[Happy]

Mister.Frosty: I was going to go through your post, you know, line by line, and pick out all the things that made your post, well, incomprehensible (And maybe explain how to fix those problems in the future). But then I realized that would take too fucking long. And it's really not necessary, as your post, in it's entirety, is fucking shit water (You know that repugnant liquid you get after you take some shit (among other things) put it into a bucket of water and stir until mixed? Yeah, that).

However, since I rather not read another rant of your's in the future, I'll give you one piece of advice: less is more. You should've gone with your summation, as it's clearly more articulate than your post as a whole. Though, I'm sure you tried your damnedest to make it sound intelligent and articulate and such.

("Addendum")

Just for kicks, here's a summation:

I'm not going to read anymore of your posts as you clearly have the wonderful attributes of a self-righteous bigot who is inept at concise, intellegent, and thoughtprovoking writing.

[Mister.Frosty]

Apparently despite your username, you are anything but.

There is a juicy irony in telling someone that his writing isn't "intellegent." I'm not sure where I was "bigoted" or "self-righteous" in my post -- I'm actually curious to know, but I'm guessing those are just catch-all phrases that you use for something you dislike.

Here I thought I had written an interesting explanation to the question of chat engines in PC RPGs.

Occasionally, I forget why I don't like involving myself in message boards like this. Before I let myself be drawn into an endless, ugly debate, I'll leave you to your game creation.

Best of luck. Some of you will need it more than others. :)

[Mandrake....yrmother]

[Mister.Frosty]

@ Bjorn --

That sounds like a big improvement over Daggerfall, which used something like the mid-system I described, but in addition to every new topic you came across, had like hundreds about the various factions/races/etc. I always found the Elder Scroll games daunting in that there were so many townspeople and most of them were so redundant. My preference is for the PS:T system described earlier, where you simply don't let irrelevant characters talk. That style, of course, would've been at odds with Elder Scrolls' freedom

@ Mandrake --

Well, I will make one last entry here, which is only to respond to the strangely manic-depressive Paul. When last we corresponded, it was on extremely pleasant terms, with you asking me to read through the dialogue to the Changeling, because you weren't sure it was good enough and you thought I would be able to clean it up for you. You then vanished off the face of the earth. (This was predated by an angry screed about how I couldn't write anything. So maybe the pleasantness was a facade?)

Refering to dialogue systems as "absurd" is hardly derogatory; it is strange to hear people so defensive over something they neither conceived of, nor implemented in their own product. My only guess is that you guys are looking for an argument. Calling my post "flame bait" is openly ridiculous.

In fact, I think this bitterness all dates back to an Olde Debate that started on MadMonkey's boards and then moved to an earlier incarnation of Pixelation. THAT initial debate was prompted by me saying that I thought the "indie game" crowd was making a mistaken analogy to "indie movies" because the latter involved innovation and experimentation, while the former involved imitation of older products. I argued that "indie games" should simply be called "retro games."

The debate reached a fever pitch, with various slurs hurling on each side, and I believe it terminated with my pointing out that I had yet to see a significant indie RPG get finished, and therefore thought they while they were neat experiences to be involved with, it was bizarre that so many kept cropping up. This was responded to with Sirocco cursing me to hell and swearing that we would see Fenix Blade finished within the year. I believe that was sometime in 2000.

The debate then recurred on Pixelation over censorship of all things, with me arguing that a game rating system did not constitute censorship, but rather was simply a way to provide parents with necessary information to make informed purchases for their kids. That one had the pleasantness of someone telling me that he hoped my wife would be kicked down the stairs while pregnant.

I had written out a mean-spirited response to Paul's last line about hair on the balls, very ugly and all, but it occured to me that as cathartic as that might be, it really helped no one. You may have your own issues to be working through right now, and whatever they are, I hope for the best. I'm sure this now just sounds patronizing, and I think you're looking for a reason to attack me, but I genuinely hope things perk up for you.

[Sirocco]

[Bjorn]

Ok, this history lesson is quite interesting. Meanwhile, it would be nice if people tried to set these differences aside, instead of letting them heat up again. If there's still a difference in opinion now though, feel free to discuss that.

The "retro" against "indie" debate is a silly one in my opinion. Mainly because indie games can be either retro, innovative or both. I think most indie rpgs produced are both, but it's a matter of perception.

It's true that innovative games are hardly finished, but I think this is because they are harder to make. I'm always trying to be innovative, but that makes me throw away many ideas before I can finish them. Had I just liked FF so much that I would like to make a clone, everything from gameplay to graphics style would have been decided and all I would need was sufficient time. If I was happy enough with FF the way it was, I wouldn't get any crazy ideas when I was halfway done and wouldn't start all over.

I'm impressed by the ability of Sirocco to keep developing Phoenix Blade while the game basically stays the same (besides improvements in areas like overhead map, graphics and combat). I think I'm breaking engine compatibility with game content about 2 times a year.

[Sirocco]

[Mister.Frosty]

What follows is a post surely too long for Happy to read. Those who do, you've got great stamina.

Without trying to re-ignite the indie / retro debate, I do think that it is a point worth making. The reason is that I think that the approach -- one could say "business model," I guess -- to making an "indie" game would be different from that employed in making a "retro" game. I'm an enormous fan of retro gaming, because I believe that there are games that were made that engaged a whole different set of interests than the current products on the market. For example, I do not think there have since been any games comparable to X-Com, Star Control, or Quest for Glory. I use "comparable" here not to mean "as good as," or not really. What I mean to say is that the few games that can be put in the same category really cannot be "compared" because they do not capture the same thing. . . And I don't think anything can even be CATEGORIZED with X-Com at all.

Retro gaming is about recapturing those lost arts.

Indie gaming -- and this really was what the debate was about, at least in my skewed perspective, back on Mad Monkey -- would, if like indie movie-making, be about doing something NEW and innovative in ways that commercial games dared not be. I simply do not think I have yet seen any games that sold themselves as "indie games" that were innovative in this way. (Incidentally, I do think that there is one class of game that is both "indie" and innovative -- namely, interactive fiction, but you never hear them calling themselves indie.) My objection on Mad Monkey was that I felt like people were trying to claim the mantle of indie-ness when what they were really doing was reinventing the wheel.

Fenix Blade, for example, is an impressive tour de force not because it innovates, but rather because it would be playable on computers that were current roughly at the time that games that looked like FB were still being made. (1996, I guess?) The game looks and plays remarkably like a game that never was, but could have been -- a console style, DOS game made circa X-Com, etc. But I don't think it makes sense to describe it as "daring" or "innovative" in the way that COMMERCIAL games often are -- Black & White, Grand Theft Auto (though one can argue this is just Elite plus sleaze), Neverwinter Nights, just to name a few. I don't think those innovative games are particularly good, but they break ground in ways that self-styled indie games never have.

The more reliable developer of "indie games" that I've encountered in the past decade is Johan Peitz, but his games are quite obviously retro and not innovative at all. They are about capturing the pure, solid, no-frills gameplay of the past.

I think I also argued that people weren't professional in their work product, and that if they wanted to be taken seriously, they should be. I still believe that, and I think the fact that a debate about ideas -- about a dialogue system! -- was interrupted with recourse to "shit water" is an example of why it's hard to take "indie" games seriously. It doesn't help when RPGs -- text, plot driven games -- are released filled with typos.

Obviously there are exceptions to this rule. In fairness, Sirocco is one of them. Peitz is obviously another. But if you go to Mad Monkey, go into the RPG directory, and play a random game, I guarantee the feel will be that of a sloppy IRC conversation. My feelings then, and now, are that it makes no sense to make games that way.

This is particularly true -- and I believe I argued this then as well -- if one wants to transform retro gaming into a legitimate indie scene where avant garde ideas are created and executed. The way a director like Aaronofsky breaks in is not by producing a piece of crap with a germ of a decent idea in it; he works hard to craft his work. Then he writes his own ticket.

As for myself, after years of butting my head up against the game-making wall, I now have a slew of great opportunities. I don't think I got them because I had great ideas. (Though, like everyone reading and posting here, I of course think that my ideas are great.) I think I got them because I was able to present my ideas cleanly and professionally, and the people on the other end, who expect such professionalism, were suitably impressed. It's that crap where resume formatting is more important than resume content.

The argument I made on Mad Monkey was not made with the intent of ending amateur game making. Rather, it was made with the intent of encouraging a fairly radical rethinking of how amateur games are made. I realize that telling people that their work product is not sufficiently professional may be rude; nevertheless I think it's a point worth making.

I've now been dabbling in game-making on the Internet for nine years. What's interesting to me is that the same group of people who were nobodies when we started out are finally starting to gain identities. (Unfortunately, one of the big stars, Tatsushi Nakao, creator of Miura Warrior, seems to have spontaneously combusted. As, sadly, did the creator of Legend of Talibah, Scott ??) I think it makes sense for people who have gone through that process to bring the lessons they've learned back to the table.

I think that has happened, quite obviously, at Pixelation, where there is now a MUCH more serious attitude about producing substantive critiques and about analyzing, in depth, artistic techniques. That level of discussion was extremely rare, if not unheard of, even five years ago.

There is an enormous wealth of talent out there in amateur game-making. I think it could be applied to create more successful products -- both economically, and "spiritually." (I use "spiritually" to mean, satisfying to the spirit, i.e., not disheartening.) I've worked on a dozen failed game projects. Everyone here, I'd wager, has worked on as many, or at least a few. I think if amateur game creators started a habit of approaching work professionally and seriously, many more of those projects would be finished. And once that momentum started, it would be a serious force to be reckoned with.

I think that would be a better scenario than unsuccessfully remaking a dyslexic Final Fantasy II and wasting breath graphically describing the composition of "shit water."

As a last note, I really am pretty certain you promised its completion within a year. But maybe you were only talking about Demo 2. Maybe I'll check on the way-back machine to see if I can recover those posts.

Anyway, I had no intention of posting further in this thread, but, since I'm waiting to sober up before hitting the sack, I figured I'd bloviate one last time. If people want to take this up further, I'd be happy to find an alternative way to communicate. I imagine this thread will become incredibly profane and ugly in the next few posts, and -- enormous as my ego is -- I don't care to engage in such a "hair raising" experience as it were.

[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

I think your comparison of the indie game world with the indie film world is unfair.

The indie film industry is an industry, whereas indie-game making is not. Even the most indie of indie films tend to have serious budgets. If your point is that indie-game makers should more actively look for funding, then feel free to try to make that point; but as it is, it's unfair to compare a game made by one person in his spare time with a $50, 000 movie in terms of "professionalism".

Very few indie movies are actually very innovative; most are cheap knock-offs. There is certainly an artsy indie crowd in which the main focus is innovation, and who often sacrifice the enjoyment of the viewer in the name of innovation. There is no comparable crowd among indie-gamers. If, again, your point is that there should be, then that's the point you should be making. Right now, the goal of most indie-game designers is to entertain, rather than to enlighten or innovate, which means a re-use of formula.

Frankly, I think it would be horrific if indie-game designers underwent a similar split between those who design for "art" and those who do so for "entertainment".

Finally, at least from what I've seen, there are simply a lot more indie movies than there are indie games. This allows you to pick out a great number of brilliant, innovative movies as shining examples of the indie-movie, while ignoring the vast amount of real crap out there. Because there's so little of it, you simply can't do this with video games.

That's it for why indie-games aren't comparable indie-movies; hope you don't feel I'm nitpicking, but that there should be greater similarity between the two seemed to be the crux of your argument. If it's just an incidental point, could you be a little clearer next time?

Also, remember that here, at least, we're creating indie-RPGs, not just indie-games. That does put constraints on our creativity; perhaps FenixBlade isn't the most innovative game out there, but it has a lot of interesting and original elements to its gameplay and as an indie-RPG, it really is quite innovative, I think. No one here is looking to invent a new genre, only to expand within the genre.

[Happy]

Great stamina indeed. While I rather not argue the point of comparing indie-movies and indie-games (as there isn't one), I felt I should make a retort in one form or another.

But first, Mister.Frosty: You know when I called you a self-righteous bigot who is inept at concise, intellegent, and thoughtprovoking writing? I meant it, from the bottom of my heart. I would never lie to you. My "catch-all phrase" that I use for someone (not something) I dislike is usually "You motherfucking cunt".

Now, to recap, you say indie-games are not up to par with your standards and you demand for everyone to change that, yes? You also say that you feel like, and I qoute, "people were trying to claim the mantle of indie-ness when what they were really doing was reinventing the wheel. ", yes? While I agree with you on the reinventing the wheel aspect, how in the world can you say that people were trying to claim the mantle of indie-ness? You do realize that "indie" is short for "independent", right? This means any person, group, studio, or company that is not affiliated or assoiciated, that is, completely seperate from, a larger more commercial company is considered "indie".

In case you don't quite grasp my point, the label "indie-games" do not, nor should ever, suggest the quality of product. If you want a professional fucking innovative game go fucking buy one at the store, you motherfucking cunt.

Everyone Else: Hello!

[LeoDraco]

Hello!
_________________
"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake

[Mandrake]

[Happy]

Mandrake: To quote Jon, "I would suck cock for hours to see that."

[Mandrake]

damn, now if only servers took blowjobs for payment, we could probably work something out.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[dak246]

Sigh...my poor thread.