Theory

[icycalm]

And don't think even for a moment that I bought this bullshit:

I think that for my first real game project, with 2 guys working on it in their spare time and a budget of $8,000

Why the hell would you need a "budget" if you are working on the game "in your spare time"? And besides, you are a teenager whose parents put you in the University of Maryland dude. You are even Indian in the bargain! You'll probably stay with them until you are 40! What expenses does a kid on break from school for the summer have? You should be making the game on NOTHING! The entire Kickstarter pitch is a scam! Why are you not taking this money and giving it to Henk Nieborg who is a real adult and a professional who NEEDS money in order to set aside some time to work on something? Why would a teenage Indian kid who is supposed to stay in his room all day to work on his game even need eight thousand fucking dollars!? What the fuck are you gonna do with all this money?!!!

Buy a new gaming PC and get some callgirls do deflower you when your parents have left you alone for the weekend, of course...

And then bullshit your customers that the money went towards the making of the game, and even that you did not get enough and you could have used even moar money to be even MOAR professional of course (i.e. buy an even better gaming PC and even better callgirls)...

And the fact that the idea of throwing this money at Nieborg and seeing if he bites so that your game would have AN ACTUAL ARTIST ON BOARD AND NOT LOOK LIKE GENERIC TRIPE THAT NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS WOULD CARE TO PLAY is a testament in who you are and what you want and how you think. You talk about professionalism, but you're just a teenage hustler milking hipsters with shit taste on Kickstarter just like everyone else.

If you had had Nieborg as a goal from the beginning, you could even have negotiated a fee with him first, then started the KS with his fee as a goal, which would have given a shitload more exposure to your project, and possibly brought in enough money to hire the man.

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONLY LEGITIMATE USE OF KICKSTARTER. 2 KIDS PLUGGING AWAY AT THEIR ROOMS DURING SUMMER BREAK IS A BORDERLINE SCAM! THE GAME YOU ARE MAKING WOULD HAVE TURNED OUT EXACTLY THE SAME IF THE KS HAD GIVEN YOU 4,000 DOLLARS OR 1,000 OR ZERO, BECAUSE IT COSTS YOU NOTHING TO MAKE THIS GAME. AND DON'T GIVE ME SOME BULLSHIT SOB STORY THAT WITHOUT THIS MONEY YOU WOULD BE DELIVERING PAPERS ALL SUMMER AND WOULDN'T HAVE TIME TO WORK ON THE GAME, JUST LIKE WITH THE BULLSHIT THAT THE INTRO SEQUENCE FOR WHICH YOU WERE DISCUSSING COPYRIGHT ISSUES ON NEOGAF WAS MERELY A "PLACEHOLDER". I CAN SPOT BULLSHIT LIKE YOURS BEFORE YOU'VE EVEN OPENED YOUR MOUTH TO SPIT THEM AT ME.

Bleargh. So much bamboozling and disgust.

[icycalm]

I don't even like Nieborg's work all that much. It's just that he is the least unacceptable pixel artist in the West right now. You'd be even better off learning Japanese or using machine translation to start trawling Japanese doujin websites to find some more talented kids to work on this with you. You could ask Gaijin Punch and other Japanese speakers in the scene (the REAL 2D scene I mean) to help you out. The resources are out there, you just lack the knowledge, passion, inspiration and intelligence to utilize them. You don't even fucking know how to spend money lol.

[icycalm]

The only Western project in this genre that would have a hope at genuine success (i.e. not the kind of success measured by how much money you can scam off hipsters on Kickstarter, but the kind whose products are played and treasured by connoisseurs for years and decades to come, and serve as the foundations and inspiration for future efforts in the field) would be one with me as director, Josh as producer, Henk Nieborg or an even better Japanese artist on art, zinger on music and you as programmer (with perhaps also one or two more programmers to assist you).

I would have the vision (the kind of vision that comes up with a name like "Shadow Dancer" for a ninja game...), and everyone else could say their bit, and offer their suggestions, but the last word in all matters would be mine, because I would be the one with the goddamn vision.

I would put up a couple thousand of MY OWN euros on the project -- not to buy you a gaming PC, but TO PAY THE FEES OF PEOPLE LIKE NIEBORG WITHOUT WHICH THE PROJECT WOULD BE SO HOPELESS THERE'D BE NO POINT IN EVEN STARTING IT AT ALL.

THAT'S how genuine professionals do things: they risk THEMSELVES first and above all to try and realize their vision (assuming their "vision" is not dollar signs on Kickstarter).

They put in their TIME, their MONEY, their EVERYTHING, while you are not even putting OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY in it. You are literally taking other people's money and you are not even putting it in the goddamn game they paid you to fund!

It is outrageous!

You deserve to make a forgettable, generic ripoff that will be forgotten even before it is released.

[icycalm]

And then, when you've worked on such a game, and delivered a TRUE 4/5 or 5/5 experience, THEN YOU COULD BANK ALL THE MONEY FROM THE STEAM SALES AND BUY YOUR GAMING PC AND YOUR CALLGIRLS OR WHATEVER.

No one could tell you at that point that you are spending the money wrongly. It's your fucking money at that point, and you have not scammed anyone to get it, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it without having to bullshit people that it's "the budget of the game" when it has nothing to do with it (though it would be wise to reinvest the lion's share of it into your NEXT game, to hire even George Kamitani- and Yuzo Koshiro-level people to REALLY blow people's minds out with your NEXT game, and REALLY start making the kind of money that would allow you to leave your parents' home and buy a Ferrari or Bugatti and hang with proper game designers, all of whom drive supercars for a reason (that reason NOT being scamming money from people on Kickstarter and not even spending it on the fucking game)).

[icycalm]

Basically what happened was:

1. You started dabbling with a friend on a student project game for kicks.

2. Unexpectedly, you actually got something playable!

3. You thought, "Why not throw it on Kickstarter and see if people bite? They bite on so much trash, who knows, perhaps they'll bite on mine too!"

4. You worked on the KS pitch. This was the only thing in the entire business in which you ACTUALLY had inspiration: the inspiration of how to push all the buttons of the "hardcore" hipsters in order to get them to shower you with dollars. You were one of them, so subconsciously at least you understood their psychology perfectly, and pandered to it like a master. Meanwhile, since you are not really a passionate 2D action game player yourself, you know fuck all about these games and therefore your actual design is perfectly humdrum and forgettable.

5. Unexpectedly (because you didn't really expect the KS to succeed), the KS succeeded!

6. IMMEDIATELY you've spent all the KS money in your mind on stuff that you wanted for a long time but your parents wouldn't buy you.

7. At no point in this entire business did you waste a single nanosecond thinking about how you could improve your game with the KS money. If you actually thought about this and your answer was "keep it to myself" it's even worse, because that means that you are not merely a scammer but a retard into the bargain.

8. You notice the meanie icycalm whom everyone hates trashing your absurd pretensions and your little scam in his forum. You rush there to rationalize away his devastating criticisms. Cue lots of made up shit and furious backpedalling.

And that is the story so far.

[SriK]

I understand the stuff you're saying about retro games, and I get where you're coming from there now. But the accusations you're making about me and about the game's budget are plain wrong.

The art for this game, no matter what you might think about its quality, costs A LOT of money. Before I had even started work on the Kickstarter pitch, I had already spent almost $1,500 of my OWN money (that I earned over my summer job) on Daniel's fees for several level backgrounds, character animations, etc. He isn't a "friend" of mine from school, he's a freelance pixel artist who contacted me when I posted a paid ad online, and he's CHEAP as far as these artists go. I had people with far worse-looking portfolios submitting their stuff to me and trying to ask for twice as much money, and people who promised me great work with great portfolios but dropped off the face of the Earth a week in without producing anything, and people who just sent me a ZIP file of PNGs with one or two lines of broken English. The fact that I managed to find a cool dude with passable art skills who consistently communicates with me and isn't trying to wring me dry of all my money, in spite of my own lack of experience and credentials, is a SUCCESS as far as I'm concerned.

If you don't believe me about how expensive pixel art is:

In the US, hourly rates for pixel artists vary from $15 per hour up to a cap around $50 per hour for the best artists on the most well-funded projects. ... However, a useful median that you'll see from large, respectable companies is about $30/hr for talented artists to work on high profile projects that look pretty hot on your portfolio.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamSalt ... elines.php

The $15 per hour figure is for beginning artists, who have no credentials or experience, and who would produce art far worse than Steel Assault's. Daniel's figure was even lower than theirs, at $12.50 per hour. And he STILL cost almost $1,500, with I'd say less than 25% of the game's art completed. (If 120 hours seems unreasonable to you, I can send you the payment log, and corresponding chatlogs, and you can see for yourself how quickly this adds up -- most of it was at the beginning when we were still trying to figure a style out.) The fact that he's willing to work on a meager $3,500 art budget for the rest of the game is, again, a SUCCESS in my book.

And I haven't spent a SINGLE CENT of the Kickstarter money yet on anything not related to the game. You think the Kickstarter gave me enough money to buy a new gaming PC and hookers? I have about $7,500 left after Kickstarter fees, and I estimate that after taxes (which are also going to require expensive accountants since it involves international law -- Daniel lives in Mexico) that number will go down to about $5,500 at most (Kickstarter counts as taxable income). After factoring in the art budget, which we ended up agreeing on $3,500 rather than the $3,000 on the Kickstarter page, $2,000. Then I have busiiness fees: Steam Greenlight fees, payment for that aforementioned accountant, other necessary legal fees (like using an online service to declare an LLC for the game)... In the end, that'll leave about $1,000 left over purely for emergency situations, like if Daniel drops out of the project and I have to find a new artist who's going to cost me a lot more money. At my current college apartment, $1,000 is a month's worth of rent. I'm not sure how much it is in callgirls.

Have you seen the budgets on the Kickstarters for Western 16-bit styled games? Heart Forth Alicia: original goal of $60,000 ($18,000 for the art). Hyper Light Drifter: original goal of $27,000. To give an even more outrageous example, Skullgirls costs $150 per frame to animate, $250k for each character, and I know that you despise that game's art. And none of these games I'm mentioning are even CLOSE to the standard that you'd want me to have. You think a couple thousand of your euros are going to get me art that matches or surpasses Metal Slug?

I mean, Henk Nieborg is going to respond to some 20-year-old university student working on his first real game? What would that e-mail look like? "Hey Henk, you don't know me, and I don't know anyone you know, and I've never done a videogame before, and I'm 20 years old and still in college, but I really really want to and can you please do pixelarts for me?" I have a BLANK RESUME in game development, I have NO experience and NO references. No master pixel artist has ANY reason to trust me to finish a game yet (and they do care whether I finish it or not, because talented people like that aren't just in it for the money). I don't even trust MYSELF to finish anything more complicated than this, at my current point as a programmer and game designer. Could I hire more people to help me with that? Yes, but that requires even more money, and an even bigger Kickstarter than $8,000 (not to mention that if I'm not doing stuff myself then I'm not gaining any knowledge or experience from it, which was half the point of the project in the first place). And that number is going to grow exponentially the more people I have!

So once I finish this, and prove that I can actually finish some sort of game on a smaller scale (both to myself and prospective artists), then we can start talking about hiring awesome pro pixel artists to do a followup in 16-bit style (or even 3D modelers for 2.5D), hiring Yuzo Koshiro for the music, hiring you to produce, etc. Until then, it's simply not going to happen. We'd both love for it to, but yeah.

You can say that I'm a shitty developer, that I don't know what I'm doing, that my game looks like crap, that I'm just a kid with daydreams bigger than my head. Maybe it's all true. But I am NOT trying to fucking scam anybody. This is legitimately the BEST that I can do, given my situation and resources.

[icycalm]

lol if the stuff you claim about Daniel is true, and he is not indeed your buddy from school or TIGS or whatever, then yeah you are doing the best you can with what you have, and it's pretty damn good to boot. But it's nowhere near 4/5 or 5/5 good. A 3/5 would be a triumph of unheard of proportions for the genre, the style and the budget in the West, and a stepping stone to greater things if you learn your lessons from the experience and if you have the necessary passion for the genre (still veeery questionable from where I am standing), and the genetic talent (very questionable as well).

Even in the best case scenario, however, Steel Assault would not even be a footnote for the genre. There would never be any reason at all for anyone who is not on Josh's or Macaw's level to play it, and anyone who WILL play it who doesn't have Josh's or Macaw's background will just be wasting their time. Any reviews that recommend the game will be trash, and the reviews will be forgotten just as surely as the game.

Basically everyone who plays your game and gives you money for it, whether before or after its completion, is merely doing you a favor the same way as if your uncle gave you 100 bucks simply because he is your uncle. In the same way, anyone giving you money for this online is simply doing so because this is a small scene and everyone is more or less friends and everyone is supposed to support each other. I'd throw some money your way too if I didn't have to log into KS to do it, or if you simply asked. It's the same thing as if a friend of mine decided to film a "movie" in my back yard. The level of encouragement and support he'd get from me and everyone else around him HAS NO REFLECTION WHATSOEVER ON THE QUALITY OF THE FINISHED WORK COMPARED TO HOLLYWOOD FILMS. The very MOST that could be accomplished by this "film" is if it led to my friend's being accepted into a film school, and eventually moving to LA to work on real films.

This is the proper perspective from which to view your work. And no one else in the world appears to share it other than me.

[icycalm]

Let's answer this too while I am at it:

Thesis: In a retro game, aesthetics matter even MORE than in a regular type of game (and they matter a lot in regular games too as it is).

Anyone care to try and guess why?

What is a retro game? I explained that in an essay nearly a decade ago:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/retro/

Given all the above, we can only define a 'retro game' as one which imitates the design of a game from the "recent past". The retro game, in other words, instead of attempting to expand or reshape the nature of the current standard of possibility-space, nostalgically goes back to an older standard from the recent past.

In your case of course there's no nostalgia but mere necessity, which is why I am questioning your passion for the genre. Quite likely, if this game succeeds, you'll be just as happy to jump to another, more popular genre like all the other "indies", instead of keep hammering away at this one until, many years later, you get a chance to really make a difference and contribute to it.

In any case, what I meant to say is that a retro game is a game which, by definition, has an old, and therefore VERY LOW standard of mechanics. That's what it means to make a retro game, above all: that your mechanics are grievously out of date, and therefore BAD.

In other words, the mere decision to make a retro game means that YOU HAVE GIVEN UP THE FIGHT in terms of mechanics, from the get-go. And if you've surrendered on the mechanical front, it means that the only front left to you in which to do something genuinely worthwhile is the aesthetic one. That's why Recap says that in retro efforts aesthetics are even more important than they usually are. You need to match in mechanics the highest standard of the era which you are imitating, and then you need to TOP them on the aesthetic front, in order to attract the attention of someone who knows how many far better, later games exist, and who values his time and wants to use it in the most efficient way possible in order to have as much fun as possible.

I mean just look at Dragon's Crown. If you ignore the stupid grinding and pseudo-"RPG" mechanics, it's an old fashioned 2D beat 'em up. If Daniel had done the art for it no one would have given a shit about it -- EXACTLY the attitude that people will have towards your game (no one will bother with it apart from a few hundred pseudo-hardcore hipsters on NeoGAF and Josh and Macaw).

But if George Kamitani was doing the art for Steel Assault...? (and also picked a proper theme and name and so on, since he is a real artist who never goes to work without a worthwhile proper vision....)

You'd be rolling in dough and blow and hookers and Ferraris dude. And Dragon's Crown mechanics fucking SUCK compared to Steel Assault. I know because I played it. Mechanically, DRAGON'S CROWN IS A ONE STAR GAME. It is the worst fucking brawler in the history of brawlers that I've played. It is comically fucking terrible. I have a half-written review that trashes the game to hell and back... but STILL gives it 3/5 because it is the most immersive 2D experience ever despite the comicoterrible mechanics.

That's how important vision and aesthetics are, then, even for 2D games. If Daniel had done the art for Super Shinobi and Super Mario World, and you had devised the themes and settings, I wouldn't have even gotten into console games dude. I'd have stuck with PC and strategy games.

[icycalm]

Here is a project that some amateurs could undertake that would REALLY add value to this sort of genre:

Rip out all the art, music and fighting mechanics from Dragon's Crown, and put them in the framework of a regular 2D arcade beat 'em up with no stupid story, grinding, or backtracking. Simple 3-lives, 1-credit, difficulty through the roof mechanics that make you fight to the death for every gorgeous new screen you travel through, from the very first all the way to the last.

Instant 5/5 masterpiece and best beat 'em up ever. And your name would be in the credits of a Videogame Art game (but only for the donkeywork, because the vision would have been mine and Kamitani's -- Kamitani would have the aesthetic vision, and I would have had the mechanical, which I explain in my review is how it should be. Kamitani is an artist, not a game designer, which is why all his games ultimately suck so bad. Someone needs to buy his company and put him in his rightful place: away from the director's chair and heading the art department).

[icycalm]

We could basically take every single Vanillaware game: Odin Sphere, Oboro Muramasa, Dragon's Crown, and turn it into a 5/5 best game in genre ever Videogame Art masterpiece by simply removing all the stupid grinding and backtracking and turning them into arcade games.

You could have an entire studio dedicated to doing this, and the results of their labor would be some of the best 2D action games ever.

Of course they wouldn't be able to make any money off of this, but critically, the games would be unbeatable, as opposed to making games with shitty Western art that make money, but are forgotten within months and that no one ever plays.

I mean it makes sense. Think about it for a second.

1. No one in Japan who makes 2D games remembers how to make them anymore because they don't have any good theorists like me

2. No one in the West knows how to make pretty 2D games

So, you take the art from Japan, and the mechanics from the West (which are merely Japanese mechanics that have been arrived at through the conclusions of my theory), and you end up with masterpieces.

Someone's bound to get around to this in the future. It's definitely a more likely scenario than anyone in the West learning to draw and working on 2D games (all our real artists are working on 3D games, because that's where the money is, and I don't blame them. Stuff like the 2D games that Ubisoft makes like Child of Light and so on are ugly and boring to boot).

[icycalm]

By the way, back to the 8-bit retro discussion, it is worth mentioning that I never really owned an 8-bit console. I bought a Master System for a few days, but its games were so inferior to the Amiga games I had been playing for years before, that I couldn't get into them, so I returned it and used the money on an import Mega Drive which had just been released.

I had been playing 8-bit games in friends' homes and in the arcades for years, but I never enjoyed them enough to bother my parents to get me a console (and my parents always bought for me everything I asked).

Meanwhile, I got every major 16-bit console released: MD, SFC, and Neo Geo (and even Neo Geo CD).

About the only 8-bit games that looked good enough and exciting enough in the magazines for me to want to play were the NES Ninja Gaidens. I used to hate Nintendo for shackling companies like Tecmo to keep making Ninja Gaiden 3 for the NES instead of for the Mega Drive.

But even back then I was so busy with so many MD and SFC games, that I never found the time to buy a NES and try the Ninja Gaidens.

Even today, so many decades later, I have STILL not tried the Ninja Gaidens, never mind obscure games like Shatterhand, or whatever other hidden 8-bit gems people like Josh and Macaw unearth from time to time. Every time they unearth such a game, and recommend that people play it, I think to myself "Well, I still haven't played Cannon Dancer, or Wolf Fang, or Hagane, or hundreds of other 16-bit classics, so until I do I am sorry dude, but I would be guilty of a crime to take your recommendation".

That's why I use the word "insane" for anyone who takes time off their day to play your game and is genuinely excited to play it. And that's why I condemn their passion for the genre as fake, or at the very least their knowledge of it as absurdly ignorant.

Whoever has not played all the Shinobis, Metal Slugs, Makaimuras, Striders, Rockmans, Contras, Castlevanias, and literally hundreds upon hundreds of great 2D action games -- perhaps even thousands -- has absolutely no business being excited over Steel Assault, let alone making time to seriously play it. And anyone who hasn't played all these games has no business DIRECTING another such game in the year 2015.

And, by the way, Recap feels exactly the same way about 8-bit games. He hasn't even reviewed one yet. He regards them as "blueprints" of what was to come. He barely even seems to regard them as proper games. Which I don't quite agree with, but the end result is the same: neither of us can seem to get too excited about them, and we almost never bother playing them. I mean we played them when they were new and THERE WERE NO 16-BIT GAMES AVAILABLE, but what would be the point now? We just can't get excited over them, which goes to show how closely we are in our feelings over this. Great critics think (and feel) alike.

And then there are people like you who need to have these things explained to them because you haven't played enough games (and in the right ORDER) to develop this kind of feeling for yourself.

You are not thirsty for the next big thing, while we have been chasing it since the '80s. How COULD you ever make something that would satisfy us enough to give your efforts a 5/5? Your feelings are almost NOTHING like ours! You'll get your 5/5s from people like yourself, and that is how it should be. But the judgements of people like yourself do not last, because of lack of passion in them, and when all is said and done, the only rating and opinion that will matter, will be ours.

[icycalm]

Your problem, and the problem of amateurs generally, is that you can't distinguish between the excitement and support of people who support you BECAUSE THEY KNOW YOU, from the excitement and support of the artistic community as a whole for a genuinely worthwhile work.

I would give your game a quick try because you have contributed to my site and we have discussed a few things now and then, and you would misinterpret this as me taking an interesting in YOUR GAME, as opposed to taking an interest in YOU.

People like earthboundtrev, who plays Ziggurat and posts about it on Twitter because an internet blogger personality made it, are utterly incapable of telling the difference between the social aspect of the interest they show to a work, and the interest towards the work itself. The same applies to people like Tain, who posts here and who helped you get the word out on NeoGAF. I can see it from a mile away, this confusion between interest in you as a person, and interest in your game.

But I am an extremely experienced and talented critic whose VERY JOB is introspection to find out where my pleasure is coming from, so I can analyze it to my readers, so all this stuff is extremely transparent to me.

[icycalm]

I've already talked about collectors somewhere, who confuse the joy of the little adventure of tracking down and acquiring a rare game, to the joy of playing the actual game. Only the latter joy comes under consideration when evaluating the quality of the game, but they routinely confuse the issue and include the first joy too in their assessment, praising bad or mediocre games as great simply because they are rare (or conversely, slamming great games simply because they are cheap and ubiquitous and popular and everyone has played them).

Or "indie" developers like Derek Yu, who said in a TIGS thread somewhere that he enjoys "indie" games because they have rough edges and he likes to look at them like a building in process and explore them. So he confuses the joy of designing and taking apart a game, to the joy of playing the actual game. Once again, from a critical perspective only the latter joy counts, but he can't tell the difference, and ends up praising rough, unpolished and even unfinished games as more enjoyable than (and therefore superior to) polished masterpieces.

Similarly, guys like Tain and earthboundtrev and maybe even Josh and Macaw to an extent, will end up overvaluing your game simply because they know you and it's cool when someone that's close to us makes something that we usually expect to come from strangers halfway around the world whom we have no contact with.

All the above are gross mistakes that no critic worth his salt would ever commit. And of course, people from the future, when all games are available at the touch of a button (hence no rarity factor involved), and who are not game designers (hence no rough, unfinished game bonus involved), and who never knew you while you were alive (hence no friendship factor involved), will evaluate the game purely on its merits compared to other games in the genre, and arrive at a conclusion closer to that of a proper critic, as opposed to the opinions of Bart Simpson-like dudes whose attention is diverted by any number of external factors and for whom the LEAST important factor when evaluating a game is how well it fucking plays for christsake.

[SriK]

I understand where you're coming from, and that the question I was asking earlier in this thread ("could Steel Assault realistically be a 4/5 game, if judged by the standards of 1989 NES platformers?") is completely irrelevant to you. From your perspective there's absolutely no rational reason to play my game and leniently judge it by the standards of decades-old 8-bit platformers, when games like Metal Slug, Alien Soldier, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Megaman X, and so many others exist which are 8 times prettier and more advanced mechanically than any NES platformer ever was, and which you could be putting time into instead of an 8-bit game. So for your purposes the entire premise of my question is flawed, and whether the answer is "yes" or "no" doesn't matter, because the end result is the same: it's not worth playing in 2015.

But to me as a developer, that question is the entire point. I don't have any illusions that Steel Assault is going to be something lasting or that people who never knew me will be playing it decades from now. It basically is a student game, even if I'd like to think it's more polished than a lot of other ones. I have what I think is a reasonable goal in mind for it (which is going to be hard enough to accomplish as it is), and if I can match or surpass it I'll be happy -- even if, in the overall history of the 2D action genre, my game won't mean much whether I accomplish my goal or not, and anyone who doesn't know me personally or want to hire me or whatever won't really have any reason to play it once the dust settles. (Though I've gotta say that as an amateur developer nobody, the prospect of even a few hundred or a thousand people playing and enjoying my game seems pretty damn awesome, regardless of what their reasons or motivations or hipsterisms are lol.)

So with all that being said, unless you still think I'm a stupid lowlife scammer, I think we're on the same page. I guess the last thing I'd like to ask you is for some more detailed feedback on the game, if you're willing and have the time to provide it (since I'd still like to make the best game I can). You're right in that everyone in the amateur game development scene wants to support each other, and no one really wants to be the person who calls some kid's game out on looking like crap; I hadn't really received any negative criticism about Steel Assault at all prior to this thread. Anyway, you mentioned the weapon effects looking like crap, and I wasn't sure what you meant by that (are you talking about the graphics for the "lightning" and expander beam weapons)? What else stuck out to you as bad from what you saw of the game (or good if you're feeling generous), that you think we could realistically change given the style?

Here are some of my ideas for moving further:

1. The first specific step I have in mind is to axe the "National Harbor" and "Club Pavillion" stages shown on the Kickstarter page, so that the game gets to more interesting and fantastical environments faster. So you'd start out in Washington, D.C. just as some sort of an intro level (maybe with a small-scale miniboss or boss), encounter the first major setpiece of the game on the metro (where you jump from car to car as they detach from each other, with some enemies eventually breaking the cars themselves in half, both large and small enemies attacking you from outside and inside the entire time until you get to the boss, etc.), and then immediately after you'd end up exploring more interesting areas. Some ideas I have are mountains which turn from fiery to icy and back on a regular basis (due to a weather machine at the top of the level which serves as the boss), underwater caverns where giant monsters emerge from cracks in the ground to bite at you and smaller eels swim around as slippery platforms (kind of like the snake blocks in Super Mario World), forest temples where eyes watch you from the shadows and grab you, trippy dream sequences where Giger monsters are trying to kill you, etc.

2. Aesthetically, I don't see us dropping the 8-bit constraints (barring any mysterious relatives dying tomorrow and leaving me their vast inheritance), but there's probably still more we can accomplish within them. If the game gets close enough to completion without any of the $1,000 "emergency money" I mentioned earlier being used, then maybe I can put it into finding the best pixel artist I can realistically hire and have them touch up Daniel's art (which will be a lot cheaper than if they were working on fully original art and concepts). The person I currently have in mind is this guy:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/84473.htm

He's a friend of mine I first met on a now-defunct forum about 6 years ago, and I think he ended up being pretty damn good at pixel art. I originally wanted him to work on the game, but he didn't have enough time to because of art school, and his rates for working on the entire project would have probably been way too high for me.

3. Mechanically, on the other hand, I don't see any real reason to limit the level design to what could be accomplished on a Famicom. The only real limit here is my own design ingenuity and programming skill (which, granted, is still fairly limited). So I guess the goal is just to have as many unique and interesting level concepts, platforming situations, enemy and boss concepts, etc. as we can possibly come up with and fit in. (You probably noticed that right now the game has, like, 2 enemy types programmed in... that's obviously going to change lol.)

I think that's about it, looking forward to your thoughts.

[icycalm]

I understand where you're coming from, and that the question I was asking earlier in this thread ("could Steel Assault realistically be a 4/5 game, if judged by the standards of 1989 NES platformers?") is completely irrelevant to you. From your perspective there's absolutely no rational reason to play my game and leniently judge it by the standards of decades-old 8-bit platformers, when games like Metal Slug, Alien Soldier, Castlevania: Bloodlines, Megaman X, and so many others exist which are 8 times prettier and more advanced mechanically than any NES platformer ever was, and which you could be putting time into instead of an 8-bit game. So for your purposes the entire premise of my question is flawed, and whether the answer is "yes" or "no" doesn't matter, because the end result is the same: it's not worth playing in 2015.

The issue is a little more complicated than that. Because if we suppose that your game IS worth 4/5 or 5/5 by the standards of decades-old 8-bit platformers, but is not worth playing today for those who still haven't played all the 16-bit games, then Shatterhand isn't worth playing either, and the 5/5 Insomnia review clashes with this theory. And that's why the review was written by Josh and not me. What would I have given the game if I were reviewing it?

Honestly, I've no idea. But I wouldn't attempt to review it before immersing myself completely in the era, meaning several months (ideally a couple of years) of playing NOTHING BUT 8-BIT GAMES. Then, and only then, would I be able to offer a fair evaluation of the game in its proper context, as opposed to comparing it with games released years later for more powerful systems by designers who were merely improving upon it. Otherwise, it would be as unfair as trashing a 1970 Ferrari for being worse than a 2015 Ferrari. It just wouldn't make sense.

This long acclimatization period that I describe is not needed for me when I review 16-bit games, because I've experienced that era thoroughly while it was unfolding, and it is very easy for me to judge anything produced by it accurately because I already have all the reference points indelibly inscribed in my memory. So the moment I boot up Contra Spirits, I am immediately back in that era, and there is no danger of me not enjoying it due to comparing it, for example, with Hard Corps: Uprising. The same cannot be said of younger players and reviewers, and that's why their analyses and judgements are basically worthless. And then you have young guys like Josh, zinger and Macaw who spend their whole time playing games of that era, so even though they didn't experience it first-hand, they are immersed in it 24/7 anyway, and their judgements are not stupid and absurd.

Now getting back to your game, it would be a very delicate business to review it. Because, on the one hand we CANNOT extend to you the same courtesy we do to old games of judging it entirely by older standards, but on the other hand, we SHOULD judge it by older standards, TO SOME DEGREE.

It's hard to explain why, though. I guess the best way I can do it is to take it to the higher level, and talk about genres. Because if Metal Slug completely trounced Contra, 3D FPSes completely trounced 2D run & guns, so it doesn't make sense to give 5/5 to Hard Corps: Uprising and 5/5 again to Far Cry. If the newer genre is indeed better than the old one, it stands to reason that the best games of the newer genre will be better than the best games of the older genre, and thus giving the same rating to both doesn't make sense.

At which point we arrive at the realization that the rating system is RELATIVE, and that 5/5 for a 2D sidescroller doesn't mean the same as 5/5 for a three-dimensional free-roaming first-person role-playing game that cost 50 million dollars to make.

So the ideal way to judge your game would be:

1. By a person who either lived through the 8-bit era and played all of its key games in your chosen genre, or at the very least a person passionate for that genre and that era who has immersed himself completely in it, and therefore properly understands it,

and

2. A person who at the same time, due to his love for the GENRE above the ERA, has also played all the key games of the genre from the LATER eras, and also the CONTEMPORARY, CUTTING-EDGE era, and can therefore evaluate whether you are bringing anything new and better to the table, if not mechanically then at least aesthetically, as I explained earlier regarding retro efforts

... and then coming to a conclusion via a baseline pleasure gut feeling on whether what you are offering has anything valuable to add to the existing library of the genre throughout the ages.

So your game should be judged partly via old standards, and partly via contemporary ones.

That's the best way I can explain it to you. I am usually very good at explaining things, but I admit that this issue -- though in my head makes perfect sense -- is very tricky to explain to others.

The main point to take away is that even I wouldn't be able to offer a decent review of the game without immersing myself in the era (i.e without playing Batman, Shatterhand et al). At the same time, my final judgment would NOT depend entirely on the comparison with those games. Your game comes 25 years AFTER these games, therefore to get anywhere close to a 5/5 you'd have to INVOKE the FEELINGS of those games PERFECTLY in your game, and THEN offer something MORE on TOP of that. Otherwise, even if your imitation (because that is what this is, obviously: an imitation) was so freaking PERFECT that you could have put a "copyright 1991" at the start screen and no one would have noticed the lie, it would STILL not be worth the same rating as the games it is imitating. Maybe it would be worth, in 2015, one star less, so if Shatterhand is 5/5, your game would be 4/5 if it were a PERFECT imitation of Shatterhand (and by this I don't mean a game with identical mechanics and identical theme, I mean a game with EQUIVALENT mechanics and an EQUIVALENT and EQUALLY INSPIRED theme).

But for the 5/5 you'd have to offer something more.

So, 4/5 for perfect imitation, a game that takes lovers of that era back to it and reminds them so much of it and so perfectly that it leaves them feeling as if they had relived it through your work; and 5/5 for a game imitating that era perfectly and then also TROUNCING in some way, or overall, even the BEST game of that era.

Really, 3/5 is the best you can hope for, and it's by no means a bad rating. I've given 3/5s to plenty of games I really enjoyed.

[icycalm]

I don't have any illusions that Steel Assault is going to be something lasting or that people who never knew me will be playing it decades from now.

When you were talking about 4/5s and 5/5s it was obvious that you were under such illusions.

Your problem is that you basically took your competition as the other "indie" games. And of course if you take trash as your competition, you will feel entitled to a 5/5, but at the same time you will not have a snowball's chance in hell of even approaching your REAL competition (Shatterhand et al). And it is obvious that, even after all that has been said in this thread, you are STILL looking at "indie" games as your competition:

(It basically is a student game, even if I'd like to think it's more polished than a lot of other ones.)

Which means precisely nothing, but merely signals that no one should have any reason to get excited about this game because its director sees TIGSource games as his competition.

Meanwhile, locamalito's games are also student games and they seem far more interesting and well thought out and put together than yours.

You're right in that everyone in the amateur game development scene wants to support each other, and no one really wants to be the person who calls some kid's game out on looking like crap;

Dude, we are talking about a group of people who think that Seiklus is a great game. No one is calling anything crap because THEY DON'T THINK IT'S CRAP. They will literally play anything and call anything great, much how pigs will eat anything and beg for seconds.

Anyway, you mentioned the weapon effects looking like crap, and I wasn't sure what you meant by that (are you talking about the graphics for the "lightning" and expander beam weapons)?

"Lightning" lol.

All I saw was some random ball that randomly appears out of nowhere and a random "beam" that just looks like it was made in MS Paint and photoshopped in. The weapon effects are ludicrous, like they have no connection with the player's sprite at all. You just wanted a blob and a beam, and you added a blob and a beam, just like how you made a random sprite for the protagonist and a random title for the game and a random setting and some random platforms. Nothing at all in this game seems cohesive under some kind of plan. When I see that FMV intro I am not being drawn into some science fiction setting for a videogame, I am being drawn into the bedroom of a teenager who wants to make a videogame and needs an intro for it and goes on Google to find some videos and digitize them. This is literally what I feel when I see that intro. This is the feeling that you invoke with me: your bedroom. You transport me into your bedroom, instead of in your game's world.

Quite apart from the fact that digitized human beings in such a lo-fi game are insanely anti-immersive. You see these fully realistic human beings in the intro, and then the game starts and you get a 20-pixel sprite. It is utterly offputting. Only in a game like Phantasmagoria, where the in-game graphics are also digitizations of live actors, can you get away with a digitized intro. In your game it KILLS the atmosphere completely (if there were any atmosphere at all, which of course there isn't).

But of course digitizing some Google-found footage is something anyone can do and doesn't require any artistic talent. Contrast that to The Super Shinobi's intro, where minimal art assets and barebones animation (pseudo-animation, really) have been used by REAL ARTISTS to evoke a feeling that grabs your attention from the very first moment, before the game has even begun. And that is a 16-BIT GAME, for christsake. It has LESS fidelity than your Google videos, for use on a MORE POWERFUL machine, and still achieves a million times higher effect than you do.

But again, it is a million times easier to digitize some videos than to come up with one or two cool static screens that convey an atmosphere and a mood when you have not decided on an atmosphere and a mood in the first place since you are not an artist.

I repeat: YOU ARE NOT AN ARTIST (and therefore can never become a good game director).

And the longer you stay in denial about this, the more you will delay getting a good artist on board with a proper vision to DRIVE the entire process.

You are trying to have your mechanical requirements DRIVE the ARTISTIC VISION, instead of the other way around, and that's why we get absurdly anti-immersive intros, weapon effects that don't make sense, and suggestions like this:

Some ideas I have are mountains which turn from fiery to icy and back on a regular basis (due to a weather machine at the top of the level which serves as the boss), underwater caverns where giant monsters emerge from cracks in the ground to bite at you and smaller eels swim around as slippery platforms (kind of like the snake blocks in Super Mario World), forest temples where eyes watch you from the shadows and grab you, trippy dream sequences where Giger monsters are trying to kill you, etc.

It's like you have Aspergers or something. WTF do I care about your stupid level ideas, dude? Why would I play a game in which a random protagonist randomly jumps between random stages?

I WANT A STORY.

I WANT A SETTING.

I WANT AN ADVENTURE THAT MAKES SOME KIND OF FUCKING SENSE.

Your approach to game design is retarded. None of the things you are talking about have the slightest importance BEFORE YOU HAVE DECIDED ON A VISION ON WHAT THE FUCKING GAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT. The Super Shinobi begins in the ninja village because the ninja village is under attack, not because the director needed an "introductory level". And then Musashi travels through the waterfall level because it's on the way to the city after leaving the ninja village. And so on.

You have nothing. All you have is the desire to make a videogame, presumably because you like tinkering with your computer or something, BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU AN ARTIST AND GAME DIRECTOR. If you don't have the illusion-making artistic spirit inside you, no amount of tinkering on a computer or reading my criticisms will change that. You are either an artist or you are not, and I am certain that you aren't at this point. Which means you either get an artist on board as director and demote yourself to a simple designer who can contribute to the process but CANNOT overrule the commands of the director, or you keep making boring, nonsensical games with no inspiration for people with no imagination who don't know any better.

[icycalm]

Journey has a proper artistic vision. Many "indie" games do, especially the famous ones (which is why they became famous). It's just that the designers are fags and the visions tend to be fagotistical and the mechanics used to convey them tend to be for fags, but the visions are there.

I'd take a game made by a bad designer any day over a game made by a bad artist.

I would rather play Journey than your game.

[icycalm]

You seriously can't see that the ball and the beam don't seem to have anything to do with the protagonist?

It feels like I am talking to a blind person.

[icycalm]

The only good thing I can say about what you've shown is the DC Metro level -- the beginning at least. The way the train arrives is cool, and the background (outside the train) and the colors, etc. It's impressive (though not sure if a Famicom could have handled it, but it doesn't matter).

The HUD is good too.

But everything else you've shown I would call either "generic" or simply "bad".

The title screen, that little ugly UFO that flies above in the first level and drops an ugly orange Tetris block, the pink enemies with the squashed hats... everything.

And "fixing" all these things will change nothing because I will still have no interest in playing a game whose setting is an afterthought. A game with programmer graphics, programmer story, programmer setting, programmer character design and level design. These games were supposed to have been dead since the '70s. By the '80s all the devs had proper artists in them, and Shatterhand was made in '91. You are trying to imitate late-80s games but your production values are from the '70s. And those games are all unplayable today.

[icycalm]

The lamp posts, if that's what they are, are also a good idea, but the color should be subdued considerably. Lamp posts with green color? Light yellow that blends in to an extent with its surroundings should be used.

[icycalm]

I am not sure if I am conveying adequately the sheer amount of contempt in which I hold your artistic sensibility. You'd have made a prettier and more aesthetically cohesive game if you were blind -- that's how bad your aesthetic taste is.

You should go start a thread on Postback and ask for Recap's opinion. I would be very interested to see what he'll say.

[SriK]

I'm glad you liked the D.C. Metro level at least. I always thought that was the coolest and most inspired part of what we have so far.

But yeah... I have to admit it. Your fundamental criticism, that the game has no sort of coherent theme or vision and is basically just a random mishmash of "cool ideas" I've been making up as I go along, is true. In some way, it's what I've secretly known and been scared of this entire time, but didn't want to accept. I've been so lost in the rush of "I'm making a game guys and all this stuff is going to be in it" that I never actually sat down and figured out just exactly what the fuck game I'm trying to make, and why all this stuff is in it.

And I think that all of the other flaws you mention are derived from this... The title screen is generic orange sky because how would I know what to put on the title screen if I barely know what the game's about myself? The enemy that drops the block and the pink enemies that shoot three bullets are generic and don't really fit with the player because I never actually thought about what they were, other than "the enemy that drops a block that breaks through the level" and "the enemy that shoots three bullets", and was just kind of okay with having any "enemy" there, because I never fully figured out exactly what sort of opponents the player was going to be fighting and why, because I never really thought about the scenario and theme beyond the bare basics, etc. The Washington, D.C. art is mediocre and has nothing to do with Washington, D.C. (e.g. the out-of-place buildings with the gargoyles) because I started off with just the idea "city streets", and only grafted on the D.C. setting on later (once I came up with the metro idea). And so on...

And I mean, I see all this clearly and obviously now, now that you've brutally and honestly pointed it out to me over the length of this thread. I feel really, really dumb.

Maybe the fact that I went this long without really considering all this, and didn't have a clear and cohesive plan from the start, is unforgivable and definitively seals my fate. But I don't know, I still want to get down to work and go back to the drawing board and try to fix/redo this as much as I can. Figure out an actual coherent journey and tone instead of a bunch of disconnected level/boss ideas and themes, try to give some sort of motivation and reason and connection to everything (like finally figuring out who the protagonist inside the suit even is and why they're going on this journey), come up with cooler-looking settings that connect in ways that make sense, and THEN finally figure out all that stuff about level design and setpieces based on what I have. Maybe some of the current ideas and art will survive this process, probably a lot of it won't, but I just hope I can end up with something better.

[icycalm]

I could keep coaching you all day every day for the rest of our lives and you still wouldn't be able to accomplish anything as a videogame director. The only way you will ever work on a genuinely good game is if someone else is running the show and you are among the dozens or hundreds of developers below him. And, from the perspective of this website, that's all that matters. No one gives a rat's ass if you'll enjoy seeing 1000 people on Steam playing your generic, uninspired Shatterhand and Batman clone.

I could have ended this on a more positive note, but I prefer reality instead.

[icycalm]

http://culture.vg/reviews/in-depth/wand ... 5-ps2.html

But good art isn't about lacking flaws, it's about having a vision brought out that is genuine and real [NOT "REAL" -- AWESOME -icy]. There are times when the music and animation and art direction and mechanics and story all come together many times to create these tiny moments of perfection

[icycalm]

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5318

Typical "indie" mindset. He puts a game on Kickstarter. Some dudes on NeoGAF tell him his game sucks because the maps are tiny and empty. Hilariously, he replies "in hindsight, I think I agree". In hindsight lol. He "thinks" he agrees that tiny and empty maps in SRPGs are a retarded idea. So he works through the night to throw some trees in and thinks he's solved the problem. He defends this shoddy remedy by saying that his game "is not FFT" (i.e. he thinks there's tactics in Final Fantasy Tactics), effectively saying that he's not aiming as high as a two-star game. But he "worked his butt off" to make this uninspired and generic game, so he feels proud about it, and looks forward to all the money that players with shit taste will throw at him on KS and Steam.

The "indie" spirit, ladies and gentlemen. The "indie" spirit indeed. Which is to say the spirit of no talent, competence or so much as the slightest interest in games and their various genres. The spirit of greed for money and fame pure and simple.

Essentially, the only way someone could think that tiny and empty maps in an SRPG are a valid idea is if he doesn't play the genre. The same with SriK's game. The only way he could think his game might be worth four or five stars is if he doesn't play the genre. And why then do they try to make games in these genres if they don't even like playing them?

Because they are easy genres to make.

So they try to make these games, throw their crap on Kickstarter, and then the very first real player who takes a look at them laughs them off as crappy bullshit.

But they never learn. They never learn anything, because they don't like the genres (or videogames at all), hence no matter the advice they receive they CAN'T learn, because they don't care to, and would anyway be too untalented and incompetent to do so even if they did care (but not caring and being untalented and incompetent are anyway related: whoever is dumb enough to not care about these awesome genres will also be untalented and incompetent). My only consolation is that, whatever resources they might be able to scam out of the industry and ignorant players' pockets is the only thing they will receive in the long run, since their games will be entirely forgotten and will never inspire anything. So they'll grab a few thousand bucks, and that will be that. The more inspired of the scammers, who make the better scams (i.e. Jon Blow et al., with the "art" scams and so on) will even make a few millions perhaps -- but they are all dwarfed by superscammers like Damien Hirst, for the reasons I explained in my Genealogy, so there's really not much to get pissed off about here. The best thing to do once you have grasped what's going on is to stop caring and ignore them, and keep linking the pages where the scams have been exposed. Which is pretty much what I've been doing here.