TALES OF A QUEUE KEEPER

As I mentioned last time, there are times when we get game profiles that are created to show off games that have little-to-no content and thus use images and the like in order to fill in space and get past the queue (they must think it's automated or something). We had another case just ten minutes ago! I swear, it happens every now and then, but, well, yeah. >.<; It's always annoying.



On the other hand, sometimes (not often) I'll get a page come through where the person is new and was just trying out the system before sending their game through - to see how it worked and if it did. I usually deny and send a note back giving them tips on how to get their game through - general stuff like making sure they pick good images to show that will draw interest, and double-checking their spelling/grammar/etc.

It always makes me happy seeing newbies get their games on the site and while I'm not going to make exceptions for people, I'm always happy to give tips and help out if I see people struggling.

A lot of the time people are quite happy (well, maybe not happy, but they don't complain) to add another image or fix up their description in some way. I'm always happy to help if they need any extra information and, as I mentioned above, when I see someone struggling I'll often send them a PM with a bit more information.

One of the annoying things about the queue is not knowing how many words can be used in the note section, and whether the receiver will have links automatically linked or not (thus having one-click linkage vs copy-paste linkage). So PMs are a good way to engage better, I find.

Sometimes, though, no matter whether you send a PM or whether you're straight out blunt with someone, they completely ignore what you're asking for. It doesn't happen that often - less than once a month most of the time - but it does happen enough that you pick up on it being 'a thing'. Some people just don't want to change x/y/z about their gamepage and they will ignore the hell out of you and keep submitting no matter what you ask for.

Those kinds of people get two responses from me. A follow up PM - sometimes it's as simple as them thinking that someone else works on the game side of the queue and will let the game through when the 'other person' isn't there. Yeah, not gonna happen and letting them know that there's only one person working the queue and that the rules are there for a reason, that they're being treated just like everyone else - that's usually more than enough for them to realise 'oh, maybe I should fix x/add another screenshot'.

The other way I deal with it is by ignoring their game for a few days. Usually I'll check the queue every day or so. By leaving it there for a while after they've gotten used to resubmitting every day, they tend to worry what's going on. Their game is effectively in limbo until such time as I either accept or deny. Usually, when I send it back with a note after it is ignored for a while, they get the message and make the changes so that it fits the rules.

Most of the time. Those that don't usually get another PM and, if then ignored, get a warning for spamming the queue. Surprisingly, those people are very, very few and far between and even more surprisingly, people don't tend to make another game page to get through the system by flooding with pages. For which I am very thankful.

Sometimes I'll leave a game in the queue for a while. This usually coincides with the game being just on the cusp of meh - not quite good enough to be accepted straight away, not quite bad enough to be instantly denied. Sometimes I'll ask for second opinions from the other staff - and they probably get annoyed at how much/often I ask sometimes (sorry! >.<; ) - but sometimes I just have to make a decision.

I think the longest I ever had a game 'on hold' was about two weeks. It was an interesting case - the graphics were default, and the maps were bland as all hell, but the description was pretty good and it sounded like an interesting game. And the three images sent in were like so:
= A decent-ish but kinda large and bare house that showed they understood the tiles well enough
= A very large, empty town map with two houses a few trees and two or three sprites
= A large empty field with a tree in the middle and flowers around it, titled something like 'Meadow/Plains'

On the one hand, they definitely displayed a grasp of what the tiles were, a meadow could be explained away for being pretty empty by some and the house wasn't horribad. On the other hand, there was a lot of empty space filled with nothing, not even dirt paths, patches of grass or flowers (especially in the town - and only around the tree in the meadow shot).

I hmm'd and haw'd for a long time, sent out a PM asking for more images and got more of the same kind of thing in return - another large but okay but empty house and a randomised dungeon with some stones strewn around here and there.

Colour me stumped. While I waited, I pointed them towards the screenshot thread and some of the better mapping tutorials out there, hoping for a good ending. A few days later the creator took the page down - I was upset, thinking I'd discouraged them from sharing their game and sent a PM asking them if there was an issue, if they needed help with something. No reply. I felt guilty but there wasn't much I could do so I moved on.

A week later a much improved version of the game popped up! Boy, was I glad to see it, too! Granted, the mapping wasn't amazing but it was enough to get it accepted. Never heard back in reply to my PM, sadly, but I was happy that they'd actually gone and made their game better and I hope they were prouder of their game after that point and continued to polish and learn.

Sometimes we get a game through the site and I just facepalm over the tile use. Kinda wish there was a crash-course for people to take so they know what tiles are what and how they're supposed to be used because it's something of a 'thing' where people don't understand how to use certain tiles of the RTP.

The most common mistake is using ceiling tiles as floor tiles and this messes with certain features like how tables work in Ace (they have a pixel off-set that is messed up when a ceiling tile is used as a floor). I've also seen floor-cuts being used as walls, shelves being used as seats, chimneys used as pots, and a whole host of other craziness.

The things that personally annoy me most are seeing floating bookshelves (shelves actually placed on the wall instead of below it by one tile) and the abuse of carpets. Poor, poor carpets never deserved to be used that way. ;.;

That said, I don't let the carpet thing get in the way, but other misuses I feel free to point out. Again, I wish there was a thread or article that told people how to use the tiles properly (someone write one so I can refer people to it? :DDD ) but alas, it is not so.

Okay, in conjunction with the above case, usually I send people links to:
= The Description thread
= A series of good tutorials about mapping and map design
= The screenshot thread

When I do refer people to the screenshot thread, I recommend to them that they tell people there that they are new and would like help getting their game accepted. This is because I know some people in there will jump on others for their bad mapping and I don't want newbies chased away by feeling as though they're being attacked for not having the skills that everyone else has. Hence the recommendation in the hope that people will be nicer to them. Not sure if it works or not, as I've heard some people complain about the harshness of others in the thread, and yeah, I can understand when certain people who are known in the community and aren't new just ignore advice get reamed for it, but it doesn't exactly show a friendly face to newbies or inspire confidence in them to share their images.

Sometimes I consider just making a thread that is only for newbies to post in order to get feedback, because more experienced mappers and devs can scare off the lambs with their 1337 skillz and world-weary attitudes, but on the other hand, showing off what can be done with the tool they're using may inspire them to push harder and you can learn just by seeing how someone else uses a tile how to implement it in different ways.

Just, try to be kind to the newbies you see in the thread, okay? Some of them were sent there to better learn how to map and I don't want you lot scaring all the fresh meat away, please! They're the future and if we don't teach them well we're going to end up screwing the community over.

Ever since the botocalypse we really haven't had much in the way of games coming through the queue, and it shows. There hasn't been a new game added to the New and Notable in about a week (if not more) and I've had the same four games staring me in the face every time I go to the queue (people who won't listen when asked to do x will have their game submissions put on hold for a little while. Seriously it doesn't take much to fix your descriptions a little, especially when each time you're linked to the thread where people will help! :/ Just resubmitting your game straight away will see it sit and wait a while... especially when I've denied it four times already for the same thing. -.-; )

So yeah, we haven't got much going on. Well, we didn't, but it seems our slow streak it over! Woo! We have a bunch of new games just jumping into the queue, ready to be looked at! Nothing could go wrong!

A lot of games do stuff like this - they fill out the description perfectly fine and then... just slap a few images they found through google that look cool and use them as their screenshots. Dear lord please no. Stop doing this. If you don't have enough of your game to show off, just let it sit in the game manager until such time as you do have something to show off, because I can assure you, people want to see pictures.

Yes, I said it. We're shallow assholes who like to see what we're going to be playing. Those of you denying that are either really good at lying to yourselves or a better person than me - frankly, I'm not ashamed to say that I judge things by their looks sometimes. I will look at a game and go 'nope'. I freely admit it. I've let looks turn me off and I will judge based on them. That said, I do read the description. I'm not gonna just download a game because it only looks good - there has to be something in a screenshot or the description (or sometimes even the features, yes I am a heathen) that makes me want to play, just prettiness doesn't do it for me.

So what does this have to do with books? Well, just today a fresh tale for you all. I log on, go to check the queue and smile with delight (hah! not tired of that shit yet kentona! You can't get rid of me so easily muahahahahahah!) at a new bunch of games that have come through. Good, about time we got something new in there. A few of them are fine, one or two need some minor help, one of them actually will make use of that useless thread I posted (finally!). Then I come to the one in question. I can tell straight away that it's -one of those-.

Description is fine but out of the corner of my eye I can already see the disconnect between the screenshots shown. I feel a sigh incoming. I'm already writing the denial note in my head (3-5 IN-GAME image required (images from within the game itself, showing off some aspects of gameplay... yadda yadda)) while I click on the first image.

Oh joy, a photo of a forest. Good times for all. Click next (really wish we had something like in the manga sites where just pressing the arrow keys would move to the next page, btw. That'd be cool. I wonder if anky... nah, he's got more than enough on his plate with site updates/plans as it is. Would still be cool though). Double yay. It's a light. No, really, it's a picture of a light effect. It's also huge. Like three times the width we support for images. I mean, okay, it'd look good as an overlay in a game but it's not game-page image-worthy.

Click next and finally we get to the book. It's a picture. Of a girl. On her back in plants. Pretty art is pretty. It's a book cover, though. Yes, they took the cover of an already established and printed book and used the cover - with the title and name of the author still on it - as an image.

'Fair enough' I hear you say. 'It might be a game based on the book.'

It doesn't share the same title. At all. Not even close. Well, wait, they both have three words in the title, but that's it. And the story is not based on the book at all. It's a game about vampires. Yey!

Oh hey, and the kicker? It's commercial. Of course it's commercial... -_-

Digging up a few older stories now! Settle in and get the popcorn kids! There's gonna be pictures~

Sometimes we get games that are pretty much denied straight out based on the content of the images shown or just how bad the games are. And I am a-okay with that! Some things we just do not allow on the site due to either hate-speech, racism, highly sexual content (nudity/pornography) and the like. Let's revisit a few of these shall we?



Who can spot the reason this little gem was denied?

Ah, this game, this game. It was actually added to the site for a little while before it got noticed. And boy-howdy did it get noticed. With pretty little screens like the one above and this one -



"I want the "stab for 9999" option." - a random comment

- who could resist playing? But wait, what did the creator say about his own creation? That it was... "...a fucked up game. Don’t even play it." With a ringing endorsement like that, who wouldn't want to play this racist, hate-speech-riddled gem of a game?


Classic Freddy...

Nest up is FNAFB... not Five Nights at Freddy's, no. Five Nights at Fuckboys. Yes, it's seen a lot of love on tumblr and other sites but it well and truly goes over the threshold we're willing to allow on the site when it comes to sex and pornography. With such enticing features as "Foxy masturbating!" and "Dragon Dildos!" it's not a wonder why we didn't let this game on the site.

But, you know, if you want to get your "...beautiful, beautiful animatronic yiffing..." on, you can find the game easily enough elsewhere. Anywhere but here.


How did all that Jewing fit in that tiny chest?!

Ah, the anti-semetic game. Joy of all joys. What do you get when you cross the lines so badly they scream in horror over the sheer racism and stereotypical 'Jewish' characteristics? This game. This game is what you get.


How many racist jokes can you make about Jews and money before the joke gets old? I'm sure this game could tell you.

With such amazing features as "Best jewing simulator you can ever get" and "Money, money, money, always sunny. In the rich man's world" it was an auto-eject. Sorry, but even if you make it a huge joke lol omg just a joooooooke loooool your anti-semetic and racist ways are not going to join the site. I mean, sure we have some shit games on here, but goddamn, you can't just make a game like this and expect people not to look at you all kinds of askance. Freakin' hell!


And of course it's a skillset. >.<;

I'll leave this set with those three. There are a bunch more that I'll show off another time. Last story, though...

You know, sometimes I really worry about game devs, I really do. Sometimes I look at a game and just shake my head. Some that pop into my mind readily is the Father-son shower simulator (it's a pretty decent commercial indie game but how do you come up with an idea like that???) or the Fuck a Pony game (don't even ask), but the one that really got me scratching my head was a game that came through the queue not once, but twice.

The first time it came through it seemed... interesting. An education-based puzzle game that helped kids learn as they played. Nothing new there, but you know, something the site doesn't have much of. But then I read the rest of the quite long description... and they talked about the Blue Screen of Death.

So... apparently when you failed in this game it would force your computer to go into a Blue Screen of Death. And no, they didn't mean 'we show a picture of a blue screen, it's just a joke, lol'. They meant that they deliberately forced your computer to kill itself. For failing. At a game. That is supposed to teach kids.

What.



The.




Fuck?!


That was pretty much my initial thought. Reading on they went on to talk about how they weren't to be held responsible for any bugs or issues this might cause on your computer. And still went on to talk about how the game had a habit of corrupting files/causing issues outside of the BSoD scenario anyway. You know, just in case you were too good at the game to fail you got to experience the same feeling anyway.

It very quickly got a deny, with a note letting them know that there was no way in hell we could, in good conscience, allow a game on our site that would fuck up people's computers. Ever.

You can't really argue with that, so they left it there and went their merry way. Flash forward a few months and there is a very familiar game in the queue.

"Don't worry! We fixed the BSoD issue! It doesn't do that anymore!" Okay, cool... but you didn't say a word about the bugs that it used to cause and whether they were fixed or not. Or what horrors you had lying in wait instead of the BSoD.

Frankly, it was a very fast, very unanimous decision to tell them 'thanks, but no thanks'. Frankly, we'd recommend that you don't trust people who would deliberately set out to destroy your PC just because you failed their game. Especially if you're a kid playing a game that's meant to educate you. :/