Woops, thanks for that, now fixed - I foolishly Googled for 'backlit GBA SP' to doublecheck, and got lots of people who don't know what they're talking about:)
Here's a text mirror, since there's some broken redirection stuff at the main site after a previous Slashdotting.
--
Buggy Demos - How To Anti-Market A Game
Posted by: Spunior on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 09:26 AM EST
Experienced demo trouble lately? Patch required? You're probably not the only one. Read on for a brief look at quick publishers, the concept of second-class consumers, local releases and why they are a disservice to both sides.
Demo bugs aren't something we haven't seen before. However, Ubi Soft seems to be on a hot streak lately, having released three demos in the past weeks which either required a patch, are crash-heavy or look somewhat unfinished. In one case they complained about the early availability, in two other cases functional "US demos" were promised. First of all, a demo release depends on what the publisher demands. The developers aren't too keen on releasing early trials as they are only snapshots of what still is unfinished code and since they also have to dedicate resources for the production of them. It seems that Ubi's PR department believes in what actually seem to be rather questionable concepts.
Local release: The Beyond Good & Evil demo apparently made its way onto the internet from the CD featured in the French mag Joystick. Magazine demos leaking into the web is something that happens so frequently the marketing sections had to be aware of it. Now there's quite a number of players who have trouble getting the trial running without crashes. Which brings up the questions why such a poor representation of a product would be released ANYWHERE in the first place. Joystick is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) mags in France. Even under the illusionary premise that the demo is not going to be made available for download on the internet, there would still be quite a few subscribers who would experience the aforementioned problems. It's definitely a shame this happened with Beyond Good & Evil since the PS2 version I got to play at the Games Convention was very entertaining.
In the case of Lock On: Modern Air Combat it appears that the marketing department also needs to get some information on the release date of certain media outlets. Ubi Soft producer Matt "Wags" Wagner on the demo release.
I have no idea why it was released before ECFS. The plan was to release CD versions atECFS on 05 Oct and online on 06 Oct with mirrors. I hope to know more on Monday after I talk with Paris. However, it sounds like Gamestar jumped the gun and released it before they were told to do so. There's nothing more I can say at this time, but I hope you enjoy this early taste.
I'm quite sure Gamestar wouldn't have put the demo on their CD without the approval of the publisher. The monthly mag ships to stores on the first Wednesday of each month. Which clearly was October 1st this month. And subscribers naturally receive their issues on the weekend before that. Well-known fact since we're talking about a magazine here which has a reader base of several hundred thousand people.
Euro twits: Now in two cases the publisher was quick to point out that there will be functional US demos available soon. Now the nature of the internet - which seems to be new to Ubi - makes information and data basically accessible to everyone and everywhere. Which means that US gamers are likely to download the Euro versions as well instead of waiting for the 'proper' release to show up. There's something else that makes one wonder: under the assumption that Euro demos will not run in NA (look forward to the 'enjoyable miracles' Digital Rights Management might provide), why would releasing a buggy demo in Europe look like a clever idea? The EU PC games market is on par with the NA market, not to mention the growing ones in Eastern Europe. Quite a number of PC titles - especially certain genres or products developed in Eastern European countries) sell a lot better here. For instance, in the case of Vietcong or Ubi Soft's very own
In an attempt to hijack this topic with sexist piffle, I just remembered that the not-good Jurassic Park:Trespasser had a particularly amusing body-image 'angle' if you looked down while playing - see this Games First review and scroll down for the screenshot in question. Uhoh.
I always took it as a Finnish-constructed take on American film noir, which would necessarily get a little, uhm, skewed in execution. Whether this is a good thing or not is, naturally, open to argument - I think GTA has about the right balance of (slight) stereotyping and cheesiness without going overboard, so let's hope Rockstar do similar with Max Payne now they're in charge of the sequel.
The site isn't Slashdotted as of right now, because this is only a Games subpage post, but it was starting to slow down a bit (to under 50k/sec), so we got GameTab to throw up a BitTorrent of it, much kudos to them, yay.
Nope, that's a much more faithful re-imagining of the original Bard's Tale, but very unofficial. Looks like a good bet for those who liked the original gameplay style, though.
Again, this is worth mentioning - you can prevent the subpage games stories from appearing on your page by turning off 'collapse sections' in your preferences. You'll still see the important, mainpage ones.
There are less posts on the games posts because you don't see these posts on the main Slashdot front page as default - we realize they may be a little specialized in terms of interest.
FWIW, I thought this was kinda an interesting question, which is why I let it through, but your howls of derision are also appreciated - it can definitely be argued that games are only long or short depending on the genre, not the country of origin.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that many Japanese games, especially action titles, give bonuses if you play through the game multiple times (such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc.) This doesn't really seem to be the case quite so much with US or European-developed titles, where a lot of the bonuses are either gradually unlocked or unlocked with cheat codes. It's interesting to speculate on why there's this (possible!) different method of unlocking - do Japanese developers presume their consumers are going to want to play through the whole game again, or are they just being wacky and obtuse with their bonus awards?
I think the game _could_ be interesting because it's developed by Nihilistic, who did the pretty decent Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, and are mainly ex-LucasArts people from the tail-end of the 'good' era (Jedi Knight, etc.) Also, Blizzard tend to be decent about quality control (they cancelled Warcraft Adventures when it wasn't up to scratch.) But.. a license does not a game make, and we'll have to see how this stacks up.
I believe the bottom, in-game looking screenshot is just a picture of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 1, to provide some context - if you squint, you can see '97' (the year FF7 came out) in the text.
It would be good, btw, if the screenshots on the official site were updated, because I _know_ it looks better in action than the old (latest is May?) screenshots on the site right now - unless new screenshots were somewhere I couldn't find?
I don't believe there's a 'remove subpage posts from x section' choice in preferences, yet. But it would be a good thing to feature-request by going to the Sourceforge Slashcode site to show there's public demand, and I'll try to bring it up with the appropriate people.
Wait, wait. None of these posts are front-page posts, Jorn. You have 'collapse sections' turned on in your preferences - there's a tickbox that does that. If we were posting this on the front page, then I'd agree there was a major issue. But just about all of these games posts are subpage-specific. The reason there aren't so many comments per post is that the majority of readers only read the front page. Which is fine. But we have a good, significant (for the games website world) and growing community who log directly on to games.slashdot.org to check out the games news. So you can filter to remove these posts - and more to the point, you've already filtered to receive them.
If there were another 349034385 big gaming sites, then we'll post stuff from those, but as GameSpot, GameSpy, and IGN are the only 3 majors nowadays, and tie up a lot of the exclusives, it's pretty much inevitable that quite a few posts are going to feature them.:) But where do I apply for 'kicks'? Sounds enticing.
Pop 'N Music never got a US release, sadly - I'm pretty sure about that, though you're right, it is listed on GameFAQs. For those who haven't seen it, it's a Beatmania-style game with a weird 9-button controller. I think it was aimed at a more female audience in Japan, and also works good with 2 people at one arcade cabinet. It's good fun, though.
The competition part of the site is kinda scarce on info, but I think the public-donated prize is 100-plus dollars, and there's official prizes of a lot more - I found the following information in the July archives to back up the submitter:
"And as you probably know, we have 1000$usd in cash prizes as well. How this will be divided is not yet clear."
Yeah, point taken. I've been feeling a bit queasy about quite so many game violence article, too. We'll see if we can't cut them down somewhat in the future (or at least post round-ups).
My impression is that the Unreal Warfare engine is actually now just the Unreal engine - in other words, they decided against changing the name branding.
In fact, I think the game originally branded Unreal Warfare turned into Unreal Tournament 2003? It's notable that most press mentions of Unreal Warfare were in early 2001, and that Unreal 2 was listed in some places as running on the Unreal Warfare engine (presumably the same one as UT2K3.)
I think it's a little ironic that ESPN end up rating their own-branded product lower than a competitor's, yes. But I also think it's the justified and correct thing to do, since ESPN, as journalists, should be editorially independent, after all. As far as drawing any troll-tastic links to editorial bias at Slashdot Games, fortunately, we don't produce many videogames, so I think we're fairly safe.
It's an interesting point, actually - I guess I'm presuming that the PS1 will get software emulated in some way on the PS3, but the article doesn't make that completely clear. I'm sure Sony would be crazy to put PS2 and not PS1 compatibility in, though, so I'm sure they're working out some way to make it happen - the I/O chip will probably need to be more powerful this time round.
Thanks for everyone cluing me in as to the possible suspect nature of the interview. The headline's been changed here and at GameTab, and the article's been updated. Honestly, don't people have anything better to do with their time than make up interviews, and then anonymously submit them here? Grr.
Hey - you're quite right, Yokoi is generally thought of as the 'father' of Metroid, so I've changed the article to reflect this. I believe that Sakamoto was the character designer on the original Metroid, though, and according to Dylan Cuthbert, who's worked at Nintendo in Japan:
"[Metroid] has always been developed by R&D1 (the dept. Gunpei Yokoi headed up) and designed by the teams who mostly make gameboy titles. Samus was thought up by a friend of mine called Yoshio Sakamoto who is also developing the latest gameboy version Fusion, and also helped direct Prime."
Guess it all depends on producer vs. character designer vs. etc, but I think the amended text better reflects this. Thanks for the heads-up!
Slashdot Mirror
Woops, thanks for that, now fixed - I foolishly Googled for 'backlit GBA SP' to doublecheck, and got lots of people who don't know what they're talking about :)
Actually, the cheaper PSX is 79,800 yen, not 99,800, so I think the blurb/article has it right?
Here's a text mirror, since there's some broken redirection stuff at the main site after a previous Slashdotting.
--
Buggy Demos - How To Anti-Market A Game
Posted by: Spunior on Monday, October 06, 2003 - 09:26 AM EST
Experienced demo trouble lately? Patch required? You're probably not the only one. Read on for a brief look at quick publishers, the concept of second-class consumers, local releases and why they are a disservice to both sides.
Demo bugs aren't something we haven't seen before. However, Ubi Soft seems to be on a hot streak lately, having released three demos in the past weeks which either required a patch, are crash-heavy or look somewhat unfinished. In one case they complained about the early availability, in two other cases functional "US demos" were promised. First of all, a demo release depends on what the publisher demands. The developers aren't too keen on releasing early trials as they are only snapshots of what still is unfinished code and since they also have to dedicate resources for the production of them. It seems that Ubi's PR department believes in what actually seem to be rather questionable concepts.
Local release: The Beyond Good & Evil demo apparently made its way onto the internet from the CD featured in the French mag Joystick. Magazine demos leaking into the web is something that happens so frequently the marketing sections had to be aware of it. Now there's quite a number of players who have trouble getting the trial running without crashes. Which brings up the questions why such a poor representation of a product would be released ANYWHERE in the first place. Joystick is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) mags in France. Even under the illusionary premise that the demo is not going to be made available for download on the internet, there would still be quite a few subscribers who would experience the aforementioned problems. It's definitely a shame this happened with Beyond Good & Evil since the PS2 version I got to play at the Games Convention was very entertaining.
In the case of Lock On: Modern Air Combat it appears that the marketing department also needs to get some information on the release date of certain media outlets. Ubi Soft producer Matt "Wags" Wagner on the demo release.
I have no idea why it was released before ECFS. The plan was to release CD versions atECFS on 05 Oct and online on 06 Oct with mirrors. I hope to know more on Monday after I talk with Paris. However, it sounds like Gamestar jumped the gun and released it before they were told to do so. There's nothing more I can say at this time, but I hope you enjoy this early taste.
I'm quite sure Gamestar wouldn't have put the demo on their CD without the approval of the publisher. The monthly mag ships to stores on the first Wednesday of each month. Which clearly was October 1st this month. And subscribers naturally receive their issues on the weekend before that. Well-known fact since we're talking about a magazine here which has a reader base of several hundred thousand people.
Euro twits: Now in two cases the publisher was quick to point out that there will be functional US demos available soon. Now the nature of the internet - which seems to be new to Ubi - makes information and data basically accessible to everyone and everywhere. Which means that US gamers are likely to download the Euro versions as well instead of waiting for the 'proper' release to show up. There's something else that makes one wonder: under the assumption that Euro demos will not run in NA (look forward to the 'enjoyable miracles' Digital Rights Management might provide), why would releasing a buggy demo in Europe look like a clever idea? The EU PC games market is on par with the NA market, not to mention the growing ones in Eastern Europe. Quite a number of PC titles - especially certain genres or products developed in Eastern European countries) sell a lot better here. For instance, in the case of Vietcong or Ubi Soft's very own
Ah, that's exactly what (was?) happening, filtering refers from Slashdot. Is anyone else still having trouble? Seems to be working OK for me now.
In an attempt to hijack this topic with sexist piffle, I just remembered that the not-good Jurassic Park:Trespasser had a particularly amusing body-image 'angle' if you looked down while playing - see this Games First review and scroll down for the screenshot in question. Uhoh.
I always took it as a Finnish-constructed take on American film noir, which would necessarily get a little, uhm, skewed in execution. Whether this is a good thing or not is, naturally, open to argument - I think GTA has about the right balance of (slight) stereotyping and cheesiness without going overboard, so let's hope Rockstar do similar with Max Payne now they're in charge of the sequel.
The site isn't Slashdotted as of right now, because this is only a Games subpage post, but it was starting to slow down a bit (to under 50k/sec), so we got GameTab to throw up a BitTorrent of it, much kudos to them, yay.
Nope, that's a much more faithful re-imagining of the original Bard's Tale, but very unofficial. Looks like a good bet for those who liked the original gameplay style, though.
Again, this is worth mentioning - you can prevent the subpage games stories from appearing on your page by turning off 'collapse sections' in your preferences. You'll still see the important, mainpage ones.
There are less posts on the games posts because you don't see these posts on the main Slashdot front page as default - we realize they may be a little specialized in terms of interest.
FWIW, I thought this was kinda an interesting question, which is why I let it through, but your howls of derision are also appreciated - it can definitely be argued that games are only long or short depending on the genre, not the country of origin.
One thing I've noticed, though, is that many Japanese games, especially action titles, give bonuses if you play through the game multiple times (such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc.) This doesn't really seem to be the case quite so much with US or European-developed titles, where a lot of the bonuses are either gradually unlocked or unlocked with cheat codes. It's interesting to speculate on why there's this (possible!) different method of unlocking - do Japanese developers presume their consumers are going to want to play through the whole game again, or are they just being wacky and obtuse with their bonus awards?
Interesting point, actually.
I think the game _could_ be interesting because it's developed by Nihilistic, who did the pretty decent Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, and are mainly ex-LucasArts people from the tail-end of the 'good' era (Jedi Knight, etc.) Also, Blizzard tend to be decent about quality control (they cancelled Warcraft Adventures when it wasn't up to scratch.) But.. a license does not a game make, and we'll have to see how this stacks up.
I believe the bottom, in-game looking screenshot is just a picture of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 1, to provide some context - if you squint, you can see '97' (the year FF7 came out) in the text.
It would be good, btw, if the screenshots on the official site were updated, because I _know_ it looks better in action than the old (latest is May?) screenshots on the site right now - unless new screenshots were somewhere I couldn't find?
I don't believe there's a 'remove subpage posts from x section' choice in preferences, yet. But it would be a good thing to feature-request by going to the Sourceforge Slashcode site to show there's public demand, and I'll try to bring it up with the appropriate people.
Wait, wait. None of these posts are front-page posts, Jorn. You have 'collapse sections' turned on in your preferences - there's a tickbox that does that. If we were posting this on the front page, then I'd agree there was a major issue. But just about all of these games posts are subpage-specific. The reason there aren't so many comments per post is that the majority of readers only read the front page. Which is fine. But we have a good, significant (for the games website world) and growing community who log directly on to games.slashdot.org to check out the games news. So you can filter to remove these posts - and more to the point, you've already filtered to receive them.
If there were another 349034385 big gaming sites, then we'll post stuff from those, but as GameSpot, GameSpy, and IGN are the only 3 majors nowadays, and tie up a lot of the exclusives, it's pretty much inevitable that quite a few posts are going to feature them. :) But where do I apply for 'kicks'? Sounds enticing.
Pop 'N Music never got a US release, sadly - I'm pretty sure about that, though you're right, it is listed on GameFAQs. For those who haven't seen it, it's a Beatmania-style game with a weird 9-button controller. I think it was aimed at a more female audience in Japan, and also works good with 2 people at one arcade cabinet. It's good fun, though.
The competition part of the site is kinda scarce on info, but I think the public-donated prize is 100-plus dollars, and there's official prizes of a lot more - I found the following information in the July archives to back up the submitter:
"And as you probably know, we have 1000$usd in cash prizes as well. How this will be divided is not yet clear."
Yeah, point taken. I've been feeling a bit queasy about quite so many game violence article, too. We'll see if we can't cut them down somewhat in the future (or at least post round-ups).
My impression is that the Unreal Warfare engine is actually now just the Unreal engine - in other words, they decided against changing the name branding.
In fact, I think the game originally branded Unreal Warfare turned into Unreal Tournament 2003? It's notable that most press mentions of Unreal Warfare were in early 2001, and that Unreal 2 was listed in some places as running on the Unreal Warfare engine (presumably the same one as UT2K3.)
I think it's a little ironic that ESPN end up rating their own-branded product lower than a competitor's, yes. But I also think it's the justified and correct thing to do, since ESPN, as journalists, should be editorially independent, after all. As far as drawing any troll-tastic links to editorial bias at Slashdot Games, fortunately, we don't produce many videogames, so I think we're fairly safe.
It's an interesting point, actually - I guess I'm presuming that the PS1 will get software emulated in some way on the PS3, but the article doesn't make that completely clear. I'm sure Sony would be crazy to put PS2 and not PS1 compatibility in, though, so I'm sure they're working out some way to make it happen - the I/O chip will probably need to be more powerful this time round.
Thanks for everyone cluing me in as to the possible suspect nature of the interview. The headline's been changed here and at GameTab, and the article's been updated. Honestly, don't people have anything better to do with their time than make up interviews, and then anonymously submit them here? Grr.
Hey - you're quite right, Yokoi is generally thought of as the 'father' of Metroid, so I've changed the article to reflect this. I believe that Sakamoto was the character designer on the original Metroid, though, and according to Dylan Cuthbert, who's worked at Nintendo in Japan:
"[Metroid] has always been developed by R&D1 (the dept. Gunpei Yokoi headed up) and designed by the teams who mostly make gameboy titles. Samus was thought up by a friend of mine called Yoshio Sakamoto who is also developing the latest gameboy version Fusion, and also helped direct Prime."
Guess it all depends on producer vs. character designer vs. etc, but I think the amended text better reflects this. Thanks for the heads-up!
I guess torrid might be a British-ism, or just slightly obscure - but see Dictionary.com for the full skinny.