I was looking at the size of some of the games here on Newgrounds lately. Four and five megabytes are not uncommon. And some of these games a effing spectacular, especially considering that people make them for free, and they're available to play, for free.

And yet, there's always some petty jerk who'll happily bash someone's hard work. Work that that person did gratis. Free. No charge.

Of course, that's part of our community's job, to look at the art that's being produced (yes, I am part of the games-are-art camp), and judge it relative to the rest of the community. It's a perk and a responsibility of this community, and some of us take it pretty seriously...a lot more seriously than Real Life (TM) in some cases.

But something else occured to me. I remember a game from years and years ago, called Arena: The Elder Scrolls. The game file size was 4.7 megabytes, you can download it for free from Bethesda's website, and it runs in DOSBox (if you can get the damn thing to work on your slick new Vista system). And that game was effing spectacular for it's time, and it's STILL effing spectacular compared to a lot of the flash submissions I see here. It was freakin' HUGE. There were dozens of classes, tolerable graphics (the game is still playable), and the music is even kinda catchy in a Press-Start kinda way.

And what's my point? There are games on this site that are bigger in file size than the venerable Elder Scrolls, and yet considerably worse. Granted, we must make allowances as these games are usually created by a handful (or less!) of people who are not getting paid anything. I'm also not any good at coding, so I have no yardstick for file size to game size ratio when comparing flash with C (or did they use something else for Elder Scrolls? I don't remember, I was just a little bit then).

So, I've actually got two points here. First, that I think some of us could do a LOT better. I don't hand out a 10 to just anyone...the game has to be damn good to get one from me, and have quite a lot of replayability. If you use the Elder Scrolls as a yardstick, it's going to take a hell of a lot of coding and writing to create a game that'll earn a 10...fortunately (and logically), I'm not that much of a hard-ass.

Second, I think that we DO need to cut some of these programmers a little slack. Just because it's bad doesn't mean we need to flame them...they're doing it for FREE, remember? Yes, there's the potential to earn some money, but we still get to play it for free, and we don't have much room to bitch about something that's free, do we?

There is, of course, the caveat: as critics of our chosen art, it behooves us to filter out (blam) those whose works are NOT conducive to forwarding the whole or themselves, such as those who slap some flash together just to see how long it takes to get blammed, or those who put quite a bit of code together, just so they can electronically insult someone they may never have met.

I hope this mild rant has inspired some of you to think before hitting the "BLAM!" button on the ratings board, and to consider if the work is really just someone experimenting and learning, or if it really is a piece of crap.

I hope this has also inspired some aspiring flash coders to look deep into their game design, and, instead of seeking the easy way out, to find a way to make everyone on Newgrounds stand up and say "Holy, F***, All my 5 are belong to this!"

And, last but not least, I hope this has inspired some of you to take a really good look at the game you are reviewing, not just for avoiding the BLAM! button, but also considering if it really is worth a vote of 5/5 10/10.

-Loki