I guess the magazine PC Zone had an article on
Punishment: The Punishing in their last issue, #187. They didn't send me a copy, but
cactus was nice enough to send some pictures:
Punishment 2: The Punishing
The return of the Punisher returns
dev: Messhof Games
www.messhof.com/games
This platformer, the sequel to Punishment, feels a bit like N
to begin with, but then quickly stops feeling like that.
Your little sprite of a character moves with the eerie motion-
captured grace of the original Prince of Persia, and runs and
jumps with satisfying velocity, but never quite reaches the
agility found in N.
With the reminder that N is brilliant safely out of the way,
let me tell you how Punishment 2 is unique. In it, you have
to backtrack to the first level each time you beat a level.
You must drag yourself back over all the impossible jumps,
perfectly timed moving platforms and ball-achingly wide pools
of acid, just to flick a switch. That's why the game's called
Punishment: because it's punishing you - like sticking razor
blades under your fingernails. The fact that I enjoyed the
game just goes to show what a masochistic moron I am.
Captions
Blue big pic: "Flicking the switch ends the level. At which
point it all starts again..."
Left dark green pic: "Graphics are a bit Spectrum."
Middle green pic: "Shows gameplay mechanics means more than
graphics."
Right purple pic: "Levels demand split-second timing."
The magazine also came with a dvd, which included the game.
So that's cool.
So that's cool.
7 comments:
That rocks that your game got in a magazine... But they're profiting on your work, without telling you and without permission.
If it was my work, I'd email them and complain. More about the principle than the money, but if it was my work, I'd also want people to come to the site instead of getting it off a CD.
Well, if it was my game, I would be ecstatic. I highly doubt there is any malicious attempt on the part of the mag. Messhof made a freely available game, the mag editors thought it was cool, and so they wrote up a review on it and then made it easily available for anybody to try with almost no effort. It's free advertising for messhof of the very best kind. He'll likely get more page hits because people played the game and got psyched up on it. If I were reading such a review, I doubt I'd type in the URL for such a weird and (intentionally) visually painful title. But I might give it a go if it was as easy as clicking a link on my latest preview DVD.
I'm pretty happy about it. Magazines generally cater to a crowd that wouldn't normally find my games. It's always cool to have a larger audience. If they like the game, it's easy for them to get to my site from the dvd. It's great that they have the dvd too, because that adds a whole group of people that wouldn't copy down a url from some article in the magazine to download later. They just pop in the dvd, play the games, click for more info on the ones they like. I am totally down with that.
Yeah. I was more commenting on the magazine itself than its inclusion of your game. As I said, it rocks they featured it, but they did it in a way that is unprofessional.
I wonder if the magazine does this all the time. If so, than I really have something to be pissed about. (Again, it's the principle.) They're not like a website where if someone decides they didn't want their game there, it could just be taken off.
What if you were actually a developer who wanted to keep the game in his/her tight community?
It's really cool they put the game up, and I know you're fine with them putting your game up, but this is truly unprofessional.
PS: I don't think this was malicious in any way, I just think it was inconsiderate.
PPS: And some further clarification:
My gripe is with distributing the game, not the article. It would be stupid if reviewers asked "May I write a review for this game?" because you might say "ah, crap. It really sucked didn't it? Better not." But "May I distribute this game and make money off sales by featuring is?" gives you the chance to respond "hey, go right ahead. I want everyone to play my masterpiece."
I see your point, but I think it's different in this magazine's case. They seem to have an established "freeware" section on their dvd. You can't accuse them of profiting off my game because they readily admit that it's freeware-- anyone can get it for free. It also seems like a very small section of the dvd, and they only list four relatively short freeware games-- games they probably don't bother promoting on the cover. But I guess in principle I agree with you.
Post a Comment