Conduit Studio Accused of Amazonbombing Conduit Reviewer - UPDATED

[hitheremynameisbob]

I like how he says it's "a tad unprofessional" so dismissively. It's okay, it was just a LITTLE election fraud, guys. It was just a COUPLE bullets. And oh yeah, he only rated your game down a FEW points. Four, really - that's not all that many, is it?

 

[LadyRhian]

I read the review, and I watched the trailer. Looks like the game got all the smacking it justly deserved. The voice acting sounded terrible, and the graphics weren't that good, either. The actor voice acting the villain sounded very... strange, and the main character's armor looked like Master Chief from Halo as interpreted by the same guys who did the original TRON.

But, you know, it's ONE review. Wigging out and passively-aggressively telling your employees to go take out their rage on the author of the review's published work is unprofessional indeed (and make no mistake, that wording was extremely passive-aggressive) and "a tad unprofessional" just doesn't cut it as a description.

Captcha: eonsub edition: Yeah, I get my Escapist news in the E on sub edition

 

[fabiosooner]

Conduit Studio Accused of Amazonbombing Conduit Reviewer - UPDATED

In fairness, it seems that these folks felt like the reviewer was using his review to plug his own stuff. That could mean that the review of Conduit 2 wasn't being given from a fair perspective, but rather from someone with a clear agenda of his own.

Sometimes reviewers have them, you know. Sometimes it's about downing on one product for the purposes of shedding a good light on another, more self-serving product. Sometimes it's just trying to make news, realizing that negative reviews are more "fun" and "attention-grabbing" than positive or lukewarm reviews. Tell me you don't read some movie reviews and think, "This guy was just looking for an excuse to use that particular jab and look clever."

I'm not saying that's what happened, and I'm certainly not saying the review was wrong. What I'm saying is that reviewers can be just as guilty of shady dealings as developers, but we tend to cut them slack because they have individual names and faces. Immaturity met with immaturity excuses no one, but that's just the point--it excuses no one.

This.

It's all particularly shady when one considers two things:

- The review was published on Joystiq. C'mon, you can't be serious. IT'S FRIGGIN' JOYSTIQ. They're not in the major league of gaming sites, they know it, and attention-grabbing drivel has become their motto quite a while ago.
- Conduit 2 is actually a vast improvement over the first. Of course, it still doesn't compare to other FPS out there, but considering the platform and what they have to work with, it's a good game. If I had to recommend one FPS on the Wii, it would still be GoldenEye 007, but the next choice would be Conduit 2.

The game is also very tongue-in-cheek in its narrative and general feel, and because of that it's guaranteed to piss off FPS enthusiasts who play such games to satisfy a soldier fantasy. If there's something I feel High Voltage was naive about, it's the fact that they seem not to acknowledge it. The game was doomed to receive at least a couple abismally low scores just for (1) being a hardcore Wii game at this point in time, and (2) being a tongue-in-cheek FPS released at the height of the Call of Duty era. Even Bulletstorm caught some flack from (2) despite its overall quality. Why not Conduit 2?

 

[duchaked]

lol they mad...

but admittedly, I'd probably take it a bit personally too if I were in their shoes. not that I condone any sort of unprofessional behavior that a game company employee might make or anything lol

 

[NicolasMarinus]

Gabe Newell would have flown Michael Murdock over to have a talk about why he thought the game was so bad and explain the choices they made during development.

Matt Corso, you have some growth ahead of you, if you ever want to attain the same level as Gabe Newell.

 

[Torrasque]

*snip*

Whats that Escapist? You want me to Amazonbomb HV? D'OK!
/sarcasm

Stuff like this puts a bad taste in my mouth whenever I think of the gaming studio involved.

 

[itf cho]

Well, as there are currently 13 one-star reviews of The Dragon Ruby, I'd say that they won't be all removed any time soon. And as only one of those one-star reviews predates this article, I'd go as far as to say that this article may have had the unfortunate side effect of getting others to jump on the amazon-bomb bandwagon.

 

[Zay-el]

More companies need to be like VALVe and realize that a lot of your problems go away when you actually consistently put out quality work at great value with constant support.

Not really. You'll still get hammered for having DLC hats.

 

[Magicman10893]

The same reviewer also gave last year's Alpha Protocol a five-star score, however, calling it "an RPG masterpiece," so maybe he or she just has really bad taste.

I am seriously fed up with all the hate for Alpha Protocol. Sure it wasn't perfect. Aside from glitches (glitches that I never encountered in my 3 playthroughs) and some balancing issues, the game was an amazing RPG. The only problem was being thrust into combat encounters when you specialized in stealth and technology. Fortunately I saw the Zero Punctuation review and when I made my character I was sure to specialize in a weapon type so I could fight when necessary.

I seriously don't get what people hated about it. The story was great (as in rather than just having 2 black and white choices on major events, you were given a large handful of choices) that changed drastically depending on your choices. There were some major events that you could uncover that 1 play through couldn't uncover all of them. The combat and stealth were like a pure RPG in that everything deals with stats rather than player skill. It plays like Mass Effect 1 for crying out loud, the only difference were setting and some bad voice acting from the player character, and a brief scene with half of a bare ass.

I really wish they would make an Alpha Protocol 2 so they could patch up some of the issues with the first game.

 

[Lunar Templar]

my that was terribly professional of them, lemme just run out a get that game right now /sarcasm

high voltage is the dev? remind me to not buy their games, ever.

if their gonna react so childishly they don't deserve my money

(not that they've done anything worth me buying >.>)

 

[LostAlone]

To be honest, this kind of thing has been going on for ages, in various forms.

Whenever lots of artists get frankly hideously unfair reviews, they have responded by attacking mostly though their art-form. Particularly comedians have been quite harsh...

Now amazon gives people the chance to do it in person, venting their frustrations directly, showing the reviewers how painful it is when someone demolishes your work for no reason, and particularly when they big themselves up at the end.

Is it unprofessional of a company to do it, rather than fans ? Probably.

But what about if fans do it by themselves ?

I think that its actually kinda dodgey that amazon are caving and removing bad reviews. If only High Voltage could phone up a review site and have a terrible review pulled just because they think the motives of the reviewer are in question... I mean companies pay for good reviews, and lots of reviewers are dicks about things just because they CAN be.

 

[blindthrall]

Hey!...I liked Alpha Protocol.

You guys want see some real astroturfing, look up the fuss about the new Dune books. Hooooo, boy.

 

[Jack Macaque]

This reminds me of high school haha nice Amazonboming though that was pretty funny.

Seriously though, don't be ignorant.

 

[duchaked]

tried to read into their response more but they just seem to be irritable about it all both the bad review plus having the world find that email lol

in the end...well, hopefully they behave and...uh, make better games? idk lol