# SJW vows to burn down video games industry...



## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

...after their game fails to sell and their company goes bankrupt.



> In 2002 I chose to use videogames as my artistic medium. The more I got to know the technology, the industry, the creators and the audience, the less I liked what I saw. *I used to be quite vocal about this until I noticed that people seemed to hate me so much that they didn't want to play our games.* So I shut my mouth, closed my Twitter, closed my Facebook, and only spoke publicly in diplomatic calculated marketing terms.
> 
> Until now.





> Nothing much has changed in videogames. *And I don't see a bright future for this medium if some radical changes don't happen soon...I have nothing to lose.* *I can safely bite the hand that was unable to feed me.*





> *Maybe this will inspire some to make the many changes necessary to improve the situation. If not I hope it will contribute, however modestly, to the utter annihilation of videogames as we know them.*


It sounds a bit like sour grapes to me - the game they tried to make was not well received and now he wants to burn everything to the ground(metaphorically of course!). The game in question is called sunset in case you were wondering - it's getting panned by people on youtube at the moment:


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

In case you wanted something more in depth on this:


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## gopherinferno (Apr 7, 2009)




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## scooby (Jun 24, 2009)

Laughed so hard at "This ****s so pretentious it just gave me a ****ing film school degree".


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## Persephone The Dread (Aug 28, 2010)

Lol I bought a bunch of their games a few years back. Most of them aren't really games, they're interactive art. Art is very financially unstable, most artists appreciate that.

To be honest, he probably has BPD or a mood disorder or something, I get disproportionately angry sometimes too about things but this is a bit far even by my kind of standards. The video game industry appears to have a high number of mentally ill people. (I'm just saying...)


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## TicklemeRingo (Jan 11, 2013)

Persephone The Dread said:


> To be honest, he probably has BPD or a mood disorder or something, I get disproportionately angry sometimes too about things but this is a bit far even by my kind of standards. The video game industry appears to have a high number of mentally ill people. (I'm just saying...)


Yeah, I got that impression too from reading the OP.

(full disclosure: I know nothing about computers, games, this story...not even sure why I'm in here tbh)


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## Milco (Dec 12, 2009)

Persephone The Dread said:


> Lol I bought a bunch of their games a few years back. Most of them aren't really games, they're interactive art. Art is very financially unstable, most artists appreciate that.


Apparently they only survived financially because of government grants. When the grants stopped, their tried to go fully commercial, failed and threw a tantrum.

As is often the case, Adrian Chmielarz wrote a good blog post with a take on what happened. It's well worth a read:
http://www.theastronauts.com/2015/06/what-really-happened-to-tale-of-tales-sunset/



Persephone The Dread said:


> The video game industry appears to have a high number of mentally ill people. (I'm just saying...)


I think the games industry has a fair bit of "idol worship" and that's a problem. Especially indies can get bloated egos - akin to Justin Bieber spitting on fans and peeing in buckets, just because he can get away with it.
There are some really good people still, but too many lose perspective and start seeing the audience as simply getting in their way of their amazing and vitally important vision, rather than the people they should create their vision for.


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## Persephone The Dread (Aug 28, 2010)

Milco said:


> Apparently they only survived financially because of government grants. When the grants stopped, their tried to go fully commercial, failed and threw a tantrum.
> 
> As is often the case, Adrian Chmielarz wrote a good blog post with a take on what happened. It's well worth a read:
> http://www.theastronauts.com/2015/06/what-really-happened-to-tale-of-tales-sunset/
> ...


I noticed that article says they sold 4000 copies. Apparently some of those were from the kickstarter. Looking at their kickstarter they had 2,228 backers so that's about half their sales on steam in a month, and then the sales that were included as part of their backing. Hopefully, the kickstarter should have included all the money they needed for marketing and the like and they didn't go overbudget there.

So then that leaves, assuming the sale rate (50% off the initial price,) about 1772 x £7 - £12,404. But that's split between two people of course so that's £6202 (but it's also not irrelevant that they are a married couple.) But of course some sales were probably before they reduced the price and the initial amount was around £14.99 or something like that I think (that's what it's being sold for on UK Steam right now.)

That game could have been made by just one person really, and then it would have been 12,404k in a month, which is good. Obviously you might not make that in all the following months though. Assuming no/few other commitments (I don't know their life story) I think the game could easily be developed in less than a year.

They wouldn't have gotten rich off this game but I wouldn't personally class it as a failure worthy of giving up over either. I mean they're making money. I guess I'm not fussy, but Jesus.

So yes, I think that is true about the egotism. Some people just expect a lot of recognition. I can understand being disappointed but not this reaction.

It's ridiculous to take this as an example that games like this can't exist. Just putting other people off because that game didn't work out... There are a number of more artistic/emotive/weird games that exist and have small followings: Shelter, Shelter II, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Dear Esther, Never Alone, The Deer God, that game that was even shown at E3 - Beyond Eyes, other games.


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## GodOfBeer (May 31, 2015)

I'm disappointed to learn that these same developers also developed "The Endless Forest", a very interesting game concept. 
In this you game you control a deer with a human face in a forest and interact with other deers. The only way to communicate with them is through sounds and gestures meaning no chat. You can eat grass, drink water, dance with others and apply magic on them to change their appearance meaning that only to change yours is if someone applies magic on you. Each player has a symbol and that's the only way to identify them, the symbol is like your username.

The game gets boring after an hour but it's nice to play now and then if you're bored. You should give it a try: http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/index.html


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## Scrub-Zero (Feb 9, 2004)

Another butthurt self-entitled man baby "gaming" dev.

Still not as bad as Phil Fish though.


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## Aribeth (Jan 14, 2012)

> closed my Twitter, closed my Facebook


the only smart thing he did.


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## Kind Of (Jun 11, 2014)

People storm away from writing all the time when critique circles don't recognize their inherent genius, and they've been doing so for longer than video games have existed. Literature is still around.

Next drama.


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## East (Jul 22, 2013)

finally, the nerds will be eliminated


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

is sjw code for someone you don't like


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## fingertips (Jan 11, 2009)

by that i mean - even if "sjw" was a term with any merit, i'm not sure how tales of tales would qualify. is it because they make games you don't like, or that they hold opinions about the games industry that you don't share?


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

fingertips said:


> by that i mean - even if "sjw" was a term with any merit, i'm not sure how tales of tales would qualify. is it because they make games you don't like, or that they hold opinions about the games industry that you don't share?


While I do think it's fair to say that the term SJW is being thrown around a bit too liberally on occasion nowadays; at the same time this game studio is neck deep in related rhetoric as well as SJW cliques both online and off. I do feel justified in giving them that label.

SJW to give the fairly standard definition is a hard line progressive, who takes a very black and white view on politics and tends to be very vocal about it particularly on social media.

For the record by the way, I don't dislike them or their games(never played them). But I do find it news worthy given that they're burning all their bridges and they've had a lot of news coverage in games media recently(Kotaku/Polygon, so not a surprise given their politics) This is almost a case study in how to not leave a industry in fact.


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## Kind Of (Jun 11, 2014)

This is kind of like that author whose dramatic arguments with negative reviews of his book went viral. I'd link but I feel bad enough for the guy already.


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## Kiba (Apr 26, 2013)

Tale of tales actually did some neat stuff.. Kind of disappointing to hear they were only in it for the money, which in term ****ed them.


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## Dilweedle (Oct 17, 2013)

Huh. I watched Jim Sterling play that game a while back and actually really liked it, it's like an interactive novel. Sad to see the dev is so whiny, they had a lot of potential.


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## iAmCodeMonkey (May 23, 2010)

Cleveland Mark Blakemore is more insane, trust me:

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=32803.0

Get ready to laugh.


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## Crystalline (Dec 1, 2008)

Really a shame as they produced some very interesting (if flawed) work back in the day. I'm a still a fan of their work. Games like the Enchanted Forest, the Path (which had pretty ****ty controls but was creepy af) made me want to try them because they broke the mold. I'd always thought they were an indie studio-slash-art project which the pair were working on alongside art installations in museums/cities.

I understand his bitterness about the game industry even if he seems to have convinced himself his game would have sold. Gamers themselves are what made many quit it (devs get barely any gratitude tbh and the endless spew of hatred that flies forth is enough to make many an idealistic young artist or developer want to give up). I do not regret changing my career choice given what I see these days.


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## Persephone The Dread (Aug 28, 2010)

Crystalline said:


> Really a shame as they produced some very interesting (if flawed) work back in the day. I'm a still a fan of their work. Games like the Enchanted Forest, the Path (which had pretty ****ty controls but was creepy af) made me want to try them because they broke the mold. I'd always thought they were an indie studio-slash-art project which the pair were working on alongside art installations in museums/cities.
> 
> I understand his bitterness about the game industry even if he seems to have convinced himself his game would have sold. Gamers themselves are what made many quit it (devs get barely any gratitude tbh and the endless spew of hatred that flies forth is enough to make many an idealistic young artist or developer want to give up). I do not regret changing my career choice given what I see these days.


A lot of people from San Francisco seem to feel that way about the games industry (I notice you live in San Francisco so that's interesting)


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Crystalline said:


> Really a shame as they produced some very interesting (if flawed) work back in the day. I'm a still a fan of their work. Games like the Enchanted Forest, the Path (which had pretty ****ty controls but was creepy af) made me want to try them because they broke the mold. I'd always thought they were an indie studio-slash-art project which the pair were working on alongside art installations in museums/cities.
> 
> I understand his bitterness about the game industry even if he seems to have convinced himself his game would have sold. Gamers themselves are what made many quit it (devs get barely any gratitude tbh and the endless spew of hatred that flies forth is enough to make many an idealistic young artist or developer want to give up). I do not regret changing my career choice given what I see these days.


 I haven't seen you in a while on these forums Crystalline, welcome back 

What career change have you done btw?


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## Crystalline (Dec 1, 2008)

Thanks. I do UX instead of art now.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

Crystalline said:


> Thanks. I do UX instead of art now.


 Cool, that would make sense given you have a background in art/3D if I remember correctly.


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