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IMHO: Combat Sims and X-mas
by Bob "Groucho" Marks

Lucky you.

As a upstanding reader of this webzine, you have just stumbled across the newest experiment here on COMBATSIM.COM: A quasi-regular column on, well, stuff I want to rant, praise, slam, or generally babble on about.

Disclaimer: Some of the things you will read may annoy you (which is good), and the opinions expressed here may not necessarily reflect those of the management of COMBATSIM.COM. Even if they did, they probably won't admit it.

This is all provided, of course, this proof-of-concept demonstrator you are reading doesn't crumple into a mass of smoke, flame, and MS Word docs right after rotation. Oh, and for the newbies . . ."IMHO" means In My Humble (Honest, Holier than Thou) Opinion.

OK, enough of this gibberish. Let's kick the tires and light the fires.

What If You Crewed a Bomber, and Nobody Came?
In a move that deeply shocked only three people living under a tree in Latvia, Hasbro Interactive started shaving features off of their upcoming release B-17 II: The Mighty Eighth. The rest of us saw something like this coming from waaaay over the horizon. No one was exactly sure what they were going to do, but there was little doubt that they wouldn't leave their mitts off of it for long. After all, this is the same bunch of people who published the incredibly horrible flight-sim punch-boy Gunship!. These are also the folks who slavishly release stuff- finished or not- before the mythical Christmas simulation buying frenzy supposedly takes over our brains. Anyone remember what condition Falcon 4.0 was in late November of 1998? To say that it wasn't quite finished yet is like calling sushi a bit undercooked.

Given the choice, I guess it's better that Hasbro slice off some functionality- in this case; they eliminated multiplayer capability- to meet a deadline. Better that than to watch it stagger onto the market, crippled by a rushed, buggy production or lobotomized to such a level that it has to be renamed Malibu Ken Joins the USAAF. Having to even make the choice of which shortcut to make is, however, idiotic.

The real shame is that this self-imposed deadline of the Christmas buying season does not apply to sims. The vast majority of medium/hardcore sim fans buy their own damn sims, thank you very much, after doing something completely insane- they research it and make up their own minds. Think about it- when was the last time you got a decent sim as a gift? If you are lucky you ended up with some bottom-of-the-bargain-bin special (System Requirements: OS2 Warp operating system, Intel 386 Processor, 4MB RAM…) in all of its 16-color VGA glory, while the less fortunate end up with Wings of Destiny.

Your dear Aunt Edna may make a mean paint-remover based eggnog but she doesn't know a damn thing about what makes a decent sim- a point probably partially attributed to her famous naphtha-based beverage. If you ask for "a flight simulator program" in your wish list, keep in mind that your perspective gift donor probably thinks of their four-year-old Acer as "a darned nice computer." You'd be better off asking for socks.

Look, the mega-conglomerate toy empires like Hasbro and Mattel did not end up having profit sheets that read like the combined GNP of Africa by ignoring the buying habits of their customers. A huge chunk- probably a third- of that shareholder-placating cash flow is generated during the last two months of the year. Christmas time is like, well, Christmas to these corporations. I don't want this to come across like a song from those masters of socialist gimmickry Rage Against the Machine (Geez, guys- corporations are Pure Evil but last I checked you were signed up with Sony).

As a staunch capitalist tool, I'm all for making a buck. It's this anticipation of a profit that triggers companies to pour money into the developers in the first place. I just wish the marketing types would pull their heads out of their tailpipes. It doesn't make sense to market a medium to hardcore simulation like B-17 II in the same way as Tonka Interactive Construction Yard or even Quake Arena. B-17 II is even going to have to be handled differently than the Microsoft juggernauts Flight Simulator 2000 and Combat Flight Simulator, which are targeted squarely at the middle of the market, the casual gamer.

You've seen these guys at CompUSA or Best Buy, trying to decide between the Combat Flight Simulator box in one hand and a copy of Varmint Hunter II in the other. Microsoft is always at the top of the sales charts because it has the deep pockets to stack the decks at retail outlets to ensnare these people, who really just want to blow a couple of hours between watching football games and downloading porn. It doesn't matter that CFS lacks such niceties as decent gameplay, immersion and believable flight modeling- it's in your face at the store. Even Aunt Edna will buy CFS as a Christmas gift for little Jimmy- hey, there's an airplane on the front and there are a lot of them- it must be popular.

If we are lucky, the dabbler in simulators will become hooked and want to be challenged by more advanced simulations, which is where B-17 II looks to be. Your average medium/hardcore simmer is older, has a higher income, is more educated, and way more technologically savvy than pray & sprayers. A less impulsive group, they pay more attention to reviews and research more deeply before they buy than casual gamers do. They are also much less tolerant of sloppy, rushed code. Hey Hasbro, want to know why Falcon 4.0 initially sold like cold cakes? It was broken! And within a very short time following a release that was rushed through to meet the non-existent Christmas buying rush, most of your prospective customer base knew it was broken!

So, Hasbro, there it is: free advice from an actual simulation fiend. Do yourselves a favor and stop trying to rush B-17 II through to a premature birth via feature vivisection. Hacking off more functions or dumbing it down will do nothing to enhance your soiled image in the sim community. If it's not ready, let the release date slip; your longer-term sales will be the better for it. If it's not ready by Christmas, we'll keep ourselves occupied by enjoying one of Aunt Edna's eggnogs . . . trying desperately not to spill any on unprotected skin, of course.

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