STALIN v. MARTIANS sort of popped out of nowhere rather dimly and didn't really dazzle me as much as it created a universe where I'm more interested in spending time reading the Stalin Wikipedia article than actually playing the game.

With Russia's software track record, I'm not surprised it sucks:
Starforce
X-Blades
Operation: Matriarchy

I purchased this game, and while gameplay was rather repetitive and unrewarding, the awesome soundtrack was enough to keep me playing until I hit some major issues. When I got to level four, it stopped showing me my mission objectives, and then the mission started failing randomly with no explanation. Then it just crashed and I gave up.

I was willing to over-look some questionable game design, but it's got some game-ruining gameplay bugs as well.

So it happened.. When 3 companies, that never released anything decent, join forces, they make a real turd.

I'm not surprised. It was going to be crap, and now we can say - it is.
I'd rather be surprised if tihs game was awesome.
They just don't know how to make games.

This game deserves any criticism it gets because it really does suck. The controls and general gameplay is among the worst I've ever experienced. As an RTS (I guess), it's a joke. It doesent matter how many "whacky" attempts of humour you put in a game if it isn't fun to play and if you dont find russian accents and dancing sim characters resembling dictators to be funny you're out of luck there aswell.

Somewhere out there, there's an interesting indie game that was passed over because this Stalin game got coverage. Games journalists need to think more about the responsibility that they have to the community. Maybe then blatant publicity stunts like this wouldn't work so well.

Or perhaps instead of being bitter, indie devs should realise how easy it is to actually get coverage if they even show the slightest flair.

KG

heh @ kg

@ Anonymous:
"With Russia's software track record, I'm not surprised it sucks"

Your list is a little selective. There are tons of great games out of Russia, I would say it is easily the most interesting country in games development right now.

Most of the really good experimental indie games aren't really full games. They're just concept sketches and ideas, normally only played for 5 minutes each.

Not many teams actually take it further (Goo, Braid etc..) and turn it into a full game. These guys did. And for that they should be applauded by the community.

Although the fact that it costs actual money gives us liscence to call it a turd if that's what it is!

Obviously, they lied about rakija. This game has nothing to do with Serbia.

There is a line that even I don't quite understand, between paying way in advance for Zeno Clash, just knowing it would be cool, and watching the trailers for Stalin vs Martians with bemusement, but knowing in my heart of hearts that the game would ultimately be ca-ca. I am so proud of my judgement right now.

@Kieron: Oh SNAP!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I was going to pop on here and mention that their viral ad campaign only served to make me sick of the game before it came out, but then I read all the comments bashing it as a pile of crap and...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"Russia's software track record"...?

Have you not heard of, oh, I dunno... TETRIS?

And let's not forget the amazing 'Boiling Point'. It was fantastic!

@Kieron Gillen

"Or perhaps instead of being bitter, indie devs should realise how easy it is to actually get coverage if they even show the slightest flair."

I'll be bitter when something I really care about gets ignored, which hasn't happened yet. Don't try to infer too much from blog comments. My comments were not meant to be a personal attack, so please don't interpret them as such.

I don't want to appear to bash your professionalism here. That's a dumb way to start a discussion about pretty much anything. I don't know enough about your work to comment either way. There IS something that I'm concerned about here, and that's the role that the press plays in the industry.

The question is, do you really want to encourage this type of stuff in the future? I guess that depends on how you view your role in the industry. As a journalist, you can set the tone for the type of things that get covered. Are you going to encourage style or substance?

Publicity is a limited resource since audience attention is a limited resource. The press has a lot of say in how that pie is cut. Every time you give space to a mediocre game, something that's more worthy gets squeezed out. You guys are active participants in the shaping of the industry. You might not make games yourselves, but you affect what succeeds or fails. In the long run that will change the types of games that get made. If a designer made a shitty game, I would call them on it. The same should go for journalists.

Do you disagree with my view? I'd be happy to have a serious discussion.

HA!!!
i was right!!!
you all were wrong! me only was right!
HA!
sweet glory!!

i knew it from the fist frames of the ad movie. maybe because nowadays there's too much of that bad stuff here in russia.

"Every time you give space to a mediocre game, something that's more worthy gets squeezed out."

Does it? Are you sure?

@ Jim Rossignol

"Does it? Are you sure?"

As I've said, attention is not an infinite resource; neither is people's time. The press directs people's attention and influences how they use their time.

I don't claim to have a comprehensive model of journalism, just a few hunches. If you have reasons to disagree with my view, please state them. It could very well be that my understanding of how things work is simplistic.

First, I'd like to state something a bit obvious; that header pic is extremely freaking weird, dudes.

Twisting Kieron's words to add weight to a PEBCAK problem is just Not Cool. I'm sorry.

There are optimisation problems, that can't be denied, but when a game outright crashes or stalls, it's pretty much always down to someone not having all the necessary drivers and dependencies in place.

If a piece of software works for persons A and B, but not at all for person C, then barring more minor bugs it's pretty much a given that the problem is with either person C or how they've set-up and maintain their computer. Why do you think so many high-street software retailers refuse returns on opened software?

As an avid Linux enthusiast, I'm more than familiar with this, but what people don't realise is that it happens just as much on Windows as it does on Linux, but Windows users aren't so smart about it. Got a crashing program or a stalling game? Check to make sure all your software is installed and up to date!

I wouldn't be so ready to lambaste if Gillien's words hadn't been cherry-picked and twisted to support a viewpoint that Gillien most likely had not intended. After all, this issue didn't hit him, did it?

TL;DR: I'm irritated because part of the article reads like 'This game is shit because it crashes, and the same happened to Kieron Gillien too!'. Where it should read like 'I'm angry because I did something wrong and I can't get this game to run on my computer!'. I expected better of this blog.

I feel for developers everywhere when I see this kind of thing happening.

just stop. go outside and breathe. Kieron, save it for your own site. it's unprofessional and pathetic.

"Got a crashing program or a stalling game? Check to make sure all your software is installed and up to date!"

There's alaways a chance (rather high for such "projects") that the game wasn't tested, so it's bound to crash on a large number of PCs. He-he...

"The question is, do you really want to encourage this type of stuff in the future?"

Yeah, I do! I'll happily put my hand up and say I want more games that take the proverbial.

Why does everything have to be substance? What exactly is wrong with a bit of throwaway silly every now and then?

Silly is great!

I want a gaming horizon where Stalin Vs Martians co-exists with more serious fare. I want a world where Stalin Vs Martians *can* get press coverage because it's so utterly clearly mental. That's worth something to me.

Sorry if it's not your tastes but dictating what should and should not be allowed coverage is a mentalism.

What a sorry old world we'd live in if everything subscribed to one persons vision of what is worthy and what isn't.

And y'know, given the coverage that KG, Jim and the rest of the RPS Hivemind give Indie games from big to small you're aiming your barrels in totally the wrong direction, man.

As Oddbob says, that you don't know who we are does undermine the conversation. Putting aside RPS, god knows I've done enough to actually try and help indie devs learn how to get the word out.

Keeping it short: No, they don't have a "duty" to some kind of theoretical community. Generally, the press write about what interests them or they think will interest their readers. The idea that anyone else gets to decide what a writer finds interesting is like me telling you that your next game has to be a side-scrolling shooter because that's what I think is lacking in the world. Writers decide what their sites are for. If they want to make a site reviewing hentai games or walkthroughs or serious discussions of indie games or anything, it's their call.

In terms of how we see ourselves at RPS: We're a generalist PC site. We cover pretty much everything. Our job is to inform and entertain. If we didn't entertain, we wouldn't have any readers, so our indirect shaping of the industry would be limited to our mums, assuming they went into videogame design.

Pre-release Stalin Vs Martians leaned towards being entertaining. We found it amusing and thought the readers would too. And we were right. Job done.

KG

I feel like this discussion has become a bit overwrought, which is probably my fault. I'll keep this short.

You know, if you feel that you served your audience well, I'm fine with that. I personally saw the whole SvM publicity thing as a huge stunt, trying to hype the game.

I do appreciate your efforts to help indie devs. In general, RPS is more interesting than the other game media sites.

"with Kieron Gillen stating that "it was clear it was going to be absolutely terrible"."

That's taken out of context. The full quote is:

"Because… well, it was clear it was going to be absolutely terrible.

Or was it?"

@Diddledoo: And then he goes on to express at great length that yes, it is absolutely terrible.

"I personally saw the whole SvM publicity thing as a huge stunt, trying to hype the game."

Which is sort of a necessity if you want people to actually buy it, yeah?

Perhaps for their next game (and I do hope there is one) they should just put a webpage up on Googlepages or something and hope someone finds it?

For the record, I love SvM. It's awful, I mean really awful but everything is so utterly deliberate that I can't help but admire the sheer utter balls of the thing. There's obviously been no kowtowing to what a game must do here, it's just a load of mental ideas thrown together and let's see where we end up. Clearly, it'd never work and the devs knew it - but heck, let's do it all the same because it's funny!

Man, that's punk as fuck. I love it.

Couple that with what's been a complete devil may care, brutally honest load of publicity (the developers have done nothing to claim it'd ever be anything other than a bit rubbish bar some obvious laughing at themselves bravado) and they've got my respect. I'd sooner that than some of the cheap shot media manipulation stunts that other (indie) devs engage in.

It's been fun going along for the ride on this. Folks could learn a lot from Mezmer's attitude (if not their game design skills ;))

Taken from their site:
"The fact that such game exists is quite an event. It doesn't really matter what's behind the name or if the game is playable at all. The concept is enough. Simply makes your brain explode."
They basically already said before the release that this game consists only of the concept and nothing else. We were all warned.