The large software developers are evidently in fear that if we have games that we can build our own missions for they are going to lose income in the area of add-on mission disks.
This simply isn’t true and while I have spent a good deal of time trying to send this message to them my voice is not being heard. In fact now if I tell them who I am and that I am with the Independent Software Consultants group they appear to ignore my messages and will not respond to me if they know who I am.
When I send them messages using another e-mail address and ask them questions they will frequently respond to me. When I use the "ISC" in my messages or send to them from my official ISC001 address they do not respond to me. It could very well be that Nova Logic didn’t care much for my review on their new F-22 Lightning II game that really fell on its face in front of everyone. It could be they are well aware of the fact that I reported their lack of support for CH Products. It could be for a number of things but WE THE CUSTOMERS voice is not being heard in the high and lofty halls of the software developer’s kingdom. It’s time for a change to be made in that respect and I need your help to bring this about. If they won’t listen to me perhaps they will start to listen to you if everyone becomes involved in this effort.
NOW DO YOU WANT REAL MISSION BUILDERS WITH YOUR SIMULATION SOFTWARE OR DO YOU WANT YOUR GAMES TO BECOME OBSOLETE THE MOMENT YOU FINISH THEIR LAST MISSION ?
I’m not talking about quick mission generators. I’m talking about REAL MISSION BUILDERS that will allow you, the user, or your friends to build your own missions from scratch.
When I asked a Nova Logic rep. if their new F-22 Lightning II would have a real mission builder with it he told me it would have. I bought it and found out later that what he was referring to was a quick mission generator. In fact it was the worst quick mission generator that I have ever had the opportunity to be insulted by. Had I known this I would not have bought the game and would have been spared the other insults by the lack of true aircraft aerodynamics as well as other bugs and faults in the program. I can write that off as being an expensive lesson but, people, listen to me when I say you need to do something in order for your voices to be heard by these lofty high and mighty game developers.
When I started the Independent Software Consultants group I told the group I would act as their spokesperson to the game developers. I told the game developers I would try and help to trouble shoot your problems with their games in order to take part of the load off of them. I am trying to work to help both sides of the field but while many of you have asked me for help and I have helped some of you and tried to help all who have written me for help when the game developer’s service team failed you, there are certain software developers who simply ignore my messages. Evidently they want to hear from you and I say it is time for all of us to get off our duffs and tell them what we want in a game. It’s time to reassure them we are interested in having our own real mission builders and we also want their extra mission disks they will develop for their games in the future. They are not going to lose business, they are going to gain more business because we the users of their products are getting smarter as time goes by. We are not going to throw our money away anymore on games that do not live up to our expectations. We are not going to buy software products anymore on advertising hype or from companies who won’t stand behind their software after we buy it.
Now Nova Logic advertised true aerodynamics, but they didn’t deliver it in their F-22 Lightning II and if you go to their web site you can see they finally admitted that people were complaining about many aspects of this simulation game product. What did they say? They wanted to argue about it and used the worst excuse of all saying that someone had said they didn’t think it was realistic to go into a loop right after take-off. Bull-hockey! F-16’s and F-15 Eagle’s have been doing that for years. Anyone who has ever been to an airshow has seen the Thunderbirds do just such maneuvers. Certainly the F-22 Lightning can do this and then some. Their game however has other serious faults in the realistic aerodynamics department. I’m mentioning this now because I told them so and they won’t listen. They want a shouting contest - No, it isn’t ! Yes, it is! This doesn’t work. And anyone who bought the software and tried it out knows that when you bank an airplane it should turn somewhat in the direction of the bank. This one doesn’t however and they won't fix it. That’s not that important at this point because it’s never going to be right because they won’t fix it. They are going to produce a new F-22 Raptor game that is most likely going to suck as bad as the F-22 Lightning II they put out. DON’T BUY IT UNTIL YOU FLY IT, people. We have been down that road before. If you do, you are going to send them the signal that you will buy any kind of crap they produce and they don’t have to produce quality, only quantity. (Not to mention when I installed their last bug patch my game locked up and in a fit of frustration I deleted it. I reported the problem about 5 or 6 times and they have not responded to me yet. I complained they didn't even include the offer for the pilot's sunglasses they advertised on the box, and they have not made that good either. Nova Logic's F-22 Lightning II was a total waste of time and a huge disappointment to many of us and Nova Logic will not support their product. Do you want to continue to do business with a company like that ?)
If you want real mission builders you are going to have to tell them yourself because they won’t listen to me anymore. Hell, they never did listen to me. The only way I could get them to support the CH F-16 flight stick was to tell CH products about it and let them get on Nova Logic’s case. Then finally they came out with a patch to fix the problem and did the worst job that I have ever seen of button designation.
Here comes the new Comanche 3 with Voxel 2 space graphics. And guess what people, NO REAL MISSION BUILDER EITHER. What are we going to do ? Every one of you needs to send them an e-mail composed in your own words that you want a real mission builder with this simulation game product or you just won’t be interested in it at all. Go play your Janes ATF and ATF NATO until hell freezes over or until these huge software developers decide to listen to us.
Likewise with all advertisers, if they pump out the junk mail and if you support it, they will continue to pump out the junk mail. The same with game developers, if they produce junk and even a small percentage of you buy this junk, that sends them the signal that they don’t have to provide what we want. They can produce what they want and be sure we will swallow it. The only way you are going to get your message across to them is not to buy their products until they build them the way you want them. Send them thousands of messages telling them you want REAL MISSION BUILDERS and GOOD GRAPHICS (which Nova Logic is good at) and the option for real flight aerodynamics. They might pay some fighter pilots to lie to us but some of us are pilots and we know what’s going on and they are the ones who need to fix the problem.
Every time they get a complaint on a product and if they must lift a finger to fix it, it costs them money. But better them than us. They have the money and we don’t. We pay out $60 for a game that says it will do all kinds of wonderful things. We take it home, install it and find out it won't even run until we log onto their web site and download a fix for some dozen or so bugs before we can even play the game.
Listen people, it’s up to you. I have done everything I know how to do as your spokesperson and they won’t listen to me. Maybe they will listen to you.
If you want a real mission builder for Nova Logic’s new Comanche 3 you had better start sending messages to "comments@novalogic.com" and do it quick because this one is going to be on the shelves this month.
If you want a real mission builder for Nova Logic’s new Armored Fist 2 you had better tell them quick because this one isn’t far from being ready to hit the shelves either.
If you want a real mission builder in Lucas Arts new X-Wing vs Tie Fighter you had better start sending them some e-mail and tell them what you want before they get their game on the shelves and leave you with a limited game that expires the moment you play the last mission.
I for one enjoy building missions every bit as much as I do flying the missions they provide for us. If they don’t provide a real mission builder they only give me half of what I look for in a simulation game product. I have bought literally hundreds of games only to discover about 10% of them were any good at all and only 5% of them were what they said they were on the box when I bought it. I no longer have the money or the desire to throw my money away on bad software products. If you have been down this road yourself you know that something has to change. We have to find a way to make these software developers listen to us and then make these games with the features we want to see in them.
It’s up to you. If we don’t fight for what we want they are going to give us what they want us to have and in many cases there is a huge gap between what they want to give us and what we really want in a game.
You can’t depend on the game review people either. They get paid to lie to us by the game developers who buy ads in their review magazines. If they give these games bad reviews they don’t get the money from the game developers to keep their magazine in business. Needless to say the people who write the reviews you read are biased and they are not going to tell you the truth. The more games their reviews sell, the more they get paid and that’s the bottom line on that.
Now you write the game companies and tell them you want features, you want options, you want support, you want to go along with their quick mission builders. Tell them you want their advertisements on their boxes to display the full truth about their game and what it really supports and does not support. And be sure you tell them you will buy their mission add on disks as long as they produce the game you want the way you want it to be. If they don’t give you what you want including the REAL MISSION BUILDER you won’t buy the game. 'Nuff said.
I have done about all I know how to do because I can’t keep buying junk simulation game products to test them and then write reviews on them when it comes out of my pocket and ends up in the corner not even worthy of my time to test the game and write a review on it.
You would think in this day and age the game developers would have had it figured out by now. We are getting smarter about their trick advertisements. We don’t want to throw our money away on junk products anymore. We want them to listen to us and do the right thing. We won’t support them if they don’t listen to us. And that’s all there is to it.
I have managed to write nearly 3 pages here and I have other things to do. It’s up to you now. Pass this message on to everyone you can think of who enjoys simulation games. Send those messages out to the game developers and do your part.
Thank you from all of us here at the Independent Software Consultants.
Bryon Smith