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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p>URL: <a href="../2.11/totb/index.html">http://www.loonygames.com/content/2.11/totb/</a><br>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 11<br>
                February 8, 2000</b>
              <b> 
                </b>
              
                <b><i>Thinking 

                  Outside the Box:</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 
                  Reviewing the Reviewers</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Paul Steed</p>
              
              <p>
                

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              <p>&nbsp; </p>
              
              Greetings. 
                I bet you&#146;re hitting that refresh key right now because there&#146;s 
                no way this edition of Thinking Outside The Box is a new one. 
                Well for that I have to apologize. You see the absence of updates 
                had been mainly to do with the fact I&#146;ve been pretty busy 
                working on <b>Quake III Arena</b>. Now that it&#146;s been wrapped 
                up I&#146;m on to our next project. For me it&#146;s pretty light 
                work so I&#146;m freed up to start doing regular TOTB columns 
                again. Thus workload is one reason I haven&#146;t updated. The 
                other is just plain disgust.</p>
              
                 
                   
                    
                  
                
                 
                   
                     <i></i></p>
                  
                
              
              Yep. I 
                said disgust. I&#146;ve been at id now for almost three and a 
                half years. During that time I&#146;ve ridden the roller coaster 
                as I&#146;ve been acclimated to this phenomena called the Internet 
                and virtual community of the <b>Quake</b>-related fan base. At 
                first I dove into the fray like I always do with a smile, a roar, 
                pecs flexed arms stretched wide as I flung myself into battle. 
                I hacked and slashed my way through the dreaded .Plan 
                Wars, bludgeoned my way past the Crackwhore Skirmish and survived 
                the wrath of the rabid horde of Angry Mongol Mod Makers. But alas 
                my extroverted, straightforward, confrontational attitude proved 
                too much for the mainly conservative leadership on the net and 
                my voice at id was squelched. No more Plans for You, Keyser Soze!</p>
              </p>
              Not a 
                problem. Enter loonygames. Let&#146;s do some thinking outside 
                the box for awhile shall we? Editorials and tutorials seemed to 
                work better for those panty-bunchers and people seemed to breath 
                easier knowing that Steed was on a leash (wait...has he cussed 
                yet?). Alas, work caught up with me and I had to suspend and eventually 
                stop updating TOTB. Silence allowed me to remain free of distractions. 
                Then I made the mistake of reading a few message boards. Uh...yeah. 
                We all know how I feel about that. Now I avoid the forums unless 
                I&#146;m led there by the nose to enlighten the unenlightened. 
                Fine, no problem. Disgust didn&#146;t form even then. I now realize 
                the people living on the message boards are simply harmless entertainers 
                who hopefully aren&#146;t reading up on how to make mail bombs 
                or hoarding weapons in their parent&#146;s basement.</p>
              </p>
              Nope. 
                Disgust settled in when I started reading reviews of <b>Q3A</b>. 
                Disgust settled in when in a thunderous smack in the face moment 
                of revelation I realized just how spoiled certain people have 
                become in the community. Now don&#146;t even think I&#146;m going 
                to name names or name sites. It&#146;s not that I don&#146;t have 
                the testicular fortitude, I just don&#146;t have the time to do 
                the research and mention everyone whose opinion I value less than 
                the telemarketer who called me this morning. Maybe one day I will 
                make that list and offend everyone equally. It&#146;s just not 
                worth it, though.</p>
              </p>
              Suffice 
                to say I&#146;m happy so many people decided that another game 
                that came out the same time as <b>Q3A</b> kicked major boo-tay 
                in the gameplay department (read: Congratulations <b>UT</b>). 
                That game&#146;s unsurprising popularity isn&#146;t what filled 
                me with revulsion. It&#146;s the point that I realized NO ONE 
                could be pleased. NO ONE. Think about it. I used to make art with 
                DPaint on a 386.25 and watched the transition from games being 
                on eight floppy disks go to one CD. Those were the days that some 
                people predicted we&#146;d not get past 55 MHz for at least another 
                year...a 486.55 that is. Back then people were easy to please. 
                No hardware acceleration. Sprites were still representing people, 
                aircraft and starcraft. Now today there exists a huge range of 
                sophistication from hardware to software preferences and opinions. 
                </p>
              </p>
              <p></p>
              <p></p>
              </p>
              </p>
              <br></p>
                            <p>&nbsp; </p>
              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.</p>
              </p>
              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. </p>
              </p>
              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.</p>
              </p>
              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.</p>
              </p>
              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? </p>
              </p>
              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>? </p>
              </p>
              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... </p>
              </p>
              *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*</p>
              </p>
              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.</p>
              </p>
              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.</p>
              </p>
              ps</p>
              <i>- 
                Paul Steed is a 3D artist for for id Software. </i></p>
              </p>
              </p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 