Tale of Tales closes shop, no more deer MMOs

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Tale of Tales closes shop, no more deer MMOs

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

Uncle Wemus posted:

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

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 04:14

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:50

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

These people make Jonathan Blow look like David Jaffe.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 04:26

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

Heatwizard posted:

If they thought video game nerds were a tough crowd, I can't wait for them to try to take their amateur hour nonsense to another medium and find real critics. They're gonna get demolished.

From everything I've seen, I'm pretty sure this is why they got into video games in the first place.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 19:05

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

I didn't realize until today that these people made Bient�t l��t�, but I don't know why it surprised me.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 21:19

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

Fojar38 posted:

next generation video gaming engine requiring a $1200 custom rig or gmod map running on a pentium d? You decide

Is that a city from Pilotwings 64 outside?

# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 21:32

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 22:50

Rocketlex: Oct 21, 2008; The Manliest Knight
in Caketown

Songbearer posted:

Meanwhile Pathologic and The Void wind up being infinitely more valid as "art" games (If that term actually has any value) without even trying. Icepick Lodge just make games the best they can and they turn out to be creative and weird enough to have artistic merit without seeming overly pretentious about the whole thing.

ToT made their poo poo with a "This will only appeal to HIGHER INTELLECTS" attitude which is total bullshit considering they weren't smart enough to pull off any of their efforts decently on a technical level, never mind the dumb heavy-handed themes and messages they presented in their interactive experiences. It's all incredibly superficial and paper thin.

It doesn't help either that the ToT duo are incredibly unlikable and seem to revel in their assumed superiority while remaining entirely inept.

Despite the backlash the games might receive for being the darlings of the "art game" genre, Pathologic, The Void, Gone Home and Dear Esther (maybe even to some degree The Stanley Parable) are all proof that art games can exist, be profitable and well-liked. What makes these games work so well is that the people who made them are super humble and passionate, the messages the games put forward are generally vague enough to allow room for discussion and interpretation, and they actually work as games. It's amazing ToT managed to put out so many different attempts without learning any lessons from thier contemporaries.

This. One of my favorite indie games is Yume Nikki, so let it not be said I can't enjoy a good abstract walking simulator. ToT's games just haven't been good overall.

I think the main issue is that the duo at the core of ToT just...aren't game designers. Everything I see out of them shows a serious disdain for game design as a craft. They have no idea what they're doing when it comes to crafting interactive systems and just assume they know better without understanding the rules they're breaking.

Having gone to film school, they remind me a lot of that guy in screenwriting class who immediately bristles when you start talking about three-act structure. Before the lesson has even started, he raises his hand and says "B-but...you don't have to do that! What if your screenplay didn't do that? What if you had an idea that didn't fit?" Trust me, any time any kind of formal structure is introduced in a creative space, there's always that guy who has to put up his hand and say "But that's not a real rule! That's just something someone made up! I don't have to do it!" By the end of the year he's either sat himself down and puzzled out why these structures help you build engagement...or dropped out to make independent films no one will watch or care about.

The ToT people feel like that guy but with game design. They looked at how games worked and, without even understanding what they were looking at, decided to express their creativity by breaking what they perceived to be "the rules." When people don't bite, they assume it's because they took people too far out of their comfort zone and not...y'know...because they bored people and failed to establish any connection, which is usually what actually happens when you freestyle a structure you don't understand.

Rocketlex fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jun 25, 2015

# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 02:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Tale of Tales closes shop, no more deer MMOs