The "Indie" Bums

[icycalm]

I am going to add a section to the Archive | People section of the site called "Indie" Bums. It will feature pages devoted to, for example, Rohrer, Yu, Cactus, et al., with mini-reviews (by me) of each bum's entire oeuvre. Now I am trying to come up with ideas for the header images. One idea is to use their pictures. OR, I am thinking of finding a picture of a bunch of homeless bums, and using it for all of them.

So, the reason I am making this post is to ask people to look for pictures of homeless bums that would be appropriate (in size, etc.) to be used for headers. Something like this, but perhaps larger and funnier:



Or if you have any other ideas let me know by posting here.

[icycalm]

Another thing I need for that section is a really stupid quote for each bum. Here is one for Cactus:

http://cactusquid.blogspot.com/2010/07/ ... games.html

There are almost no games that try to convey messages or personal views on life and matters that are important to the people who have created them. It’s even rare to find any personal aspect about games at all these days.

Especially if you consider that all his games are some atrocious shooters or platformers; what "personal views on life" does this fact convey?

But yeah, if you can find some REALLY dumb quotes, post them here. They have to be two-three sentences at most; ideally a single sentence if possible.

The other option is for me to simply make up some quotes for them, lol.

[Worm]

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2007/08/ ... /#more-134

Why would anyone ever play a game, if they play games to escape, but they can escape with movies or books instead?

[faceplant]

[cephissus]

Haha dang, that's good!

[icycalm]

Yeah, insane. And the quote is mind-boggling. I couldn't come up with something that stupid if I racked my brain for years. Thanks, guys.

So here's the index:

http://insomnia.ac/archive/people/indie_bums/

The quotes are all real, but perhaps not so good as the one Worm found. So if you find better ones let me know. And other bums as well -- the more the better.

Just make sure when you recommend a bum that you have some half-way decent quote to go with him.

[faceplant]

Jonathan Mak, developer of Everyday Shooter:

When you break gameplay down to its essentials, it's not just interaction, it's an action and a reaction. And what's fun is when you do an action and you get this spectacular reaction.

http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=503

[icycalm]

lol, I didn't get it at first. I had to read it three times to get it.

[icycalm]

Now with thumbnails.

[Tain]

Jenova Chen.

As I get older, what’s the point in pulling off another infinite combo? What does that do for your life? It’s not useful.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/01/ ... spirations

[icycalm]

This from now on will also be the thread for quoting and making fun of indie bums in general.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg485809

And that's the most disappointing thing about icy: a lot of people in the indie community agree with him and his point of view on a lot of things but are put off by his outsider-status, reactionary vitriol that has to put words in people's mouths to make a point.

I am not putting words in anyone's mouth. If you don't realize that when you call some games art YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY ALSO CALLING ALL OTHERS "NOT ART", it's not my problem. It's just yet more proof of how stupid and unconscionable you are.

As for the "indie" community being "put off" by me for any reason whatsoever -- NO ONE GIVES A FLYING FUCK, LEAST OF ALL I. The bums will say bummy things, act in a bummy manner and make bummy videogames regardless of what anyone says or does. This, after all, IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A BUM. My articles therefore are not directed at THEM, but AT EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN TRICKED INTO MISTAKING THE BUMS FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN BUMS. And as for the tiresome objection to this, that I would reach and persuade more people if I toned down the vitriol, it just comes from people who know as much about persuasion as Derek Yu knows about platform game design. In five or six years there will not be a single half-intelligent person interested in videogames who will not have been 100% persuaded by my theories; in ten or twelve my books will be required reading <i>at every game studies course on the planet</i>, AND DEREK YU WILL STILL BE A BUM CHURNING OUT PLATFORMERS THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN EMBARRASING IN 1982.

But it doesn't fit the artfag stereotype that I wouldn't say such things, or that, for example, Paul is a Diamond-level Starcraft 2 player, etc., etc., so it has to be made up to fit this narrow concept that is much easier to rant about.

Again, a complete incapacity to form a coherent train of thought: He is simply throwing about factoids at random that have no bearing on the issue whatsoever in the hopes that THE VITRIOL THAT'S COMING HIS WAY AND MAKING HIM UNCOMFORTABLE WILL STOP. Derek: NO ONE GIVES A SHIT IF AN ARTFAG CAN PLAY STARCRAFT, OR HAS ALSO WORKED ON NON-ARTFAGGY VIDEOGAMES FOR CHRISTSAKE, FOR HOW ON EARTH DO ANY OF THESE FACTS MAKE HIM LESS OF AN ARTFAG?

The thing is, all creative types are fags in icycalm's eyes.

NOW who's putting words in WHOSE mouth, fuckface? Your tactics would be disgusting if they were not pitiable.

He has no understanding of what it's like to create something.

lol. I am creating philosophy higher than Baudrillard's; writings that people will be reading ENTIRE CENTURIES AFTER EVERYONE HAS FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT YOUR BOTCHED ATTEMPTS AT A PLATFORMER, and "I have no understanding of what it's like to create something", lol.

In his own words, "he makes dust". That's all.

Yes, I am making dust in order TO CLEAR THE TERRAIN SO WE CAN BUILD ON IT. Build criticism and philosophy THAT WILL LAST. Not the retarded mouthspew that you and your friends vomit that even a child or a dumb rapper can demolish -- let alone a genius.

He doesn't realize what "fags" all artists are, even the ones who make really manly, complex games.

I NEVER SAID THAT ANY OF THESE PEOPLE AREN'T ARTISTS. THAT'S YOUR MOVE. ALL I AM SAYING IS THAT THE ARTFAGS ARE BAD ARTISTS.

Meh. It really does feel at times as if I am pushing cripples down stairways. No joke here. They really do seem retarded.

[ghost4]

That Jenova Chen interview sure is something.

When people design online games, they often do lazy work. They bring an existing single-player game — an RPG, an RTS, a fighting game, a shooter — and duct tape on some online technology. They say, “okay, there’s multiple players, now do something cool. Here, play a kid’s game like Capture the Flag.” That’s the level of design. “Why don’t you kill each other until the last guy is left standing.”

The "level of design" in Journey must be exceptionally high since he's shitting on games like StarCraft and Quake with such bold confidence. This game will probably change multiplayer forever with its innovative and exciting game mechanics.

If your grandma asked, “what’s Journey?” I’d tell her “Journey is just like hiking. You go to hike a mountain, and there are other hikers you might meet and if you like them you can hike with them.” And that’s it.

[The core gameplay goal in Journey is] Journey-ing. Moving from point A to point B.

There are two buttons right now. [...] We used to have a jump button, but we wanted to simplify the game.

We wanted to make the player feel small and weak. So initially, we did have a level up experience — if you collected 20 patches, you would jump higher or fly further. But that felt too empowering.

If there is an enemy, you can’t do anything about it. You’re small and weak.

Oh...

[icycalm]

If there is an enemy, you can’t do anything about it. You’re small and weak.

Can people begin to see now why I call these people fags? and why they are therefore irresistibly drawn to making faggy games? The fag wants to CONTINUE BEING A FAG, EVEN IN A VIRTUAL WORLD -- thus it affirms its fagginess. It is a proud fag -- faggy and proud of it. Anything that is not faggy is systematically slandered; everything that IS faggy is lavished with the highest praise and glorified. The entire fag-game development is the introduction of fags into game design and their self-glorification (just as higher, more complicated games are the self-glorification of higher, more complicated men). It's really very simple.

And this is why the fags arrive LAST into game design -- just as women arrive last at everything. The new artform is invented and taken to its greatest hight by MEN, and only after a great length of time has passed does it get dragged to its lowest point by the EFFEMINATE MEN, THE NON-MEN, THE FAGOTS.

[icycalm]

By the way, here's a summary of the contents of that 50+ page TIGSource thread:

Several pages of botched attempts to grasp the concept of "trolling".

Several pages of botched attempts to grasp the concept of "gimmick".

Several pages of botched attempts to grasp the concept of "genre".

Several pages of botched attempts to grasp the concept of "complexity".

Several pages of botched attempts to understand the relation between mechanics and aesthetics, and how they relate to complexity and immersion (the toughest problem of them all).

And finally several pages of botched attempts to come to grips with my genius.

[icycalm]

The retards' thread linked above has reached 200+ pages lol without them managing to agree on anything or understand anything, of course. The one thing it has convinced me of, however, is that Anarkex/A.Wrench and Austere/Substance, whom I had banned from this forum for thinking they are the same person, are in fact not. So I have unbanned them, along with AshfordPride, whom I had banned even earlier for some little stupidity, but who has demonstrated to me with his posts in the retards' thread that he deserves better treatment. I apologize to all three of them for my somewhat rough behavior towards them, but such things will happen when you have 700 people signing up to your forum and must decide whom to keep and whom to throw out based on scant evidence and without much time in which to deliberate on your decision. It's a war, and collateral damage is unavoidable. All I can do is attempt to redress any mistakes I've made once I've perceived them, and this is what I've just done here.

By the way, it may be worth people's time to skim the retards' thread, reading only the comments by these three people, and perhaps also shig's and eva's (the only two TIGSource regulars participating in that thread who are not subhumans. eva appears to be a female as well. Impressive!)

[icycalm]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg487045

Getting back on track, icycalm is definitely a genius, underestimating him in any way will only give you grief. Engage him directly without any preparation and he will slaughter you, just look at the mountain of corpses behind his grinning face. If you read everything he's posted on his website, you will see he's given everyone the chance to defeat him. Literally, it's all there and he's not afraid to hide it. He wants a good fight. He needs a good fight. The fact that no one has come even close to giving him one so far, grants him the right to declare himself a genius. If you want to prove him wrong, begin reading carefully -- and thinking cleanly. Start here, for example. Correcting small facts he's stated incorrectly doesn't count though, you'll have to do better than that.

That's a very accurate evaluation of me. And the claim that I actually want someone to come out and fight me, is extremely perceptive. I would love nothing more than to see someone come along and tear my theories apart. People have no idea how boring it can eventually get to always be the winner. And they have no notion of this because they themselves are usually the losers, so they imagine constant winning as some sort of utopia. However, the only thing winning really does is, as all winners know, to make you crave a stronger adversary. Eternal winning would be the greatest curse on existence -- which is why we get eternal losing instead, and why we love it.


http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg487120

If he was really that important, wouldn't more people talk about him?

Long after he's finished, people (i.e. general popullace) may talk about him if he's successful. Most won't understand a single thing he wrote and will corrupt everything he said until there is nothing left of him but a few fragmented statements that may stand the test of time. For a while.

Again, extremely perceptive, except for the last sentence. The last sentence shows that you have not understood the meaning of the Eternal Recurrence. My accomplishments will not survive only "for a while". They will be eternal, just as I myself and everything else that has ever taken place or will ever take place inside this universe. By the same token, the gaffes of my adversaries and their mediocrity and wretchedness will also be eternal. This is why only an Overman is capable of affirming the Eternal Recurrence.

[icycalm]

A certain emperor always bore in mind the transitoriness of all things so as not to take them too seriously and to remain calm among them. To me, on the contrary, everything seems far too valuable to be so fleeting: I seek an eternity for everything: should one pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea? My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will cast it up again. (WP 1065)

You see that Niezsche's attitude is superior to the emperor's (Marcus Aurelius), because it creates a mindset in which everything is taken extremely seriously, which leads to better results. And results which are moreover eternal, which fact makes them doubly pleasurable. Nietzsche's attitude is a winner's attitude throughout.

[icycalm]

The TIGS thread keeps on trucking, and several more Insomnia readers have joined the fray. The most interesting thing about that thread, I would say, is the immense intelligence gulf that separates my readers from all the rabble there. It's really something. Not only are they the only people making any kind of sense there, they even comport themselves in a very distinguished manner -- a million miles away from Derek and his goons, who are furiously throwing shit around the walls in the hope that something will stick. I mean, even if one had never read a word I'd written, the immense distance between my readers and everyone else should basically tell the whole story.

I just have to say: your posts have given me much pleasure, guys. Thanks.

[icycalm]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg517758

i could write a scathing review of a game some kid made with game maker but it'd be like swatting flies with a wrecking ball.

I like this expression. That's exactly what I am doing in my "indie" game reviews: swatting flies with a wrecking ball. And that's precisely why I did NOT want to do it, and never meant to do it, UNTIL I WAS FORCED TO. And why I will stop doing it the moment all my wrecking has achieved its desired end (which is the general recognition of the fact that the "indie" crowd is nothing but a bunch of incompetent kids whose pathetic efforts are not worth bothering with).

[icycalm]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg517920

You're saying that Spacewar! was high art for its time, so even though it's low art now, it's still considered a classic. That makes sense to me.

Nonsense. Spacewar was "high art" (i.e. a masterpiece) for its time, and will remain high art (i.e. a masterpiece) forever, because if Josh and I got together to play games, and we had to choose between Spacewar and all the "indie" abortions ever made, we'd STILL choose Spacewar without a second thought. Therefore Spacewar will remain "high art" forever, and your abortions will likewise remain "low art" forever.

Of course, given a choice between Spacewar and, say Hard Corps: Uprising, we'd pick the latter, but that wouldn't suddenly make Spacewar "low art", quite simply because the distinction between "low art" and "high art" (or, less fagotistically: masterpieces and trash) is a very rough, very simplistic one, whereas in reality there is an infinite scale of differences of worth between game and game, otherwise known as an order of rank. Within that order, then, Hard Corps certainly stands higher than Spacewar -- but both of them are infinitely higher than all the "indie" abortions ever made, and that will ever be made -- which is why they both qualify for masterpiece (i.e. "high art") status.


http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg517927

Yes, because it was at the cutting edge at game development, it was so far advanced that it left everything else in the dust. So just like people don't forget Newton once Einstein came into the scene, or Einstein once we had Pauli and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, it doesn't make sense to discard the classics.

Moreover, even if you wanted to discard them, you wouldn't really be able to because the new masterpieces CONTAIN THEM. This is the nature of genre and the tree of gaming (or of science and the tree of science, or of life-forms and the tree of life, etc. etc.) The new masterpieces CONTAIN the old masterpieces, whereas the new trash CONTAINS NEXT TO NOTHING -- which is the main reason it is trash.

[icycalm]

http://www.zeldauniverse.net/forums/gen ... ost3881249

A roguelike has far more "meaning" on the subject of death then Passage (and manages to be, you know, fun at the same time!)

Amen, my brother. Amen.

[icycalm]

What's funny in the last few pages of the TIGS thread is that people are digging out forum posts by me (even from other forums) that even I had forgotten I had made. I am actually copy-pasting my own quotes into a text document for use in future articles.

What's most frustrating about that thread currently, and generally throughout, is how confused everyone is with the concept of "subjectivity". Even my readers are confused by it, though nowhere near as much as everyone else. And because I am such a nice guy I will give you the solution here:

Only the great writers succeed in painting these mechanisms faithfully, without falsifying them: we have here a system of relationships that paradoxically, or rather not paradoxically at all, has less variability the greater a writer is.

René Girard, Quand ces choses commenceront... (1994)

I will explain this at length and far more profoundly in future essays. But for the time being the above quote should set the more intelligent on the right path.

[icycalm]

To put it more simply: the question of whether fish or beef tastes better is, like all questions, entirely subjective. But science can determine to a great deal of precision which of them is better for which person AND TOWARDS WHAT END. The answer will be radically different if the desired end is a long life-span, or an easier digestion, or more appropriate nourishment for a specific sport, or to treat a specific disease, etc. etc. And THAT's what people would call an "objective" judgement -- which would again be wrong because even the highest so-called "objectivity" is not objective at all -- since the answer will be different depending on the subject (i.e. the person for whom we are answering the question). And vice versa: even in the highest "subjectivity" there's at least a certain element of "objectivity". For example, that many people do not like complex games is a subjective preference. But once you've run some IQ tests and discovered that these people are generally stupid, you've uncovered a rather "objective", scientific truth -- one which you can use to build a theory on. And so on and so forth, until you ultimately come to enlarge your definition of "people" to include all animals, and eventually all life-forms. Then you start comparing the games dogs, for example, play, to those played by homo sapiens. And all throughout your studies the evidence keeps mounting that more complicated life-forms generally prefer more complicated games. And finally your question "what is a better game?" ends up being transformed, after having passed through the most careful and most rigorous "objectively" scientific analysis, into the question "what is the game a higher life-form would prefer?", which is entirely subjective -- affirming not only THE SCIENTIST'S PERSONAL PREFERENCE, but also the dog's, and the rat's and Derek Yu's.

lol, someone copy-past that on TIGS and see what happens. It'll be like throwing a copy of the Tractatus in a dog kennel. They'll "tear it apart" all right, lol.

[icycalm]

Do you see what has happened here? Our original question ("What is a better game?") was an objective question, since it implied that there IS such a thing as a universally valid "better game" -- which there clearly isn't. Our transformed question, on the other hand ("What game would a higher life-form prefer?"), is an entirely subjective question, and thus, if correctly answered, a universally valid one.

This second question, of course, raises the issue of the "higher life-form", and whether there IS such a thing, and if so how we could possibly define and measure it. This is a philosophical question, already answered to a great extent by Nietzsche, and soon to be completely answered by me. The scientists are already close to the answer in their "Tree of Life", but hold back from articulating it too loudly for fear of being called "fascists" or whatever and losing their jobs. They also lack some very important data by their failure to comprehend the question in a cross-disciplinary manner. That is to say that the answer lies partly in biology, partly in psychology, partly in physics, partly in ethology and sociology, etc. etc. This is why only the philosopher can ultimately answer it -- like all questions worth answering in fact.

In sum: I am NOT saying that the games I prefer are the UNIVERSALLY BETTER games. What I AM saying is that I am the highest life-form so far to engage in game criticism, therefore my tastes will also be generally the highest. "Highest" here does not mean APPROPRIATE FOR EVERYONE -- it means "appropriate for higher life-forms".

lol, etc.

Do you see now why subhumans have so much trouble getting anywhere with criticism and philosophy? Their belief in the "equality of life-forms" effectively bars their way to real knowledge of any kind.

[icycalm]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?t ... #msg519209

For instance when I first played Ketsui I already had a pretty clear idea of the rules in virtue of having played other shmups... and as far as complexity is concerned: it's my favourite Cave shooter and yet it's one of their less complex games - I prefer it because the ruleset is simpler, more refined, more streamlined than other Cave games... does it then follow that I have inferior subhuman taste?

Yes. Because you refuse to talk to the experts who've been playing these games for about 1000x longer you (or I) have been playing them. If you play that long THINGS CHANGE. TASTES CHANGE. The more convoluted system BEGINS TO APPEAL TO YOU MORE. (Just as, ten years earlier, the EVEN SIMPLER primitive shooters appealed to you more.) But to get to that stage you have to be truly passionate, not only about games as a whole, but also ABOUT THESE PARTICULAR GAMES -- as well as have decent reflexes, etc.

But it's always the same story with subhumans. Always unwilling -- nay, incapable -- of looking beyond themselves. Always unwilling to consult the expert. Always unwilling TO LEARN. And that's precisely what makes them subhumans -- and keeps them so.