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      <h5><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">//<a href="../../../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">loonygames</font></a>://<a href="../index.html"><font color="#7C420E">issue 
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                      <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000FF"><i><font color="#904C10" size="2">Thinking 
                        Outside the Box: </font><font color="#904C10" size="4"><br>
                        <font size="3">Reviewing the Reviewers</font></font></i></font></b><br>
                      
                      <div align="right"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">By 

                        <a href="mailto:psteed@idsoftware.com">Paul Steed</a></font></div>
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                  <td width="45%" align="right" valign="top"> 
                    <h5 align="right"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#00025E">Vol. 
                      2, Issue 11&nbsp; <br>
                      February 8, 2000&nbsp; </font></b></h5>
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              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><loonystart></font></p>
                            <p>&nbsp; </p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now take 
                your average game reviewer. What kind of system do they have? 
                What kind of knowledge do they have? What kind of experience do 
                they have? Do they represent the average consumer of ANY game 
                sold today? Hell, no. They don&#146;t. Let me let you reviewers 
                in on a little secret...you are not normal. You do not represent 
                any form of normalcy. You are the freak of the freaks. You are 
                the hardcore. You are the person who (possibly) gets paid to play 
                games and vomit your opinion of them to the far reaches of the 
                cyberspace universe. Don&#146;t get me wrong. It takes one to 
                know one. I am anything but normal. Just ask my therapist.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">During 
                the testing of <b>Q3A</b> I continually shook my head at the seemingly 
                endless parade of web pimps and crack players who came in to play 
                test. Don&#146;t get me wrong, these are guys I generally think 
                are cool, intelligent, talented and fortunate people. But does 
                their opinion really matter when they represent the creme de la 
                cr&egrave;me? The elite of the elite? These are the people that 
                care only about one thing: stomping your face into the ground 
                under the heel of their mighty mouse. They want to hear your lamentations 
                as you become a red stain in the corner of q3dm1. They are the 
                subset of the subset. Their opinion should be heard, notes taken 
                and applied to those parts of the game that rate in an official 
                competitive capacity. </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now you 
                want some real feedback? Go to the mall, grab a wide variety of 
                people running a gamut of age, race and social station, offer 
                them twenty bucks and a free t-shirt, have them come over to the 
                big black monolith, set them down in front of a windows background 
                with a couple icons to click on and tell them to play our damn 
                game. Then maybe questions like &#145;what do I do first&#146;, 
                &#145;why do the menus look like this?&#146; &#145;Why do I have 
                to type things in at the console thing?&#146; And, &#145;just 
                what the heck is a tilde?&#146; Could maybe have some impact on 
                the game&#146;s development.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Reviewers 
                are like this as well. They are yet another sub-strata of the 
                elite gaming bourgeois. When cranking out those well thought, 
                well written, completely meaningless, steaming piles of...excrement 
                who exactly do game reviewers represent? The generally computer 
                illiterate public who doesn&#146;t know a motherboard from a skateboard? 
                I say thee a resounding NAY! They usually represent that sleek 
                9 percent of people out there who have the knowledge and desire 
                to tear apart their computer, put it back together again, analyze 
                the <b>Quake</b> source code, spec out a mod or two, play capture-the-rocket-flag-arena 
                and then go have lunch.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Okay, 
                yeah I am exaggerating and yeah I know many reviews are articulate, 
                well-written valid examples of criticism...and they&#146;re welcome. 
                But come on. You know as well as I do too often making a review 
                is more about making the reviewer famous and the site popular 
                than making an accurate, useful observation on the product being 
                reviewed. Most reviewers can&#146;t see the forest for the trees. 
                In fact, many are firmly face-planted into a mass of BARK. Have 
                some sense of relative comparison guys. Look at things objectively 
                instead of whatever the flavor of the week sways your opinion 
                towards. Games are commercial vehicles to make businesses and 
                individuals money. Get it? Understand the commercial part? </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I agree 
                <b>Q3A</b> has its weak points. You don&#146;t think we as developers 
                know that? But nothing is perfect and the game wasn&#146;t rushed. 
                We were sick of working on it and spent five months longer on 
                it than we did on <b>Q2</b>. Still, we are very happy with what 
                we accomplished. We took a one sentence game description and turned 
                it into a pretty damn fun experience...for a normal person who 
                likes playing computer games. However, as Plebian as you think 
                the game was dumbed down, at its heart this game was made to make 
                the community happy. If you think about it, how many other games 
                are out there that are essentially a game development toolbox 
                with the quality level of <b>Q3A</b>? </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Anyway. 
                Disgust has prevented me from updating TOTB and I apologize. I 
                felt the need to just stay away from my web browser period, ruminate 
                over the source of my irritation and annoyance, form a suitable 
                body of commentary and jump back on that horse. But venting my 
                views on this subject has been very therapeutic as I knew it would 
                and I feel immensely better. But... </font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">*I want 
                to be clear that I don&#146;t hate reviewers, I don&#146;t hate 
                mod makers and I most definitely don&#146;t hate our esteemed 
                community*</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So when 
                you feel the need to send me the flames, keep your arguments to 
                the point at hand and you&#146;ll get a lucid (yet appropriately 
                reciprocal) reply: I think most reviewers lack perspective and 
                objectivity when reviewing games. That is the statement I am making 
                when your hopefully post-pubescent mind boils all the chaff away, 
                not that I&#146;m unhappy because <b>Q3A</b> was outflanked by 
                anything...because it wasn&#146;t.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks 
                for listening and next update will be the first part of a very 
                long tutorial on creating, animating and putting your own character 
                into <b>Q3A</b>. Chin up, beer glasses full, bro.</font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">ps</font></p>
              <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><i>- 
                Paul Steed is a 3D artist for for id Software. </i></font></p>
              <p align="left"></p>
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              <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></loonystart></font></p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Illustration 
  &copy; 2000 Dan Zalkus. Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 2000 Paul Steed. 
  All other content is &copy; 2000 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction 
  is prohibited, bitch.</font></i></p>
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