What's the deal with...the developer of Sword of the Stars?

Where’s Critical Bill when you need him? (If you don’t remember Critical Bill, you weren’t on Usenet back in the day…)

Do the people at Kerberos live in some alternate reality where gamers love to be shit on and buy products from companies that engage in said shitting? Every time I read something from those people I just cannot comprehend what they could possibly think to accomplish by the things they say (other than preventing people from buying their product).

This is a fairly serious issue. If I think my writers are running around selling their services to game companies too, it has to make me pause: Are they being honest? Are they concerned about losing a future gig? Are they hoping to score one in the future with a positive review?

If you have worked on a game, there’s an easy way around it: Disclosure. If you worked on a game, you can disclose that in the review.

But this ia s pretty serious non-issue. The Ebert and Roeper show has had various filmmakers reviews in place of Roger Ebert. I wonder if people are screaming about “conflict of interest.” What if Kevin Smith has a vested interest in The Guardian making money? Oh my god!

(Of course someone should send Mr. Cirulis that report that shows no correlation between review socres and sales.)

Speaking of Bills, can anyone reach Bill Trotter for his take on this argle bargle?

Who can forget. Fractious bastard.

;)

Hey! This reminds of RPGCodex/Elder Scrolls forum conflict! If you didn’t know, RPGCodex was very negative of Oblivion during development and post release. Ignoring the fact they are negative about a majority of games, Oblivion earned special ire for being everything Codex is against: a once respected, ambitious RPG franchise feels the need to remove choice and consequences and appeal to GTA lovin’ console users.

Some of this negativity has manifested itself in amusing ways: http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=15071 (warning, there is a shock link in the first page, so check out links at the bottom). Anyways, in an attempt to share the amusement all the “clean” posters were hosted on a 3rd party server for which a link was posted at the Elder Scrolls forums. Not only was the topic locked, it was deleted. Indeed, after that it became official TESF policy to delete any reference to RPGCodex. Furthermore, the auto-censor automatically changes RPGCodex to “i love oblivion”, I kid you not.

This is from the same people who said all the complaints on forums post release weren’t indicative of fan feelings since the real fans were all playing Oblivion.

Of course, no here really likes RPGCodex and is probably going to say Bethseda Admins had the right idea and surely Bethseda has their side of the story to tell, but the whole point of Tom’s post seems to be silenting any sort criticism under the guise of unrelated technicalities is “wrong”.

Yeah, we knew. A little.

He sold out and went to work for some editorial site, where he no doubt accepted all the graft he accused everyone else of receiving. (He’s at Sharky Extreme now.)

Preface: I’m not saying you specifically are a whore. So don’t come back like “i ain’t no ho, ho”.

So you worked a contract gig, big deal. But then it turns out you did such a good job that you’re writing all their manuals from now on. Entering an ongoing business relationship distinct from media pubs effectively makes you an employee. I don’t like the idea of critics being employed by studios. It sets a dangerous precedent. But it isn’t just about potentially compromising your objectivity, that’s a big part, but not all.

I manage databases for a MSP. Due to our high levels of sophistication and automation and my experience gained from the job, I can personally monitor and fully manage maybe 200 production dbs on my own, just me, no sweat. Lets say one of our clients is impressed with my performance and they make an offer to bring me on for side work. Not to take over the full contract of my real company, just other stuff on the side for them, and a significant amount of money for relatively little effort on my part. Is that ethical? I think not. This has happened, many times, and each time I turned it down. It all comes down to one question-- who do you work for? Where do your loyalties lie? As a freelancer with no formal employer, that answer may be “paying my mortgage”, so just ignore this paragraph entirely.

I’ve seen some seriously corrupt shit go down. I live in the real world, where frequently VPs get >30% gross kickbacks for signing contracts, spend 10s of thousands of dollars in stripclubs on our dime, etc. One dude literally ordered one of everything on the menu at Megu, dragged us to a bottle club for 2 hours trying to pick up highschool girls from jersey, then took 4 strippers into the VIP room at scores westside for 3 hours,somehow managing to drink 7 entire bottles of opus one 1999, while we sat around outside waiting and feeling like jackasses. The bill was something like $27k for the night. Compared to those excesses, this is more of a philosophy exercise. Is it wrong? Yeah, but it’s all a matter of degree.

More like filled with blinding hatred, but I think we get the picture.

Ignoring the fact they are negative about a majority of games, Oblivion earned special ire for being everything Codex is against: a once respected, ambitious RPG franchise feels the need to remove choice and consequences and appeal to GTA lovin’ console users.

The RPG Codex fanboys are not just negative about a majority of games, they are negative about virtually every single game ever released. I mean, it’s not like they’ve ever played any of the classic RPGs that they claim to hold in such high regard, or else they’d realize that a focus on combat for conflict resolution is not a new development in the CRPG world.

I also laugh at the sillliness of the notion that player actions had fewer consequences in Oblivion compared to Morrowind.

Indeed, after that it became official TESF policy to delete any reference to RPGCodex. Furthermore, the auto-censor automatically changes RPGCodex to “i love oblivion”, I kid you not.

Sounds like an appropriate way to deal with fanboys. It’s not like you can reason with them.

This is from the same people who said all the complaints on forums post release weren’t indicative of fan feelings since the real fans were all playing Oblivion.

I suppose that by “all the complaints on forums” you really mean “all the complaints on RPG codex”. Since that’s the case, then yes, they are certainly correct. I don’t think that a group of uneducated ignorant fanboys have any particular ability to determine what the majority of people playing a game think. I mean, the fact Oblivion boxes still occupy multiple shelf spaces must mean that people hate the game and don’t recommended it to their friends.

Of course, no here really likes RPGCodex and is probably going to say Bethseda Admins had the right idea and surely Bethseda has their side of the story to tell, but the whole point of Tom’s post seems to be silenting any sort criticism under the guise of unrelated technicalities is “wrong”.

I’m pretty sure that the point of Tom’s post is that it’s insane to claim that there is a conflict of interest between a person who wrote a manual for a game released about a year ago and another game from the same broad genre released a month ago. Of course, the Kerberos devs like to claim that their craptacular interface is actually a good thing. I mean, it says right in the manual that the complete lack of any useful feedback in combat is designed to make it easier and quicker to determine what’s happening.

Hahaha. You’ve repeatedly tried to establish yourself as such a jackhole that nobody is going to believe that you have moral or ethical standards. Even if that was all Walter Mitty-esque fantasies, that you would even try to inject yourself into the discussion in this way is comical.


Can’t you see they’ve stolen your letter “i”!

You do realize that the general attitude towards SotS around here pre-release was extremely positive?

A lot of us were really looking forward to it. And then it came out, and the UI was rubbish, and the devs were arrogant crack monkeys who stuck their fingers in their ears and hummed loudly when anyone dared issue a word of criticism. Thus the mighty fall.

Damned shame. I still want to play the game I hoped they were making.

It’s interesting to step out of the game world for a minute and look at what, say, the NYT book review does–they farm out their reviews to people who are, at best, competitors (i.e. other writers), and often to people who have written their own competing books in the same field. (They’ll send civil war books to historians who’ve written about the civil war, for example). Talk about a conflict of interest!

But it hasn’t hurt their credibility at all. It comes down to whether the individual reviewer is credible. A person with no apparent conflict might just hate the authors of the game for some obscure reason–it doesn’t make his review any better b/c he doesn’t have a financial incentive to see the game do badly. And vice versa.

Bah. For all the good work Rorshach did on here it’s difficult to believe that the devs continue to be such flaming retards. I love the accusation of how all the QT3 people who posted on their forums act like ebonstone did in that thread post - er no, most of us were entirely reasonable but negative towards the game.

I guess SOTS sold well? I hope they learn for the sequel if there is one, but unfortunately it looks like the attitude problem is going to be as bad as ever.

I guess the question comes down to, “Should reviewers work for the products or a competitor of the products they are reviewing?” I personally feel they should not during the time the products are in the market place. Even if the reviewer has no vested interests in giving one or another more sales. While I read Tom Chick’s review and feel its totally accurate and unbiased, the majority of the time it doesn’t work that way. Clearly the Ascendency review in PC Gamer and the Advent Rising review on Judgement Day were tainted. If I was Jeff Green, I wouldn’t of given Tom the review, if only to avoid public conversations such as this. As a totally outside observer, I know that besides writing the manual, Tom appeared on Stardock’s podcast for a long while so its unclear as to his ties to the company. Even if there isn’t a financial incentive to trash a competitor but there could be an emotional bias.

On the other hand, who even uses reviews to make purchase decisions anymore?

As for RPGC/TESF… Had Bethesda not bought the rights to Fallout, RPGcodex would of loved Oblivion. thats all I’m saying.

No. In fact, that’s pretty common in the book world. Charles DeLint has a monthly book review column in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for instance. Fiction authors are a pretty amiable lot, though–most of them seem to see other authors as peers rather than as competitors. Which makes sense; presented with two appealing books, I think that most consumers would choose to eventually read both rather than seeing it as an either/or choice.

I think games would be that way as well, but they are forced into a more competitive relationship by the virtue of their retail market, where shelf space is a rare commodity and many games live or die based on how well they sell in the first couple of weeks on the shelf.

As for the claim the claim that Tom’s review is teh bias, it’s good to see that Cirulis is still as much of an arrogant, pompous windbag as he ever was. I’d have an easier time believing his claim if his game did not, in fact, suck ass. But it does, and Tom’s criticisms are all pretty much in line with the criticisms raised by everyone else here when Kerberos first released the demo. Not that Cirulis feels the need to support his claim by pointing out any factual errors in the review, or by explaining how this supposed bias that he sees even makes logical sense.

It must burn his ass that his game’s highest score, to date, comes from PC Gamer.

Yes, I’m full of contradictions. I have no compunctions about messing with random jerkoffs like yourself on the internet and yet here in the real world I wouldn’t rape a baby. One would think that anyone with the sheer unmitigated gall to call you, YOU by sweet Jesus, a shithead would love to rape him a baby, and yet I there’s no baby blood on my hands (or elsewhere for that matter, dirty goose). Odd how I can compartmentalize my psyche like that, is it not?

I can see his point. GalCiv and SotS are similar in scope and subject matter if not in gameplay. However, he’s also acted like a twerp online in many venues and (as seen on this board) it has cost him sales.

If it helps, I didn’t really get into SotS either, and Brad Wardell hasn’t paid me a dime! In fact I couldn’t help thinking “Wow, this is playing like a dumbed down GalCiv/Moo”.

As Steve said, I think disclosure is the better answer. The industry is incestuous enough that it’s called for, and the people within such as Tom are adult enough that I think just a “hey, I got paid by Stardock to do work on a similar game’s manual” in a footnote is adequate notice.