Dodonpachi Series Article on HardcoreGaming101.net

[Skykid]

It's a choice based on presentation: do you want to do a sterile technical guide or do you want to communicate to your reader how the game makes you feel. The latter is my preference, with choice information about mechanics and scoring to outline the kind of input and feedback you get as a player.

But I'm not saying this is easy. The hardest part of creating prose that's engaging is being able to commit large chunks of material to the recycle bin, and that takes humility and a lot of practice. It's like making a constant sacrifices for the greater good of the article.

[Squire Grooktook]

In a lot of ways, writing (and other art forms) are a lot like game design. Endless trial and error plus obsessive polishing of what you've already set down.

[slateman]

Yeah, you guys make sense. I too sometimes want as much as humanly possible. But again, for the layman, even for us, it's verbose and difficult to digest. 15k words...geez!!!

I've looked around at HC101 articles and thought they were OK (Ys, Mushihimesama, Montezuma's Revenge!) and never knew of a consistent issue with validity.

Here on these forums though I have encountered elitism before and it's discouraging. As a 39-year old father of four, my game time (shmup time) has been severely diminished. Stopping in here from time to time I see it more. But that's me.

Glad my sites were of value to someone!

[Despatche]

as much as i'd like to go on about how people misunderstand "elitism" and why most people here aren't really elitist at all:

Hopefully a courteous email will allow the author to amend their mistake with honor.

only this guy would ever do such a thing. trust me, i've tried. also:

I think the more constructive thing to do here wouldn't be to fry the op/poster, but rather to help point out the errors and correct them. This is a small community and you know his intentions were good.

when you start lying about things you know you don't really understand, you do not have good intentions.

the sad thing is that this is one of the better articles. most of the articles lie about far less esoteric things and at some point you just do not want to help them anymore because the way they approach breathing is a lie*.

if you want to just write about your first impressions of a game without needing to worry about numerous details, please actually do that. please don't lie about how you think the game works in order to somehow "prove" why you like or hate the game and why others should follow you, like hg101 does.

*this is actually a bad example because most people actually don't know how to breathe correctly, but i think the emphasis is clear enough

[Squire Grooktook]

Nothing written in this article is a lie, it's just the person who wrote the article being mislead himself by faulty data (likely he picked it up from another source and had no way of knowing it was false). There is nothing malicious about it.

[CStarFlare]

I think some people are exaggerating the negative tone of this thread. No one said the article was shit, and I don't think most people are accusing him of consciously lying - repeating things he's heard with no verification, yes, and it's easy to take issue with that when he's writing an article to be published on a reasonably well known gaming website (which will likely be cited as a source by readers).

(I had to update this paragraph after Despatche's post )

I actually like HG101. Occasional problems with accuracy aside, it catalogs a reasonable amount of obscure games that often have received little to no comparable Western attention. The comparison of ports is always appreciated, as are the screenshots. It could be better, but I view it as a fansite and adjust my expectations accordingly.

Back to the DDP article, perhaps a mention of the international versions of Donpachi is worth some space? The US version isn't that interesting, but apparently the HK version is brutally hard: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=17716

[Despatche]

he chose to put in that information. he lied.

hatred and stupidity are the exact same thing.

I actually like HG101. Occasional problems with accuracy aside, it catalogs a reasonable amount of obscure games that often have received little to no comparable Western attention. The comparison of ports is always appreciated, as are the screenshots. It could be better, but I view it as a fansite and adjust my expectations accordingly.

if i were a developer worth a damn and my work was featured on hg101, i would spend so many years and so much money trying to get the entire site taken down. being on hg101 instantly and irreversibly lowers the perceived value of a game, regardless of what the author claims to think of that game.

[Squire Grooktook]

he chose to put in that information. he lied.

Lie, definition

1: a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

2: something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture:

There is no evidence to suggest he knew, or had any way of knowing, that the information was false (except maybe one thing he could have checked). Therefor there is no evidence to suggest he had intent to deceive. Therefore there is no evidence to suggest it is a lie.

His problem probably was that he trusted the wrong sources. He could easily have posted here asking about these issues, but likely believed that the sources he consulted were verified.

hatred and stupidity are the exact same thing.

stu·pid·i·ty
st(y)o͞oˈpidədē/
noun
behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.
"I can't believe my own stupidity"
synonyms: lack of intelligence, foolishness, denseness, brainlessness, ignorance, dull-wittedness, slow-wittedness, doltishness, slowness; More
the quality of being stupid or unintelligent.
"a comedy of infantile stupidity"

ha·tred
ˈhātrəd/
noun
intense dislike or ill will.
"racial hatred"
synonyms: loathing, hate, detestation, dislike, distaste, abhorrence, abomination, execration; More


Hatred and anger aren't the same thing. Hatred and contempt are not the same thing. Hatred and selfishness are not the same thing. Hatred and stupidity are not the same thing.

[Skykid]

This is a lot of hoohah over nothing. The guy has a shmup/Cave passion, wanted to get creative with his free time (always worth applauding) and decided to do a Donpachi series writeup for HG101.

It's not his fault he's not a professional author, and it's not his fault HG101 has a reputation for false information and ill-educated articles - in-fact this is standard for most amateur games journalism. And I agree people are getting too granular with his factual errors: we all know most of HG101's readership will have no idea whatsoever, and only shmup die-hard bastards like we few are able to take issue with them (and we have).

The point is HG101 is HG101: created by people who don't quite know much about the subject matter, go on to invite others to do write ups on games that they also don't know much about (Darius & Taromaru always spring to mind), and continue the site's reputation for being an interesting browse based on content, less so if you're looking for accuracy or entertaining writing.

With all this taken into account, the Donpachi article is pretty okay.

[Masamune_Shadow]

I forgot to setup a subscription to this thread, so i wasn’t aware of the comments or discussions taking place here. As much as I would like to respond to everyone individually, that will just look horrendous with all the quotes. So I’ll just be addressing or responding what I felt was the main points of this thread.

I’ll start off and state that I took the Mushihimesama article because I felt that I would do the series right, and from there, was asked to do the same for the remaining CAVE games (DDP’s, Ibara/Pink Sweets, Akai Katana). I am a relatively new STG’er, and even though I’ve played through and read about the other CAVE games, Mushihimesama Futari and DFK 1.51 were the only two I had played for scoring. The intended goal of these articles was to inform the reader to such an extent that they could read the article, then walk up to the machine or watch a replay and understand exactly what was going on. Then, if they wanted to, they would have a leg up on scoring or surviving as well. In fact, talking about the scoring system and mechanics was one of the requirements for the article when I took the job. However I believe I failed at properly conveying that message, so I will reflect upon this and improve it in future works.

As for Erppo’s comments in his first posting. No. I did not blatantly lie to the audience. Any misinformation I posted was done so unknowingly. I have updated articles in the past to fix mistakes. I just recently updated the Pink Sweets article for that very reason. And to Iron Peach's comment, I would have loved to have gotten an email with feedback for the article, but none ever came. Back to the initial topic of misinformation and sources, Softdrink 117 got it right in that I had gotten most likely gotten those pieces of information from Gamengai and Cave of Shooting, though those were certainly not my only sources. The specific sources depending on the game, but Slateman’s excellent DDP site (and his FAQ’s) were certainly used. But, take DFK for example, I used 3 or 4 different FAQ’s, a PDF guide from an American player in Texas who reached Ura Hibachi, An Archive.org backup from the defunct Cave-STG site (both forums and front-page posts), four or five DFK threads from this website, at least two superplay videos with commentary, and more, including playing and testing things out in training mode. I thought that I had personally cross checked everything that was going in to be stated in at least three places, or if it sounded sketchy, to try it out myself. I would say that I easily spent 10 hours just cross-checking all the information for DFK. For 1.51, much of that information is from watching the WR run, or other scoring runs, talking to Van_Artic91 on twitter, or spending hours in training mode figuring out exactly how something works, reading what I wrote later, and checking it again. If I'm remembering correctly when I was doing the Mushihimesama article, everywhere I found a bit about the story or the characters, there was at least one thing was actually wrong or conflicting in it, including the English iOS version (though that may just retcon all previous?). So the version I wrote is the correct parts all together. I feel is the most correct version of it out there. Regardless, I hope that sheds some light into how I got the information (and what I did with it) for these articles.

As for the misinformation, yes there is a ton of it out there, and I unfortunately I didn’t filter it all out. The last thing I wanted to do with these articles was have incorrect information. I will remember this, and increase my efforts to ensure that such events do not happen again. I know that this community is a group of people with many diverse talents, but I didn’t feel right being such an outsider to ask the community to additionally look over, proofread, and fact-check everything I wrote. Especially for free (as it would have been at the time). But this event in particular has shown me that I especially need to improve my own editing abilities, but that it looking into having someone else as an editor would benefit everyone greatly. So I am thankful for that.
Some of you mentioned the length, and you’re right. I feel that overall these are too long, and that DFK is almost offensive how overkill that one is (it’s longer than the the entire Mushihimesama series articles I did combined). I have noticed that I well...excessively, but I’m understanding that just having numerous outstanding sections doesn’t mean shit when there is a mile of garbage they have to wade through. For some reason it slipped my mind, but I currently feel that having something that is continuously outstanding, without or virtually none of the garbage, would have a larger impact, and success. I know these articles are long, but trust me, they were all much longer at one point. As a result of your comments, I am taking another look at some of my current projects and have decided to rewrite some of them to eliminate the chaff to suit this new mindset.

When I first found HG101, it was the larger articles that drew me in. They were full of information about the game. And having it all there in one place? Great! However, while that was appealing to me, may not be to others. I realize that now. I also want to state that I don’t really visit forums or chat sections often, but I was pleasantly surprised reading through this thread, the points it brought up, the topics discussed, and even who was speaking about them.
So, I want to thank everyone again for the comments and feedback. I shall use them to make my future works even better.

...FUCK! I wrote a shitton again god damnit.

[Erppo]

Well for starters, the DFK article contains a really lengthy paragraph explaining the details of caculating the maximum bonus. It's entirely unrelevant however, since the bonus is worth nothing at all. I don't even know if the details are correct or not since there's no reason to pay any attention to the bonus.

On the other hand, while the BL section does explain the mechanical changes made to the game system, it fails to make any effort to explain what these changes mean in practice. There's nothing about how the game ends up playing compared to 1.5 there. I feel this would be way more relevant information.

[Masamune_Shadow]

I see, that's a good point. That would have been good information to know. I'll make note of that.

[Elixir]

I'd like to recommend HG101 to others, but I will not go through every shooting game article scanning for inaccuracies first.

If HG101 were a wiki, people could just correct these issues, but this won't happen for two reasons: 1) 95% of your posts consist of advertising your articles, which you obviously want to be credited and praised for. 2) people who actually play these games don't give a shit about nor even read HG101's articles unless you draw it to their attention, as evident with this thread.

You're better posting your upcoming articles here and asking for advice on how to improve them. Publishing an article on HG101 and posting it here an entire year later only to discover it has a bunch of errors is just going to piss people off. Especially if you're self-proclaiming to be "new to the genre".

[Squire Grooktook]

people who actually play these games don't give a shit about nor even read HG101's articles unless you draw it to their attention, as evident with this thread.

I scan over hg101 articles from time to time. Say what you want about writing, but they have brought many games to my attention that I didn't know existed beforehand.

[Elixir]

People who actually play top-down scrolling shooting games don't read HG101's articles of top-down scrolling shooting games unless they're posted on this forum, as evident with this thread. If they did, the article probably wouldn't have gone an entire year online with errors. If it were editable, people who play top-down scrolling shooting games might be able to help correct any issues.

is there anything else you would like to take out of context and misinterpret?

[Squire Grooktook]

People who actually play top-down scrolling shooting games don't read HG101's articles of top-down scrolling shooting games unless they're posted on this forum, as evident with this thread. If they did, the article probably wouldn't have gone an entire year online with errors. If it were editable, people who play top-down scrolling shooting games might be able to help correct any issues.

is there anything else you would like to take out of context and misinterpret?

To be honest, I have read a few top down scrolling shooting game articles for games I hadn't heard before (the internet is funny, you never know what you're going to discover from one day to the next), and I have occaisionally read through articles for games I particularly like (Cho Ren Sha 68k, etc). I'm sorry if I slightly misinterpreted, but I find them a decent skim every now and then, even though I consider them more of an amateur fan-site rather than a place for serious reviews or information.

[Shepardus]

For what it's worth I usually refer to HG101 for info on basic mechanics, character names, etc. if I can't find a good ST on the game in the strategy forum. It's not the most reliable resource when it comes to in-depth mechanics (not that I notice most of the time, I wouldn't be reading it if I already knew the stuff) but it's good if you don't want to go into a game completely blind.

[CStarFlare]

If you're ever looking for a proofreader feel free to ask here. Personally I'd be more than willing to give something a look - you write about the kind of things that are relevant to my interest and I expect I'm not alone in that.

[slateman]

Thanks Masamune_Shadow for popping back in and giving us some depth. To clarify more...

He used my FAQ/sites for info and I can almost guarantee I screwed up somewhere in there! Much like him, I scoured the net, using many of the same resources to write my guides. Perpetuating errors (or lies as some call them) is, IMHO, neither of our goals.

In any event, like it or not, I think it's cool there's a highly-detailed article out there. We all know that outside of these forums, DDP knowledge is, in English, slim elsewhere. Errors, I say we fix 'em. Otherwise, verbose or not, good job.