Being Compared To A Console Game
by Porter on Apr.19, 2010, under Flash Industry
Compared to Consoles
Ever played an amazing flash game, I mean, a truly excellent game, that just happened to be built for flash player? I have, only a few times, but they exist. I came across yet another one of those games recently, Remnants of Skystone, and I realized something, something that really disappoints me and pushes me away from this industry at times. Flash games that are of insane quality, often get judged far more harshly, and on the same level you would expect from a console game.
What happens, is that the game has so much polish, and so much content packed into it, that it works it’s way into the players minds to be treated as a console game. The player becomes far more picky, far more judgmental, and completely loses any ability on how to compare this new, quality game, to the far less quality flash game they played a half hour beforehand. This results in players dropping a 3 or 4 vote (often times lower) on Newgrounds or Kongregate, when they just handed out a 4 or 5 to a game half as well put together or polished just moments before.
It’s almost a compliment to receive such harsh judgment, but at the same time, it can be a punch in the face. For instance, if you don’t grasp that your game is so great that it’s receiving the effects of this odd psychological anomaly, you’ll likely be very angered by the reviews and less-than-deserving scores. The real insult comes when you see one of those games that directly attacks the addictive and power hungry nature of players, with a higher score. It’s annoying both as an observational player, and as a developer to see this sort of thing happen; it’s just discouraging.
I know I’m not the almighty judge who gets to decide what is and isn’t a great game, but I’m going to lay down my personal and well thought out opinion on a few games, and give some examples of what I’m talking about. Let’s take a look at the most recent victim of this behavior, Remnants of Skystone. The game’s quality is absolutely amazing for a flash game. As a game in general, it’s still impressive. It has it’s flaws, I won’t deny that, but as a flash game, it’s among the best that the flash platform has ever seen. Despite this, it’s current score as of writing this, is a 3.88 on Kongregate. Here’s what really gets me, I’ve seen dress-up games with a score almost as high as this game. This might be fine and all, if the character customization screen alone wasn’t one of the best dress-up games I’ve ever seen; that’s not even looking at the RPG elements, the exploration, the platforming, the art, the towns, the quests, the co-op play, the “float” customization (your personal room), and so on. My point, single elements of this game are better than most flash games out there, and as a package, it’s amazing; yet it’s judged on the level of a console game, and put below many lesser games by score as a result. Another great game that suffers the wrath of this effect, is Drift Runners 2. The game itself is one of LongAnimals best, is significantly better designed than the first game, yet has extremely low ratings and reviews compared to the first, and what what you’d expect to see from it. There’s a few minor faults such as oil spills not effecting the opponent cars, but such small flaws shouldn’t outweigh the quality build this game offers. Those games aside, I’m sure you’ve all encountered an amazing game with reviews dropping zero’s because of something tiny, while the rest of the game is excellent; be it your own game, or one you played.
Overall, there really isn’t too much you can do about the issue, it’s just a bit of human psychology that’s out of our control. The best thing we can do is make sure that every little aggravating wrinkle in our game is removed before launch, because it’s those tiny things that will somehow change the votes of players, despite the amazing features the rest of the game has to offer. I guess we developers should just sit back, and accept the compliment, as backhanded as it may be.
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April 20th, 2010 on 3:08 am
Agreed, I gave Remnants of Skystone a 5, first 5 I’ve given in a while.
April 20th, 2010 on 3:03 pm
It reminds me of the “uncanny valley” problem in CG movies. The closer they get to making a photo-real computer generated human in a movie the more noticeable the subtle errors become. The realistic characters tend to look more dead than cartoonish ones.
The closer a Flash game gets to being a full console style game the more harshly it’s criticized. Take the same game and offer it as a download on Steam and it would probably be reviewed much better.
You’re right, there’s not much that can be done about it. Except I would err in the other direction, rather than going crazy trying to polish the game to higher standards I’d leave it looking rough. Like an indie film vs. a big budget Hollywood film, it’s the rough edges that make it cool.
May 11th, 2010 on 11:31 am
My take on this is that people tend to play flash games as quick and simple pasttimes, that is why they dislike a flash game that is too complicated. Sure if they spend some time with it they might come to like it, but most won’t.
May 17th, 2010 on 2:16 pm
I checked out the game — Remnants of Skystone — and its comments and feel like I have a better idea of what’s going on. It sounds like there are a lot of people with legitimate complaints about the game. Like there being bugs, taking long to load, not balanced properly (so you have to pay money to reasonably afford new items).
Even though it’s free, and a high budget production, it’s still up to the audience to decide if they enjoy it or not.
There’s also a lot of problems with the reverse of what you’re talking about, a lot of people inflating scores just because of how complex the game is.
Even if the game is flawless, it’s not the type of game for everyone. Tamara touched on this point, some people don’t like overly complicated time-draining games.
I only played through the intro, but the game didn’t entice me to want to come back to it.
May 19th, 2010 on 6:22 pm
“Even if the game is flawless, it’s not the type of game for everyone. Tamara touched on this point, some people don’t like overly complicated time-draining games.”
This is where things get a bit tricky. I strongly feel that even if I don’t enjoy a game, I should rate it for what it is, not for how much I like it. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of racing games (I do love a few though), however, if it’s a great racing game, and put together very well, it deserves a great rating, or a decent rating at the very least. I don’t vote on a game for how much I enjoy it, but rather for how the game itself is, regardless of my personal taste.
Lots of people don’t like 8-bit games, end of story; however, that’s not to say a specific 8-bit game isn’t amazing to those who do enjoy it. Those who dump personal taste into the voting help bury great games of specific genres, which isn’t fair to the developer, or those who do in fact love the genre.
I know that everyone can’t be the most intelligent and responsible critic, but ratings would be much more informal if people voted on things for what they were, not for how they felt about them.
July 22nd, 2010 on 1:19 pm
I think people just rate games on how much fun they have playing them rather than how polished they are, which i think is absolutely right. As long as games are rated like this it means that single developers can make a little fun game and it will do well. if all ratings were about polish then it would just be studios and people with lots of money who do well rather than the peopel with good ideas.
If you watch a film, you dont necessarily just watch the ones that have had lots of money spent on them and are the most polished. Often the lower budget films can be much better because they can experiment more. Same with music, you listen to what you listen to, not whats had the most effort put in, or the best producers.
I think its great that in the games industry where the big games are low risk, high budget games, there is a place where someone with very little money can make a fun experimental games that can succeed without being solely judged on graphics etc.
July 22nd, 2010 on 1:29 pm
also, I think you are judging how well games are received and also your opinions of players solely on your experiences on kongregate. Different sites have different user bases that like different things. Kongregate user for example are often rebelling against having to pay for in game content and games with locked content for example
August 15th, 2010 on 9:49 pm
I disagree with you here. Your argument is the equivalent of saying, the new Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore is great, with its $85 million budget, while Donnie Darko deserves less attention, what with only having a $4.5 million budget. But if you check Rotten Tomatos, you’ll find the former at 13% of critics pleased, compared to 84% pleased. However much zing and shine and gloss there is on your game, people will either find it fun or not, and that is what they are rating.
To me, Remnants of Skystone was not much fun. It had many different elements, and none of them were fun for me. (I suppose you’re correct, the dress-up part was good. But that’s not something I spent time on, not my taste.)
It was also bitten by being greedy with the microtransactions. It had a pricey subscription fee and required you pay extra for additional items, and so forth. It would have shifted many more dollars if it was better value for money. Players downrated the greed, yes.
I definitely do rate games by fun. I don’t play games in genres I don’t find fun, or at least I don’t rate them. To rate by polish is to rate by nothing at all.
August 26th, 2010 on 6:20 pm
I see what you’re saying, and I agree with most of it. I think what I’m trying to say isn’t exactly getting put into words right. As we both agreed, the dress-up portion of Remnants was pretty good, on par, if not better than many dress-up games. I just find that what I’m talking about exists in simple scenarios like this. People will give a decent dress-up game a rating of 3.00 – 3.50, but when it’s that same exact concept, plus so much more, the expectations of the player rise, and when they’re let down, they vote it as a whole, losing site of the fact they just dropped a good vote on something much lesser, because their expectations were low.
In the end, I’m looking from a more universal critic point of view, and that simply isn’t how people vote. People do in fact, as you stated, vote on how much fun they had. What I’m trying to say is I think that expectations alter people’s judgement of how much fun they had. If someone plays a dress-up that was decently polished, was neat, and was put together well, someone might give it a 3 or a 4. When someone plays a huge game like Remnants, and expectations are raised, then they’re let down, they may drop between a 1-3 because they’re being far more critical.
As for the microtransactions in that game, yeah, way too greedy.
September 1st, 2010 on 3:20 pm
I wonder if Remnants of Skystone works as an example.
Complaints seem to be about slow loading and required grinding for items if you don’t want to transfer money to buy them. So it firstly irritates some, and next fails to be enticing beyond the first level, and then fails to be addictive enough to make the players that do keep playing it to invest money.
There might be a difference between Flash where players mostly sit down for quick/immediate enjoyment and consoles where they’re willing to spend some time on the game, but there’s nothing unnatural about people voting upon their impression. They upvote games that facilitate quick amusement. Some might consider the apparent quality of the game as a second contributor to their vote, such as going from 0 to 2 if the game looked polished but was simply too irritating to get into.
But voting high on a racing game because it was technically polished even though you had to force yourself to keep playing it is doing it wrong I’d say.
The viral-but-immersive strategy might not be a good idea, simply because virality depends on quick enjoyment. One Flash game I know of that uses immersion for sustainability is Tactics Arena, and it hasn’t ever been on a portal.
(Although Runescape was on Kongregate at some point I think.)