, because I would say the same of any company that was taking their stance in this new console war.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
The clueless corporate purchasing minions are the same everywhere, in all walks of commerce. Just like in music, they only buy the crap they bought before, to strict formula. After all, their jobs could be on the line for a bad decision.
So don't expect any of the larger publishers to buy a truly original game. They're not staffed by gaming *FANS*, but by 9-to-5'ers who have no personal love for the genre. It's a job.
In any event, forget publishers. It's 2005, self-market online. If you need help, use marketting minions, don't sell your soul to marketting overloards in a megamachine.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Q:What exactly is wrong with this question?
A:It assumes that listening to your conscience is a bad thing.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Is it just me or is there a nod to tron in one of the screenshots? http://www.darwinia.co.uk/screenshots/t_image6.jpg
Publishers make their real money by putting down the cash for the development of a game. Darwinia is finished; this means they get less control over the game, and less money for their investment. Given the already overwhelming number of talented independent game makers wheeling and dealing for publishers, the people who work for publishers are interested in the next big hit, a financial blockbuster.
Darwinia isn't going to be a blockbuster. It's interesting, but it hasn't had the press scores and coverage that publishers leverage for their piece of shit "like metal gear with more buttons". The good news is that Darwinia can be self-published quite easily. They won't ever score the big contract with Wal-mart, but there's plenty of publishers who regret that once their stock languishes on the shelf.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Maybe they haven't found distribution for their Windows version... but I got the Max OS X version of Darwinia two months ago from Ambrosia Software.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Stupid decisions:
Summary: A game that'd be nice as result of one of the indy game dev contests, but as commercial product it simply makes so many mistakes that cannot be excused by "art", "indy" or the one I'm expecting to creep up here soon, "Innovation". Sorry, try harder next time and try innovating on the side of story, genre and actual gameplay, not controls, please...
I looked at it a while back. It wasn't clear from the website exactly what the game was. Quoting from the game guide:
Uhm... what? Sure doesn't sound like the description of a game that's going to be compelling.
It also describes the requirements as "Windows 98". I do have a windows box set aside for games, but it runs XP. It didn't look likely enough to run nor interesting enough to play to be worth downloading teh demo.
I know y'all can't stand marketing in any shape or form, but there are some basics that are really important. A website that makes the game sound as though it doesn't suck and will run on my OS is a good start.
like Ambrosia. They have Darwinia listed. I think I will snub my nose at the "Big" publishers that lack the stones to give a game like this a shot. So my advice to all of you out there. Go to small shops like Ambrosia and others like them. Buy from them and show your support for creativity.
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
...or someone making fun of those who actually think like that.
1. # ALT+TAB to switch between units.
The unit are programs... It's the most logical thing to do. To terminate them is to hit Control+C just like you would in a Unix terminal. Oh my... A game that actually acts like a real world computer system.
2. Mouse Gestures only to create units. It's slow and thus counterproductive, RTS-nuts will hate it and I have to ask "why?".
I bet you don't use mouse gestures in other programs either. Like... Um... Firefox extensions? They are wonder things if you dig them. If you don't well... Go play WC3.
3. Navigation. WASD only + mouselook and up+down via QE or mousewheel, which works the wrong way around for me. Does the full version allow me to customze that? It's not hard to implement, you know?
I don't know. It's seemed so intuitive to me from playing all sorts of FPS games for the past 5 years that I never bothered looking to customize the game.
4. Graphics, or lack thereof. I could easily accept the bad graphics and models from a freeware game, but honestly, it looks butt-ugly. The Darwinians are sprites! Why exactly does this game require a 3D-Card?
Arrrgh... It's supposed to look like that. You know... Are you too young to remember Tron? Or maybe the first Lawnmower man movie? If I wanted something that didn't look like a throw back to a 1980's movie I would have bought Doom3 or something, but no... I found this very fun and "artsy" and actually did buy the full version.
5. The highly praised story. Er, excuse me? Story? The original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen and even Doom had more "story", their's usually filled more than one screen... Yeesh, if similar games usually have even less of it...
*hits head on desk* Obviously if you played the game all the way through (which you need to buy the full version) you'd would have noticed the really cool plot line of the evolution of the Dawinians and all the screens sometimes I sort of said to myself "I hope they hurry up with the cut scene story so I don't miss anything so I can hit pause and use the bathroom!" because it was that interesting on occasion.
I just don't know... Maybe the game is too deep for some people. Thats why I guess we seen copies of the same damn game every year by the same people with no innovation whatsoever. By chance do you like reality TV?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'm sure this company was looking for something more mainstream (i.e. box and CD), but SOME publisher is better than NO publisher, right?
With that odd Kung Fu game coming out on Steam in just a few weeks... assuming that works out as planned, would it not be a viable option?
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Nevermind.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
I think the game sucks major ass from a usability standpoint. You disagree, fine, but stay polite please.
The unit are programs... It's the most logical thing to do. To terminate them is to hit Control+C just like you would in a Unix terminal. Oh my... A game that actually acts like a real world computer system.
That'd be a wonderful idea. If it worked. On my system, at least, the real taskmanager pops up, I change out of the game, ok? Is that hard to understand? I probably wouldn't if I closed all other apps before playing, but it's bad from a UI standpoint still.
I bet you don't use mouse gestures in other programs either. Like... Um... Firefox extensions? They are wonder things if you dig them. If you don't well... Go play WC3.
I dig Opera and gestures, thank you. That doesn't mean that having to hold ALT, drawing left-clicking into a rather small drawing area, releasing ALT, Moving to a "starting area", left clicking to actually create the unit and left clicking again to start moving it to where I was is a good use of them. It wastes time. Make me hold-right-click, draw on the entire screen and have to unit deployed exactly at screen center, then we talk again...
I don't know. It's seemed so intuitive to me from playing all sorts of FPS games for the past 5 years that I never bothered looking to customize the game.
Sorry, maybe I'm too old for that, but I still configure my FPSs to use the cursor keys and I expect any game to allow reconfiguration of the controls. As I said, it's not hard.
Arrrgh... It's supposed to look like that. You know... Are you too young to remember Tron? Or maybe the first Lawnmower man movie? If I wanted something that didn't look like a throw back to a 1980's movie I would have bought Doom3 or something, but no... I found this very fun and "artsy" and actually did buy the full version.
OK, so the crap look is on purpose. TRON didn't look much better, because they couldn't do it. That's not to say that I'd expect gorgeous graphics, but at least Dune2000 would've been nice...
You bought the full version, fine, but that doesn't make me recommend the game anymore, especially since you did nothing but insult me...
*hits head on desk* Obviously if you played the game all the way through (which you need to buy the full version) you'd would have noticed the really cool plot line of the evolution of the Dawinians and all the screens sometimes I sort of said to myself "I hope they hurry up with the cut scene story so I don't miss anything so I can hit pause and use the bathroom!" because it was that interesting on occasion.
Maybe a little more teaser would've helped my impression? It looks extremely shallow on the site description and the demo doesn't enhance it one bit. Oh, and, you can't hit Pause during the cut-scene? That'd be another "don't touch" reason on my list...
I just don't know... Maybe the game is too deep for some people. Thats why I guess we seen copies of the same damn game every year by the same people with no innovation whatsoever. By chance do you like reality TV?
No, prick, I don't. I love the Myst series of games, thought HL2 had a bareable story (while Doom3 was as boring as they get) and generally like browsing gamedev.net, adventuregamestudio.co.uk and the like to get games that don't suck mainstream ass. But know what? Darwinia has some extremely stupid UI decisions and doesn't look like it has any story whatsoever. I gave it a try, I thought it was crap, it goes in the dumpster. That doesn't keep you from liking it, though, so please accept that I'm entitled to my opinion and to posting it here, as well as you are to yours, ok?
Seriously - games like this need a sugar daddy like Wright or Sid Meier or Carmack to force it onto publishers.
The Sims wouldn't have gotten made if Wright hadn't kept hounding EA.
More 'developers with power' should adopt games that step out of teh box.
I guess playing Darwinia turns you into a real asshole...
"Next Generation has a conversation with the lead designer of the much lauded game Darwinia. From the article: "It sports..." (emphasis mine)
Great, sports, so how long until EA negotiates an exclusive license?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If Alt-Tab doesn't work then use Ctrl-Alt-Tab.
Man, what a great time it was to download the Darwinia demo install script, run it, and play it on Linux.. I'd been keeping an eye on this game (I'm a huge llama fan) while they got the Linux demo ported, and I just want to say: superlative job.
I would say games on Linux are waaaay ahead of the competition for ease of use, if Darwinia is an example. The darn thing just ran, and I played, and
It may not seem remarkable to you young-uns', but there was a time when such ease of use gaming in Unix was relatively irrelevant. But, I mean, this 30 minute Darwinia session I just went through was at least as simple, from an "einfach sichtpunkt" perspective, as
has to be observed. i think linux gaming could give other platforms a serious run for its money. but then, i'm not hardcore gamer
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Regarding #4, I don't mind the retro look, but I could do without the aliasing and screen tearing. (I tried the Linux demo. I don't know if the Windows version is any different in this respect.)
I could also live without the occasional
on startup.Also, the interface doesn't work well for us dvorak users. WASD isn't exactly intuitive on dvorrak, so I use the arrow keys. Unfortunately, the right ALT doesn't work, only the left, so the inteface effectively requires three hands.
Try some of those that are more 'indie friendly'. Garagegames, Mstrix games, Dreamcatcher, JoWood(well, maybe not them).
I think its a good idea to give a bit more love to the smaller publishers, be integral in their growth and see where that leads interms of financial success and noteriety....
"Death and poverty like me so much, they brought friends!" - Vash the Stampede, Trigun
The unit are programs... It's the most logical thing to do. To terminate them is to hit Control+C just like you would in a Unix terminal.
But I'd expect the entire application to exit after pressing that key combination. If it doesn't, it's behaving badly.
Oh my... A game that actually acts like a real world computer system.
EXCEPT THAT IT'S AN APPLICATION.
Do you seriously expect to sell a Unix computer simulator to someone who wants to play games? What gamer finds the Unix command line exciting?
I bet you don't use mouse gestures in other programs either. Like... Um... Firefox extensions? They are wonder things if you dig them.
But I hate gestures. They're a solution looking for a problem. I don't know about you, but I can't draw for shit with a mouse. I have a whole keyboard in front of me - what's wrong with assigning the unit selection to a key or (horrors) an on-screen menu? It would make the game easier to learn - and the interface would get in the way less.
Maybe the game is too deep for some people.
No. I thought the demo was slow-paced, boring and not worth spending any more time with. As a strategy game Darwinia is inferior to Dune 2 - which was released in ~1992.
Thats why I guess we seen copies of the same damn game every year by the same people with no innovation whatsoever
The goal of user interface design should be to make the game easily accessible and straightforward for the user. It's entirely possible to have an innovative game with easy controls.
"Fool me once, and all that."
More like "Blame others for the way I am".
Cain: Abel! You stupid #@!%&. Look at what you made me do?
"They're complaining that someone is trying to trick them, which is precisely what is happening. We're wise to it. We don't *fall* for the trick. We just perceive that a trick is being played, and we don't like it."
You must dislike optical illusions, and hate "white lies". The "trick" isn't creating it's own basis. There are psychological basis for all those "tricks". Which all those decades of marketing "discovered" (not created, discovered). In other words be mad at ourselves, and our unconscious desires (I'm not compensating for anything. '$' lower? '$' lower '$' lower? Just right. Now gimme.), and our unwillingness to face truth (But honey! That dress does make you look fat., Her sister has a nice personality, arf! arf!). When we start being honest with ourselves then we can start demanding it of others (even marketers).
Actually, it assumes that listening to your conscience comes somewhere lower than listening to your wallet... for most people.
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http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?gameID=22
It would be sad for Darwinia to be overlooked simply because it plays originally.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
in the demo, I didn't really find this game very fun. I liked the 'world' and it held my interest for a while, but at the end of the day I was just making a squddie, then manually controlling them to shoot at little arrows moving around and lobbing a few nades, and that was about it. I didn't understand how that was supposed to be fun.
I have played the game, and I have loved the game, so I find it hard to see the highest moderated post about this game to be such an inflammatory critique, especially from someone who only tried the demo.
:P. But then, one needs to know the classics to get the idea.
:)
While I deeply appreciate their try to run on different platforms and have to admit I dislike anything remotely like RTS, I have a few points to note, stupid decisions, ultimately leading to me not suggesting someone give Darwinia a try, let alone pay 20 bucks for it.
If you have a bias against RTS games, which Darwinia is part of, somehow, it's hard to take your next opinions as being even partly objective. If you don't like RTS games, I'm surprised you even played the game.
Stupid decisions:
1. ALT+TAB to switch between units. How braindead can a developer be? Under WinXP, of course that brings up the real taskmanager... I have to say I'd have been really frightened if it didn't. So you have to click on the unit itself, because you cannot "tab" between them and clicking on their goddamn icon in the game menu (ALT) gives an error message.
The game's design is a metaphore around an operating system and you controlling programs. That they'd push the metaphore in the way you control the interface is a good decision, because it puts the gamer more into the atmosphere.
If you wish to use your OS's ALT-TAB, you can just press escape. Traditional ALT-TAB works fine in the menus.
Besides, which version did you use for the in-game ALT-TAB not to work?
2. Mouse Gestures only to create units. It's slow and thus counterproductive, RTS-nuts will hate it and I have to ask "why?".
Well, admittedly mouse-gestures are a controvesial decision. I think it's good to try a new control interface like this, and the first impression in most people is 'wow!'. However, when you're under a heavy load, it can be annoying to have gestures skip. But once again, it is fitting with the game's overall gameplay. This is not a starcraft or TA-type in which winning is largely dependant on creating units quickly.
3. Navigation. WASD only + mouselook and up+down via QE or mousewheel, which works the wrong way around for me. Does the full version allow me to customze that? It's not hard to implement, you know?
Yes, you can change the controls in the full game, though not for the mouse, as far as I've peeked n the preferences.
4. Graphics, or lack thereof. I could easily accept the bad graphics and models from a freeware game, but honestly, it looks butt-ugly. The Darwinians are sprites! Why exactly does this game require a 3D-Card?
Now that's just unfair. The game's graphics are a huge part of its originality. It's borrowing from classics to create a retro-futuristic view of what it should look like in a computer (think Tron). Yes, I know that sounds corny
It's fun to see how they use cutting-edge 3d (read shaders) to create just that retro feel.
I think this is a welcome parting from the path of photo-realism the mainstream games are taking. Darwinia uses modern hardware in an interesting way.
5. The highly praised story. Er, excuse me? Story? The original Duke Nukem, Commander Keen and even Doom had more "story", their's usually filled more than one screen... Yeesh, if similar games usually have even less of it...
Of course, the demo doesn't give you any glimpse into the story. You'd want the full game for that.
In summary, a game that's graphically and audibly (hear those virii scream!) a step away from traditional gaming. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to try something a bit different, as well as the rest. That is, of course, if you are ready for a different perspective on how a game could look. If you are the kind to have Doom3 and HL2 on the top of your hit-list because of their graphics, you're in for a shock...
Furthermore, the community is thriving, and mods are starting to flow in, thus giving it an excellent lifespan.
Need I say it only costs a third of what mainstream media charges you? And it all goes directly to the devs, not to the marketers.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I'm confused; what am I supposed to be listening to?
Waiiii!!!!!! I have bad karma!
Cutting out the publisher is the way forward. Buy games from the developers via the net.
Join the British National Party
I only read the stuff modded 3 and up and didn't see this mentioned as an option. Why not set it up as a disk image and sell it via an e-commerce solution to we US-ians? Or some other method of internet distribution? Maybe bit-torrent it and have a front end attached to the software that allows you to purchase it once it's launched. Given, then you're limiting your distro to broadband users but isn't that who primarly plays PC games anyways? Just a few thoughts.
I've said it once, I'll say it again.
Introversion. Call Nintendo. Make a port (or a new version) for the DS. I'd even say find a way to port Uplink to the DS, but Darwinia just screams touch-screen-stylus gestures.
when I learned that I needed to buy the boxed windows version to play the Linux version I went to my local HMV had no problem finding the game, took it home ran the linux install from the web site and spent the next couple of weeks enjoying a really cool game. :(
It worked first time, was interesting, different and engaging.
Perfect learning curve, envolved the longer you played and well worth the money.
Its a pity that HMV will rack it up as another windows sale
And the retro winks really added to the experience
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
This is not what Video Games are about.
:(
Darwinie its a absolutelly brillant AAA title. If publishers dont want to help this title, we hare doomed. Only absolutelly CRAP will get distributed
-Woof woof woof!
"The reality is that Introversion won't be here this time next year, because sales of Darwinia are terribly low."
The fact is, many general level gamers are pretty apathetic these days and don't really want much originality or want to stand up and offer support to smaller developers, forcing them to assume huge financial risks or prostitute themselves to publishers (many of whom don't want much original, because of reason A at the start of this paragraph). It seems that way anyway. I hope i'm wrong.
I posted about my project on Slashdot (hopefully it gets approved and gathers some interest) as a new way to fund and create games, called micro-funding. It's a way to allow people to pre-order the game at a lower price, use the money to create the game (lowering the risk for the dev and allow for more creativity and risks), and (a twist of my own) offer a chance for those users to actually influence the design of the game as it is created.
Several projects have used variations of this theme (Mount and Blade, for instance), and I think it will be the future for small/indie game development, bypassing publishers (and the need for discussions like this) altogether.
Derek Stormcloud Creations www.stormcloudcreations.com
Nice to see that people are making proper use of the mod system, and not modding down perfectly valid points that they just happen to disagree with because they don't like seeing "(Score:5, Insightful)" next to them...
I'm a long-time gamer who values gameplay over looks. I can appreciate more simplistic or bizarre visual styles. What I can't appreciate is absolutely god-awful interface design. Interfaces should be as transparent as possible, facilitating the shortest path from your thought to the corresponding action in the game. In this respect, Darwinia completely and utterly fails.