Jimquisition: Air Control - A Steam Abuse Story

[Abnaxis]

I believe that issue is with surgeon simulator's advertising, which would, if there was a standard, have to put in something about it being satire on the page. It wouldn't be much to give up for not having utter garbage scams around.

I'm not talking about the format of the Steam page. I'm responding to all the people that demand Valve implement some sort of quality control so that the likes of Air Control would never be sold on their storefront.

I think the system would benefit greatly if there was a better way for people to get information about a game within Steam proper, that is not entirely under the control of the developer. However, that's a whole 'nother can of worms separate from what I'm trying to bring up in my original post.

 

[Alterego-X]

And what about it would fail to meet a minimum quality requirement?

It's premise implies either a trolling attempt or a fetishist porn which would be a cause for removal.

Surgeon Simulator another good example of the same problem but for other reasons. It's not a functional simulator.

What we have here is a road with no traffic signs. Most cars are playing by the rules, but we have some, like this game, that are playing bumper cars. Some regulation is necessary.

There were some towns that tried to remove all traffic signs. Accidents plummeted each time [http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/controlled-chaos-european-cities-do-away-with-traffic-signs-a-448747.html]. Turns out, if drivers actually pay attention to their surroundings instead of relying on regulations, they are driving more safely.

You are right, just because people die from car crashes, doesn't mean that cars must be completely safe.

However, sometimes it might turn out that the desperation to Do Something causes more harm than a more laid-back, permissive regulation.

- Something Must Be Done!
- Well, this here is something.
- Then it must be done!

It's a bad thing that people die from car accidents, but maybe regulating the roads just to do something is even worse than not regulating it at all. It's bad that bad games exist on Steam, but maybe turning it into a walled garden would caue more harm than the bad games themselves.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Names are not and never will be descriptive. "I went to see Man of Steel and he wasn't actually made of steel! I want a refund!" Sounds stupid? Same thing here.

There's a difference between being non-descriptive and being deliberately counter-factual. The name "Surgeon Simulator" is deliberately misleading for the purposes of irony--the game is quite obviously far, far from even approximating a simulation. That's the joke.

But from another perspective the game is "advertizing" itself as a simulation when it quite clearly isn't one. That is the definition of false advertizing.

I don't see how. The game IS simulating surgery, it's just doing it intentionally poorly for the purpose of comedy. The description is factually correct.

And what about it would fail to meet a minimum quality requirement?

It's premise implies either a trolling attempt or a fetishist porn which would be a cause for removal.

Its premise "implies"? You're suggesting that no one at Steam would even look at the game itself before greenlighting or denying it? Why are you suggesting that?

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Oh Jimmy boy. Again with your quality control. I dont know Why I have to keep explaining this over and over and over again.
They're trying to make an open platform, and quality control goes directly against that. Understand?
No, you obviously dont.

Maybe I should just leave this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD_1Kyiw1R0] here.

It dosen't matter if you're "Triple A", If you're "Indie", If you're big, small, if you're a team of 600 or if you're a solo man job. If you put shit on the internet and you wanna charge for it, you're offically making a product and you will be critizised as such.

Unless you're an attractive looking woman of course,
then you can scam people as much as you fucking please and get praised for it.

i like how the guy in your video thinks, that being said steam would use the informationg provided by tags and user revieews to give personalized recomendations to users

 

[Abnaxis]

I don't see how. The game IS simulating surgery, it's just doing it intentionally poorly for the purpose of comedy. The description is factually correct.

So where is the false advertizing in Air Control, then? The game IS an airplane simulator with a "realistic mode," it's just a terrible simulator.

 

[Frankster]

Honestly I'm not too fond of the idea of a steam quality control.

Sure you can point to things like Earth 2020 or Airplane but I'm much more worried about GOOD games that have gone through thanks to steams laissez faire policy that wouldn't have made it otherwise, and had steam users had their way, wouldn't have let them in either since it doesn't appeal to their specific tastes.

To give an example, I'm quite fond of some VN games made by winterwolf, who struggled since over a year ago to get their games into steam. Once they were finally in, you had a fair few steam users raging at VN type games and dismissing them as shovelware and moaning about steam letting crappy devs in. Had a rigid steam quality control existed, I'm not confident winterwolves would have made it onto steam.

 

[momijirabbit]

I genuinely think that this game was made for pure ironic purposes, nobody, and I mean nobody can make a game this bad and not do it ironically.

 

[Evonisia]

Watch_Dogs doesn't launch for many people. Some were banned from UPlay for "too many attempts" to activate because keys would not work. To this day, multiplayer will not work for many PC and XBOne users. It was intentionally broken, by the developer, on AMD PC hardware.

"4.5/5" -Jim Sterling

Did you miss the PS4 (Reviewed) part of that review? I'm sure the score would be much lower if he had played the PC version. Maybe even if he reviewed the Xbox One version (I'm not sure whether the whole multiplayer being broken thing is true).

 

[Imp_Emissary]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.851575.21052918

Veal is tortured baby cow! xD They call it that for the same reason they call it rump roast.
No one would eat it if they called it cow ass. ;p

As for the comments, I think it's a larger danger for them to have the Dev decide what gets to stay, than it is that some may decide to give lots of negative comments.

True, lots of negative comments can be misleading, but you can see red flags if they all come from the same person, or if they're all very vague.
There could be a compromise where they could flag comments so they are still there, but people can be told that they are suspicious.

 

[Lightknight]

The problem is not that the game is crap. The problem is that the company may easily censor information that would be otherwise valuable to the consumer.

However, one has to ask whether or not that's a problem. Companies don't allow you to sit in their store and shout that their products suck in other places so is it ok for them to prevent that in this storefront too while information is available elsewhere? I mean, dirty? Yeah, but not necessarily wrong.

 

[LeBard]

My gripe isn't so much that Steam allows shit games, but that the system for punishing companies for advertising misleading games isn't strong enough. If it was, we wouldn't see Air Control doing what it did; If it was still released there would be absolutely no way that people buying this game would do so because anything was misleading. More than anything, I think steam needs a better punishment system for devs. The issues with rust, while being a good game in my opinion, would have never happened. (issues like reporting false information about their game)

As for quality control, i just wish we had a way to have a better user based system of curation. Basing the home pages on games bought by friends and communities and such. Websites that take the time to completely remake the home page and showcase steam games that they personally like. Things like this would help much more than anything else, I think.

 

[LeBard]

My gripe isn't so much that Steam allows shit games, but that the system for punishing companies for advertising misleading games isn't strong enough. If it was, we wouldn't see Air Control doing what it did; If it was still released there would be absolutely no way that people buying this game would do so because anything was misleading. More than anything, I think steam needs a better punishment system for devs. The issues with rust, while being a good game in my opinion, would have never happened. (issues like reporting false information about their game)

As for quality control, i just wish we had a way to have a better user based system of curation. Basing the home pages on games bought by friends and communities and such. Websites that take the time to completely remake the home page and showcase steam games that they personally like. Things like this would help much more than anything else, I think.

 

[CaptainBill22]

Jim I understand that you honestly want Steam to be a better place. Please go onto different topics other than Steam failing to stop bad games. You can say the same thing of Apple, Google, and Amazon's app stores as well. They're so inundated with shit it's not even funny. I find that those app stores are far worse and predatory than the devs who sell on Steam.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

I genuinely think that this game was made for pure ironic purposes, nobody, and I mean nobody can make a game this bad and not do it ironically.

That's within the real of possibility, but why would they do all the other things too?

If it's suppose to be a "joke game", why would they try to shut down the criticism, or say that the reviews just didn't have powerful enough PCs?

:/ Meh. Even if this is suppose to be a joke/prank on Steam, I'd say they turned it into a scam by charging for it.

At least the Goat Simulator people were willing to say, "Don't buy our game for $10, ;p it's not worth it. Wait for it to be cheaper, or buy something else."

 

[Gerardo Vazquez]

Unless you're an attractive looking woman of course,
then you can scam people as much as you fucking please and get praised for it.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to raise the specter of Anita Sarkesian, stopping all legitimate conversation in it's tracks to in order to needlessly whine about something that isn't relevant to the conversation, no matter how much they ~Insist~ it is.

 

[Bloodstain]

Looking at the Air Control ingame footage, I think I really get what's so shitty about it. How horrible.
However, I am proud to announce that I have sufficiently solved its main problem. It is now a fully marketable and approvable game.

Spoiler: A shining example of quality, if I dare say.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I don't see how. The game IS simulating surgery, it's just doing it intentionally poorly for the purpose of comedy. The description is factually correct.

So where is the false advertizing in Air Control, then? The game IS an airplane simulator with a "realistic mode," it's just a terrible simulator.

Again, names are one thing. Marketing descriptions are another. This is the description for Surgeon Simulator on Steam:

"Surgeon Simulator 2013 is a darkly humorous over-the-top operation sim game where players become Nigel Burke, a would-be surgeon taking life into his own shaky hands, performing life-saving surgical maneuvers on passive patients."

See the difference?

The problem is not that the game is crap. The problem is that the company may easily censor information that would be otherwise valuable to the consumer.

However, one has to ask whether or not that's a problem. Companies don't allow you to sit in their store and shout that their products suck in other places so is it ok for them to prevent that in this storefront too while information is available elsewhere? I mean, dirty? Yeah, but not necessarily wrong.

Yes it is, because it's not their store - it's Valve's store.

It would be like Best Buy stifling your ability to express opinions about whether or not Panasonic makes good TVs while you're in the store. It would be Newegg allowing Intel to moderate the reviews of a product it sells. That's ridiculous, and wrong.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

As for veal and rump roast. I've lived on a farm. i've seen how my steak goes from grazing to sizzling, I've cut the throats of goats and wrung the necks of chickens. I know exactly how my meat gets on my plate. That has not stopped me from enjoying good honey mesquite charcoal grilled steaks or my turkey sammich. Because brutha if that puts you off you should probably stop eating plants They don't call it a 'head' of cabbage or lettuce for nuthin and at the very least the cow is quite dead when it goes into the meat grinder and on the hotplate... the carrot you fed into the juicer was still alive.

I'm not saying no one would ever order it, but it would hardly sell as well. xD
And it better be tasty, otherwise what sick weirdo would do that?!

Also, funny that you should mention that about veggies. They recently found out that plants do "think".
And when damaged, they emit a high pitched screech that we just can't hear.

So yeah. Can't eat pretty much anything without causing some pain.