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Jeff Minter doesn't spout BS.
LewieP
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jesus fucking christ
not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week.
OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.
We'll shut up trying to do anything new then.
Sorry for even trying.
I feel sorry for him. I promise to buy Space Giraffe as soon as I get a 360.
For those of you who don't know who Jeff Minter is, firstly, shame on you, secondly, you should check out his Wikipedia entry. He is famous for making awesome trippy games/visualisations, notably Tempest 2000 and the Xbox 360 music Lightsynth. Here's a great video of him speaking at google TechTalks.
Space Giraffe is the same game that Official Xbox Magazine gave a 2/10 review. Minter then checked the reviews gamescore, and saw that the had received zero acheivements, which is almost impossible unless you have played the game for a very small amount of time. Minter made this post about it.
[url=http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=66861&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=356]YakYak[/url] wrote:OK, I found him on the Partnernet leaderboards. Come to think of it I remember having seen his entries before because they were a bit unusual.
He's on as "OXM Dan" and he has NO achievements at all for Space Giraffe. It's really pretty hard to play SG for any length of time and get no achievements whatsoever; there are a few that are given out fairly easily by way of encouragement. Genius-boy here has managed to get none at all.
His score in interesting because it shows that he got 6.7 million at a maximum level of 31. To have such a small score for level 31 is pretty extraordinary. It basically means that the player must have just been scraping through one level at a time, just barely pushing the start level and accompanying start bonus over the threshold each time, and stubbornly refusing to actually play on earlier levels and actually, y'know, learn something. It's a truly horrible way to play, a combination of idiocy and brute force that is spectacularly unrewarding.
A good player should be scoring 40 or 50 million by level 30. I'm looking at the leaderboard now, Jimaroid's level 30 score is 57 mill. "JoeQA" obviously playing the game correctly got 51 mill by level 31. I have a level *17* score that is 64 million (and that's the very point of SG; learning how to score efficiently is part of the skill and the pleasure of it).
In short, the leaderboards show that OXM Dan was playing the game in about the most shit way possible, and being absolutely crap at it. The leaderboards also show a lot of other people playing the game rather well, so we know it's not the game at fault here.
Basically he was just rubbish.
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Funny, that's exactly how the SG demo felt to me. Some old uninteresting arcade game with trippy effects.
I spoke to him once; nice guy. He's very passionate about gaming.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Yeah. I
I mean, you did lose. Hard. But it's gonna be fine.
Man, I do feel kinda bad for him, it's gotta suck to think of something that you think is awesome, make it, and have the public reaction be "meh". Also, I like that he says "Genius-boy" the same way my dad does when insulting someone.
Honestly, I didn't dig Space Giraffe all that much, but it's probably because it was the first game since my childhood to give me a migrane.
Yeah, Angry =/= emo.
And anyone who's ever heard the OXM podcast knows Dan's a doofus, which is to say he fits right in with the rest of that magazine's wretched "crew".
SG's far from my favourite Minter game, but it seems like it takes longer to "click" than most of his games. But there's no-one else doing what Minter does, not any more.
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Seriously, this is just whining. Whether or not Space Giraffe is, deserving games don't sell as well as they should all the time. Get over it. I know it must be frustrating when you put so much into it, but don't bitch about it to the whole internet. Move on, keep making games because it's what you love to do.
I was playing that back in the eight-bit days. It wasn't very good. I was playing Minter's games back then, too, but they were fun if difficult and downright weird. Llamatron anybody?
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
This is one of those games where screenshots can't do it justice. There's an old demonstration video on Youtube here, though the video quality's so low it doesn't really do the game justice either. Still, you get to see it in motion.
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I think it's a fairly hideous game. I remember someone comparing it to Rez once, but it's not even in the same league.
It's just a mess of colours and shapes, most of which clash violently with each other.
Then I read the post again, and read about this Dan OXM magazine.. and then I thought about the whole Frogger thing..
Now I kinda feel bad for the guy.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Also, did the 2/10 reviewer guy ever respond to the comments? Seems to me that just having a seperate account for reviewing purposes, or playing on a debug unit and not liking the game would account for it.
Llamatron was amazing. Screaming Mandelbrots!
On the podcast, he more or less shrugged and said "It sucked. Don't care."
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Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Yeah that looks fun as hell. Damn screenshots almost soured me.
Honestly, he's surprised not many people like his game? Really? He expected, what, to get Mass Appeal with clearly niche, trippy shit like SG?
I'm going to put this guy above Dennis Dyack in the 'please shut the fuck up' category.
What the fucking fuck! Fucking bullshit this is fucking making me fucking angry! Any art that was made before mine is basically the worst art in the history of art. Fuck.
With that said however I have Tempest on my Atari Jaguar and its awesome. They should of just touched that up. At least Tempest doesn't hurt my eyes
SG is just not fun to play. This is the reason me, and so many others chose not to buy it.
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I don't care how innovative your game is, you don't go online and say "I'm quitting" because more people buy a classic that everyone has loved for 20 years.
I can see why some people wouldn't like it. Biggest problem is that the deeper gameplay mechanics are hidden until later in the game, are never explained in a noob-friendly manner, and the "digital marmite" of the visuals and audio appear to turn a lot of people off. Obviously more people than they attract, it seems.
One thing I find puzzling is that many folks who don't like Space Giraffe seem a lot "angrier" than usual when they slag it off. The game really seems to annoy some people.
Personally, I think it is both very refreshing, and yet endearingly old-school, I have a total blast playing it when I'm in the mood for some brain-melting gameplay.
Minter is a quality bloke, sad to see him getting pissed off, I really hope I see more games from him like Space Giraffe.
Remaking the same type of game over and over again and making it moer XTRAEME is not the same as innovation.
EDIT:
This is another way of saying that it is bad.
But hey, that's why it's an arcade game, right? So that development costs are recouped even if the game doesn't sell through the roof? While I'd love for Minter to get a runaway hit, he shouldn't be expecting it with the kind of game he makes. I still love the guy, though. Please Jeff, start working on Unity again.
And seriously, people are getting upset because he's ranting in a blog? It's not like he's making a press release announcing he's retiring. It's an exaggeration because he's frustrated, and I can see why. I've heard similar things from the team that ported Marathon to the 360. They put a ton of work into it, and it vastly undersold, so they probably won't get a chance to work on another game like it for a while.
I mean really, he seems to have the mentality of a 12-year-old.
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Yes, it's a combination of Jeff's self-righteous bullshit and his pretentious 'it's trippy and weird and lots of people don't understand it so it must be good!' game. It actively annoys me, unlike most games. Especially with him saying crap like this.
Seeing as how the best way I can describe it is 'an interactive migraine', then yeah I can see where some folk would be annoyed.
Tranquility: