Papa Sangre Petition Returns!!

By Shaun Uk, 12 March, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming
Hi All, Seems that the original poster took down the topic after a lot of negative feedback. I've got to say I'm amazed and disgusted with some of those comments left in response to her proposed letter. It give the distinct impression of blindly, forgive the pun, defending something purely because the developer actually made it for the blind community. Let's look at the reasons behind her post without jumping all over it. Papa Sangre is incredibly unstable on IOS 6 hence it's removal from the app store. This was also an issue with the release of IOS 5. Ok, this is a fact, you can't argue with this statement. However, with the release of any major update to IOS, some issues with certain apps or games are to be expected. What is up for discussion however is how long is a reasonable time period to expect a fix? Let's not forget, this is a paid game and just because it's aimed at blind users doesn't mean the developers don't have certain responsibilities to the people who bought the game. I note one comment left by a user in the original post which basically said "Stop thinking your entitled just because your blind". In this case that is an ridiculus and stupid thing to post. The reason she is entitled to a response from the developer is that she has spend money on the product, nothing more nothing less. It has absolutely nothing to do with being blind. Then we have more posts attacking the letter as disgusting and whining. Were you reading the same letter as me???? She stated how grateful she was for the developers efforts with the game and how much she enjoyed it. It seemed perfectly polite and respectful to me. The whole tone of the responses to the letter was incredibly hostile and unhelpful. It reminded me of the online battles you see between Apple and Samsung fan boys. Make 1 negative remark about a certain product and people attack you rather then try to answer or explaintheir point of view. Just to be clear, I'm not saying I agree with the petition letter. What I am saying is she has legitimate questions the could have been answered in a civil way. People stated that the developer has made a statement about the upcoming fix on their Twitter feed, this may have been true but not everyone uses Twitter or blogs or facebook etc. Also the poster did state that she looked at the Blog and couldn't find a reference to the issue. I know that direct emails to the developer were unanswered so the poster felt she would show her eagerness and even support for the game by writing a perfectly fair letter and posting it to Applevis to see other users responses. Then I see people have even audioboo'd the subject and various twitter posts again attacking the letter. People get a grip and grow up. More help less hate. ps. As for the people attacking the spelling and grammar of the letter. I may have found a cure for your blindness, take your pedantic heads out of your butts. Of course the letter could have been tidied up before being sent anywhere, that was a non issue. *Watching my language in respect for the Applevis forum* Shaun.

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Comments

By Siobhan on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hi Shaun. I applaud you for writing such a human response to the petition. If you got a chance to read the comment i wrote, it was pretty much telling her that i hoped she got what she was seeking, but also that maybe Apple hadn't approved it yet. I kept reading and I to was horrified by some of the responses. even when I asked earlier this week about if Firefox was accessible, I jus got a yes it is accessible. Umm, thanks? Anyway just wanted to congratulate you on a well thought out, kick in the posterior for most of these so called helpers. This is why I don't post much. Cheers.
Hi Shaun, Well said! I didn't have a chance to read the petition before it was removed from the site, but most of the responses I did read were down-right vicious, and may have turned the poor girl away from these forums! As a software engineer myself, I can see that points made on both sides of this argument have merrit. On one hand, coding, testing, debugging, and the software approval process can take a lot of time, depending on the complexity of the change. On the other hand, taking six plus months to fix OS compatibility bugs does seem a bit excessive, during which time, paying customers have been unable to download and use their purchase. The developer should be applauded for keeping their followers apprised of their progress in fixing the software, but it sounds as if the writer of the petition had not come across this information. Responders should have pointed her to this information instead of starting a flame war. Come on people, grow up and write responsibly! :-)

By Shaun Uk on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hi, First off let me start by apologising, I should have stated a thank you to all the posters who posted a helpful reply to Musicfairys petition post, as well as my comments on the negative ones. And Siobhan's And Bill Freemans comments both raise the concern of people not posting to Applevis because of a fear of a totally disproportionate and angry response to a perfectly reasonable question or point of view. If someone presents their point of view in a polite and reasonable manner then you should reply, either pointing out their errors or agreeing with them, in the same manner. At no point was anyone attacking the developers of Papa Sangre, I am sure they are working extremely hard on the update, (which I understand is very nearly ready), and we wish them every success with future products. As I stated before, I personally think a petition was premature but this could have been explained, and as Bill said, she could have been pointed in the right direction to find the info she needed. The internet is full of enough trolls and haters already. Take care. Shaun ps. Siobhan, sorry you felt alittle underwhelm with the responses to your Firefox question. Hope it won't put you off posting here again. Bear in mind, some people might be replying to your post from an iphone etc and so may give a shorter answer then they normally would. If you feel you need some more information after someone has answered your question don't be afraid to post again asking for more info.

By sockhopsinger on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

It is also neat to know that Papa 2 is in the works. Now if they could just get The Nightjar to the US. That's probably the game I have been looking forward to playing most since it came out.
Hi. I didn't got the chance to read the other thred, so I don't know what have been posted or commented on. But sounds like the original poster have wrote in a tone which have started a war, only because of misunderstanding...

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hello Shaun and all commenters, This is Paul Bennun, the CCO of Somethin' Else and one of the proud members of Team Papa Sangre. First of all, the entire team loves hearing feedback β€” positive and negative β€” from you. We do this for you, and knowing people care means a lot to the team. We also understand why people would get upset about the inability to buy Papa Sangre at the moment, and we share the frustration. So I hope I can shed some light on the situation and answer some of the questions raised in the petition. One β€” when will Papa Sangre return to the app store? Answer: we expect to upload version 1.1 of the app for approval by Friday. In our testing it is entirely stable on all devices it runs on, and sounds much, much better as we have totally rewritten it based on what we learned the first time around. The game is identical. As for live date, this is tied up with other news I will get to later ... but we are talking days rather than weeks. Two β€” why did you take it down, and why is it taking so long? Answer: there was much that was amazing about Papa, but there was much that ... wasn't. We could have kept patching it, but when iOS 6 came out we realised we had no option but to re-write the Papa Engine from top to bottom. This was partly because of deep problems with the engine, but also because we wanted to have one single engine that powered all our future games β€” and maybe more importantly so we could put the Papa Engine in the hands of other developers to make games with. This meant creating something rock solid with a fantastic API, as well as the documentation to go along with it. We also wanted to improve the way our games handle VoiceOver. Being a small studio, and faced with such a big task, meant we had to take hard choices. We did not have the resource to patch the old engine and write the new one at the same time, and we did not want anyone playing a game that was broken. So we took Papa Sangre 1 off the app store until we had completed the re-write. We assure you this was far, far more than just fixing compatibility problems. We thank you for your patience, and we absolutely promise you we have been working as hard as we can to get this back in your hands. Three β€” why didn't you communicate this with us? Answer: we thought we had, and we are sorry if we could have done better. This was announced on our mailing list, on www.papasangre.com, on www.somethinelse.com and the Twitter feeds for both organisations. We could have been more active on AppleVis, and we will make sure we tell you what we are up to in the future. Four β€” future games, you say? Answer: yes β€” Papa Sangre 2 is coming, The Nightjar is nearly ready for release in the US and the Papa Engine is now ready for third-party developers to take and build games on, too. Let a thousands flowers bloom! We will be announcing exact details of all this at the same time and this takes co-ordination, which is why I'm being cagy about an exact date in this post. Once again, on behalf of the team, thank you. Paul

By David Goodwin on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by Team Papa Sangre

Hello Paul and welcome to AppleVis.

We really appreciate your reaching out to our community and for the update on Papa Sangre and the Nightjar, which I suspect will have made a lot of people very happy!

By Clare Page on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hi! I was very pleased to read here that Papa Sangre 1.1 will soon be released and that version 2 is being worked on. My only slight disappointment after reading the post above is that, as a user of the French IOS App Store, I still won't be able to get The Night Jar, which sounds like an excellent game from what I've heard about it: if I misunderstood and it'll actually be available all over the world eventually, that's good, but, if not, it's still great that US App Store customers will be able to add it to their IOS game collections.
Hi Paul, and thanks much for the great news. I hope The Nightjar will be released world wide. If it won't, can you then tell us why? Many people (me included) have been forced to create an UK account just to download the game. the blind community is small, so therefore people want games like this so desperatly each time something new hit the market. As you know, there are more than 1000000 games for sighted people on all platforms, and they can simply choose to play whatever game they like. that's not the case for blind people. I look very much forward to see what you have in mind for the future. The Nightjar is too short and too easy in my oppenion, but Papa sangre is really awesome, great sounds and great difficulty level. So I'm excited for the news. Keep up the good work guys.

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by slj

Hi SΓΈren, We hope we can get a FULL international release for The Nightjar, too. We are working on this. Unfortunately the current situation is because a certain negotiation is beyond our control due to the original way the project was financed. Papa Sangre 2 is far more ambitious than Papa Sangre 1. I'm sure it will divide opinions β€” which is great! The Papa Sangre series was, from the outset, designed to be a series that blind people and sighted people could play on equal terms, with no concessions to playability or imagination. We don't think of it as a "game for blind people" β€” we think of it as a game for everyone, but we actually include blind people in the definition of 'everyone', which does not happen nearly enough!

By Tangela on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Fantastic! I personally have never noticed any crashing or odd behavior with the original papa, but I can't wait to see what changes have been made, and the new games in development sound just as if not more awesome! Thanks for keeping us all up to date, and eagerly awaiting further news.

By Khalfan Bin Dhaher on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Dear Paul. I am so delighted to hear this great news! I shall make a podcast once the game is available for download at the AppStore. I highly appreciate how developers have been working so hard and making their apps without any bugs or crashes. Thank you a lot. Warm greetings.

By Shaun Uk on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by Team Papa Sangre

Hi Paul & The Team, Congratulations on completing the rewrite. Apart from making the many Papa Sangre fans extremely happy, I'm sure you and the team are happy to have the new game engine finished. :) I would like to thank you for taking the time to post to the applevis forum. I'm sure I can speak for all Applevis members when I say that having a developer respond to a question or thread really gives a feeling of mutual respect and community between us all. I hope that you and the team didnt' feel like you were being 'attacked' or 'disrespected' by the original post by MusicFairy or my thread here. I'm sure Music Fairy will be very happy with the answers you have given her, I also know that she felt terrible when people told her she was being disrespectful or unfair to you. This was far from her intention she was just unaware of the information you had given out over your various sources and should have been pointed in the right direction by our community. This topic got alittle out of hand and heated but does show the amount of support you and your products have in the community. We all appreciate your involvement in the blind community and wish you lots of success with all your hard work. Thanks Shaun.
Hi Shaun, We've never felt anything but glad people play and like our games, and truly grateful when someone cares enough to talk about them in public. We could have done better in communicating the situation, so we take that on the chin. Paul

By Clare Page on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by Khalfan Bin Dhaher

Many thanks to Team Papa Sangre for posting to this forum thread with news of future releases. I very much hope that The Night Jar can be released all over the world some day: if so, I will get it. In the meantime, I definitely look forward to Papa Sangre 1.1, and I'm intrigued as to what will change in Papa Sangre 2, so I definitely have good reason to look forward to that when it's ready.

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

We thought you should be the first to know The Nightjar will be having a full international release. More news on release date when we have it. Not long!
Hello Paul and team, Like others, I'd like to wish you well on your rerelease of the updatedPapa Sangre too,and hope that you continue to cook up such awesome games. When I read that there were plans to release Nightjar in the US store, I was going to request that it be released internationally,too. but I am happy to read that plans are to release it internationally. Awesome work. So this is just a thank you for considering us people who don't live in USA or UK. Good luck and thanks again, Falcon wings.

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Dear all, We thought you would like to know that Papa Sangre version 1.1 has been uploaded for review to the App Store. Paul

By Sean Terry on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hi, I was wondering what is new in v 1.1?

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by Sean Terry

0) It's a total re-write ... 1) It doesn't crash! 2) It sounds much, much more realistic (and it was amazing before) 3) We've removed bugs that affected sound 4) Officially works on iPhone 3GS now 5) VoiceOver support has been tweaked to be less intrusive 6) Ability to level skip introductions once heard 7) Streaming support in the engine (not used in Papa Sangre, but lets us spatialise sounds of unlimited length ... think about it ... ) 8) New API lets us make new games very quickly (but we'll still take ages β€” sorry about that) 9) Other stuff

By Sean Terry on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Hi, I can't wait for Papa Sanga to come to the App Store. New stuff, total rewrite, more realistic sounding? wow, just wow!!!!! I can't wait!!!!!

By Tim Schwartz on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Dear Paul, Team Papa and friends, This is great news! I've been looking forward to an updated Papa Sangre and I'm VERY excited to hear about a Papa 2 as well as the Nightjar coming to the US! I'm also very happy to see this level of interaction and respect between developers of such great games and our community! The better the dialog between us and developers, the better chance that we have of games like this becoming more the mainstream. It's nice when someone gets it that these type of games don't have to be niche. They can be for everyone! Good luck and thanks! Tim Schwartz

By Weary Mouse on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

In reply to by Tim Schwartz

This is in response to Shaun's original post. I missed the original letter but just reading Shaun's post was enough, I think. Because I have read the whole discussion many many times before. In other places this sort of interaction is called internalized opression. In other words, facing discrimination in most aspects of life, we echo what we've been told about ourselves and turn it inwards. Really, if it were anything else, it would sound a little more original. We are tougher on ourselves than any single sighted person or institution is capable of. We berate each other for anything less than perfect grammar and spelling. We nit pick about wording. We talk about sense of entitlement. We aren't grateful enough. We project - if we complain when a sighted person does something for us, then nobody will make anything accessible ever again, sighted people won't like us, they won't hire us for jobs, etc. We exhort ourselves to be reasonable and we create elaborate explanations for why something can't be done, why access isn't possible or why something shouldn't include us, before ever hearing the reality. And we call each other names. We certainly don't extend the demand for understanding and appreciation to each other. I say "we" because I'm surely not perfect and I don't want to create more division by writing this. I am not sure, but I am guessing that Paul from the Papa Sanger team, is sighted, because it seems it is hard for blind people to talk about ourselves they way he does when he says, that the Somethin' Else games are for everyone and blind people are part of everyone. I personally thank him for those words. I would also like to ask that we give each other a break. It's hard out there. If you feel you have over come all difficulties, scaled all barriers, well, there would have been nothing to overcome if it wasn't hard. So, even if we disagree with someone, how about being a little more gentle with each other? For the typical human, support and encouragement are much more helpful in overcoming difficulties than demeaning put-downs and chastisement. Please let's support each other. Also, I'm typing this on my phone using an Apple keyboard. I'm a pretty good speller, but if you find errors, rather than verbally flogging me, can you direct me to a good editing app that has accessible spell check? Or tell me how to make better use of auto-correction which I turned off because it interferes more than it helps.

By Team Papa Sangre on Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 23:17

Dear all, We would like this forum to be the first to know: Papa Sangre v1.2 is now on sale (and a free update for owners). We can't thank you enough for your patience and continued interest in our games. Yours, Team Papa Sangre