Deal or No Deal is now available wiith a leaderboard.
at
BigJon's PC Games
I GIVE THE GAME TWO MILLION THUMBS UP!!!!!!!
A ********** Star game!!!

A SUPERB game. Graphics are spot-on, and the authentic sound effects, music, and crowd reactions really get you into the game, even though it's not for real.

The global leaderboard is a great feature as well, and adds a new competitive dimension to this normally "You against the house" game.

It just goes to show how the little things go a long way. Goodbye official NBC game!!!

Great job, Jon!

Doug

P.S. On the board is $25,000, $750,000 and $1,000,000...Bank offer is $591,000. I make the deal, turns out my case had $25,000!

At least there's no question material for him to get wrong when putting together the game.

The problem is two-fold: the games that would be even remotely interesting to play (Russian Roulette, Blockbusters) are so riddled with question and spelling errors (I didn't know George Orwell wrote "Fahrenheit 451," for example) that it makes any effort to enjoy the game go sour, even though the Flash graphics look very good.

On the other side, the games that have no question material (Deal or No Deal, Powerball Instant Millionaire) are not games that lend themselves to playing by yourself, on a computer, for no money.

When he gets the first part right, I'll check them out again. Plus some sort of documentation with each game would be nice, but Jon's too worried about the Flash animations being pretty.

Well, i can't please everyone. Some like the question games, some like the money games, some like other various combinations. I admit spelling problems, but then again, i won't comment on a TPiR game that's in the store that people paid for with errors. I think I did good solo. I'm no perfect person, nor do i focus on Flash either like that. (I just don't understand, the majority of the stuff I do ISN'T flash). But thanks either way for letting me know I'm not doing to bad graphically, as well as the other positive and constructive criticisms :)

I can forgive spelling errors, but there's really no excuse for providing the wrong answers to questions.

That's true. I do not see the appeal of "pick a box and win money" games, but the 'market' is there. Obviously there are people who like that sort of thing, and would probably be tickled pink if you did a "Treasure Hunt" game. I don't get it, because there's no emotional investment in it for me. But you're right, I certainly don't have to download the games I don't like.

What about it? Are there errors in the TPIR DVD? (I wouldn't know, I don't own it. See above.) I get that you're not perfect. I'm not. But I do strive to do the best I can whenever I undertake a project. If things can be fixed to make your game better before you release, then you ought to do that. If your beta testers aren't noticing things like the fact that "Orwell" should not be a Super Password clue for "Fahrenheit 451", or that "UNITIES" is not a word, then you need better beta testers, no two ways about it. I'd happily do beta work for you.

Never mind that, I'm just a technology tard. It all looks like Flash to me. And I'll say it again, when it comes to set design, you do a fine job.

It's entirely possible that it's used wrongly in the context in which it appears in his game, but 'unities' is definitely a word. More than one unity. When you criticize someone for careless errors, it helps to have your own house in order.

OK, then that wasn't it, because I looked at the word, and looked again, and could not comprehend what the word was. (I wish I had written down the word when I had seen it). Coulda been "unitities" instead, because I know that's not anything. If you were to discount the spelling of that word as a penalty for my own dumbassery, it doesn't diminish the point that I made: that zero errors should be strived for.

In any event, I'll take that under advice, Matt.

Unitities--Multiple instances of someone or something possessing one breast. Example: "Dude! Did you just see those hot chicks with their unitities?"

Personally, I prefer bitities on hot chicks...

Hey, that almost sounds dirty!

Absolutely. Remember, I'm one of only a handful of people on this forum who writes questions that will actually show up on television. I know how much effort can go into vetting every piece of material, which is why Jeopardy, for example, has more than a dozen people on staff to handle stuff like that. If BigJon's one-man-band games are a triumph of style over substance, I'm not going to rake him over the coals for it.

That Orwell/Fahrenheit 451 mistake is certainly a boner, and if his Q&A games are rife with that sort of thing, then sure, there's not much sense in playing them. My experience has been that those sorts of errors are relatively rare, and I've certainly seen worse than that on TV. I have on tape a host telling a player that Barcelona is the capital of Spain, not Madrid.

Damn you, Mike, for stealing my joke!

Speed is important, Grasshopper. At least I didn't steal your unitities!

First, Jay posts a link regarding uncensored Yolanda and now we're talking about...this stuff. Something's in the air tonight...

How convenient of you to wash over any errors that the questions have.

WOW, this is funny. Hey matt, i shouldve used use to proofread the questions my submitters gave me. I never wrote the questions myself. LMAO, Barcelona Spain...

The Gametek SP computer game put the Amazon river in Africa, so even mass-market computer game show game have had an occasional error.

This is true, but this is where play-testing comes in. There's a reason there's a "Game Problems" section in his forum. Different types of errors can be found by the public and reported, as an effort to make the game better, and eventually contain zero errors. BigJon won't be able to discover all performance issues and errors on his own, as different games perform differently on different computers.

I've said it, and I'll say it again, for a one man team, Jon does a hell of a job.

Does anybody have any comments or feeback about the DonD game itself? Has anyone who's replied in this thread even played it?

Doug

There are. A few. Off the top of my head, Todd calls the Showcase "the Showcase Showdown" at one point, Grand Game gives you the option to quit after every pick (which honestly doesn't hurt anything but is really, really dumb), Golden Road says you lose everything if you pick the wrong number for the car (which, again, doesn't affect anything, since the players do all the scorekeeping), and the ad copy you hear when Citracal is displayed is for Citrucel.

But for Jon to imply that the DVD game is anywhere near as error- or bug-riddled as his Price game is just asinine.

BigJon,

The impression that I have been getting, based on both posts here and private conversations, is that two complaints about your games overwhelm all of the others. First, when you release a game, you consider it basically finished and would much rather go on to write another game than fix the problems with the last one. Then, when approached with the problems, whether they're technical issues, spelling errors, or errors in the accuracy of the material (I could go on and on, but others have, so I won't), you always want to blame someone else. The game crashes? "Lemon is bothering me." Errors in the material? "I didn't write the questions." And on and on and on.

Yes, you're a one-man team, but that's not an excuse. You wrote the game. You put your name on the game. You decided to release the game. You put the game on your site for others to download. Therefore, if you don't want to hear complaints or criticism, you need to fix the problems so there won't be any basis for said complaints or criticism. And since you're just a one-man team, perhaps the resources of that one man would be better put toward fixing problems with your current games rather than working on new ones.

There will always be people who will complain no matter what, as Chris, Dan and the other Flashgames folks learned when they released a game and some people just demanded to know when the next game would be out. You shouldn't listen to them. Unfortunately, right now you appear to be listening only to the people who praise you no matter what; that's just as big a mistake.

My two cents. Take it or leave it.

<clapclapclapclapclapclap>

Wow, we can't have any fun around here without someone getting their drawers all bunched up...

Yes, I played the game twice last night. As mentioned on BigJon's board, I was left with the penny and $5 suitcase in my first game, with a $2 offer on the table. I passed on the crisp portrait of Thomas Jefferson, only to end up with a shiny new penny. On my second game, I had a reversal of fortune--$500K and $750K left, with a $625K offer on the table. I went on, figuring that I won at least 50,000,000 times more the last game. I had $500,000. At this rate, with my winnings multiplied 50,000,000 times over the previous game, I fully expect to have at least $25,000,000,000,000 in my case during game #3.

If you get $25 trillion, then I'll be convinced that the game is crap. :)

Fix the problems, i don't know how many times i have fixed problems as they were noticed, especially on TPiR, which i continue to tweak. Yes, i multi task into other ventures, but that was more THEN than now when i was all happy about being able to program. This should be evident just noticing how games progressed. I don't try to blame others, spelling, i can't, game errors, it could go either way, (via files i forgot to include, coding problems, or lack of essential files on the machine, right OS, flash, etc). If i only listen to those who praised me, i'd never fix problems as they were noticed. Even those who despised my games, some even recognized my ability to contstantly try to address probelms, time permitting..

And steve, i never the DVD game has as many errors as mine.. again, words are being put in my mouth. I simply said "...with errors".

Either way, dzinkin, i appreciate your honesty, the views on both sides i take and apply them. A hobbyist programmer ain't no easy lifestyle :)

You don't?

Granted, there are other major flaws in your post. I just picked the easiest one to debunk. :-)

EDIT: Are you sure you don't try to place blame elsewhere? Really sure? Really, really sure? Positive? Maybe there's something you overlooked? Perhaps something you forgot about in your quest for the next game?

And please stop overquoting.

I bet you use Ebay a lot.

Man, if you went to all that effort just to post that, you seriously have issues. Not exactly what your point is in that either... What exactly is it that you would like me to do? I've never said i was 100% right in any instance and feel sorry you think that I am. I apologize i can't please you. LMAO, he actually spent the time getting to research posts. Truly hilarious.

Avoiding posts that make claims that can be completely debunked with minimal effort would be a great start.

This is the point, Jon. It doesn't TAKE any time. It takes no effort at all to search on all posts by a user.

Right... you ignore completely legitimate complaints and, in attempting to defend yourself, make things up out of whole cloth, and I'm the one with issues.


The point is that you claimed that you don't blame others for your own mistakes, and I proved you wrong.


How about spending less time working on new games and more time fixing the ones you've already released? Then people won't keep coming here in hope of finding technical support -- support that they don't find on your board because you're too busy releasing new games and blaming everyone but yourself to fix bugs.


No, but ultimately you always place the blame elsewhere.


Please show me ONE POST of mine where I said you thought you were 100% right. Just one. I'm waiting.


Took me all of two minutes... and what's really hilarious is that that's probably more time than you've spent debugging your games. You refer to "time permitting" but if you're that time-limited, how come you have so much time to write new games?

Let's see... you point to Lemon when a game keeps crashing, you point to your question writers when you release an error-riddled game, and now you point to me when you've been caught peddling a blatant falsehood. Have I missed anything?

And as I said before, please stop overquoting. Or are you going to try to blame someone else for that too?

Oh kay....

If you're in any mood to fix anything at all, Jon, would you mind fixing the link to your xDrive so that I can download the game? I'd like to give it a go, you know.

(EDIT) -- I switched from Firefox to Internet Explorer and got it to work, but is there a reason why xDrive won't work all of a sudden on Firefox when it does work on Internet Explorer? I've d/l'ed stuff from xDrive in the past on Firefox.

Look, judgments on dubious individual character aside (and since the person making those judgments is a mod, then by all means, carry on, my liege... :-)... for a guy that pretty much works alone with an admitted lack of knowledge and resources, Jon cranks out decent products, so to expect something world class or mistake-free from him is a tad selfish of us, don'tchatink? On the flip side of that coin, we have other folks (who, for all we know, might be Jon himself using pseudohandles) placing Jonboy here on a pedestal as Exalted Lord High God Almighty Of Homebrew Game Show Game Making. (Sorry, was temporarily possessed by the demon spirit of Frank Genovay.) That isn't appropriate, either.

Jon, I'm sure you do this because it's a hobby, and maybe, just maybe, someday, it might pay off for you. Wonderful. When your hobby can make a handful of people happy, that's a fantastic thing. Personally, I think you bat slightly below the Mendoza line when it comes to cranking out enjoyable fare. But that's just one schmuck's opinion. If it makes you happy, Jonny Cat... carry on. K? K. Bye.

I don't see anyone expecting perfection from Jon. But if he wants to bask in praise from one and all -- and right now praise is pretty much all he cares to hear -- he needs to do something that will merit praise from one and all; releasing faulty software doesn't generally lead to praise. Moreover, as we tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to teach Adam Kleist, people here aren't generally enamored with those who fail to take responsibility for their own mistakes, and they're even less enamored with those who are willing to lie about it, or who are so deluded that they actually think that they haven't made mistakes.


I confess that this irritates me more than anything... particularly when his fanboys think that this is an appropriate forum to praise him but not to criticize him. News flash, guys: this isn't it. Having your own opinion is a right, but having others agree with you isn't.


Clearly, it's not really a hobby for him. He wants to be compensated; he just wants to be compensated in adulation rather than in money. He hasn't learned that both need to be earned.

He's earned the praise of a lot of people. What makes your opinion so special?

Yeah, yeah, I'm on board with the whole constructive criticism thing. Why is it necessary to have one of these wonderful speeches down to him every time he releases a new game?

Half the posts you linked to are right in the middle of one of these wonderful arguments about the flaws in his approach to his games. What does that do? All that does is show that when someone identified as a "hater" by him goes on the offensive, he gets defensive.

It's not like the response to Steve Gavazzi's post in your list, where he goes through the issues Steve brought up item by item, even saying "I'll get that done for ya" for one of them. But that's all null and void in the eyes of the vocal detractors, simply for the "come on, it's x-mas" comment.

You want to know how you get your point across? The following works (which I address to BigJon):

BigJon, YOU'RE the only one who can fix the question database that "ships" with the game. Isn't there someone on the boards who's made alternate question databases, and can you replace the installer with one giving the better QDB? If you don't want to QA the questions, isn't there someone on your boards who will?

The following does not:

"How convenient of you to wash over any errors that the questions have."

"At least there's no question material for him to get wrong when putting together the game. "

If this is what's passing for constructive criticism, I'd be afraid to see what just plain criticism would look like.

I'll throw in my two cents here.
Obviously, most would expect me to back Jon, as I've been a part of 5 of his games now.
I'm actually very proud of my involvement with these games.
Fact is, Jon puts a lot of time into these games that he makes as a hobby...And opts to share them with everyone.
Take it or leave it, guys.
It's not a Hasbro or a GameTek, and Jon admits they're not perfect. It's something he does in his free time and chooses to share with us.
It's like how a lot of us admitted to making our own "home games" as kids. Often just paper, maybe some dice, a deck of cards, perhaps....
This has now hit the digital age.
While a Press Your Luck home game involving dice may not suffice for some, others might enjoy it.
Constructive criticism is welcome, I know....
Some of the character asssination...Seems a bit much.
I remember how much time it took to do the original voice work for Whammy...Days before I was happy with it. (even now I'm only about 75% happy with it, and wouldn't mind some retakes)
But the way I figure, it's something I volunteered to do for the enjoyment of the community...I didn't have to do it.

Not a bit of this has Thing One to do with the matter at hand. You have successfully responded to none of the points brought up (and summarily dismissed by Jon) in this discussion.

Whoever said it was constructive criticism? Personally, I'm tired of Jon dodging many of the issues people bring up, and then seeing a whole line of people try in vain to defend him.

While I wholly admit I probably couldn't do better, someone who frequently seeks out praise should be making an effort to equally accept criticism when it is handed to him.

You know Modor, i've constantly said I've welcomed and accepted the criticism by working on some issues you've and others have mentioned, it seems that unless i fix them all, you don't acknowledge i'm making an attempt.


"people here aren't generally enamored with those who fail to take responsibility for their own mistakes"

I've taken blame before and tried to fix many of them, some of them were on my side, and some weren't. Shoot, not to mention, i've even remoted into many person's machines trying to see it 1st hand and fix their issues. Those saying I don't make an effort and only seek praise is just BS. I know what I do and I don't need people like clemon79 and dzinkin telling me i solely expect praise, dont take responsibility for my errors, because its not true.

"First, when you release a game, you consider it basically finished and would much rather go on to write another game than fix the problems with the last one."

Yes some, due to other issues, such as losing code in the past. Some I discontinued due to low popularity. Other like TPiR and Whammy and WoF, went through numerous updated, revisions due to errors, other enhancements, and user suggestions.

Everytime it seems here someone says a good thing about my game, a couple guyz here come out and saying "he only expects praise and doesn't take the constructive criticism". BS. TPiR, which i consider my best game, was mediocre game, and with all the suggestions, headaches, and difficulties i encountered, has turned in to what I think is the best PC version of TPiR period. Whammy / PYL I believe are on that level to. Yes I admitted several games aren't on that level and in the past i put out games like a man with with the runs. But i admitted i made faults, some games completly got revamps. Good things are nice, but obviously being a programmer i expect those with problems or those you aren't going to like it. Shooot, just look at the Windows OS (22 yrs of revisions)

As i've said everytime, i've taken your points to heed and will work on them.
I don't even know how this topic turned into this. Someone simply announced I release a game. Those here who jump on me seemingly expect nothing but faulty/bug ridden SW from me, so i don't expect anything other than what was spoken from me. THose who continue to degrade me not acknowledging the fact i've improved and have been working on the errors and suggestions made by people over time, more power to you. It's always an exhaustive thread. Those who want to continue to hide behind the realm of security with the ignorant threads of what is claimed I don't do continue. I'm sure its something that face to face we could settle on and provide you a better understanding of what I do and don't do.

Look dzinkin, i didn't even overquote (and you say I don't listen)

And that's my 13 cents.
I'm done with my responses here.

Er, perhaps the fact that every time he releases a new game and demands that people bow down and worship him for it, his fanboys clutter up our board and then get ticked when anyone dares to disagree with them, leaving me, Matt and Chris to clean up the mess?

That said, my opinion per se is no more or less valid than anyone else's. It's BigJon who's decided that only the opinions that agree with him matter, and he and his worshippers are the ones who try to silence dissent.

And for the record, it's not just his fans.. a couple of days ago one of Jon's message board moderators tried to post an obscenity-laced rant, one that purported to defend Jon but in fact attacked most of the membership, in this forum. He then sent me an equally obscenity-laced email when I wouldn't approve the post. Naturally, nowhere in his attempted post or in his email did he note the fact that he was one of Jon's moderators. Sorry, guys, you set the rules for your board, not for ours -- and not being upfront about who you are doesn't change that. It only makes you and Jon look even worse. (No, I don't know that Jon told said moderator to do it and I'm not saying that he did, but the effect is the same.)


Why is it necessary for him and his supporters to demand praise and only praise for him every time he releases a new game? When you release software publicly, people will offer criticism.


He is the one who said that he doesn't blame others. If he doesn't want his claims debunked, he shouldn't make claims that are debunked so easily.


He has been given constructive criticism and he listens to it not one bit more than he does to any other form of criticism that is not the equivalent of "don't change a thing, your games are perfect and you're perfect." Moreover, when he was criticized here earlier, I not only offered him constructive criticism, I told him point-blank that he was free to announce his games here even if others didn't like it. That doesn't seem to be enough for him; all he wants is adulation.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the man clearly has talent. I don't think anyone, not even any of Jon's most vocal critics, has disputed that. But if he wants less criticism, he needs to turn more of it to maintenance and less to making new games; of course he'll get fewer huge bursts of adulation, but IMO he'll get a lot more praise over time.

On that note, I think this has gone far enough.