Jim Sterling reviewing a game made with GameGuru.

WARNING SWEARING IN VIDEO !!


Let be honest it's not a great advert for GG, which is a shame because you only have to look in the WIP forum to see what GG is actually capable of, yes I know GG has problems but making a game and just throwing in hundreds of AI in with no optimisation is going to kill anyone's frame rate no matter what engine you use !

Not the first GameGuru game he's reviewed, he's done a review of Them Bones too if i remember rightly, and he didn't have a lot better things to say about that.

I've a feeling Jim Sterling doesn't have a great PC, or the recording software he uses really drains resources, because I've seen quite a few reviews from him where he's been complaining about the FPS in games that a tablet could run at a decent FPS.

What i want to know is; how the hell did Slingshot Man get through the Steam process and up for sale? The greenlight process can be pretty unforgiving at times, and that game is so bad i'm surprised he wasn't burnt at the stake by the steam community over it.

Only watched halfe of it ,to painfull.

Dave

I got half way and then skipped to the last bit. Sigh. I also don't see how it made it onto Steam, but I guess anything is possible.

I wasn't aware of that review, I'll take a look.



Steam is terrible for this at the moment, I don't know how half of the games get through, a game gets absolutely slated but still manages to get greenlit !!



I like the idea behind his/her game but other than that no real thought has gone in to the game, mixed buildings, modern day soldiers, fantasy weapon and hand model all just thrown together, with a bit of effort it could have worked as a game.

Actually thinking about it, it might not have been Jim that reviewed My Bones, it might have been that other big reviewer, Markiplier?

Edit: Nope, it as Jim sterling in August last year, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iikyk-H_M1Y

He's also done two reviews of Elves Adventure, another GameGuru game;

Once when it was still on greenlight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMVm7ffLHR4

And again after release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_weK0F-4es

I only bothered to watch halfway through too. That was just horrible! LOL, kinda like when a toddler draws in crayon all over the wall.

Like one of the reviewers said: It's like he's a little kid who has played with it for 20 seconds then run off to tell mummy what he's done

I wonder why steam suddenly gives green light to play like that.
There are some obscure reason for this change in behavior?
I only know that this is not good publicity for GG.
Just my thoughts.

3com

Greed... Money .... They don't really care about the buyers ... their refund policy works better for them than the buyer.
Even if they make a dollar each on 10,000 rubbish games ...its still and easy $10, 000 for them.

Steam figures that if you are willing to pay the $100.00 start up fee. They will take it willingly.

Well the fee is supposed to go to charity so I don't think they make money on that so much and that's a good thing I guess..
To be honest its more down to who is voting to Greenlight some of this bad workmanship ..

It still intrigues me as to how games like this actually get enough upvotes from the community to get greenlit. I've never had any such luck myself, nor have the majority of others who spent many months if not years on their projects.

I was wondering if the people who've made these ridiculous games have done so deliberately to make GG look bad? I originally thought they must just be kids who've played with GG maybe 20 minutes and then just plopped down a bunch of assets and released their game. Now I'm not so sure!

UGH! Some of those models were only made available weeks ago (doubt they converted them, themselves) and next thing you know the game is uploaded to Steam? Absolutely no effort involved. Quickly throw together for a quick buck. This disappoints me and disgusts me. But hey isn't that the point of GG? No effort? "The Easy Game Maker".

first review said it best:



I remember GG being marketed as:

"make a level with no effort whatsoever in minutes and share it with your family and friends"

We'll that couldn't be more true. Now look at the result. I feel embarrassed using GG sometimes.



Unfortunately how GG has been marketed at conventions to youth.

If anyone is curious... you can read the rest of the reviews here.

But nowhere does it recommend sharing your "minutes of effort" with the rest of the damn world! Family and friends are fine; they will likely forgive you. Some may actually be impressed, but not the world. Please, don't share it with the world!

Well, first let's say that Jim Sterling isn't anywhere as important as he acts sometimes. Second, his reputatian among game publishers and bigger developers is shady, to say the least. Let's just say he isn't doing that for fun or charity...

Bottom line - yes, there are many crappy things out there done in GG. And yes, the reputation IS suffering.

On the other hand, if you do it right, you get an additional "unbelievable such a good game was made in GG!" bonus on the reviewers end.

So, keep calm and don't panic.

All this!

And, thirdly, he doesn't review, he rips games apart, that's his thing, he's not doing it to give a fair review of the pros and cons, he is specifically ripping games apart for entertainment value.

That's why I've never rated Jim's reviews, although to be fair in this case he is fairly spot on lol.

I didn't even really listen to the full video review. My attention was brought to the Steam reviews. Depressing.

It makes me want to build a bunch of crap games and "earn" a few hundred dollars as fast as possible. I guess that's the problem. Lots of people feel the same way and then actually try to do it.

I have put off using Greenlight with a few finished games and creative tools for over two years because I just didn't feel that the demand or time/profit ratio would work out, or the truly hard part for me- that I just wasn't good enough to even bother with it. I'm not so sure anymore. Apparently, anything goes, reviewers be damned.

GG desperately needs more quality projects getting finished and made public to help counter all of the garbage that gets tossed around. We all know what it is really capable of with time and effort and a little investing. I swear that I see it get much more hate than projects developed with any of the other "easy" game making packages, and it is certainly due in large part to these types of disasters that somehow gather enough votes, with a "completed" game that looks more like a prototyping build that just started yesterday.

Fair credit for taking the leap and putting yourself out there like that, but I do have to wonder how much of it is just a troll job.

The problem with that is that almost anyone who actually cares about their project and gaming in general will not be happy with the current quality of their "finished" game in GG simply because it will be missing at least 1 major feature or something will not work well enough in GG's current state.
(There can be some good projects sure but you're going to be very limited on the type of game you can create so that hugely limits the number of games made).

I've seen loads of GG games on Jim Sterlings channel. He can be a biased as the next guy. I agree though generally, games like this are the worst advertising GG can get, no effort or though involved in this. A cash in by someone who is out to make a quick buck. It could be, as said a deliberate troll, but if so a dedicated one to spend the $75 or more to put up on Steam. I can't see how it could ever make it's money back. Who would buy an indie game or any game for that matter without at least watching a video or viewing screenshots? Perhaps some think at less than a dollar they will take a chance...

Regardless of peoples opinion of Jim Sterlings channel and his modus operandi, I can't say I've seen an unfair GG game review there. Yes some games he has reviewed are quite good for GG, but only for GG, as games they are really not that good. We here will always see it differently to someone who has never used GG at all, or only heard the name mentioned. We can see touches that take some time in GG, but people who don't use it will never see that picture.

I've thought about getting a game on Steam myself over the years. But as said above, I agree GG is not really there yet to make something good enough. I'm starting to think it never will be, it's had plenty time to get sorted, but even now years after release, I can slow it to a crawl with just a few trees in a circle. It badly needs the much vaunted graphics update that was being bandied about last year, then forgotten. That along with far better AI and physics support - why is it most things have to be worked around when we have a physics engine built in that could do the job a million times better?

Games like this only serve to show how bad it can get when you have a silly amount of AI dropped down. I say silly, silly for GG. There are engines/games that could handle that many enemies and still run pretty well. We're almost at November and still this EBE is nowhere in sight. This year for me has seen virtually no progress at all. A few extra lua commands have been thrown at us, which is good, but the actual engine itself just seems stuck in time.

I got the new remastered Skyrim today. The minimum specs are listed as an I5 cpu. It runs fine still on my Q6600, which as anyone will admit is no I5 beater. The game defaulted me at Ultra settings, because I have a decent GPU. So if my system can run that fine, GG is really showing some major issues to be as slow as it is in comparison. In Game Guru, you couldn't even make one area from that game and keep up to 60 fps. It would also have little chance of being as good looking either.

So, poor as this game is. GG has a long way to go to be considered a decent engine. After spending so long with it and getting quite used to how it works, I'm starting to think I really have wasted my time and should have spent it on a better engine I can do all sorts with it and feel ready to start something, but every time I seriously start something, the speed issue always, always kills it. I ran an old DB demo I did years ago, I always though THAT was slow, yet it flew like butter smooth silk in comparison. Way faster and smoother than a blank map in GG, sad to say.

The best way to combat this is to get GG up to scratch! That way some of us might be able to release something decent!

Funny review. Hilariously bad game.

Hi all, haven't watched the review, and after reading this thread there is no need I guess.

The one thing I would say is that Jim's review should have been focused on Steam.

When the dev has obviously not spent any time or used any skill in making a game, why would Steam even allow it to go live.

It is a blatant money grab for both the dev and Steam - neither care zip about the steam community, and simply by putting that trash out there are suggesting they are all gullible enough to cough up a dollar.

The order of guilt is as follows:
Shame on Steam - for allowing their community to be targeted by trash
Shame on the Dev - for making the trash
Shame on Jim - for not placing the blame where it belongs



I think DVader has some good points above though.

It would seam the EBE is taking way too long (bells should only be added when the core engine is up to scratch) and it is beginning to look like this year is not going to produce any significant advances for Game Guru at all. Which is of course a shame because GG has so much potential.

But hey when\if the EBE ever goes live we will be able to add buildings to our levels - erm, hang on, can't we do that already?

Reliquia....

I am obviously wrong but I thought the whole idea of Steam was to vet programs and only put decent ones out there for sale. Maybe someone ought to create a Website that does that so that users could be pretty sure that what they were buying was at least playable to a good, indie or professional level, and not something that a child could throw together in half an hour.

I know that GG says that it is a game making program that you can put a game together in a short amount of time with no scripting or modelling knowledge. But that does not mean that you should take that game and put it up for sale.

A game that is put up for sale should be well thought out and have some time taken about the models placed around the levels not just thrown together. Any body serious about having a game of theirs sold should have some self respect. I have been developing a game for the last couple of years, it is not ready yet because when I do put it up for sale I want it to be just right. If I can't get it right then I will scrap it and go back to the drawing board. I would rather that than have a piece of rubbish floating round the net making the odd dollar.

@Tazman - my thoughts exactly.

As someone who is trying to create a game in GG and juggling a full time job, I find it sad to see people who are just shovelling bad looking GG games with terrible playability onto steam. I just hope when I go to greenlight my effort, it will be liked. Im not doing it for fame, fortune etc, etc, I just like to create and if some people enjoy playing it, then all the better, of course a little cash is nice too. There are some great GG games on steam, ertlov, i'm looking at your games in particular, you can see time is spent getting the feel just right. It only takes a few dedicated indie GG games to really make people sit up and think "wow, this was done in GameGuru, I will have to buy GameGuru now!!!"

I like to put effort, detail and atmosphere into my levels, not just plonk down a few bit and bobs and release a shoddy product. I thank everyone at TGC and the community here for being such a dedicate bunch of people, its makes a change in this day and age

Thanks everyone. Long Live GG.

Judging from the video posted above, I can deduce two things:

a- This is something that can not be considered as a game.
It is rather a demo that shows GG worst of enemies that do not attack the player, enemies thru the walls, acting as mere mannequins, unintelligent.
I find it difficult for someone young and inexperienced it not see clearly that this is not a game, and therefore can not be put on sale.

b- also really hard to understand, that Steam give the green light to this garbage.
Steam suddenly changes its policy, why?

This sounds more like a smear campaign orchestrated and supported by Steam, though sincerely hope to be wrong.
After all Steam no longer earn more money through the store.
Just my thoughts.

3com

Very Unlikely .... 99% of products on steam don't have a store ....
After a little reading it would seem there is no number of set votes to get a game on steam ..
Its all statistics by the sound of it .. Amount of visits, attention and votes. They probably just look at a graph of the overall greenlight products and go by that ....

The trouble is with this kind of thinking is that the visits and attention could just be people looking at it and then sending someone else a link because they couldn't believe how bad it was.

Probably is a factor.

Steam used to be strict, ages ago. Now they seem far less so. I'll bet no-one at Steam really checks these games out, they rely entirely on votes and such.

I certainly don't think it is a Steam conspiracy to stuff GG. Just users jumping in, hoping to make a quick buck. The new media recently released may well spawn a few abominations as they rush to be the first on Steam to use em.

Yep very likely .... In this case bad publicity probably helps

Playing every game that comes on to Steam greenlight would be a massive task, and there's no way Valve are going to waste resources doing that - it's just not in their interest to do so, so they've placed responsibility for quality control in the hands of the users (a bit like GameGuru).
I think the reason terrible games get voted up is because people want to see gameplay videos of truly awful games - Jim Sterling's 'reviews' of terrible games are extremely popular. People may also get some sort of perverse pleasure out of helping these sort of games get published.

How is any of this even remotely relevant?

Besides, whoever made "slingshot people" doesnt get anything for christmas from me this year! What a load!

My thoughts exactly Wolf. Bah Humbug to them and I hope they have many a trick played on them tonight.

I'm definitely not experienced GG user, hell, I'm far from that.
But I would NEVER release unfinished, unoptimised game like this FOR MONEY.
It's not completely bad idea, but it seems like this has been made in few minutes.
No lighting, no custom menu, one unoptimised location with only soldiers. It's bad.
But I can see where game like this (even with GG/store assets) could be good.
Just put more time into it, make new levels, I think it could be pretty fun (and hard) going w/ slingshot against various enemies.

[video=https://youtube.com/?#/watch?v=QNB2XSBGnW4]
And another one!

I'm not a fan but we can expect more from him. Now that he has found GG games he has evidently gone out looking for more. This one he finds himself out of the dev space and onto the rest of the empty map. In all my time with GG and Reloaded I have never seen the edge of the map in game. It's amazing that he walked right to the end of the world. With a flashlight. No visual reference. Empty map. Wow.