Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013
http://taleoftales.tumblr.com/post/122153044077/and-the-sun-sets

quote:

We are happy and proud that we have tried to make a “game for gamers.” We really did our best with Sunset, our very best. And we failed. So that’s one thing we never need to do again. Creativity still burns wildly in our hearts but we don’t think we will be making videogames after this. And if we do, definitely not commercial ones

This is the company that made the deer MMO that goons killed
This is the company that made a game about red riding hood and raping wolves
This is the company that gave people poo poo and condescence for asking for fun in games

I'll miss them

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

closeted republican
Sep 9, 2005
I still don't understand what is happening in the Red Riding Hood game they made years ago. I can either walk to grandma's house with no problem, or get lost in a giant forest that has a billion worthless collectibles that seem to do nothing.

The GIG
Jun 28, 2011

Yeah, I say "Shit" a shit-ton of times. What of it, shithead?
Tale of Tales biggest problem outside of gameplay was that they relied on symbolism to tell a story instead of actually telling a drat story, it's like trying to float a crusie ship using only the life preservers. Your message doesn't really mean much when I can't figure out what the message is in the first place.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
the word 'pretentious' gets thrown around a lot about video games but, uh, yeah

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
They made bad games that sucked rear end.

slev
Apr 6, 2009

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013

Hahahaha, I knew they were pretentious but holy gently caress, that's really

wow

:smuggo: is the only smiley that defines them

Lustful Man Hugs
Jul 18, 2010

LotsBread posted:

This is the company that made the deer MMO that goons killed

Haha, this sounds like a fun exaggeration - HOLY HELL THIS EXISTED.

Baller Time
Apr 22, 2014

by Azathoth
I shall mourn them in the tongue of my people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l9LX7JjZ2s

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Tale of Tales honestly, earnestly made the kind of art game that I could never be certain weren't elaborate parodies.

Well, okay. The deer game was at least coherent. They spiraled out from there.

throw to first DAMN IT
Apr 10, 2007
This whole thread has been raging at the people who don't want Saracen invasion to their homes

Perhaps you too should be more accepting of their cultures

LotsBread posted:

This is the company that made the deer MMO that goons killed

???

Baller Time posted:

I shall mourn them in the tongue of my people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l9LX7JjZ2s

I was wondering how you could kill a game where you basically can't interact with other players and then the sounds started.

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow
They were terrible artists, and not good at what they did, but I was rooting for them.

Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Ahundredbux
Oct 25, 2007

The right to bear arms
let's make stuff there's no market for then get mad when no one buys this poo poo they don't want

Ahundredbux
Oct 25, 2007

The right to bear arms
gently caress the video game industry indeed :rolleyes:

BexGu
Jan 9, 2004

This fucking day....

Ahundredbux posted:

let's make stuff there's no market for then get mad when no one buys this poo poo they don't want

And pay a washing up game journalist 200K to advertise to a non-existing market.

This guys pose is wayyyyy to flowerly but makes a few good points on why the game failed so completely: http://www.theastronauts.com/2015/06/what-really-happened-to-tale-of-tales-sunset/

quote:

But look, you have two options when you make art you want to be commercially successful.

One is to carefully study your audience. This is not to stop you from telling the story you want to tell, this is to let you understand how to communicate that story to them.

Two is to do your own thing and see what happens.

If option number one is your thing, you need to make sure you really understand what you’re doing. Otherwise, you’re “How do you do, fellow kids?” Steve Buscemi meme. But even if you do everything right, remember that nobody knows anything in movies, and that art form is well over a hundred years old. And obviously things are even worse in games, and that’s why when a big studio strikes gold, they keep producing sequels basically forever.

But if two is your thing, you must be prepared that no one is obliged to give the slightest of fucks.

So with those two options in mind, what happens when the game does not resonate and is not exactly a technical and design masterpiece?

Usually, you sell nothing and the only people playing your game on Steam are your friends and family. But sometimes, only sometimes, you get lucky, and you miraculously sell four thousand copies in a month. Add two thousand drama bonus.

IPlayVideoGames
Nov 28, 2004

I unironically like Anders as a character.
They made a free game where you walk around a graveyard with weird camera angles.

And if you bought it, you'd get extra gameplay. You'd randomly drop dead.

Chard
Aug 24, 2010




Hahaha reading their twitter gently caress these passive-aggressive hacks. I remember the deer game, they are bad.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
this is my favorite sentence on the wikipedia page for endless forest

quote:

1 in 5 players discovered the game through fanart posted on deviantART

Original_Z
Jun 14, 2005
Z so good
I think their kickstarter had a pledge which would get you all future tale of tales games for life. Some people took a bad bet there.

FAROOQ
Aug 20, 2014

by Smythe

Original_Z posted:

I think their kickstarter had a pledge which would get you all future tale of tales games for life. Some people took a bad bet there.

OTOH, they lucked out.

Black Wombat
Nov 25, 2007

Every puzzle
has an answer.
My favorite part is that they tried to improve their image by never letting anyone involved in creating their games talk to people.

They must have been infuriating co-workers.

SyntheticPolygon
Dec 20, 2013

LotsBread posted:

This is the company that made the deer MMO that goons killed

What's the story about this? Because it sounds pretty hilarious.

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013

Black Wombat posted:

My favorite part is that they tried to improve their image by never letting anyone involved in creating their games talk to people.

They must have been infuriating co-workers.

Please, oh please, elaborate on them

I want to know what if Steve Jobs was a lovely artist who instead of creating hand-held devices no one can blog about, created lovely art games that no one can blog about

I want to hold on to this dream

Black Wombat
Nov 25, 2007

Every puzzle
has an answer.

LotsBread posted:

Please, oh please, elaborate on them

I want to know what if Steve Jobs was a lovely artist who instead of creating hand-held devices no one can blog about, created lovely art games that no one can blog about

I want to hold on to this dream

Sadly, the worse of the two seems to have closed all his social media accounts as part of his 'cleanup', but if you go look at his Patreon page, I think you'll get a good idea of the kinds of things he probably said.

mycot
Oct 23, 2014

"It's okay. There are other Terminators! Just give us this one!"
Hell Gem

BexGu posted:

And pay a washing up game journalist 200K to advertise to a non-existing market.

This guys pose is wayyyyy to flowerly but makes a few good points on why the game failed so completely: http://www.theastronauts.com/2015/06/what-really-happened-to-tale-of-tales-sunset/

Thanks for sharing the article, it was a good read. The part I particularly empathized with was the author not even knowing the game had released until this closing announcement (I didn't back the Kickstarter, but I knew it existed and had succeeded). Coming out on the same week as The Witcher 3 explains a lot.

Adam Bowen
Jan 6, 2003

This post probably contains a Rickroll link!
I like how the first line on the $100 tier of his page where he begs for money in exchange for writing is "I'm not doing this for the money."

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013
He looks less like a raggedy artist, and more like a 1940's disgruntled uncle

TipsyMcStagger
Apr 13, 2013

This isn't where
I parked my car...
Sunset is a terrible loving game.

It lacks the #1 thing a video game needs to be: Fun.

The story is so poorly delivered and turning on lights and blue/red decision markers are absolute garbage.

Their post about making a game for gamers and paying Rock, Paper, Shotgun for promoting their game and PR companies just goes to show how out to loving lunch they were with their games.

Good-bye Losers, i'll try to remember your names of people to avoid games from in the future.

Shima Honnou
Dec 1, 2010

The Once And Future King Of Dicetroit

College Slice
I'm gonna guess that the new Steam refund system allowed people to not be stuck with the bad games this company poo poo out and so they quit.

Seraphic Neoman
Jul 19, 2011


I'm all for the evolution of art and poo poo, but this shoe was dropping for a while now. Whether they want to admit it or not, their games were just not engaging. They didn't have gameplay which could appeal to people, and they didn't make up for that with a story (unlike say Analogue: A Hate Story, where your rudimentary UI was used to highlight the lack of control you had over the ship and the actions of the characters). Yeah it was symbolic, but it is loving easy to make poo poo symbolic in games. Making it meaningful, cohesive or relevant to the narrative, that is the true achievement.

Ether One by White Paper Games is the game ToT was trying to make for years, and WPG did it on the first try. It uses its symbolism really well (note how many times you seem to end up in a claustrophobic space that fills up with water) both to highlight plot stuff and as part of its theme.
ToT would probably brush off this compliment because, man, they are so far beyond me my head flips.

gently caress 'em. No love lost from me.

Feels Villeneuve
Oct 7, 2007

Setter is Better.
In all seriousness Sunset was very uninspired from them. I hated everything they did but they always seemed like they were doing their own thing, even if it was something I couldn't stand. Sunset just seemed like a bad attempt at cashing in on several current indie/art-game trends, when the studio's MO was always seeming like they were doing things nobody else was doing.

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord

Endorph posted:

the word 'pretentious' gets thrown around a lot about video games but, uh, yeah
Pretty much, most gamers don't even know what the words means, but ToT have always been so pretentious that I suspected that they were trolling. They've also never seemed to have any love for the medium despite claiming that they wanted to push its boundaries.

They got no one to blame but themselves because they've always been pretentious hacks and more than enough devs are doing what they tried to do far better.

Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jun 24, 2015

Uncle Wemus
Mar 4, 2004

Mirificus posted:

The politics of beauty by Michael Samyn

quote:
I understand that many people "just don't get it." It is not unimaginable that art would require a level of intellect and sensitivity that not everyone possesses. But usually it's a lack of education that lies at the basis of our indifference towards the very thing that could cure us. Now that secure employment is a thing of the past, maybe the education of our children can shift towards teaching them how to become happy and satisfied. A big part of that could come from acquaintance with the arts.

— Michaël Samyn.

Rocketlex
Oct 21, 2008

The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

Came in here to post this exact quote. I have no real problem with the games these people make (even if they aren't my thing) but I find their attitude towards criticism insufferable. Their farewell blog post is basically them blaming absolutely everything imaginable for the failure of the game...except the game itself.

The thing that makes it hard to watch is...I've been there. I know how painful it is to put something out there that you're really proud of and have absolutely nobody take the bait. This wasn't a game that was poorly received. At 4000 units sold, this is a game that just plain wasn't received. It was ignored at every turn. Though the scale is obviously smaller, I've had the same thing happen with my own projects. However, the difference is that I never once blamed the audience. I looked at what I'd made, what I did wrong and what I could do better, and went about fixing it in my future endeavors. That's really the best way to handle things like this.

Even if you think your audience is wrong, there's no point in blaming them for your failure, because in the end you have no control over what the audience wants. You have control over what you make, and you can die on the hill of darling decisions if you want to, but you have to recognize that the choice is yours and yours alone.

EDIT: I thought The Path had a cool art style, though.

Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jun 24, 2015

Electric Lady
Mar 21, 2010

To be victorious
you must find glory
in the little things

quote:

About
One half of Tale of Tales...Potentially videogames' worst nightmare and most delusional dream.
Proud father of a young man and a young woman. Adoring husband of a goddess. Cat companion. Guitar apprentice. Doomsday prophet. Sea lover.

Saying you are a guitar apprentice is like saying you speak Japanese (Conversational)

Orv
May 4, 2011
Oh yeah, that weird people-faced deer MMO was these guys. That sure was a thing. Never would have connected that with Little Red Ridinghood's Collectathon of Death.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
Adoring husband of a goddess. Cat companion.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
VIDEOGAMES WORST NIGHTMARE *makes a five minute walking sim*

Rocketlex
Oct 21, 2008

The Manliest Knight
in Caketown
These people make Jonathan Blow look like David Jaffe.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Control Volume
Dec 31, 2008

my profession is sea lover. im a lover of the sea. sometimes ill sit down and stare longingly at the sea for hours, and people will see my passion for the sea and be moved, and give me quarters, and dollar bills, and sandwiches

  • Locked thread