Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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...
They stated that they did publish in the UK, but couldn't find a US publisher.
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?
"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
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
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.