Project description now available for those who are interested Alife gaming. It is now three years in the making and is one of the largest games written to date- period! The game is built on a new cluster scheme that links six active games into a single world. A world which we built from the atom up.

The first game called the Astron is a galactic Sci-Fi adventure, the second is a strategy based life simulator, the third is a strategy RPG and the last two have never been touched on to date. The trick, and why this game is interesting, is how it links six unique dimensions of life (games) into a single clustered game that evolves. The engine runing the system is accessible with Pen&Paper, Dice or PC or linked!

We welcome serious comments and will watch this thread.

Get a small little taste of it through www.bionicbros.de. Its nearly all graphic and a few words about the concept - in february the site will turn into a network news station broadcasting from this new world.

__________________
Come evolve Exobiotic Life
www.bionicbros.de

Looks like it might be intresting... but your website sucks.

Don't take this personaly. I think that microsoft has a terrible site too.

What I look for in a good site isn't flashy graphics (frankly, I'm sick as hell of flash and animated gifs), and it isn't clever interfaces.

It's transparency. I want to be able to find out the information I'm curious about with as little trouble as possible. I looked at your site last night, and decided it was more trouble than it was worth when I couln't get to a quick and dirty explination for your game with just one click.

Give me a plain text interface with some minimal graphical design, and I may come back.

So, "bionic" requested some serious feedback on the game and the support site. Well, here's my take on it all:

First and foremost, the site is a prime example of mystery meat navigation.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it means that the links are not clearly marked as such nor labelled as to their destination or function.

Frankly, this is just bad web design.
Flashy graphics and a chic interface do nothing for your site if visitors don't know how to get where they're going, or what's on the other end of where they're going. In fact, you'll lose more visitors with the graphics than without.

Next, the site is loaded with undefined jargon and technobabble, and bold, unbacked claims about originality, depth, accuracy and so on. Simply, a lot of hype...hype which we have all heard before too many times to count (Synnibar, deadEarth, SenZar and every bad computer game ever made).

None of this is good: throwing jargon around without defining it is just going to confuse the casual visitor, if not outright scare them off, as is using technical terminology (frex: "hypercycling," "existance mapping", etc).
I should also point out that the site fails to explain why any of this is important to or how it is used within the game, and when it attempts to, it rambles on about concepts like "uniting your body or that of a fictional character with other atoms."

(and I'll ignore the insane questions that statement brings up)

Perhaps most problematic is the fact that amidst the self-congratulations and colorful jargon, the site fails to, anywhere, give a clear, concise overview of the game in plain english.
In short, it has a lot of style, but little to no substance.

Regardless of what the creators might think on this point, to the casual reader or browser, there is nothing there which explains what this game entails or involves.

I came away with a vague notion that it was a game about evolution or something to do with aliens, and you could play it as an RPG, a card game or computer game.
In fact, one does not get a clear idea of the point of the game and the different ways it can be played unless one downloads and reads the introductory .pdf file.

Therein, one discovers that it is about cellular/planetary evolution on an alien world and might be something like the Sim-Earth and Sim-Life computer games. Even so, any number of questions are left unanswered by the document.

It also appeared you have to buy or get your place in the game from the creators before you can play...how it can be an RPG and do this is never detailed, nor why.

Further, it appears that when one plays, one plays against the whole world at the same time; if the option exists to ignore everyone outside your group, or if such is even possible, it is not mentioned.

Finally, the site and document reads as though written by someone whose native language is not English (and if it is, they need to go back to school and take a few classes on writing), as there are points where the phrasing and style of language are actually painful to read, while throughout the rest it is merely odd.

I wish I could actually critique the game itself, but unfortunately, there's nothing of the game on the site to critique, thus the above is the only feedback I can give.

At the very least, the base concept sounds interesting.

Amen Reverend!

I had quite a bit of trouble with this site as well, granted I read the first two posts and went in with a preconception, but this is exactly the kind of site that I file under "never go there again".

All talk with no substance. I personally believe that bionic should take this away until more stuff has been fleshed out and posted. I had no real idea what I was supposed to be commenting on, other than just how much this site is unuseable.

Possibly the game itself could be of some amusement, but that remains to be seen.

And as per Bailywolf's posting, a text-only portion would be a great introduction to the game and its world.

Aaron

I'm afraid I have to agree with the folks above, and I'm one of the few MMORPG GMs and Developers who calls the Forge my home, so I'm not biased against the virtual platform. I'd even heard a little about Biobros before, probably on Gamasutra and SourceForge.

My personal analysis:

I wouldn't pay to play SOB or purchase any supplement with the information available in the English portion of the site. The lack of a stated premise, the lack of a presentation of rules, setting, theme, character information, etc., is overwhelming. There's nothing available to tell me what would make SOB interesting to playing. I can make some guesses regarding genre and I'm sure that its an interesting product, but the website does a really poor job of marketing it.

Now, through some judicious web surfing, I was able to uncover more such as the blurb at Pen-paper.net http://www.pen-paper.net/print.php?sid=276 "We, a Berlin Germany-based bioelectronics company, will be releasing new RPG engine and game for Pen & Paper fantasies in Feb 2002. The story begins in a realm that crosses SciFi with Gothic Lore. Its engine offers modes of play that competes with the best of modern Artificial Life systems."

There! That's the start of the kind of information the website needs to utilize to capture player interest. A story? What story? SciFi with Gothic Lore? Tell us more. Tell us a lot more.

http://www.sambal.net/wowee/show.php3?cat=0200 tells me that "The BIONIC BROS GmbH, a Berlin Germany based bioelectronics company, announce the release of a new Artificial Life gaming engine. Initially developed for the biotechnolgy and information technology sectors, the engine behind this game offers a dynamic realm of new challenges for its players. The game is in itself a piece of scientific research. A sneak preview of the this system can be viewed now through www.bionicbros.de. It can be played simultaneously using cards, dice or a PC."

Aha! An Artifical Life gaming engine, which has a story with sci-fi and gothic elements. I also happen to know that it might involve that kinetic-based programming language you folks were looking for help with on SourceForge a few months back. I know that James La Clair is part of bionicbros (or was last year) and have read some very intelligent comments by him elsewhere.

But none of this, and I mean *none* of this is information that I found on the game's own webpage, and I either surfed for it or happen to belong to online communities where its been discussed.

On RPG-Search.com, Biobros is called Evolutionary Alife Systems, and SOB is described as a Kinetic Life Emulator. So, it ~sounds~ somewhat similar to Cyberlife Research Limited but utilizing a microcosmal universe. Look at Cyberlife Research's web page.
http://www.cyberlife-research.com/company/index.htm I won't claim its a shining example of web design, but when someone goes there to their page, they catch on really fast to Premise and Substance.

SOB might be a big hit in the AL community, but it won't be a hit with the mainstream RPG, even the mainstream MMORPG community, without a lot of changes in presentation. The good news is that presentation is awfully easy to change. Easier than changing the product. If you want help changing your presentation so that it ~would~ have Industry appeal, I'm cheap. *smirk*

Laurel Stuart
External Developer, Skotos Tech http://www.skotos.net
author of "In The Trenches" http://www.skotos.net/articles/trenches.shtml
Contributing Editor, Suite 101 http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/white_wolf_games

PS:
Finish those pen and paper rules, let the Forge community know when they are done, and if they are an Independent RPG (owned by creator) and if so, let this group discuss -that- product, once its published and I think the dialogue will amaze you.

Thank you and notes are well taken. We are in the process of doc'ing the project for descriptive use. I understand that the description is poor - there are only 24 hours in the day and 21 are used. We needed to gatherer some early feed back on the principle to test one of two objectives - and this is why a pure graphic outlook was chosen.

The game is based on Manfred Eigens Hypercyclic engine. Your goal as a player is to evolve life from the beginning. You get a selection of small single celled organisms on alien planet and you will be evolving them. As a player you enter this life form using five simultaneous played games one at the level of the molecule, one at the cell, as the being, one as its world, and one as its heavens. If interesting stay tuned we can use critical help to optimize the delivery part.

As for definition of Indie - the game is owned 100% by the group that built it which however is shelled within a company - in Berlin Germany GmbH format. If the fact that a company runs this game is not acceptable for this forum matters can be ceased immediately.

Thank You

James J. La Clair

This is valuable advice on putting together a website (or not!). Since I'm currently putting up a new game conversion on my site, I've been considering these essentials. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. However, my restraint is governed by a) my web-design software, and b) my limited knowledge of web design!

I try to pretend the 'clean and simple look' is a design consderation!