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25/08/99: Rant about Unjust level promotion and injustice:
Update: After some work the PQ Level of the Week has been successful, resulting in much better promotion for many good Q1 SP levels, and I have kept doing it for over a year now.
Note:This rant was previously posted at TEAMShambler Quake Level Reviews, however, Lowtax, with whom I was negotiating the Level of the Week when he still worked at PlanetQuake, objected to the content and insisted I remove it. It is still an important issue, thus I am posting it here.
There is a gross injustice being perpetrated by the coincidence of a level getting promoted at Quake news sites, and more importantly by the players who visit those sites and download
a level solely due to this promotion: There is evidence that indisputably shows a vast number of Quake players are prepared to download a Q1 SP release when it is massively promoted by
various sites, but are not prepared to download other unpromoted, yet often superior Q1 SP releases. Consider the following download statistics taken at Friday 20th August 1999:
RDE: "Runner's Delight Episode" - - 1854
Damaul6: "Bestial Devastation" - - 333
Darkness: "The Darkness Within" - - 330
Moonlite: "Moonlight Assault" - - 233
Rc2: "Swamp" - - 232
Dxm: "Dextromethorphan" - - 230
Q1M2: "Q1M2" - - 204
Solarfall: "SolarFall" - - 180
Valour "Steel Valour" - - 171*
Golgotha "Castle Golgotha" - - 121
Strong-Hold: "Strong-Hold" - - 103*
Outpost-Alpha: "Outpost-Alpha" - - 60*
Note: Levels marked with a * have inaccurate download figures due to FilePlanet's incompetence in not posting the download figures for a week or so. The actual
figure is likely to be 50-100 downloads higher than that stated.
These are the only download statistics I have, since most levels I link straight to Cdrom.com or Sunsite - there are many more good quality levels that I don't have the statistics for, and if you
are going to try more recent Q1 SP levels, I'd strongly recommend you look at the Reviews by Name page to choose the best levels. However, the figures still tell an annoying story: Solely due to PlanetQuake's promotion of "Picture of the Day" announcing the episode and RDE site (and other promotions), RDE has been downloaded 5 - 10 times more than other levels, despite many of those other levels being equal or better in quality. To be honest, this is so unfair, so unjust, such a poor indictment of the mentality of Quake players, that it really infuriates me...
Jesse, author of RDE, has admitted to me that he had a promotion campaign planned out for two weeks before RDE's release. He says it was hard work, but
obviously it's been hugely successful: PQ gave him their Picture of the Day and Jesse's caption sang
the episode's praises to all who saw it. This has been rewarded by a vast number of downloads, presumably from people who saw this promotion and downloaded it out of interest, rather
than from people who visit this site or have been taking an interest in RDE from the start. Other recent Q1 SP levels have not received any such promotion, and the number of
downloads are much lower, REGARDLESS OF MAP QUALITY. But let's just consider the people who are downloading RDE:
Q1 SP is unpopular at the moment. SP players have moved onto Quake 2, Unreal or Half-Life, and completely abandoned Q1 SP (often with no good reason other than
simply following trends: there are many Q1 SP maps still made that rival and even exceed the quality of SP maps for other, recent, games). So where on Earth did the 1850
people who downloaded RDE come from?? Well, we can discount some people: The maximum number of people who would have downloaded it just from this site would be about
300, so they are the usual Q1 SP enthusiasts. At a very high estimate, perhaps 150 people are speedrunners/enthusiasts who downloaded it, sans promotion, for running
only. Which still leaves us with
1400 people, who haven't shown ANY interest whatsoever in other Q1 SP releases, yet who download RDE SOLELY BECAUSE OF IT'S PROMOTION.
So what attracted these people?? PQ's and Jesse's promotion mentioned several different selling
points to the episode, any of which might have enticed people. I'll analyse them and consider how problematic they are, as far as people relying on hype alone:
"...took 16 months to create..." - Not sure about this...this may have encourage people to believe it was a superior release, however, build time is no indication of quality, as it
varies hugely from mapper to mapper. If people are enticed by this point, they are fools.
"...complete new episode that consists of 6 new levels..." - This may grab people, as many people believe that size=quality, again this is completely untrue. People may have
fallen for this, thinking "Wow, a whole episode". Again, if they have been enticed by this, they are fools.
"...suitable for normal single player..." - This aspect worries me intensely. If people were enticed by this point, it means they have an interest in Q1 SP, yet have only
downloaded this episode, rather than any of the equal or better maps from this site. This warrants further discussion.
"...suitable for...DM..." - Could be quite an important aspect, as many more people like DM and not SP. If people were enticed solely by this, that's fair enough as it's no injustice
to the other Q1 SP maps.
"...most importantly, speed-running..." - Again, I'm not sure, this may have grabbed people, as major speedrunning releases such as QDQ have proved very popular. If
people have been enticed solely by this point, it's strange but not a problem.
"...tricks such as grenadejumps, ogre-grenadejumps, barrel-jumps..." - Same as the speedrunning aspect, people may have just been intrigued by these bizarre and
exciting-sounding tricks. Again, it would be strange, but not unfair, if people have downloaded a 7 meg release for funky tricks.
So from this, these 1400 players are either: 1. Stupid and easily led by hype. 2. Solely interested in DM. 3. Solely interested in speedrunning or tricks. Or in the worst case
scenario: 4. Interested in Q1 SP, yet only downloading a massively hyped release, and, for some unknown reason, ignoring the vast number of equal or better levels at this site. Even if the
majority of the 1400 people fit into the first 3 categories, it's almost certain that some people fit into category 4. So the critical question remains: why are some people interested in
the Q1 SP release of RDE, but not interested in other, sometimes superior Q1 SP releases. And this is perhaps the worst problem: people are more interested in promotion and
hype than level quality.
Level quality is all. It is the most important aspect of any level, and the reason why anyone should download a level: because it is a good quality level. RDE is a good quality
release, there is no doubt about that as my review shows (and if I get any email misinterpreting this rant as a rant against RDE, it will receive my full wrath in reply). However, in that list above, there are levels that are nearly as good, equally as good, or better. Certainly there is no justification at all for RDE getting 5 - 10 times as many downloads based on level quality. Let's compare it to Moonlite, for example, as they were released on the same day. So far, RDE has been downloaded 8 times more than Moonlite, yet Moonlite is a better quality map, a better quality Q1 SP experience than RDE - see it's review. If I were to recommend people to download just ONE of those two maps based on level quality, I would recommend Moonlite (actually, I'd strongly recommend they get both, as fairness is intrinsic to MY promotion). This is just one example, and the same problem applies with all these levels mentioned: people are downloading Q1 SP levels because of promotion, rather than because of level quality.
Unfortunately, as frustrating and as grossly unfair as this is, I have no idea why, nor how to solve this problem. I do know that shallowness, stupidity and gullibility are fundamental
to human nature, and this may just be an example of it: People are just led by hype, and too stupid to pay attention to quality, too stupid to notice that there are many equal or superior levels
waiting to be played, that they ignore simply because those levels haven't been hyped. If this is the case, they are unlikely to listen to reason....I guess the only thing to do is to plead,
promote and spread the message: Just beg these people: "You are playing one great Q1 SP release, but there are many more to be played, and some are even better. Please go to
TEAMShambler Quake Level Reviews, please look at the other
reviews, please try some of the other levels". That's all I can do....and I hope anyone who is reading this will do the same too: spread the word, there are
many other great levels, and if people still have an interest in Q1 SP, they need to know about them. And finally, one important aspect would be for sites like
PlanetQuake to give more promotion to more of the great many worthy levels, rather than merely
hyping just one release (even if it is a natural process of announcing a site) - they are a Quake site, so should be fairly promoting all aspects of Quake.
This is just my opinion. If you want, you can email me about it, though I'd rather you spent your time either playing or promoting the other great Q1 SP levels. This rant is NOT a rant against RDE, and any mistaken suggestions that it is will be treated with the contempt they deserve - it is a rant solely against the injustice of people paying more attention to promotion rather than quality.
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