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[SaintXi]

EDIT: Valve has launched Light of Altair on Steam

London, June 4, 2009 - SaintXi, an independent games studio, today launched Light of Altair, their addictive new sci-fi strategy game for PC worldwide.

Light of Altair is a colony building simulation with a rich single player campaign based on a detailed future-history of Earth. You can grow colonies from landing pod to metropolis, while sending off new spaceships to expand your territory to other worlds. You are not alone in space, 8 factions from different parts of the world are all following their own agendas in the solar system challenging each other for wealth and power of the new worlds.

After you complete the campaign storyline there is a cruelly difficult "Hard Mode" to master, and the missions have bonus objectives to let you prove your economic and military tactics even further.

Light of Altair will today be available on Direct2Drive and other quality gaming distribution sites for $14.95 and you can play the demo at FilePlanet.

For more information, direct sales, and BMTMicro affiliates see http://www.saintxi.com

[Lynx]

Congratulations on your launch!  I played the beta and got pretty hooked after the 5th mission or so.  I hope it does as well in the public as it did with us beta testers!

[SaintXi]

Valve has launched Light of Altair on Steam

[Mipe]

Well, that didn't last long... A pirate release is already out. 

[SaintXi]

Don't pirate it, support indie developers and buy Light of Altair for only $14.95

[SaintXi]

By the way - the rootkit in the pirate version is nothing to do with SaintXi, just a little extra present from the hacking group.

It is almost like they are fighting an anti-piracy war against themselves 

[Eclipse]

that's awesome SaintXi, good luck! the game looks rad... frontpage?

[SaintXi]

We have uploaded a Light of Altair 1.01 Patch which fixes the "it's" distractions and afew other bugaboos too.

I've been having fun watching people progress through the game on the Steam achievements page, after 2 weeks of being live a 0.2% have beaten the hard mode of the game, but no one has 100% on all the optional objectives yet - with the strongest contender racking up 27.1 hours in the game already.

[Melly]

I would be interested to know sales figures.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i would too, but not yet -- it's been less than two weeks, you aren't going to get very accurate information. i'd rather know sales figures after it's been on sale for a year. the first burst of sales means little and doesn't tell you anything about how many copies you'll sell over time.

[SaintXi]

I'd love to know our sales figures for the first year too

[Mipe]

Keep marketing it and the sales will keep trickling. Get more reviews! It is a rather solid game. But remember - the content sells well. Light of Altair in its current state seems rather limited, short-lived - I mean, going for 100% score for each mission is not really that interesting, if you've seen the whole story already.

But that is what the sequel is for, right?

[SaintXi]

We knew it was going to be a massive job getting a game of this complexity finished on time, so we chose to focus on the single player campaign and the core gameplay and release it at an affordable price to match the amount of gameplay (10-30 hrs depending on if you try and beat Hard mode + optional objectives).

The sequel will likely extend from this base to broaden the gameplay experience - with more open-ended missions, sandbox and modding.

Reviews are a tricky point. We are deliberately a niche game. We are old-school, low budget and very hard - so a mainstream reviewer will spot a lot of 'flaws' that our fans don't register as they are sucked into the addictive play. This is why most of our user reviews are 9/10 while our mainstream is 7/10.

[Wayward]

a mainstream reviewer will spot a lot of 'flaws' that our fans don't register as they are sucked into the addictive play. This is why most of our user reviews are 9/10 while our mainstream is 7/10.

Speaking as someone with a reasonable amount of experience in reviews both in print and online, you'll find this is almost always the case.

A reviewer gets a game, and reviews it. Chances are - especially on the bigger sites - it's just handed out to them. They bring their own bias of course, but not as much as the buyers.

Buyers have already paid money for the game. This alone is enough for people to rate something higher as they try to justify their purchase. Buyers are also already invested in the idea behind the game - chances are if they weren't going to like it, they wouldnt have purchased it in the first place, especially as you have a demo out.

I'm not saying that means Altair doesn't deserve 9/10 - it deserves whatever a person thinks it does! As you know, I think it's a pretty solid game and your marketing has been top notch. I just think you'll that the whole 'user reviews are higher' thing applies to just about any game, even the crappy ones.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

if you're getting reviews from places that give a game a number out of ten or a hundred, those aren't actually reviews -- try to get it reviewed from places who don't give it numerical scores. i'm actually considering a policy of not giving review copies of my games to places that numerically score games, just in protest over that policy

[Wayward]

if you're getting reviews from places that give a game a number out of ten or a hundred, those aren't actually reviews -- try to get it reviewed from places who don't give it numerical scores. i'm actually considering a policy of not giving review copies of my games to places that numerically score games, just in protest over that policy

That's a pretty poor marketing policy, considering how many large sites (and indie ones) that cuts you off from.

I'm not a big fan of numerical scoring either - I use alphabetical and I only use that because readers want a quick way to score a game. It's not great and I wouldn't reccomend using the 'score' as the only way to define a game.

But if you're seriously suggesting SaintXi would be better off not having a review from IGN, I'd love to hear that justification?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

true, but not all of our actions should revolve around marketing, though. i'm not saying his sales would be better off, just that the game industry would be better off. i already kinda gave my justification for that -- that i think review scores do a disservice to games journalism: reviews of books and such typically don't rate them out of 10 or 100. in order for games to be taken more seriously working towards not giving games scores would be a step in that direction.

besides, i still managed to get a large number of reviews of immortal defense, and most of them don't have review scores: http://studioeres.com/immortal/press

[Wayward]

No, indeed not. In fact using reviews as marketing isn't always a good idea at all, especially if your game isn't any good.

I won't argue the book/scores point because I totally agree!

But taking a look at your list - I think you could safely say quite a number of them do give you a score.  I guess it depends on what your idea of a review is.

Many of the ones that don't - the TIG one, for example - are descriptions of the games, not reviews. They aren't subjective, they don't talk about how the game actually plays. A news announcement is not a review without a score, it's a news announcement.

Take a look at say, one of the 'lists' your game has featured in where you've got two, three sentences of coverage.

Do you rate that as better (from a marketing and feedback perspective) then a well written 300 word review that points out your games flaws and strengths and then gives a score out of 100?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

which ones do out of curiosity? i can only actually remember about 4-5 that had a score. haven't read them since i linked to them though so i may be forgetting some; and as i said, i was considering the policy, i didn't actually use it when that game was released (it was released 2 years ago), but i'm considering using it for my next game

and again, i agree that this isn't the best idea for marketing (or for feedback), just for the advancement of games journalism

although typically when i want feedback, i go to playtesters, not reviews; feedback through reviews is usually a bad idea because often they don't play the game enough to give as specific feedback as playtesters give -- if you're still adjusting your game in response to reviews, you probably didn't playtest it enough or have enough playtesters (i try to use at least a few dozen, with an emphasis on watching real people play it rather than internet playtesters)

[Wayward]

Totally, but I think playtesting and reviews offer different types of feedback and perhaps both are useful? I'm on dodgy ground here because I don't create games but from what I've seen talking to developers (indie or otherwise) a decent amount of reviews can give you a very good point of reference.

I'm just not sure I'd be as bold as to make a decision like that purely to make a stand against a poor system. Then again, I don't make award winning indie games ;]

Speaking from a journalistic perspective and as someone that has before tried to create sites that don't offer scores, the overwhelming customer/reader reaction is: 'wtf is the score?'

In the case of SaintXi though, I'd say any review with a good score is a good way to let potential customers know the game is of decent quality and potentially worth their money, score or otherwise.