Porter's World

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.