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“The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

grumpygamer.com

21–30 of 280 posts

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreeing with the art direction is one thing but people are going beyond constructive criticism by being toxic and throwing personal attacks.

Not to pry, but do you have any examples of this?

Go read the HN comments, and then imagine what a cesspool like Youtube or Reddit would do if HN itself was that "down" on it.

Personally I think it's a better art style than Tumbleweed, but I had issues with that game's story.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#22
post #8

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized in your eyes. However, you're really old now…

I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#23

I feel bad for him, but really the problem is he’s made a directorial mistake and it looks like the only point it’s gonna click is when the sales numbers hit. Will he realize his mistaken then or will he continue to blame the customer?

Could you summarize what you feel the mistake is? Normally I'd RTFA but in this case it's a lot of arguing in threads and I'm missing context.

Some people don't like the art style chosen for the new game, which is pretty stylized. Some of them are being extremely (vocally) shitty about it.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#24
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagreeing with the art direction is one thing but people are going beyond constructive criticism by being toxic and throwing personal attacks.

Not to pry, but do you have any examples of this?

Some references can be found here: https://kotaku.com/return-monkey-island-ron-gilbert-art-styl...

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#26
I think you got to discount points of view from the perspective of how valuable their perspective is to your goal. The problem with social media and open forums is that it’s not obvious and takes time to figure out who’s who.

Having said that, it seems a little childish to me that Ron just shut down the haters. I think that there might be a bit of his ego attached to the outcome versus the process. I can only speculate that perhaps he wanted recognition and adulation for this bold choice and was hurt when feedback didn’t match expectations.

Sure people might be rude about it, but it seems that there is clearly a market for the retro pixelated aesthetic, so why not give people what they want if his goal is to satisfy the fan base and continue the story? I have no doubt the story, set, characters and jokes will be great. I guess the comment asking for Ron to do a Sonic might have been too on the nose for him.

I think that any creator has to reconcile that if they create for others, their art becomes something more than just theirs, like a sort of reflexive co-creation.

Seems to me the best artists understand this while not letting it stifle their creativity.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#27
The healthiest thing for a creative person to do is ignore reviews, and not pay attention to comments about your work. Mentally, and emotionally, and creatively, I mean. Your job is to make things that other people can appreciate, or not, but you don't need to listen to them if you don't want to. Active community engagement is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's a marketing technique, not an artistic one. I'm sure it works for some people, but don't feel like you need to do it if it causes you pain, and not, by any means, if it makes it harder to do your job.

It may feel necessary in 2022 to engage with fans and build a personal brand, but go ahead and audit the creators you really respect, and how many of them do this. Some do, I'm sure, but some don't.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#28
post #14

Gamers are the most entitled consumer group I've ever seen. It's astounding. Someone wants to create something, and there's just so much hate and negativity on something that people didn't even pay for. I've seen it on HN also. Someone creates a thing, and then people pour out of the woodwork to lump horrible criticism. No one is asking for blind praise for what they create, but surely there's a middle ground between…

That is what was going through my mind while reading it. Entitled brats. They are a bunch of entitled brats.

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#29
post #8

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized in your eyes. However, you're really old now…

Yeah, naively I would expect people whoever played the original games to be quite grown up by now. Are they really the ones leaving those comments?

Re: “The joy of sharing has been driven from me“

#30
post #8

I don't understand the outrage at this art style. Granted, I've never played any of the Monkey Island games, and have no emotional attachment to the content. To me, the art style seems very similar to a Cartoon Network cartoon, and that may have broad appeal to kids today. Like I kind of understand why people are upset: this thing you loved 32 years ago is being vandalized in your eyes. However, you're really old now…

I'm not sure if it's even an exclusively nostalgia thing. Over the past few years I've seen a lot of complaining around art style changes. Notably the Civ V -> Civ VI art style change pissed a lot of people off. Personally I loved the game, but a lot of series veterans didn't even bother to try it.

In the other thread about this, someone brought up the colloquially named "Zelda Effect". It is most evident when reviewing Wind Waker, which used cartoony cell-shaded graphics: contemporary comments featured quite a lot of vitriol over that decision, but the game is now fondly remembered as one of the best entrants in the series.
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