No no - the TA official review reply by Eli- that he spent time with it to learn and couldnt. Sorry- ive seen 4 year olds completely master it and one 80 year old after 10 minutes. I still am not buying the 2.5 - especially after all these comments on here. Your insights about the podium and the fallacies of reviewers is spot on here.
My review was negative but respectful. I even directed people to the forum thread and strongly encouraged them to read the opinions of people who saw it differently. Your reactions to the review, on the other hand, are hovering dangerously close to rude. I don't appreciate what you're implying here at all. Not everyone is going to like your game. In catching up on this thread after finishing my review, that's clearly something you have trouble coping with. I get that, it's your baby and you worked hard on it. But I'd really like it if you could keep yourself from suggesting I'm either conspiring against you or incompetent at my job. Thanks.
Wow. I have NEVER seen a more unprofessional developer in my life, and I've been doing this a long time. "No no - the TA official review reply by Eli- that he spent time with it to learn and couldnt. Sorry- ive seen 4 year olds completely master it and one 80 year old after 10 minutes." How absolutely disrespectful. Your answer to people having trouble with your game is to put them down? There is a reason we passed on this game multiple times, and believe me, we tried it many times when it first came out and with each new update, hoping and WANTING to enjoy it. It just didn't happen. We literally had everyone on our staff try it, and nobody enjoyed it. At all. Yes it's beautiful, but it's one of the worst controlling and most frustrating games I've ever played. But hey, the developer continued to make snide comments in this thread about us not reviewing it, and we had some users emailing us about reviewing it, and so finally we asked Shaun if he wouldn't mind writing something about it. There was no political agenda behind it, nothing "fishy" about it as the developer has accused us of already. We simply wanted to give those who were asking for the game to get coverage what they wanted, and Shaun shared his feelings on the game honestly. All this tells me now is that our gut instincts were correct to pass over this game. Apparently developers don't want honest coverage, they only want it if they're going to get a good score, and if they don't they have no problem throwing a public temper tantrum about it.
I mean I won't dispute that I'm dumber than a four year old when it comes to controlling dolphins I guess. That's fair.
I believe the developer was referring to Shaun (in the comment section, you say Shaun has the patience for even the steepest learning curves). You, Shaun, who-the-****-ever...that doesn't make the post any less disrespectful.
Hah, say what you will, but all this did get you (the dev) a lot of publicity on the forums and I downloaded your app. I mean, yeah, the controls are quite loosey and cumbersome, as is depth perception and honing in on a fish. I also wish I could move the buttons around manually and turning didn't feel so unresponsive. Pretty animation and I like your menu; I personally wouldn't rate it quite 2.5 stars. Your little online meltdown is simultaneously entertaining and pathetic. The world is not out to get you, grow up.
Wahahahaha! Dev mad coz of a review and went apepoop! Seriously though, i had to read a few pages back to see how this started, and all i can see is that this is a 4-year-old accusing a reviewer of being 4 years old, and couldnt drop the case until he changes your favorite fruit to his favorite fruit. This thread is hilarious!
So the dude's human and vulnerable. Not everyone's a grizzled one-eyed internet vet who lost their ability to care anymore back in a 'Nam debate that got outta hand. Probably shouldn't have played the Agenda Card on the reviewer so soon, or at all, but he wouldn't have been the first to get exasperated at a critic.
Apology No - the motor plasticity of a 4 year old is actually very high. Its not an insult - its a statement of the spectrum of people testing and playing and ultimately mastering. People won't master it - we have some statistics on that - and certainly the game will not appeal to everyone. We absolutely respect this. People WILL not like our game. One would have to be profoundly delusional to not feel that way. The market is cold, hard, and ruthless. But we tally the sum total of many peoples feelings and opinions and try to gauge a general "feel" of where the game is, and where it should go. You review, as I've said, many times, is good. I feel it was fair, except for the score (but thats my right as well). I make that judgement because of something very specific I will get into. - you clearly did not "get into it". You could have mastered it and not liked and and thats perfectly fine. Completely. What feels odd to me was the lowest, of low score, and the timing. Conspiring is way too strong a word. But disingenuous is a fair feeling. The reason is because TA rated Aves at 2.5 stars. This was also my game. Compare the two - a universe of difference. But same score. This is very useful feedback to me. I want to create an experience which hits the maximum N, and it won't please everyone. But I emailed you guys over 25 times. If you would have explained this to me, that would have been the pinnacle of professionalism. I also would have started development on a different control scheme that may be more suitable. I didn't ask users to email you. That was organic. Do you think they emailed you because they didn't like it ? So your entire staff was at odds with people who liked it enough to feel compelled to ask you to review it. Thats fine - thats their right. But what you're implying here is that you had to go, "Ok ok fine... we think it sucks but these people keep pestering us so lets give it a low score...". Can you please find these snide comments ? All of my comments have praised the professionalism of TA. I said we were saddened by not being reviewed - but snide. Please, post the snide comment and I will apologize for it. Thats fine. You are entitled to your opinion. But politics is inherent in any industry such as this. We absolutely want honest coverage. We want and welcome the frustration, the players who don't like it, and what they don't like about it. This helps us - to craft new things, and to try and continue to build things that people will enjoy. Creativity is fundamentally about building, destroying, rebuilding, trying new things. The true creatives never get too tied to any thing they do - they leave it plastic and shapable. This is what we want - and the TA members have been absolutely brilliant in their feedback. Was it so "devious" to want the same from the TA reviewers who we hold in such high regard ? All I can operate on is the market response, professional reviews, and user reviews. I have many - from these members, from iTunes, and from private emails and other review sites. They all have been beneficial - and we will try to tweak this and bring others to market. The timing is what made me upset - but looking now at this thread - I do owe TA an apology, particularly Eli and Shaun because I do hold them in very, very high regard. I think Eli has done tremendous good for this industry. If the score is a true reflection that this game deserves the same exact rating as Aves - then fine - so be it, thats your opinion. I respect it, but disagree with it. So here it is: I Apologize.
If it helps set you fears to rest, I (the reviewer, responsible for all the words in that review and the 2.5/5 score) have never even heard of Aves and when I checked "Other Apps From This Developer" in your App Store description, there were no other games listed. I can see how, from your perspective, there were dots to connect, but I can assure you that it was sheer coincidence. I'd also like to point out that 2.5/5 is nowhere near our lowest score, and it's one I've used pretty frequently during my time here. I've also rated plenty of games lower than that. You may have heard before that TouchArcade doesn't generally review bad games, and that's true. But I do review a lot of games that I give low scores to, because they've often got *something* about them worth highlighting even if I don't enjoy the game overall. That's the category Shark Eaters fell into for me. I'm sorry if you feel I'm being disingenuous with my review. I have absolutely no idea who you are, so there's no reason for me to be dishonest or misleading in my review. I've been reviewing games professionally for 17 years now, and the only developer I've had a grudge against in all those years is millionaire playboy Mike Meade.
I appreciate the apology, and yes - get back to making games. Even if I didn't like this one, a lot of people did, and I might like the next one better. You have a lot of passion - channel it into positive things.
Like it so much I bought it as a gift as well. I've registered here just to post in support of Shark Eaters (nee: I am Dolphin). I often agree with TA reviews, but IMO "Shark Eaters: Rise of the Dolphins" is a five star game.
Thanks Mom. I'm jk - Mr or Ms Cerbo - thank you kindly for the kind words. I swear I have no idea who you are - but it is much appreciated you took the trouble to register and post as a show of support.
That sounds like some grade A bullshit to me Whether intentional or not, you have a very condescending tone to anyone who seems to have trouble controlling the game. Go back and read the thread for yourself. "Oh I'm sure you'll get it, even a FOUR YEAR OLD can master it" or "Even a 94 year old can play it, you won't have any problems." So, if somebody doesn't "get it" then I guess they are a complete moron then. Definitely don't try to spin that around as if it's some sort of compliment. So basically "you're holding it wrong." Do you really not see how that can be construed as offensive? "It's not the game's fault, it's yours!" That's interesting, I didn't know you also made Aves, but that makes total sense given all the attention to animation and stuff. I actually think Aves was awesome back in the day. The 2.5 score had absolutely nothing to do with that game. That's strange, I have exactly two emails from you guys, and that's out of every inbox, trash and spam folder I have. One from August of last year and one right around the time of the January update. Anyway, we don't reply to any emails we get as a rule. It's not to be rude, it's because it's simply not feasible due to the volume of emails we get. Even a simple "not interested" reply almost always ends up opening a can of worms that we just don't have time for. We have talked about having a canned auto-response just to let people know that yes, we read all our emails, but I'm not sure what ever happened to that idea. All I'm saying is don't take a lack of a response from us personally. This is actually my fault, I wasn't remembering correctly. Nobody actually emailed us about it, but like I said, I have been following this thread every day since it began (and the upcoming thread too), and in my mind I was thinking of all the comments about "I hope TA reviews this" etc. The point being, we know there were a lot of people who hoped we would review this game, yourself included. That was what prompted us to review it. This is absolutely not the case. I take offense to you thinking we would be so vindictive. We never, EVER go into a review with a predetermined score in mind. Ever. Sure, we've all tried this game before and nobody really had fun with it, but maybe something might have changed, you know?. Maybe we would "feel it" or whatever. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. Snide maybe isn't the right word, but your comments about us "refusing" to review you or "ignoring" you or your front page comments about being "blacklisted" just don't sit right with me. I'm sorry, but there are literally hundreds of new games that get released every day, and there's a fair share of ones that are probably deserved of a review that we simply don't have the man power to review. We skip games all the time. It's nothing personal, and it's not part of some conspiracy or revenge tactic or secret society blacklisting. Again, really don't appreciate what you're inferring. I dedicate my life to TouchArcade. Not just a 40 hour a week, 8 hour a day job either, but practically every waking moment I am doing something or another to make TA a great website. I don't have time to play petty games or deal with "politics." I play and write about as many awesome games as I humanly can, while simultaneously managing our staff alongside Eli, and that's it. I appreciate that, and in fact I apologize as well for my previous post. It was most certainly fueled by emotion. I also apologize for further derailing this thread, this will be my last response but if you want to discuss anything further please email me directly jared @ toucharcade dot com.
I extend my apology to you Jared. I understand the points you've written here - but don't want to dwell any longer. Its a sincere apology - not a BS one. I've truly tried to internalize your point of view - and I desire most of all to keep crafting the experience - and others - that can bring a very unique way of doing visceral animations to gaming. But one small thing: Its not grade A bullshit We are not a game development company in the traditional sense. We are primarily scientists and engineers in one of the most prestigious universities in the world studying motor learning and brain repair. You see there is a precise moment at which your brain actually "learns" the control - and the game actually "kicks" in. This happens around the blue cards. The red cards are extremely challenging but where the Ai really "comes out". Thats where you get the totality of the experience. watch this video (I'm in it @ 1 minute) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140929-krakauer-medicine-stroke-neurology-rehabilitation/ What I have a disagreement - the totality of the score in light of everything thats in there, and in light of ALL of the feedback I've gotten. But I erred in assuming it was political. So again - my apology. We are data driven - and ruthless about statistics. We make opinions based upon statistics of engagement, sales, retention, and the totality of comments. What I can tell you is that these sales that were generated without any significant exposure were far higher than the norm. The retention rates and average play time as well. I've studied this very meticulously, and also released 2 previous games, both of which were featured by Apple. So please understand that our "radar" won't go off unless we see something that has a high deviation out of the norm. To me - it was slightly out of the norm that you didn't find any of the videos of our animation compelling enough to give us some press coverage prior to release. The animation has proved itself in the highest and most professional circles. And remember Eli was gracious enough to post this once upon a time: http://toucharcade.com/2010/12/23/remember-aves-check-out-the-latest-bioreplicant-technology/ There is one other piece of history that I don't have cached so I cannot bring out. But thats the real sad part which does show some lack of integrity. I can't prove it - but I know it happened. The person who did it also knows it. So we felt the complete lack of coverage was inconsistent. I will stop saying "political" or insidious - but it was "off" for us. It isn't worth coverage because we said so or we think its great - but because of how the market and community responded to it. It was newsworthy. Thats not an opinion - that is fact. It was covered by the national press (email me if you'd like a list, but it includes the WA post, Kotaku, national geographic, etc. etc.). Thats not just the "stroke" story - its the total novelty of this animation system. The only place that didn't give us the time of day was TA. So do you understand how this felt weird to us ? How it felt out of alignment with everything else ? Again - its statistics. Why are we newsworthy ? Well - here is where we are covered, organically. Most of it is very positive. The press is describing the experience as "superb" and "magical". Most of it understand the significance. We don't get an atom's weight from TA - But then when we DO get covered - its this post launch (4 month) review which slams the entire experience with a very low score. That should feel "off" to anyone absorbing everything. Is that not an unreasonable position (to feel that feels off, from our perspective) ? The goals underlying this project deal with people working very, very hard to help those who suffer terrible neurological problems - thats who WE are - thats why the dolphin is controllable in the way it is. So one assumes a little bit of press coverage and love would be normal. A little extra push "up" - not kicked in the Ass - as one commentator put it. But again, I am willing to accept that, in this case, especially because of the thoughtful responses on here, it was truthful, not insidious. And once again, my apology to you, eli, and shaun. My error is assuming that this is impossible or out of characteristic of a normal distribution. I think what I found improbable is that if statistically N percentage "get it" and everyone on your staff didn't, then there is something out of characteristic with all of our previous experience. But now I realize this is possible - and with a wide of diversity of review sites, likely. Also, it suggests I need a much larger N - which hopefully I will gain this week and be able to come back and craft something entirely new or significantly improved. Like the fish Ai - it all comes down to probabilities. Some people couldn't get good at it - but with enough patience, went from not liking the game, to absolutely loving it. The game is meant to be enjoyed at a level when the brain "clicks" with the motor-connection to the animal. This isn't a hokey concept - its very real. A small percentage absolutely won't get there. Another - about 5 - 10 need extra patience. Most will immediately "connect". We have a lot of players (maybe a few %) who play for over 90 minutes a day. The largest session time (as percentage of sessions) is over 7 minutes. The average is about 5 minutes. Then the review, which we were VERY strict about NOT shilling, averaged about 4.7. So this is what I'm looking at to gain objective truth - then trying to understand TA's complete silence and then boom, 2.5 stars. But I get it, and respect it now. Its a 2.99 experience at the end of the day (well free for a bit). Meant to be played, and enjoyed for about a weeks worth of play, maybe less. One good thing is that I set the game to free to get a much more informative market response. This move is a bit late too, come to think of it. There is where objective truth about the game, the controls, and how "good" it is, will be realized.
