next »

[Irock]

I have no other explaination what Edmund McMillan would say "It's like a concetration camp" if it wasn't just to grab attention and act in front of the camera.

People are looking into this way too much. It's almost certainly just a casual over-dramatization. He probably put less thought into that than he does brushing his teeth.

[Alevice]

Which sadly represents anothr sad state of affairs anyway (that people dont give a fuck of others touchy subjects, but want others to give a fuck of theirs). But I will admit this doesn't belong this thread.

[Graham.]

@Eres

There was an article I read - that I lost the link for - about Blow. It was well circulated. This journalist spent a lot of time with the guy and wrote it up. I enjoyed it a lot. Anyway, it offered an interpretation of Braid. Here's my interpretation of some of it.

Blow sees Tim's journey as one of personal discovery. He (Blow) has a lot of internal conflict about isolation, resulting from the pursuit of intellectual individuality - or intellectualism if you prefer. He's always tried to justify his behaviour to himself, and constantly looks back for some sort of answer to his current uneasiness. He's always looking back to understand because the past contains the strength of his founding relationships. The present is more like a memory of them. So he tries to go back to understand why he drove himself to be alone. In the end he sort-of forces himself to accept the present. He's not happy with it, but understanding the finality of the past kind of makes him feel like the present must be justified. No matter how many ways you look at it you're still just as much you as you were before. You either deal with it or you don't.

Something like that. Obviously I'm off.

[Paul Eres]

Paul: Were on earth are you getting "shut up" and "stop talking about it" from that?

okay, to me it works a bit like this:

re the "who cares" one:

let's say there's a thread where people are discussing something that you do not care about, and are not interested in. you know that they care about it, and also know that nobody else cares about it. what is the likely motivation for saying "nobody cares" in that thread? if you really didn't care, why would you care that they care, and care enough that they care to bother posting in a thread you don't care about? the only thing i can think of is that he feels that those who do care about it should not care about it

e.g. there's a thread about whether lizards can be furries, in a furry forum, or whether they should be called scalies. you yourself happen to not care about furries. why then would you bother to post in the thread saying "nobody cares about this topic besides you guys"? the only motivation i can think of is that you don't think those people should care about it either. is there any other possible motivation? if so, what?

re the "make a better movie yourself" thing:

eric described it as "I figure, if you want that story told, tell that story, it won't get made whining on a forum." -- which to me implies that he feels we should *not* whine about it on a forum. that is kind of the obvious implication of the statement, i think? what other motivation is there to say that if they can do it better they should do it themselves, other than that he feels they should *not* complain about it?

the analogy i used back there was that indie game devs often have the same reaction to people criticizing their games (especially the less mature indie game devs), they react by saying 'if you think you can do better, make your own game'. that's usually used as a way to turn aside or divert otherwise valid criticism. is there any other possible reason to say that? if so, what?

so yes, they didn't literally say 'stop talking about it' but that felt like the implication of those statements, and the motivation behind them, and the only interpretation one could make of them. if that wasn't their motivation then i misinterpreted, but i'm still not sure what the motivation was? in the explanations you and eric gave of what was said, neither of you addressed what the motivation would be, you just restated what they said in different words. if you felt that i misunderstood the motivation, you didn't really provide any alternative motivation

sorry for writing so much here about something that seems so simple to me, only trying to be clear here

[PompiPompi]

Well sure, the whole point is to exagerrate everything to make it look interesting, an informative documentry would probably be a lot more boring to the masses.
It needs to be exciting to sell.
This is why I am suspicious this is hollywood style self promotion. I KNOW actors do that, so why not indies as well? Make sense to me.
Instead of thinking why they look like stereotypes and why they say these exaggerated dramatic things, a reasonable explaination is that they are acting in order to promote themselves.
I might be wrong, but this is the most plausable explaination I have.

[Malky]

Paul: Where on earth are you getting "shut up" and "stop talking about it" from that?

TeeGee: But this is an accurate portrayal of some indie developers. As far as I know, no elephants can fly.

Time to rephrase: If 3 elephants happened to be pink and a documentary about elephants as a whole addressed just these 3 elephants and thus gave the public the impression that all elephants are pink, what would you make of that?

Holy shit!  Someone made a documentary about elephants!  Thank god, I've been waiting for the public to become more aware about elephants, since I'm an elephant too!

Oh, man, they even made it accessible so non-elephants could understand what it's like to be an elephant?  Fantastic, I'm going to show this to my parents so they can understand elephants a little better.

[Eric McQuiggan]

I have no other explaination what Edmund McMillan would say "It's like a concetration camp" if it wasn't just to grab attention and act in front of the camera.

Sometimes people say things that don't mean exactly what the words mean. Also Hyperbole.

It's still a documentary because it's an unscripted look at a subject. Documentary doesn't mean a movie that presents completely objective truth(which is unobtainable).

Warning - while you were typing 4 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Waaaaaaa....

Tell me that my opinion is irrelevant because I am involved in indie gaming. SHit man, cant wait to read it. Oh wait you did. Shit. The excitement of surprise was lost.

I value your opinion. I never said it was irrelevant. My implication is when you're close to something, you have a lot of emotion and knowledge that the vast majority of people who are paying attention have no interest in knowing. But they might look into it! Let them know if they ask!

Warning - while you were typing 5 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Waaaaaaaaaa....

[Paul Eres]

@Eres

There was an article I read - that I lost the link for - about Blow. It was well circulated. This journalist spent a lot of time with the guy and wrote it up. I enjoyed it a lot. Anyway, it offered an interpretation of Braid. Here's my interpretation of some of it.

Blow sees Tim's journey as one of personal discovery. He (Blow) has a lot of internal conflict about isolation, resulting from the pursuit of intellectual individuality - or intellectualism if you prefer. He's always tried to justify his behaviour to himself, and constantly looks back for some sort of answer to his current uneasiness. He's always looking back to understand because the past contains the strength of his founding relationships. The present is more like a memory of them. So he tries to go back to understand why he drove himself to be alone. In the end he sort-of forces himself to accept the present. He's not happy with it, but understanding the finality of the past kind of makes him feel like the present must be justified. No matter how many ways you look at it you're still just as much you as you were before. You either deal with it or you don't.

Something like that. Obviously I'm off.

yeah that sounds somewhat similar to what i wrote, except that instead of it just being about a particular romantic relationship it's about human relationships / friendships in general. so i do think it's possible to figure out what he meant in it, but i'm not surprised that most journalists missed it, particular because most game journalists often don't get to the end of a game before reviewing it, and a lot of what braid "meant" exists in the final level of braid (like, maybe 80% of braid's meaning is contained in that single level)

reading that i actually feel a bit sorry for blow, because from what you wrote it seems like he became isolated from others due to his various habits. i don't think that necessarily has to happen; one can be a "genius" or whatever and still have regular friends, one just has to communicate with them on their level rather than your own. if feynmann could do it so could he

[TeeGee]

TeeGee: But this is an accurate portrayal of some indie developers. As far as I know, no elephants can fly.

I don't see it that way. I think it exaggerates a lot and paints everything in a very skewed light for the sake of its thesis. I'm pretty sure no indie dev's workflow (even Fish's) includes jumping into pools with glasses on . It's also called Indie Game: The Movie, which suggests that what we see is how the indie scene looks in general (and that's how most reviews I saw interpret it). I just feel it's closer to something like The Social Network than an actual documentary.

That said, I'm not going to argue about the personal reception of the movie beyond what I already said. It's purely subjective. I see your point and Eric may as well be right that my viewpoint is too skewed. Just sharing my honest opinion about it.

And if a large fraction of people actually living in that piece or reality think it doesn't accurately represent it, then it fails as a documentary.

I think if we were to take a blanket survey of all indie devs world wide, you'd see that the people against this movies portrayal and the people at are cool with it are basically 50/50. So where would this leave us?

A lot of people in this thread (or TIGs apparently) don't like the image it's painting of indies. And yet, on other forums, on twitter, on blogs, you hear the exact opposite from indies that don't frequent this forum. So that argument I think falls to a standstill.

You may be right. I haven't really researched it much. I would say that if something is factual it should get closer to 100% approval from the respective field. But this is a very personal and creative field we are talking about, so who knows.


In any case, I don't see why people get legitimately pissed about this topic. It's just a movie, and we're discussing it, on a forum. Is it weird or bad that we have different opinions about it?

[Eric McQuiggan]

eric described it as "I figure, if you want that story told, tell that story, it won't get made whining on a forum." -- which to me implies that he feels we should *not* whine about it on a forum. that is kind of the obvious implication of the statement, i think? what other motivation is there to say that if they can do it better they should do it themselves, other than that he feels they should *not* complain about it?

You talk about it all you want on a forum, but things don't get made just talking on a forum.

[PompiPompi]

I have no other explaination what Edmund McMillan would say "It's like a concetration camp" if it wasn't just to grab attention and act in front of the camera.

Sometimes people say things that don't mean exactly what the words mean. Also Hyperbole.

It's still a documentary because it's an unscripted look at a subject. Documentary doesn't mean a movie that presents completely objective truth(which is unobtainable).

Warning - while you were typing 4 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Waaaaaaa....

Tell me that my opinion is irrelevant because I am involved in indie gaming. SHit man, cant wait to read it. Oh wait you did. Shit. The excitement of surprise was lost.

I value your opinion. I never said it was irrelevant. My implication is when you're close to something, you have a lot of emotion and knowledge that the vast majority of people who are paying attention have no interest in knowing. But they might look into it! Let them know if they ask!

Warning - while you were typing 5 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Waaaaaaaaaa....

You want to call it documentry? Whatever, documentry has a very broad definition. It's just not informative but rather a promotional documentry.
Kind of like when someone write a news story that is ment to promote some body that paid the journalist to make this news story.
I hope you are not sticking to vague definitions to say there is no difference between different documentries.
If you accept it's a promotional documentry with very little educational value, then we agree.

[Malky]

You want to call it documentry? Whatever, documentry has a very broad definition. It's just not informative but rather a promotional documentry.
Kind of like when someone write a news story that is ment to promote some body that paid the journalist to make this news story.
I hope you are not sticking to vague definitions to say there is no difference between different documentries.
If you accept it's a promotional documentry with very little educational value, then we agree.

What?  This was super informative!  Anyone who doesn't know about indie games would learn a TON from seeing this documentary!

I think what you're trying to get at is that it's not strictly informative.  It has stylistic elements in addition to the information being presented.

But that's okay!  Lots of documentaries are like that.  Many films exist on a gradient, trapped somewhere between two (or more) genres.  It's not any less of a documentary for it, but it's not just a documentary either.

I think (correct me if I'm jumping to conclusions here) that you'd rather have a different documentary.  Maybe you even feel misled about the nature of this documentary.

I'm sorry about that!  I bet the filmmakers are too.  I don't think anyone tried to mislead you, I think you're the casualty of just being in the wrong audience.

[Paul Eres]

@eric. yeah i agree -- however, things can *begin* getting made through that means. you know, by brainstorming. if someone *were* to make a documentary that would appeal to indies (and other creative types) rather than the mainstream, then threads like this would be good "source" material: figuring out what people liked about this movie, what they didn't like, and how they could do it better. so this thread alone won't get anything made, but if something were to be made, threads like this would help the people making it figure out what they want to make, and get ideas

for instance, when someone says they wish it were more like those little adam atomic clips, a collection of little things like that, that's helpful. it's not just "whining", it's a useful idea

[Alevice]

THIS POST IS KINDA OUTDATED BECAUSE SEAS OF POSTS. ARGH

Well sure, the whole point is to exagerrate everything to make it look interesting, an informative documentry would probably be a lot more boring to the masses.
It needs to be exciting to sell.
This is why I am suspicious this is hollywood style self promotion. I KNOW actors do that, so why not indies as well? Make sense to me.
Instead of thinking why they look like stereotypes and why they say these exaggerated dramatic things, a reasonable explaination is that they are acting in order to promote themselves.
I might be wrong, but this is the most plausable explaination I have.

I think the fact that indies as a whole have brought quite  fw revolutionary stuff to the modern gaming industry and can dare to explore areas that the AAA can't (due to huge financial risks and shit) to be quite interesting. Glimpse at those crazy ideas (hell, more braid less blow). remember that cactus guy and his crazy mondo games? Remember that toady guy and his rathr crazy uberdetailed crazy dorf simulator? remmebr that notch asshate who dared to make a crafting/lego block shit?

Paul: Where on earth are you getting "shut up" and "stop talking about it" from that?

TeeGee: But this is an accurate portrayal of some indie developers. As far as I know, no elephants can fly.

Time to rephrase: If 3 elephants happened to be pink and a documentary about elephants as a whole addressed just these 3 elephants and thus gave the public the impression that all elephants are pink, what would you make of that?

Holy shit!  Someone made a documentary about elephants!  Thank god, I've been waiting for the public to become more aware about elephants, since I'm an elephant too!

Oh, man, they even made it accessible so non-elephants could understand what it's like to be an elephant?  Fantastic, I'm going to show this to my parents so they can understand elephants a little better.

hey son, why the are you pink.

I AM NOT PINK DAD

IM NOT JUDGING YOU SON, IM JUST CURIOUS ABOUT THE WHOLE PINK DEAL

FOR THE LAST TIME DAD, I AM NOT PINK!


Also new movie:

Gay Life the Movie, starring a bunch of transvestites and no one else.*


*nothing against trasvestites, but why not just call it trasvestite life instead?

Tell me that my opinion is irrelevant because I am involved in indie gaming. SHit man, cant wait to read it. Oh wait you did. Shit. The excitement of surprise was lost.

I value your opinion. I never said it was irrelevant. My implication is when you're close to something, you have a lot of emotion and knowledge that the vast majority of people who are paying attention have no interest in knowing. But they might look into it! Let them know if they ask!

I get what you are saying, but I beg to differ. I don't expect people to learn all the crazy intricacies of the indie games and its community. But I would expect a documentary to be slightly broader about the whole thing (examples in my first quote). I don't mind having talked about these 3 guys. I mind having for the most part only talked about them (talk about hardships, undoubted successes, sad utter failures, etc), in what is meant to be a documentary.

[Paul Eres]

In any case, I don't see why people get legitimately pissed about this topic. It's just a movie, and we're discussing it, on a forum. Is it weird or bad that we have different opinions about it?

i think the reason for this is that a lot of people are *close* to the movie in the opposite direction. for instance, people who are friends with phil are just as close to the movie as people who are friends with his ex-business partner whose name and face they censored in the film; i suspect a lot of the people upset about us talking about the movie are upset exactly because they are too close to it. for instance, glaiel is personal friends with edmund and tommy, and he got upset with us for criticizing the movie, probably exactly because he's too close to it