06-23-99

Note: This was originally addressed to Steve Bauman of CGS+, the print version of CGO. 
After being contacted by Robert Mayer, indicating that he was the web editor of CGO and that my 
concerns should be forwarded to him, I decided to edit this and remove all references to Steve 
Bauman and CGS+.

Dear Editor

Further to my short email of this morning to Steve Bauman in which I protested the review at the 
CGO site, herein is the expanded version. I'm in a good mood today, so I'm going to be as tame 
and objective as I can be.

So, without further ado:

First of, the reviewer is probably a contractor to CGS+ and I feel that he just blazed through 
the game without taking the time to play it after being landed with it. Any veteran from the core 
CGS+ staff and who have experience with such complex games, would have done better, even if the 
end result ultimately ended up in a 1.5/5 rating. I mean, 1/5 for gameplay??? Is this guy 
serious? Are all the other reviewers that favorably biased toward the game as to give it much, 
much better scores? In fact, Voodoo Magazine (Summer issue), the first printed magazine to do a 
review, just awarded it a 5/10 with a 6/10 for gameplay alone and they don't dole out scores for 
the heck of it. Jane's Fleet Commander, a military real-time strategy game, has not even received 
higher scores than BC3K in any publication to date, that I'm aware of. Incidentally, it also got 
a 5/10 in that magazine. Yes, there is a connection, read on.

Here are the most blatant flaws in that review:

(1) You do NOT need *any* VESA driver to play the game. BC3K v2.0x supports 85 chipsets in 
    their native mode, if the software renderer is used and *every* 3Dfx board in existence if 
    the Glide mode is used. The Version Control file lists even more chipsets that were added 
    since the game went to master back in September '98.

(2) The game supports *all* joysticks, digital or analog and the FAQ contains assistance with 
    setting up WIN9x joystick profiles if desired.

(3) The game allows you (9) saved game slots per profile and there is no hack/patch in existence 
    that changes how this works. A lot of games, even the most simple ones, don't even have a
    saved game feature.

The only major issues with BC3K, as it stands and which are echoed by the gamers and the 
reviewers to day, are:

(1) The complexity. It caters to a certain audience and has done since day one. That's the 
difference between Falcon 4 and F22 Raptor. My website stats show that the current crop of BC3K 
gamers, would never touch Falcon 4, F15, Longbow2 etc if they were tied to a pole and a bag of 
red ants dropped down their briefs (well, maybe they would but you get the point) due to the 
complexity of those games. These games, like BC3K, have a market. I have always and other fans 
and reviewers have echoed this, said that this is no Wing Commander nor is it Freespace or I-War. 
When Babylon 5, Freelancer, Freespace 2 etc all come down the pipeline, along with Battlecruiser 
3020AD, each title will be in its own category, catering to a different crowd. The premise of 
BC3K will never change and the newbies of yesteryear are my pro commanders of today. I am, to 
say the least, proud of each and every one of them. My gamers have grown with this franchise and 
if nothing else, I have introduced them to the braver side of game development. An area, never 
before explored and which, continues to drag you in with each passing iteration of the game. 

These are not the kind of gamers to worry about whether a sound setup program is in DOS or WIN32. 
They just want to play!. Had they not stayed, I would've been gone. Probably laboring away for a 
boss who wouldn't know a matrix transform from a two dimensional array. The same kind of moron 
that I didn't want to meet in the first place, who would take credit for my work, pay me 
pittance, while I labor my sorry butt off to make him look good because he hired a dedicated 
developer. The fools who told me, so many years ago, that the game was too complex and to chop 'n 
ship it, look just like him. The same reason I stuck to my guns all these years. This is the game 
I wanted to develop. It is complex. We live with it. It has a niche and a fan base, more than I 
can say for some of the garbage the industry is shoveling these days.

(2) The DOS sound setup which is a moot point because it does not take brain surgery to select an 
icon and configure the sound. In fact, Heavy Gear II, in order to get the sound working in some 
machines, you have to run an applet. Who never had to configure the sound settings for Unreal, 
Half Life or a myriad of other games, via the provided interface etc? What makes BC3K's sound 
setup (which uses the albeit, antiquated HMI sound system which was the standard 3-4 years ago) 
so different apart from the fact that the setup is DOS based?

(3) The interface can be intimidating, but, like *all* the fans and *all* the reviewers say, you 
get used to it over play time and it becomes second nature. 

(4) The graphics are outdated and if it wasn't for the time invested in putting in Glide support, 
would have looked much worse. Well, why not, it is a re-release of a 1996 DOS title and one which 
is doing quite well in sales for Interplay, I might add (don't take my word for it, call them 
up). This is a title competing for shelf space (and getting it) with the likes of I-War, 
Freespace etc. Lets not forget the simple fact that it is a value title, was marketed and 
released as such for the reasons stated. There are a lot of $49.99 games out there, with kick-ass 
graphics which would give the gamer less satisfaction than this $20 title.

I strongly believe that this reviewer, forget about the amount of words in it (its not like 
online reviewers would have word count restrictions as printed mags), is not a fan of complex 
games. This is akin to having a sports writer review Falcon 4. That whole issue with the save 
game, the article content, the premise and indeed, the stance, just proves my point. The word to 
content ratio in lieu of even the DOS sound setup, shows that he spent more time writing about 
unimportant issues than on the game itself. How on Earth anyone can possibly do a review of such 
a complex game in so few words, is baffling at best. I would wager that, if I were to pick up the 
phone and asked this reviewer a single question about the TacOps computer or other areas of the 
game, he would be dumbfounded and not be able to answer my question or any gamer's for that 
matter.

I have dealt with the CGS+ mag, in some fashion or another, for years. I have weathered bad 
reviews, my demos were hosted etc. I have never questioned said reviews. Heck, the first time 
this game was announced to the world on one of my trips from the UK, made the cover of the May 
issue in 1992. The series, and indeed myself, have grown through this period and being notorious 
for taking the good with the bad and making the best of a bad situation (kicking and screaming 
the whole way), I have come to accept the criticisms associated with the game and indeed, my 
person. However, I feel that your assigning this review to this person, is a grave injustice to 
me, the game and indeed the gamers. Further, it threatens the very integrity of other industry 
reviewers who all seem to agree that this game is nothing short of a amazing in terms of gameplay 
and premise, in my opinion, the two most important ingredients of any game. The AI technology 
alone, is revolutionary. The concept itself is by far something that has never been done in 10 
(TEN) years. It is only now that games such as Terminus, Freelancer, Babylon 5 etc, are beginning 
to tout a dynamic universe, advanced AI etc. Even then, you don't cramp 10 (TEN) years of 
experience in this field into a two year dev schedule and expect to pull it off, yet, the hype 
machine trolls on. Then again, every preview is touting graphics and throwing hints of a 'dynamic 
universe' and advanced AI around, as if they were the norm. These are the same people who created 
the race to market syndrome that literally helped kill SiN (notwithstanding the problems with 
it), built the hype for Trespasser and literally threw Klingon Academy and other big budget 
titles into obscurity, leaving the publishers and developers alike, redefining the duh! factor.

So, a dynamic universe, advanced AI etc, are all just the latest buzzwords echoed by the same 
hypocrites, some in the press, who predicted my demise because they said that it could not be 
done. If I had not taken a leap of faith and convinced Interplay to re-release this title as a 
Value title in order to show this game's strengths in gameplay technology (regardless of 
graphics), I would be spending the better part of Q1 2000, explaining to the world why they have 
to buy Battlecruiser 3020AD. Now, guess what? I don't. So, I succeeded if not for any reason 
other than to alleviate the stigma associated with the 1996 release by Take Two. 

So, that said, to read this reviewer bypass the game's strengths and emphasis on gameplay and 
spend valuable word count allocation (if that is indeed the case) on less important issues, is 
unsettling to say the least. Here is an excerpt from your ratings page:

The Overall rating is determined by the reviewer on a five-star scale. The rating can be from 
zero (unbelievably bad or, more often, simply not functional) to five (excellent, top of the 
heap, a superb game) stars, with half stars allowed. Anything over four stars is considered very 
very good. Four-star games are very good, perhaps better for certain gamers than others, but 
overall excellent products. Three star games are your basic, working, run-of-the-mill titles, or 
perhaps games with greater appeal to certain gamers than to others, but which lack the spark of 
true greatness. Two-star games have problems, often serious, but are still in some respect 
redeemable, while anything lower means the CD is probably best used as a device to hunt rodents.

From this alone and going by the worse case scenario, it is my opinion that, if nothing else, the
overall score should have been 3/5.

While we, as an industry, cannot discard the premise that graphics do give games an edge, are we 
to continue ignoring gameplay and focus not on the importance of the game content but the glitz? 
Have we, as an industry, not learned valuable lessons from all the industry failures that 
graphics and sound do not make a game good? How about all the terminated titles which had 
revolutionary graphics but never went past the cutting room floor? The BC3K series, to date, 
starting with the incomplete v1.0 released by Take Two, down to Interplay's v2.0 release, have 
sold well in excess of 150K units worldwide as a stand-alone or bundled title; a lot more units 
than most titles combined even if you ignore the fact that it is the sister to a failed v1.0. I 
would say that 1 out of 2 ain't bad and I'm still batting. In fact, the contract I signed just an 
hour ago (an announcement will be made by today or tomorrow) to release the game worldwide 
(Interplay only released in North America and Canada), will add, more units to that count. This 
game and indeed this series, has sold more units than *most* multi-million budget productions 
with high-end graphics and automatic sound setups and it is *still* able to compete, to this day, 
for the desktops of gamers worldwide. Why? Because of the gameplay and the dedication that the 
development team and indeed the gamers have shown.

These are the facts and once someone higher up the food chain at CGO takes a closer look at this 
issue, you will see that something odd this way strides. Of course, I don't expect the scores to 
be altered, nor the reviewed pulled from the site. I don't even know what I hoped to achieve in 
sending you this, but, you are a respected industry vet, so, I'll let you use your best 
judgement. Me? I'm just going back to writing games that cater to an audience that is willing to 
buy it, play it and stand by it.

Best Regards

Derek Smart, Ph.D.
Designer/Lead Developer
The Battlecruiser Series
www.bc3000ad.com