The Gamer's Quarter

JamesE

http://ilthuain.livejournal.com/110008.html

Jeff Minter is now attacking random livejournal users for Space Giraffe thought crime. I didn't want to derail the existing thread on the game but I think it would be... not nice, but interesting to have a thread discussing this. He seems to do it an awful lot, and it isn't very healthy.

Basically I propose that the programmer should leave the work to speak for itself, and has no right to an exclusive reading of his work. It would make me a little angry at Jeff to see how he thinks he can legitimately do this, but it's his life, and well, this isn't a great way to spend it.
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FortNinety · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:41 am Post subject:

Yeah, that was pretty awkward. First off, artists should never defend their work. But ESPECIALLY on LiveJournal.

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:54 am Post subject:

calling out a reviewer for barely playing the game is fair. this seems like a waste of time and energy. (well, it's livejournal.) also kind of obsessive and crazy.

dear yak: if you end up posting in this thread, note that i love you and am only looking out for your wellbeing.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

So... like, yeah, I love jeff because he's a little crazy and all.

That said, I wish that SG was a little easier to get into (i.e. starting out with NO background noise). It's a very, very solid game, and probably some of his best mechanics, but there's a very thick barrier between the player and the mechanics.

It's a good bit of controversy though!
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:36 pm Post subject:

ps i've never played your games but you look like the sort of guy who likes to party, dude. call me.
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:38 pm Post subject:

jeff minter please invite me to your farm to cuddle your sheep
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

The Soviet Onion · . Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 41

I heard that the collision detection was kind of boned.

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:47 pm Post subject:

i'll say. that thing is covered in sticks.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I'm tempted to replay to this LJ converstation with: 'sup Jeff
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dessgeega · Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:53 pm Post subject:

you know what i think i want to do? play space giraffe with the gamer's quarter jeff minterview as the soundtrack. that would be pretty post games journo.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I'll send it to you if you would do that and then write it up.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of the post-release SG stuff has been Jeff and Giles (the other guy at Llamasoft) not reacting very well to any sort of perceived criticism, to the point of a massive back-and-forth with the Rev* and generally being massively pissy.

This may be related to Kumar's note that they seem to surround themselves with sycophants and this is why the game design (and PR, it seems) suffers a bit.

* - Combine two short-tempered folks who never ever back down and woooo fireworks.

dessgeega · Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:16 am Post subject:

well, they're used to having an audience comprised entirely of their fans, because those would be the only people who'd find their games. this is the most widely distributed game llamasoft has ever created. so yeah, i imagine they're frustrated and not used to this sort of reception. and maybe a little crazy.
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astralpancakes · . Joined: 12 Sep 2007 Posts: 12

It seems that, even in the old days, Jeff used to have a problem coping with criticism and distancing himself from his creations. And that was when his games were reviewed by a handful of magazines. Apparently he still reacts the same way, only nowadays every random interweb guy with a blog or a forum account is a potential reviewer. It gets out of hand pretty quickly.

As someone on Stuart Campbell's forums pointed out, it'd be nice if Jeff really was the chilled out hippie who lives among sheep and creates trippy shooting games he seems at first glance, but say a bad word about his games and all that shatters. He's always maintained that his games tend to polarize opinion, but he apparently has trouble accepting that on an emotional level. You'd think that after 25 years in the business he'd be a little more relaxed about it.

I've been hanging out at the Llamasoft/yakyak.org forums for a few years, but all of this has been a pretty big turn-off for me. It's probably still the place to go to for assistance on some obscure technical subject, and there's always been an unsettling amount of fanboyism under the surface there, but watching a semi-public figure like Jeff losing it in front of everyone is seriously creepy. The absolute low point was probably when he called out the OXM reviewer* to a score battle, like a drunken man challenging the man his wife left him for to a fistfight while his friends try to keep him from falling over.

I just hope this won't keep Jeff and Giles from eventually releasing a PC version of Space Giraffe. I WOULD like to judge it for myself.

* nevermind the fact that the reviewer apparently WAS a complete muppet, who didn't understand how to play the game at all

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

astralpancakes · . Joined: 12 Sep 2007 Posts: 12

Yeah, Minter hinted at that in his GDC talk, didn't he? It's just that it'd be Vista-only for sure, and at least Giles has in no uncertain terms expressed his loathe for Vista.

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I think everything hates Vista though, if not the OS itself then how DirectX 10 is tied to it. I know Mark Rein at Epic regularly brings up his dislike for it, I believe laughing at one point when someone asked if they have any Vista-only games coming out.
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