http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/email-the-conduit/

Hi Sean, 

No doubt you have already seen the Conduit review at GamePro, and the meltdown that resulted. (I have linked it all in case you missed the storm). 

Obviously the most reviewers are only focused on the Hardcore, and hate the disruption the Wii has created. When a “Hardcore” game comes out for nintendo’s console, it seems like the old guard reviewers want to make sure it fails. 

Now here we have a case where the reviewer did not play the entire game, did not utilize the customizable controls, and spent half the review bashing Nintendo even more than the game. He bashes the long cutscenes (that he would praise for their cinematic value if they were on either of the HD consoles). In the same 4 sentence paragraph he prises the controls, and then laments about having to spend five hours with the same terrible controls. Yet he does utilize the extreme customization the developers have been bragging about since the games first appearance. He plays single player only, when most of the hype for the game has been for it’s online multiplayer. 

Many were wondering how this “amateur review” got past the editor on GamePro, only to find out it was THE games editor who wrote this review! 

Then when he is “called out” on his unprofessionalism, this editor (taelurkim) twitters “Forget words. What i need is one of those Red Faction sledgehammers. And the addresses of everyone who bitches in our comments.”

So the reviewer is angry at GamePro’s readers/CUSTOMERS for using a feature of GamePro’s website, the comments section. This section’s entire purpose is for readers/CUSTOMERS to give their feedback, and create a GamePro Community. Then after they become part of the community and tell the reviewer he did a poor job, he wants to hit them with sledgehammers?

Another reviewer (Garnett Lee from 1Up) twitters him back: “all that customization only amounts to a cry for help trying to adapt the Wiimote to something it just doesn’t do all that well”. 

Hm. Why is the RE4 Wii version considered to be the definitive version? Controls! With RE4, MOH:H2, COD:WAW, & MP3 the Wii has shown the superiority of the IR pointer for control over analog sticksfor FPS. You have the nunchuck’s analog stick for moving, you have all of the necessary buttons. The Wii controls are perfect for shooters, what the Wii doesn’t do as well as other consoles is graphics and online. And both of those are far more than adequate here, they are very good. Tiger Woods 10 just proved without a doubt that gameplay and controls can mean more than graphics. And to say control in a FPS “is something the Wii just doesn’t do well”?

BTW, an hour after the hardcore meltdown started Garnett Lee from 1Up publicly delays his review of the game until he can try the online multiplayer.  

What is GamePro’s editor REALLY saying? Why does Garnett Lee say the WiiMote is not good for FPS? They are fearful of Nintendo having games that also appeal to the “core/hardcore”. They represent the hardcore, they are afraid of Nintendo’s disruption as it relates to them. 

I have no problem with the Conduit getting a bad review, it has gotten some positive ones, and i’m sure it will get it’s share of negative ones as well. 

But GamePro has not JUST written a poor review. As a matter of fact, the poor review even gave the Conduit a pretty good score. But the review was clearly a “hit piece”. It was not a hit piece on just the Conduit. It was a hit piece on Nintendo’s disruption. It was written in fear of some of the hardcore enjoying a “core experience” on the Wii. The editor/reviewer negatively reviewed a game without even trying it’s claimed strengths (customization, and online play), and contradicted himself over and over (even in the same paragraph) regarding the games controls. He was not just being unprofessional, he was being suspect. 

The best part: The “Hardcore” gamers were on the opposite side of the “Hardcore” reviewer. The meltdown was the hardcore defending the core game on nintendo’s disruption machine. 

We fans or disruption would love to get your thoughts on this….. 

If you missed it:  

The comments section on the official GamePro review page:http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/210916/the-conduit/

Gamepro forums: http://www.gamepro.com/forums/topic/4472225/epitome-of-failure/23/

GoNintendo forum bashing the GamePro review: http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=86933

NintendoLife: http://www.nintendolife.com/forums/wii/lol_gamepro_conduit_review

Gametrailer forum : http://forums.gametrailers.com/thread/the-conduit-discussion-thread-/847410?page=20

The was a GAF meltdown as well. 

And new meltdown thread are popping up as I type this. 

Thanks for reading,

What do you expect me to say about this? :) What more is there to say?

Since you emailed, I will try to say ‘something’.

One of the bedrocks of disruption is that customers hire products to perform a job. Why do Ubisoft Girlz and Babiez games sell? Mothers need to pick up games as gifts for their daughters (in which case, I have stopped a couple of these mothers and directed them to getting DS games like Mario Kart DS or New Super Mario Brothers DS for their daughters instead. The mother doesn’t know that I’ve just saved the little girl’s childhood). My sister severely limits time for my nephews on the Wii but lets them play forever on the DS. Why? The job of the DS is to keep the kids occupied in the car or during frequent trips to various places. The DS and Gameboys are godsends to parents as they shuttle their kids around. The job of Wii Sports can be to occupy a family gathering or party and make the evening entertaining. There are many jobs that need to be done with games.

One job customers want done is a Wii FPS that uses the pointing and controls correctly to make a fun FPS experience. This is why many Wii owners, or people who do not like the Dual Analog stick FPS, want to buy the Conduit. It isn’t fanboy love because some FPS is on the Nintendo console. It is because it is a game that is finally doing the job people have desired: a FPS using Wii-motion controls. People are not looking to Conduit to ‘revolutionize the genre’ or ‘to have content never before seen’. Frankly, customers wouldn’t want that anyway. What the customers want is a decent FPS experience with the new controls. Wii-mote seems natural for a FPS as stated by even Iwata before the Wii was launched.

Imagine if the Conduit had come out when the Wii launched? Ooohhhh…..

However, our hardcore friends do seem to be in quite a funk about the game. That is a good sign. Usually the Wii games that the hardcore loves always end up bombing in the market. I don’t find Gamepro’s review worth the expense of ‘outrage’ because Gamepro has a tradition of fanning fans on their respective consoles. The real story and the thing to watch is the response of customers to the Conduit game. Some people are saying, “Oooh! Oooh! There is advertising going on! That means the game will sell!” All advertising does is direct people to the product. If customers don’t like the product, no amount of advertising is going to do you any good.

Now, I haven’t bought the Conduit. I’m a PC gamer fan and prefer keyboard and mouse so I always thought dual analog sticks were backwards. However, the Conduit is on my radar screen. I might pick it up when I go buy tons of games this holiday season. The fact that the game is on my radar screen to want to buy is a good sign. I’m that ‘horrible customer’ who doesn’t buy many games!

Conduit won’t be a ‘Halo’. But I suspect the game’s sales could surprise.

The big story about the Conduit is the company behind it. High Voltage Software is a very young company that apparently has more enthusiasm than capital. The guys there are young, excited, and quite ambitious. They remind me of how game companies used to be back in the day. They don’t whine and say, “We can’t compete against Nintendo games.” They say, “We are going to make the most awesome of games!” Whether they achieve it or not is up to the customers. They noticed a huge hole on the Wii that the Western Companies were ignoring concerning FPS games and are filling it themselves.

If Wii had been a Gamecube HD machine where everything could easily be ported, there would have been no window for small companies like HVS to rise through. This industry desperately needs new companies and new ideas. If Microsoft and Sony go the full motion control route, HVS could end up becoming the premier FPS shooting company due to their skills, not in high end graphics like how id or Epic did, but in high end controls. Viva la disruption.

 
(Yes, he looks crazy. But you have to be crazy to work in this industry! Note how he talks about variety and doing things that aren’t being done on the Wii. He is essentially saying Conduit wasn’t designed to compete with any game, on the Wii or on another system. Whether he knows it or not, he was adopting some Blue Ocean principles.)

I expected something more exciting to read. =( Oh well.

Yea, I was expecting Malstrom to rip the guy a new one and explain how the review "industry" in general is a farce, but looking at what happened yesterday, he would just be reiterating what we all know.


I hope he is right when he says the sales may surprise. People around me criticize Nintendo all the time for not going the HD route, but if they did, the little guy wouldn't have stood a chance. Everyone starts somewhere, so they could be the leaders in the future.

And he is right about another thing- whenever gamers get exactly what they want, it underperforms. Nintendo has said the same thing, and are more focused on surprises when making games, even the unorthodox ones (Pikmin? Few would have the gall to make a series like that nowadays)

I'm glad he thinks it is going to sell. He gives good reasons.

I'm going to start the thread by saying Malstrom is a jerk.

Malstrom is an arrogant jerk!

That out of the way, we can talk about what he has said.

Couldn't be bothered reading all of it, Mastrom may make some valid points but he is really annoying.

I got to the bit about the 1up reviewer on twitter though.... What an ass, customisation is a brilliant feature to add in The Conduit, and developers have been dim to not include it beforehand, I have always thought standard control pad FPS needed more of this, it was one reason why TimeSplitters 2 was so great. People have different preferences when it comes to controls, and for FPS especially (I suppose because they are fast paced) there should always be at least some premise of allowing the user to map buttons where they want to.... Moving that onto aiming controls is just the next step.

Maelstrom specifically hasn't been right about anything. What Maelstrom does it correlate Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim Chan and Inventors Dilemma/Solution by Christen Clayton. The fact that often the correlated evidence fits in line with the mentioned books/strategies is a testament to their research. One in which we should all consider before slamming some of the "his" predictions.

Maelstrom I find has 2 types of articles. Ones that informs which are generally reasonably written. The others to goad people into reading, writing and thinking. Possibly even just to rub the biased hardcore faces into it. He is often a jerk in these for that specific reason.

So i'm not all that surprised that he took the high road on this one. Even a faction of the hardcore fans are getting on the more elite hardcore for there nonprofessional. Now I don't mind unprofessional reviews, but people like that should stick with their preferred games and the mag should really be considered before review copies are sent.

He is right though. Times are a changing. If they don't change with the times they will be left behind. Console gaming was ridiculed by PC core gamers, now everyone gaming is being ridiculed by core console. While at the same time PC gamer culture has matured. Sooner or later even the console gamer will be mature, but it's going to be a long rocky road.

This is my favourite part right here.

HVS is hungry, independant, and very social with their fanbase. They remind me of pre-acquisition Bungie. Except in those days, you didn't need to either have the backing of a major publisher or take on a bunch of licensed work to pay the bills.

And yet, the very paragraph right after what you quoted is utter rubbish:

"If Wii had been a Gamecube HD machine where everything could easily be ported, there would have been no window for small companies like HVS to rise through. This industry desperately needs new companies and new ideas. If Microsoft and Sony go the full motion control route, HVS could end up becoming the premier FPS shooting company due to their skills, not in high end graphics like how id or Epic did, but in high end controls. Viva la disruption."

Except that HVS did not bring new ideas to the table, and is trying to be the Id or Epic of the Wii: the graphic engine comes first, the first game is almost an afterthought and a showcase for the engine.

For all the talking about how good it is to have completely customizable controls -the only aspect in which one could say they've done anything different from say MP:C- that also sounds to me as a lack of proper game design. To all the people that think that being able to customize how fast you turn or how wide your bounding box in an FPS is a step forward, ask yourself when is the last time you played a platform and wished for a way to customize how much inertia your character had when turning around.

My answer is that it should be a choice of the game designers, and that the limitations imposed upon me, the player, by the controls are part of a game's identity.

The fact that we're used to customize controls in FPSs is only a legacy of the origins of the genre on the PC, where there's no standardized controllers and different mice/trackballs respond differently. On consoles, that doesn't need to happen and excessive customization can devolve into the game not having a proper feel to it.

Small companies can still rise on HD consoles if they're given the means to reach the public with their peculiar offer. Think Braid, World of Goo, Castle Crashers, so many quirky PSN and XBL games. Now that's where I see ideas, and I can't see why it would have not worked if the Wii had been a "Gamecube HD machine".

I actually expected this. Malstrom tends to bitch about things because other people aren't bitching about them. In this case he doesn't need to say much.