Mail Bag

Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 14:01:32 -0800
From: FullaHate <win32ch@mindspring.com>
Subject: Andrew Smith's editorial

I hope that the three responses to Andrew Smith's editorial that you have posted in the Oct. 28th section of the mailbag are meant in jest. If they are meant to be serious replies, then things are a lot worse in the gaming community than even Andrew's document suggests.

Andrew is definitely on the right track in his article. I believe the online gaming community can have a positive impact on the way software is developed and distributed.

Even though he makes a few weak points, Andrew's ideas are a far superior alternative to some of the posted replies his editorial received. id would have had to pay a PR firm millions of dollars to come up with the kind of one-sided, all positive, responses these letters offered up for free.

The reason Quake 2 will ship for Christmas is money and past sales history. id knows from their half-hearted release of Quake that distributing an unfinished product is only a very small deterrent to sales, probably made nil by the overwhelming success of the Quake community.

President Carmack (as PC Gamer refers to him) is still upset from missing the gravy train of Christmas '95. This holiday seasons cash flow will probably come in handy, what with no new id game offerings in the near future, as well as, the possible high costs associated with developing a new game engine.

One letter congratulates id for listening to its customers by including the single player game play in Quake 2 that was so lacking in Quake. Wow! How far has this community sunk when we start thanking a gaming company for including actual game play.

Both of these letters convey the idea that leaving out support for CTF and other multi-player enhancements and including them later as an add-on, is more than acceptable. Not only is this unacceptable, but for id to refer to CTF and multi-player as merely "add-ons" is an insult.

These "add-ons" were the "REASON" for a lot of the downloads of the Q2 Demo over the past week. Without them we would have tired of Quake over a year ago. id's inclusion of the multi-player option in their games is one of the big reasons for all the support they receive from so many dedicated individuals.

The previously posted replies serve as very powerful reminders of an attitude that will only serve to erode a gaming companies integrity and high standards down to match the level of its customers.

I had hoped this community would mature and gradually become a heeded voice throughout the 3d gaming world and not resign ourselves to the role of a bunch of lackeys, all to willing to tow the company line.

Best Regards,

FullaHate

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Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 19:27:35 +0000
From: Matt Sefton <matt.sefton@dial.pipex.com>
Subject: Level Contests

Hi Blue,
Hope you're doing good.

I read with interest about the Screaming Neurons level design contest you posted on your page and I thought I'd check it out. I feel that people should be aware that NOT ONLY is the prize of $500 an insult as you quite rightly imply (my levels each take upwards of 100 hours to produce) but that (quote) "All entries become the property of Screaming Neurons LLC. (legal reasons we don't pretend to understand)"

This is quite frankly a joke - firstly, they shouldn't be running a contest if they don't understand the legal ramifications and secondly, what's to stop them dumping all the levels they receive on a CD and selling it with no comeback to the creators?

On a related note, I received a mail from Canopy Productions today who wanted to use 2 of my level map files for $150.00!! I feel that it would do a great service to all those people who are about to give away their hard work (which was created for FUN in the first place, not profit) to warn them of these scams.

Thanks for putting up with the rant :)

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