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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGamesInsane Gamasutra comment thread on Adam Coate's game Flytrap
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Author Topic: Insane Gamasutra comment thread on Adam Coate's game Flytrap  (Read 32723 times)
Gregory
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« on: December 15, 2009, 09:18:16 PM »

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4213/pondering_indie_spirit_derek_yu_.php

Check out the comment thread on that post.  I don't think it's been linked here yet.  A crazy man hijacks a story about the Great High Yu in order to complain that no one's paid attention to the game he made that was only available for 4 days.  Along the way, he makes horribly sexist comments and is asked to return some guy's wife's Gamecube game.

I'm still not sure if he was trolling.  My fiance and I were laughing for minutes.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2009, 09:35:14 PM »

I always get uncomfortable when I see people publicly self-destructing like this. I'm glad he eventually apologized and calmed down, rather than keeping things escalating totally out of control.

Also: Michael Rose's comments on how to format press releases are pretty informative. Smiley
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Alec
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« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2009, 12:47:57 AM »

 Facepalm
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GregWS
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« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2009, 12:57:57 AM »

Facepalm
Pretty much sums that one up.

...the gamecube part was so brilliantly out of left field though!  Cheesy
« Last Edit: December 16, 2009, 01:39:42 AM by GregWS » Logged
floatstarpx
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« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2009, 01:55:04 AM »

man, that's funny.
actually even more embarassing than when Luc Bernard went insane, starting arguments in the comments of all the bad reviews his game got.

I read the first few posts, and thought I'd try to find some info on his game - but when I typed it in to google, absolutely nothing came up!! I've tried "flytrap game", "flytrap x360", "flytrap xbox indie", etcetc.. eventually I found that one negative gamer review! - no website, no xbox marketplace listing, nothing....!

then I read a few more posts down and realised I didn't actually want to find his game.

the Gamecube game bit is amazing, that wasn't there the last time I read the thread.

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« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2009, 05:47:07 AM »

Is this like a new Bob's thread?  Durr...?
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2009, 06:38:38 AM »

It's really sad when indie developers decide to act like jerks just to drum up some attention for their games. It may work in the short run, but it's like pissing your pants to keep warm. You may get some attention for your game, but you get a lot more negative attention for yourself and lose any respect and credibility you may have had. See: Bob Pelloni or the JForce Games guys. Any publicity is not good publicity.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2009, 07:19:24 AM by chrknudsen » Logged

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« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2009, 06:46:26 AM »

This was sad, but also hilarious. I'm not sure how that works, but it's true...

Anyway, when I saw the dude's picture, I went, "Oh! The Flytrap guy! Oh, yeah, that game sucked..." I believe the trial version lived out its life on my 360 for...10 minutes?
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dariusk
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« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2009, 07:51:55 AM »

If you need a convenient recap of the thread to forward to people, I put one together here:

http://tinysubversions.com/2009/12/how-to-squander-your-15-minutes-by-repeatedly-shooting-yourself-in-both-feet-an-instruction-manual/
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Cthulhu32
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« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2009, 08:28:26 AM »

So if you notice the comments I posted in there, Adam and I were actually friends for about 6 years prior to him releasing this game on Xbox Indie. I met him when I was living in Seattle, he worked with a few people I was friends with, so we eventually met through groups of friends. He was super into arcade machines, I was totally down with nerding out. So we hung out a few times and he was always a bit off but never seemed this mentally unstable.

-------- WARNING: LONG READ -----------

I did not hear much from him until I moved out to Colorado, and all of a sudden he IMs me and is like "hey! I think I live near you." and turns out he moved back to Colorado (he is originally from here). He was living with his girlfriend in an apartment about 20 mins from my house, so I was totally down for hanging out and playing some old school games. He also had gotten a job at Sony Online Entertainment as a game tester, and I was working in Boulder at Leviathan Games as a programmer. Some of the people I worked with knew the people at Sony or had previously worked there, so it was kind of a cool "hey people know each other" sort of experience.

We hung out a couple more times (once during his b-day), he was super into this Neo Geo arcade he bought, we'd play some games and he'd talk to me about game designs. He actually originally asked me if I wanted to code Fly Trap, he would sketch out ideas on how it was going to work and why it would make all this money. It seemed like a fun little casual game idea, but I was super busy on my own projects + work at the time, so I passed. A year and a half later, he's fired from Sony Online, my company loses some big contracts and we're all let go, and I get another PM. "You want to work on this Godzilla game I'm doing?" I think "Godzilla"? Huh... umm how could you get the rights to work on a commercial Godzilla game. He assures me he can land a cool million and get franchise rights for Godzilla. It will be the "biggest game" on the PSN network. I'm pretty skeptical, but I give him some advice from what I learned at my previous game company, and how to approach PR at any company with something pretty left field like this.

Later, he has me over again and shows me a prototype of the Godzilla game. Its just a flash movie, no actual gameplay happening yet. I tell him it looks like a cool start, he's pretty offended I am not wanting to throw some money into it and invest... ? And I don't want to quit my new job to work on his project. He also hands me an Atari documentary and tells me I should borrow it, so I'm cool with that.

A few more months pass, I buy a house with my new job's income (lower than what he's posting) and 2 years of savings from my old job, and he tells me he has a beta of his new Xbox indie game to show me. I'm extremely supportive, tell him to bring it on over and I'll check it out! He shows up, tells me the levels are actually not working and its not ready to be tested, so I'm like "ummmm.. okay lets play some games." So we play games for a couple of hours and talk about games and the industry. I mention TIGs and the last Tigjam I was at, he doesn't really talk about any industry stuff but is super into his upcoming game. So on his way out, he grabs a Gamecube game I had laying around and asks "hey can I borrow this? thanks" and I felt really bad because I had his DVD for like 5 months (I had not seen the guy in that long.)

We part ways, and a few weeks later I get a message on my gmail account:

2:52 PM Adam: the game got approved...will be online in the next 24 hours
2:52 PM me: right on man
2:52 PM   whats the title?
2:53 PM Adam: Flytrap
2:53 PM me: awesome
2:53 PM Adam: yeah it's only $5
2:53 PM   and it'll be by far the best game on indie games
2:53 PM me: right on
2:53 PM Adam: yeah, so buy it
2:53 PM me: haha
2:53 PM   i have no xbox points
2:53 PM Adam: so buy some
2:55 PM   if you can't spend $5 to support a friend, then you're no friend of mine
2:56 PM me: haha is that how that works :p
2:56 PM   well thats awesome you got it approved man
2:57 PM Adam: you're a piece of work
2:57 PM   I'm done talking to you
2:58 PM   if you made a game, it wouldn't matter if it cost $60, I'd buy it
2:58 PM me: ??
2:58 PM   chill out man, when I get some points I'll snag it
2:58 PM Adam: when will that be
2:59 PM me: Xmas most likely, I asked for some points for my bday/xmas
2:59 PM Adam: make 85k a year and can't spend $5 on a friend's game?
2:59 PM me: yeah alright, calm down man

So thats where we stand, I've been bugging him to return my wife's gamecube game and trying not to be uncivil, hoping he doesn't toss a brick through my window. A few people here know this story already (I thought I was being an asshole and I felt really shaky/bad after this conversation so I needed to talk to non-crazies), but I thought I'd get it off my chest in writing since he's gone public with his negativity.
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dariusk
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« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2009, 08:42:33 AM »

That guy gets classier and classier.
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handCraftedRadio
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« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2009, 08:46:14 AM »

Quote
DY: Yeah, it's true. Suffering, I think, definitely helps the kind of artistic side of things. [laughs] I do agree that a lot of good games and entertainment comes out of people just going through tough times.

Maybe we should all go do really mean things to derek so he can go through some tough times and make even better games!
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Alec
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« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2009, 09:05:31 AM »

Thanks for the update, Luke. I was curious about that.

I was like... "how could someone ever get pissed off at Luke?"

There doesn't seem to be a legit reason. Tongue
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2009, 09:10:06 AM »

Quote
DY: Yeah, it's true. Suffering, I think, definitely helps the kind of artistic side of things. [laughs] I do agree that a lot of good games and entertainment comes out of people just going through tough times.

Maybe we should all go do really mean things to derek so he can go through some tough times and make even better games!

That's actually an interesting comment. I agree that interesting stories will likely come from a developer's own personal hardships and experiences, but I also think that if that hardship is of a financial nature, the resulting game is likely to suffer and become too bland in an effort to make a "commercial" game. Without having ever played Flytrap, I get the feeling that this is what happened with that game; the developer had got laid off and had spent $10,000 on the game, so he probably needed it to make money, fast! All his talk about trying to appeal to women with having the weapon a super soaker and having the main character eat the enemies because women are apparently all about "consuming" just screams of trying to appeal as widely as possible. Bascially, if you make a game because you're strapped for cash, that game is more likely to be bland and uninteresting, I think.

Then again, Quite Soulless and Space Spy was made by a developer extremely strapped for cash, but I guess Vasily Zotov had seen enough hardship and suffering to balance that out -- those games are hardly bland! WTF
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« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2009, 09:15:56 AM »

That's actually an interesting comment. I agree that interesting stories will likely come from a developer's own personal hardships and experiences, but I also think that if that hardship is of a financial nature, the resulting game is likely to suffer and become too bland in an effort to make a "commercial" game. Without having ever played Flytrap, I get the feeling that this is what happened with that game; the developer had got laid off and had spent $10,000 on the game, so he probably needed it to make money, fast! All his talk about trying to appeal to women with having the weapon a super soaker and having the main character eat the enemies because women are apparently all about "consuming" just screams of trying to appeal as widely as possible. Bascially, if you make a game because you're strapped for cash, that game is more likely to be bland and uninteresting, I think.

*quote fixed*
Well, he borrowed $10,000 from his grandpa to pay the programmer. He did all the art/design himself.

Thanks for the update, Luke. I was curious about that.

I was like... "how could someone ever get pissed off at Luke?"

There doesn't seem to be a legit reason. Tongue

Haha yeah I might be a bit of a shut-in sometimes but I try to always be friendly Gentleman
« Last Edit: December 16, 2009, 09:57:23 AM by Cthulhu32 » Logged

Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #15 on: December 16, 2009, 09:24:12 AM »

Well, he borrowed $10,000 from his grandpa to pay the programmer. He did all the art/design himself.

Ouch. Never, ever borrow money from friends or family to develop a game. It's one thing if it's your own money you're spending, but owing money to relatives will just make you even more desperate for the game to sell. I think that desperation is pretty evident in that gmail chat you had with him -- he seems like the kind of guy that'd try to get you involved in a pyramid scheme type of deal.
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« Reply #16 on: December 16, 2009, 09:45:26 AM »

Wait, so he pisses his pants over some guy who calls himself "The Negative Gamer" giving his game a negative review?  Facepalm

I thought he was a troll at first, but after reading everything here and on Gamasutra I'm convinced he's just crazy. I also have a feeling he's going to show up here, he seems like the kind of person who obsessively googles his own name.  Screamy
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ChevyRay
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« Reply #17 on: December 16, 2009, 09:50:26 AM »

That's actually an interesting comment. I agree that interesting stories will likely come from a developer's own personal hardships and experiences, but I also think that if that hardship is of a financial nature, the resulting game is likely to suffer and become too bland in an effort to make a "commercial" game. Without having ever played Flytrap, I get the feeling that this is what happened with that game; the developer had got laid off and had spent $10,000 on the game, so he probably needed it to make money, fast! All his talk about trying to appeal to women with having the weapon a super soaker and having the main character eat the enemies because women are apparently all about "consuming" just screams of trying to appeal as widely as possible. Bascially, if you make a game because you're strapped for cash, that game is more likely to be bland and uninteresting, I think.

Well, he borrowed $10,000 from his grandpa to pay the programmer. He did all the art/design himself.

Just noting a misquote here. HandCraftedRadio did not say that, chrknudsen did. Smiley
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MaloEspada
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« Reply #18 on: December 16, 2009, 09:52:45 AM »

Quote
Raigan, the point I'm trying to make is that I've been waiving the best game ever made in your faces but you're all too busy going ga-ga over the latest platformer gimmick to notice.

I stopped caring here.
Not worth of my time.


Trolls are everywhere people. Don't feed them.
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c-foo peng
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« Reply #19 on: December 16, 2009, 10:27:39 AM »

This is a sad sad tale. Grandpa's $10,000? For an XBLI game? You're lucky if you make half that back from XBLI, on a GOOD game.
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