IGF 2012 Dramafest (gamedev hipsters behaving badly)

[cools]

Everyone apart from me is wrong.

[Udderdude]

Everyone apart from me is wrong.

Me too :3

I'd like to think this thread had a good run before it got derailed into the usual flamewar between "Games as mind numbing entertainment experiences" versus "Games as hardcore challenge that kicks your ass and you love it" crowds.

Oh well.

[Skykid]

^That's what happens when Estebang gets angry at the Gods.

[Udderdude]

Wow, I don't want any angry god wrath. Can we all at least agree that Phil Fish is a giant knob and call it a draw? >_>

[Skykid]

Wow, I don't want any angry god wrath. Can we all at least agree that Phil Fish is a giant knob and call it a draw? >_>

I'm down with that.

We probably should drag this back OT tho, so let me give it a shot:

Phil Fish is a massive nob for showing such a lack of decorum toward the Japanese developer and everyone in the room, and again his ego waggling on twitter etc.

But, Fez looks okay to me. Not as groundbreaking as they make it out to be, but fun and aesthetically intriguing. There's also an argument that maybe PF's outburst did Japanese devs a favour. Inafune hasn't exactly been softly, softly in his approach, but he's been harping on for years and no-one's really paying him much attention.

I assume PF's "Japanese games suck" has made top stories in videogamedom globally, so the Japanese have got the message too. And not all Japanese games suck, but they're sucking more than they ever have before. Perhaps this will be some kind of wake up call.

There you go, back OT, discuss!

[Marc]

Dev is a bit of a dick, his game looks quite nice, and I don't think Japanese gaming sucks any more or less than it used to, I think it's more that what I look for in a game in general has changed.

[TLB]

Fez just allows you to rotate the viewing area by 90 degrees or something like that, right? There might be some kind of skill involved in guessing what you need to do next by simulating it in your mind (without having to look at all angles of the play area before doing so)...but something tells me the guy developing it isn't smart enough to do that and will just make it a bunch of random platforming that you have to suicide constantly to figure out when you're not just tapping the button until you see a new platform to jump to. He just went and spent three years churning out four different perspectives for each room of each area...He's probably ready to say, "FUCK IT!" and let it shit the bed.

[Udderdude]

Fez just allows you to rotate the viewing area by 90 degrees or something like that, right? There might be some kind of skill involved in guessing what you need to do next by simulating it in your mind (without having to look at all angles of the play area before doing so)...but something tells me the guy developing it isn't smart enough to do that and will just make it a bunch of random platforming that you have to suicide constantly to figure out when you're not just tapping the button until you see a new platform to jump to.

Yeah, probably. Compare this to my own game, Sphere Shift, where you can see what's on the next 'angle' (actually an entirely different layer) quite easily, because there's giant floating skulls over everything that will kill you if you warp there. And ability to warp around obstacles is definitely required. http://rydia.net/udder/prog/sphere/index.html

I'm not really sure you could show a 'preview' of where everything is in the next angle in FEZ, I'm guessing it just requires you to rotate the world in actual 3D and guesstimate it .. :/

He just went and spent three years churning out four different perspectives for each room of each area...He's probably ready to say, "FUCK IT!" and let it shit the bed.

I'm fairly sure it's automated because you can rotate the camera in 3D and see the entire world, not just the four 90' angles you'd expect if it was all done manually.

[TLB]

He just went and spent three years churning out four different perspectives for each room of each area...He's probably ready to say, "FUCK IT!" and let it shit the bed.

I'm fairly sure it's automated because you can rotate the camera in 3D and see the entire world, not just the four 90' angles you'd expect if it was all done manually.

What I'm saying is, he designed all his stages to be platformable, but instead of adding a skill element (+ balancing, etc.) he's probably just going to settle with shitty, largely pointless stage design. (Just a guess.)

[Skykid]

Compare this to my own game, Sphere Shift

Fun, played through ten stages just now. Quite enjoyed it, nice music too. Bit of slow down/sticking, not sure if that's my mac, but I got the gist pretty quick. Good stuff!

[louisg]

Wow, I don't want any angry god wrath. Can we all at least agree that Phil Fish is a giant knob and call it a draw? >_>

I'm down with that.

We probably should drag this back OT tho, so let me give it a shot:

Phil Fish is a massive nob for showing such a lack of decorum toward the Japanese developer and everyone in the room, and again his ego waggling on twitter etc.

But, Fez looks okay to me. Not as groundbreaking as they make it out to be, but fun and aesthetically intriguing. There's also an argument that maybe PF's outburst did Japanese devs a favour. Inafune hasn't exactly been softly, softly in his approach, but he's been harping on for years and no-one's really paying him much attention.

I assume PF's "Japanese games suck" has made top stories in videogamedom globally, so the Japanese have got the message too. And not all Japanese games suck, but they're sucking more than they ever have before. Perhaps this will be some kind of wake up call.

There you go, back OT, discuss!

Pretty good summary! I think we went OT in the first place because there was nothing left to discuss

[Udderdude]

Compare this to my own game, Sphere Shift

Fun, played through ten stages just now. Quite enjoyed it, nice music too. Bit of slow down/sticking, not sure if that's my mac, but I got the gist pretty quick. Good stuff!

Thanks. About the slowdown, Flash on Macs kinda sucks .. sorry, not much I can do there.

[Estebang]

The only thing Fez's aesthetic says to me is "I want to be like Cave Story!"

I mean, look:




The characters are practically sprite edits of Quote. Not to mention, did actual 16-bit games ever have freakish rectangle-headed, albino, featureless characters? Or excessively blocky environments? No.

Also, Skykid: MGS2 predicted SOPA and anti-internet-free speech rhetoric in general a decade in advance. How is that not intellectual?

[TLB]

If Kojima had been writing his games in Nazi Germany, he'd have been tortured to death. That's almost all I have to say about his writing, no matter what one may say about the originality or quality of his planning and writing.

The rest of what I have to say having mostly to do with how he uses easily recognizable conventions to keep the story structured and easy to follow (though susceptible to fascist localisers restricting character counts, as with MGS2 and how the overall dialogue came out retarded) while trying to show some kind of "humanitarian" shit everywhere in some kind of attempt at educating...nerds who play MGS games...about how nukes are bad and people are corrupt...or something. Valiant, I guess.

[replayme]

The only thing Fez's aesthetic says to me is "I want to be like Cave Story!"

I mean, look:




The characters are practically sprite edits of Quote. Not to mention, did actual 16-bit games ever have freakish rectangle-headed, albino, featureless characters? Or excessively blocky environments? No.

Also, Skykid: MGS2 predicted SOPA and anti-internet-free speech rhetoric in general a decade in advance. How is that not intellectual?

Magic Pockets on Amiga has bricky environments...

[CIT]

And not all Japanese games suck, but they're sucking more than they ever have before.

That's not saying much though. During the 16Bit era Japanese games were for the most part good to excellent, while Western games were for the most part somewhere between terrible and passable. Today Western games have improved somewhat, while Japanese games have gotten worse, but the end result is that now you just have overall very average games.

[replayme]

Life is about Balance. Maybe everything will equal itself out one day...

[Skykid]

Also, Skykid: MGS2 predicted SOPA and anti-internet-free speech rhetoric in general a decade in advance. How is that not intellectual?

How is it intellectual?

From the game ~

Raiden: "So what we're actually talking about is one huge censorship system for deleting information which might be inconvenient to the Patriots?"

Emma: "Exactly."

Doesn't seem very prophetic to me. More like Kojima shoved so many hundreds of different excerpts from encyclopedias, articles and essays into his project, that he loosely happened upon something that was not just a likely possibility for the internet, but a system that's been around in general media since the beginning of time.
I can't understand why people don't realise that, MGS2 in particular, is so full of itself that the player can't see the game for all the hack waffling. It's funny you say Icy is dismissive of MGS2, since it's pretty much the game I would expect him to make: 90% desperate attempts at profundity, 10% decent stealth action.

If you want to continue talking about how intellectual and smart MGS2's plot is, we really shouldn't do it in this thread. Udderdude only just got his topic back on topic. I'm happy to refute everything you say elsewhere, but perhaps asking a mod to split the content out or using an existing MGS2 bashing thread would be more fair to this one.

[Udderdude]

https://twitter.com/#!/PHIL_FISH/status ... 4511400960 lol

somebody spent their evening registering the polytron email to a bunch of porn sites under the username "douchemaster".

[undamned]

What a hoser.

I suddenly feel compelled to watch "Strange Brew."
-ud

[Ed Oscuro]

Also, Skykid: MGS2 predicted SOPA and anti-internet-free speech rhetoric in general a decade in advance. How is that not intellectual?

How is it intellectual?

From the game ~

Raiden: "So what we're actually talking about is one huge censorship system for deleting information which might be inconvenient to the Patriots?"

Emma: "Exactly."

Doesn't seem very prophetic to me. More like Kojima shoved so many hundreds of different excerpts from encyclopedias, articles and essays into his project, that he loosely happened upon something that was not just a likely possibility for the internet, but a system that's been around in general media since the beginning of time.
I can't understand why people don't realise that, MGS2 in particular, is so full of itself that the player can't see the game for all the hack waffling. It's funny you say Icy is dismissive of MGS2, since it's pretty much the game I would expect him to make: 90% desperate attempts at profundity, 10% decent stealth action.

Echelon. It never really was able to do what Kojima's plot machine does, but it had that reputation even back then.

[DJ Incompetent]

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Multifor ... sp?c=38932

This article insinuates a game submitted to IGF was stolen and put up on iOS.

[Estebang]

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Multifor ... sp?c=38932

This article insinuates a game submitted to IGF was stolen and put up on iOS.

This sort of thing happens constantly with flash games. Nitrome's had to deal with unauthorized iOS ports of their stuff many times.

[DJ Incompetent]

I interpreted "original" in the article to mean creatively. Why reference IGF at all in this?

Your explanation makes more sense.

[Udderdude]

.

[mesh control]

someone shoot him a lrn2play

[Mortificator]

somebody spent their evening registering the polytron email to a bunch of porn sites under the username "douchemaster".

[Estebang]

I think we can conclude from all this that Fez is a clusterfuck of everything wrong about the current retro-hipster "indie" scene. Pointless gimmicks, lazy and derivative pixel graphics, a complete lack of challenge, undeserved levels of promotion and hype, and an irreverent dickhead of a developer. Journey might as well be Dodonpachi compared to it.

[louisg]

I think we can conclude from all this that Fez is a clusterfuck of everything wrong about the current retro-hipster "indie" scene. Pointless gimmicks, lazy and derivative pixel graphics, a complete lack of challenge, undeserved levels of promotion and hype, and an irreverent dickhead of a developer. Journey might as well be Dodonpachi compared to it.

You can't really conclude that without playing it...

[Udderdude]

a complete lack of challenge

You can't really conclude that without playing it...

Nope.

There are no enemies in FEZ. No bosses, no combat. In fact, no conflict of any kind. You can die, but there is no penalty for doing so. FEZ aims to create a non-threatening world rich with ambiance, a pleasant place to spend time in.

http://polytroncorporation.com/what-is-fez