As for the co-op, to each their own. If you ever do have someone over and are bored and don’t have Turok lying around, consider giving it a go.

That said, you say the game never gets past “Level 1″ so to speak. Did you try the game on Gauntlet mode at all? I consider myself pretty much a “master” at the game and I can barely make four minutes in that mode; and that is with dodging and firing at the same time.

Did you get to try the co-op mode out at all? It introduces a nice level of required cooperation along with the fact that you can run into each other which can make it quite a fun challenge, again especially on higher difficulties.

Anyway, regardless of this negative press it seems the game was received well overall (what with Ars Technica deeming it their favorite game available and IGN saying it is one of the better deals on the market). I appreciate anyone and everyone checking out the game so I thank you for playing it (though, granted you are playing all the games).

Fairs fair, it is an odd way to enforce it and I’d like to hope that it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on sales because people believe it’s the devs doing. I can see the logic and the argument behind MS doing so, but it’s not a very customer facing decision

Blow doesn’t let you *really* get through the entire tutorial because of this. I believe this was raised as a potential problem when it was first announced?* And it did take two loads of the demo to play a reasonable segment of the game, but you can see the potential in the game still – it’s unfortunately a case of hoping that the rest of the game does live up to the potential because sans tutorial it can be a bit mystifying.

Which, as I say, is where attempting to garner good press comes in. Send out videos, send out screenshots and press packs, “trial” versions or full versions in one format or another. Not just to us, although if you can – please do, but to everyone you can think of who might be interested.

Promotion is hard graft, getting column inches is hard and I know bad reviews can chafe – I’ve doled out a few and been on the receiving end of a few. But if the 4 minutes are going to be an issue, try and make it *less* of an issue. It doesn’t take 5 minutes to bag some hi-res screenshots. It takes a bit longer to make a decent video or press version of the game, but it might be worth it in the long run.

I recommend Kieron’s excellent article on how to use and abuse the gaming press as a fine starting point. It works.

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693

I know it seems like we’ve just popped up out the blue (and in many ways we have) but we’re all old hands at this sort of thing and all the staff ride both sides of the divide as developers and customers and in my case, a cheeky bugger at promotion (for my own works and others) to boot. I’m a bit abrasive (sorry, that’s just me) but I’m not out to stick the boot in for the sake of it. Honest! I want folks to do well wherever possible, but I’m not going to fib or pull any punches because I don’t think it helps anyone in the long run. We’re not perfect and we may cock up ourselves, but I accept this as “stuff that happens”

And cheers Paul, I’ll be happy to give your games a good monkeying. And I might even play them too

*not for Blow specifically but for more passive games in general.

I’ve got a few things that I’ll be releasing shortly and I’d be perfectly happy with Bob ‘n’ the team ‘monkeying’ trials of them.

1. Your demo is the bridge to the public. With 4-8 games a day currently going onto the Community Games service – folks aren’t going to try each and every one of them. You can’t rely on the “oh well, it’s only [x] points and I’m bored” for good word of mouth or the majority of your sales. You certainly can’t rely on that from a reviewer. Make your demo the best it can be. Sell it to me. I want you to sell your games to me because I, believe it or not, want to hand over my money to people who make good games. If I review your game poorly and you’re not happy, fine. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me and if the game is truly that much better than I or any of the staff say it is – you’re safe in the knowledge that I, or the reviewer holds a sufficiently minority opinion as to not matter.

If you get 10 good reviews and 1 bad review, and you fixate on the bad review – you’re wasting your energy.

2. I’m not developing for the community (well, I might yet be – I haven’t decided yet) but I’ve known for months about the time limit. It is not an excuse for a poor demo. As the Blow write up testifies, if I can see the potential in the game even with a poor demo, I’ll mention it.

3. If you’re really that offended by me or any of the staff reviewing the trial version (and labelling it as a trial version review…) then give us access to the full game or a reasonable portion of the game somehow. I can run your games on my 360 if you supply me with an appropriate build, build a PC version that I can use, do something proactive towards getting good press and you might find you get better press. You might not, but at least you’ve done something constructive and tried. We have 3 staff precisely so that we can offer multiple opinions on the same game, use that to your advantage if you must.

4. Please don’t argue semantics with me. I’ve got a tolerance level of a gnat with concentration problems for poor internet argument techniques . Telling me I’m wrong or stupid or “not a proper reviewer” or I didn’t use the word you’d prefer isn’t going to make me change my opinion.

Convincing me I might be wrong on the other hand…

You’ve got a service here that you can use and shape. You have the power to shape how your game is perceived by the staff here and the public. Bitching may give you five seconds of feeling better about yourself but it won’t change any opinions. It certainly won’t sell more copies of your game or encourage me or the staff to help you sell more copies of the game.

I’m happy to help you guys out, but it’s a two way thing y’know. You can either treat us as the enemy which isn’t good for us or for you or you can try to use us and the site for good PR purposes.

Which would have the better outcome in the long run?

We don’t just review the trial (as I pointed out above) because of monetary reasons but precisely because this is what the public will see. You’re asking for their time and money, you owe it to them to not waste that time if you want their money.

It is your duty as a developer when asking for the public to hand over money to make that trial as engrossing as possible. I’m a developer myself as well as a likely purchaser of your product and you simply can’t tell me that making a good demo is impossible because it’s flat out wrong.

Getting into semantic arguments doesn’t change that fact and I’m not entirely sure what you’re hoping to achieve in asking us to label something differently purely to placate you.