Truth. They realize their game doesn't have the graphics to stand out in a list of screenshots, so they make a high-falutin' paean to "quality" and hope THAT will be their ticket to success.Originally Posted by Melf
Frankly, the game doesn't look attractive at all.
Have you actually played the game though? It's pretty addictive; this is referring to the Flash version though, I've yet to try the 360 version.
Also, the comparisons made to Minter are way poor IMO. Minter BAW'D in a Livejournal post in the middle of the night. These guys were doing an interview, and seemed very down-to-earth about how they felt on things, surprisingly so.
Last edited by Berserker; 03-24-2008 at 04:29 PM.
Did you actually read their comments? One of the guys claimed there are 100 games on Xbox Live and all of them are "s&%*". Is that how you define down to earth? There are a ton of good games on Xbox Live. Yes, there are some crappy ones too, but it's not most of them or even half of them. The fact that I can buy games like Triggerheart Excelica for $10 when getting the Dreamcast version (if you can even find it) is like 10 times that along with fun games like Catan, Exit and Rez HD for low prices is something I appreciate. Heck, even Space Giraffe is only $5 which is not too much in my opinion to support an experimental but flawed game. How about this, I think the real arrogance is in people taking Flash games that are available to anyone with a PC for free and then charging money for them on Xbox Live.
I did, and I'm not sure if you could've actually missed the point more, which as I took it is simply this -- There's good stuff in there, but there's also a lot of noise. That's it.
This kind of kneejerk polarizing demonstrated here by yourself and Melf is precisely the reason why PR guys were hired to blow smoke up our collective ass, and why most gaming interviews and press of this kind is so boring, uneventful, saying and accomplishing nothing. Also Known As -- Fluff. Yay, fluff. Wherein we walk on eggshells, watch our every word, and try really really hard not to make waves or offend anybody.
No thanks.
I would much rather have more developers simply speak their minds, regardless of whether or not I agree with their opinions.
Sounds like you're shitting on a majority of XBLA titles there. After all, plenty of those games are just copy cats of already established titles but with oh-so-minor tweaks to the gameplay. Hell, Popcap has been doing it for years on the PC (and now consoles) and has created some extremely profitable knock off franchises (the biggest of which is most likely Zuma).
In contrast, the N+ developers created their own unique game, released a version for free (with support for user made levels, even!), and eventually were able to secure a contract to produce a commercial version. Hell, the free version is still being actively supported and updated (1.5 soon!) and has a few hundred levels to play around in. The XBLA version has 400 new levels, upgraded graphics, online multiplayer, etc.... not a bad addition to an already addictive, challenging and highly enjoyable game.
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Well, I'm not going to pay to purchase a game on Xbox Live that is available on my PC for free. I will, however, pay for commercial quality games in niche genres (shmups, arcade classics, experimental titles). I personally like N+, but I don't think it's the most innovative game I've ever played, nor do I buy that Xbox Live was their window to the big time, particularly since a PSP port was already announced before the Xbox Live version was even available.
Let's be honest though; XBLA isn't taking nearly the chances that PSN is.
XBLA bread and butter is in established classics and flawed, but functional, ports. Even N+ is just an expanded version of the free flash game. Likewise E4 (which was ultimately disappointing given how beautiful and hypnotizing E3 is on the PSP).
I wouldn't call the majority of releases on XBLA "crap", but I will say that content is disappointing as a whole. I'm still waiting for XBLA to have their breakthrough original content that will finally take off the gloves and show that XBLA is a serious platform for serious games. Though I suspect that the XNA project, if done well, may fill that void.
Well, that and the super pricey PS2/Arcade Cave shmups that are getting ports!
First of all, it's not knee jerk. I took the time to read the interview and frankly, these guys don't have a track record nor any kind of existing credibility since other than this game which I just heard about and played month or two ago, I know nothing about them or their work. In my book, they are hardly seasoned developers and so, I took everything they said with a grain of salt. As far as I'm concerned, developers are free to say whatever they like. Of course, as a person who buys far more games than the average consumer, I'm entitled to hold what I perceive as arrogance or stupidity against them and not buy their work. I don't think developers have been restrained in their opinions, but it seems like they get upset whenever a reviewer or anyone else disagrees with them. Anyone recall the scandals with Kane & Lynch (let's pull our ads and get people fired for not kissing our ass), Lair (everyone in the world is stupid, the controls take a while to get used to), and the list goes on. I'd love to see the list of what they consider to be "s$#@" on Xbox Live as I would strongly disagree that the market has difficulty regulating itself. People aren't morons and if a game is no good, people won't pay to download it. It doesn't matter if there are 5 games on Xbox Live or 5,000. Give the public a little bit of credit for crying out loud.
Yay! This is basically what I've been trying to say for the whole thread thus far, but with the added bit about how fucking boring most developer interviews are.
This is a good point, as in some ways it represents the opposite end of the spectrum, but the PSN store still has its crap. Based on what I played of the XNA demos, I don't have much hope in that being XBLA's salvation, as the cream of the crop of those games were at best heavy on style and lacking substance.
Well style and experimentation can work to build upon solid game foundations down the line. N, Every Extend, and flOw being perfect examples of games that started out as tech demos and game theory ideas but blossomed into full-blown realizations on their respective console releases.
My hope is that XNA will breed some great new ideas now that the approval process will be passed over. And hopefully these ideas can later be fleshed out with larger releases on XBLA proper.
As far as PSN goes, don't get me wrong, I just said they were taking chances, I didn't necessarily say that they were succeeding at every corner. There are some pretty awful games on there and a healthy amount of arcade "cash-in" ports. It's just that Sony is starting to really lay their online presence on the line and, so far, I'm highly impressed with the results.
All that said, I have 9 PSN games but some 50 XBLA games. Read into that what you will.
Dude, the freeware scene they come from is proof of what they say. You can pare it down to just one genre and still have a problem manually sorting out the chaff from the wheat, as is immediately obvious to anyone who's tried browsing Shoot The Core. The biggest problem that scene is facing right now is specifically that there's so much crap you have to wade through just to find something interesting. It has nothing to do with whether or not people are morons.
You even said yourself that you had no idea N even existed until a few months ago; it's been going for nearly 3 years now. Is that sinking in at all?
I thought he was referring to the version on XBLA, not the PC. In either event, even if it was the PC version he was referring to, I think that still says a lot about the game and the developers that a game which has been out for 3 years now and there's still a significant portion of mainstream America that either does not know it exists or simply does not care, myself included. I did not know about their flash flash game until it got all the press for its XBLA release in magazines like OXM, EGM and Game Informer. Seems to me they want to bite the hand that feeds them. They can leave the XBLA and go back to making flash games and I would not care, even if N+ is the greatest game ever for XBLA.
As to the overall picture here, it's not just the developers who are crying, but also magazine writers and game publishers. The same thing happens when a game like Okami does not do well in the US market, or a multi-platform game like Beyond Good & Evil fails to sell a lot. There are two ways to address this as far as I know: either everyone tells us we are stupid for not buying these games, or simply tell us what we are missing out on and that we need to go out and buy these rare gems. Frankly, I think the latter course works better, as the former (telling everyone they are idiots) only seems to piss people off. The old saying goes, "you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar".
Had these guys told us why their game is great, or recommend that we try the free game first and then move on to the XBLA game if we liked it, I am sure they would be doing their work more justice. Rather, they come off as a bunch of whiny bitches blaming someone else for their (economic) misfortunes.
The fact they say all adaptations of classics are crap and dismiss Pinball FX and Uno completely out of hand while propping up Street Fighter II as an example of the kind of game which they approve of tells everything you need to know about these guys.
It's all especially silly since N+ is something akin to a new adaptation of Lode Runner.
I'll be honest. I didn't even bother trying the demo of N+. I'm probably not going to. The first, and least, reason is that I loved Lode Runner in my youth, but found "it doesn't age well." I don't feel the need to play Lode Runner or even a remixed version of it again.
The more substantial reason is that I have over 40 games paid for and downloaded to my 360. I don't have to worry about their unattractive flash game port. I'm still playing Triggerheart Excelica and Commanders: Attack of the Genos. I'm looking forward to Assault Heroes 2. As a old school D&Der, Talisman is coming soon and interest me. Omega Five is still awesome. And I still haven't even gotten a chance to play Puzzle Quest yet!
It's not that there's so much crap that I'm overwhelmed. It's the opposite. I'm overwhelmed by all the good stuff. There's so much good stuff I don't have time for a game like N+ which can't stand out from the crowd on it's own. The bar is set much higher, not lower. Which, of course, is the real reason for the developers' rant.
Jesus christ, what the hell. Lode Runner?
No one's crying about anything, either. It's not like Minter's whining about how no one cares about his burnout crap anymore. I absolutely get the resentment for devs that blame customers for their failures (especially after a few recent projects), but i didn't get that at all from these guys. What i got from it wasn't that no one bought it, but that the sheer amount of crap greenlit makes it harder for people to weed through it all on their own in order to make their own decision based on the demo. I can anecdotally add that this rings very true for me, since i log ago got tired of randomly downloading stuff from ShootTheCore, and not only are those small, but installing them is usually as easy as extracting a folder from an archive.
The thing is, when you strip things down like with XBLA games, you can't get too much of a feel from a screenshot. Afterall, the point with these games, more than with the current mainstream big titles, is that the focus is more on the gameplay. Right? And the way to check that out is via demos. Surely people on this forum, of all places, can see this point.
This works fine if there's some manner of quality control going on, but if there isn't, the game of ratios goes completely out of whack. 10 games total, 3 are truly crap, no big deal. 100 games, 30 are crap, that starts to screw things up. Worst case, like with the current freeware scene, the act of randomly downloading demos on a lark just becomes a complete waste of time. Cho Ren Sha 68k is the most perfect videogame ever created, but it's still relatively unknown simply because it gets lost in this sea of crap.
these downloadable console games are all kind of a new thing in console gaming right now. Yeah you were able to download PC games in the past but they are trying new things with things like the virtual console with wiiware, PSN, and xbox live arcade. Not everything is going to be perfect and they are trying to come up with new ideas and see what people like. Do you think they expected Geometry Wars to sell so well? thats the kinds of risks you have to take and the N+ guys are trying something new also. If people like shooters like Geometry Wars, other companys are most likely going to do some form of shooter thinking that its what people want. I think most of the XBLA games are acctually pretty good games. I haven't tried Space Giraffe or N+ at all so I can't say much on that. With games like Castlevania, Puzzlequest, and Rez....I think people may overlook games like N+ because there are ones that people KNOW are good that they'd rather spend thier money on.
If that's not whiny, then at the very least its arrogance. Just as Minter was bitching about how Frogger was outselling Space Giraffe, these guys can't figure out how games like Uno are popular. Frankly, if they can't figure that out, maybe they shouldn't be developing games. As I said in my post in the "Space Giraffe" thread, it is the developers job to make sure we get it. If we don't, it is their fault, not ours. (See also Lair and the Sixxaxis controls).Raigan: "Oh my god. Exactly! That's the whole thing. They all suck. It's like, when we started out, we were excited, just like with N. There were 30 games on Live Arcade. If N was one of them, it would stand out. Now there's like a hundred games, and they're all shit."
...
RB: It's like, how is Uno the best-selling game on there? That really... that doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't. Street Fighter II you can see, because everyone played it and it was popular. But Uno... I didn't realize the 360 was popular with that crowd.
The interviewer briefly touches on it, and the developers simply blow over this, and that is that XBLA is only releasing 2-3 games per week. That provides plenty of spotlight for new games to be seen before they are mixed with the hundred shitty games according ot the developers. On top of that, this game got plenty of coverage in the gaming mags. I remember reading about it in OXM, EGM and Game Informer.
Maybe so, but it is implied. If the numbers were there would they even be making this argument? My guess is they wouldn't care.
Ahh, but that's not what the developers are saying. They are saying demos should be enough for you, and that you don't need to download the game, at least if its not their game...
N+ may not be a retro game, but it takes its inspiration from retro titles.RB: The retro games thing I also don't get, because Double Dragon is not a game you ever need to play again. It was great. It was so good. But who's buying that if there's a demo?
This leads me to wonder if these guys even play any XBLA games, especially the demos. A demo does not give you the full experience of the game. Most demos last like 1 maybe 2 minutes. Even the Retro title demos are brief, and have you wanting more. Playing the demo of Double Dragon will not satisfy your desire to play a retro beat 'em up.
Moreover, how hard is it to scroll through X amount of games listed and download a demo in the first place? I don't think the number of releases are the problem. Part of their problem is marketing. If you give your game some obnoxious name that has been used over and over, like "Xtreme Whatever", or a bland or generic name like "N+", what do you expect?Mare: People are used to seeing crap on there.
Raigan: If I was a consumer, I could see not even looking at Live Arcade games anymore if I had downloaded 10 or 20 demos, because at a certain point, you're like, "Whatever. Maybe there's a good game in here.
Another reason why only Japanese homebrew is called doujin...
This member is requesting to be banned.
The dismissive comments "Oh I'm not even going to bother trying it" are what get to me the most out of this thread. The game actually reminds me more of a really upgraded Jumpman more than Lode Runner. Seriously, Lode Runner?
It seems people are perfectly willing to voice a strong opinion while being ignorant of facts. The fact that they'll say something along the lines of "Well I don't really know anything about this but this is what I think" boggles my mind.
I bought N+ the other day on a friend's recommendation (I had downloaded the demo a week prior and liked it, was just waffling on buying more points)
And it's a very fun, very creative piece of work. Props to the devs for a solid title. And boo to anyone who feels the need to subject others to a worthless and foundless opinion.
Go team Venture.
You mean like the developers in this saga?
Personally, I don't care about the title. It didn't grab my attention before and it doesn't grab my attention now. I have no opinion about the game beyond the fact that the videos remind me of Lode Runner, and the visuals are of the quality of a simple flash game. It could be the greatest game of all time, and I simply wouldn't care.
And that's the crux of the matter. The developers in this story are saying they can't get exposure for their game, because it doesn't stand out amidst the sea of "crap." I'm just saying that's not actually the case. It's not a shit sargasso N+ floats amongst. For someone like myself, the apathy regarding N+ is not caused by lots of other bad games, but because the other games are so cool that it dims any lustre which N+ might have.
It's one thing to not care. It's quite another to condemn all other games as shit. N+ is irrelevant. The commentary on other games was what I was addressing. By their own admission, the developers in the interview don't bother playing anything.
You're certainly welcome to play the game or not; but to deny yourself a solid, unique gaming experience baffles me. Even if you ultimately don't like it, you've at least tried something new. And the fact you can enjoy (or not) what it has to offer for free in about 10 minutes is even more encouragement to do so. In fact it takes as much time to watch a video of it on YouTube as it does to go play the flash game itself (which you can do here).
The visuals look like a simple flash game because it is a simple flash game.
Though I am curious; how does this game remind you of load runner? It plays nothing like it, it looks nothing like it, and the game concept sounds nothing like it. Perhaps you don't recall what Load Runner plays or looks like; it's like saying that BurgerTime reminds you of Q*Bert.
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