Indie Game: The Movie

[droqen]

Regarding Blinkworks'
"Indie Game: The Movie"

[droqen]

[confusing excerpt removed]

This excerpt was written in a way that confused me. I don't remember this part in Indie Game: The Movie at all, so I'm going to see if I can find it and write my own excerpt.

Also, it has me thinking about the way I extract my own excerpts. I wonder: How confusing is this whole subforum to other people? People who aren't me, who don't have the blessing of context? I know some other people read this stuff sometimes. Hello, you! But of course I have to remind myself, this place isn't for you, it's for me. It's my notebook, you're just reading it.

Anyway, I'll go find that piece of the movie tomorrow and see what's really being said, and by whom.

[droqen]

It starts with a clip of Soulja Boy playing Braid, laughing, saying "You're this little guy in a suit, it look like, Mario, in the future."

[droqen]

"On release day, you start seeing the reactions of people on the internet and for me it was a very addictive thing? cause here I spent several years, you know, working on this thing in isolation, for the most part, and then suddenly it gets out, and a lot of people -- like, tens of thousands of people -- play it in the first few days. And . . . (hesitation) . . . you see that all over the internet and for me that was actually a very negative experience." -- Jonathan Blow

Okay, yes, and here it's someone COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TALKING. Thanks a lot, whatever website grabbed that first excerpt. Thanks for nothing.

"When Braid was coming out, when people would talk about it online, and this was the really serious birth of blog commentary, lots of people writing pretty good stuff about what they were playing, what they thought of it . . . " -- I'm not sure who this is, maybe one of the documentarians?

Back to JB.

"I found that there was this perception of me on the Internet that was running away very quickly from who I think I am, and that was kind of disturbing, and there didn't seem to be much that I could do about that. So that was actually a pretty negative experience and I was actually seriously depressed for probably three or four months after Braid came out. You know, when you work a long time on something really intricate like that, there's a hope that people are gonna understand the things that you did, and that you will have, you know, some line of communication with your audience and things like that. And . . . some of . . . the most demoralizing things were actually positive reviews of the game. Game would come out and people would say, "Oh, this game's great," you know, "Nine out of ten," or "Ten out of ten," and then they'd say what's good about the game, and in many cases, it would be just a very surface understanding of the game that didn't even see what I thought was most special about it. Not that many people understood. And that was a little bit heartbreaking, in a way, it was like, oh, I visualized that I was gonna . . . have some kind of connection with people. through this game. And, they think it's great, but the connection isn't there? because they're kind of living in a different world, still. So they think it's great for some of the reasons that I do, but, but not for other . . ." -JB

[droqen]

At this point JB trails off. He's silent for a second, and the documentary cuts back to Soulja Boy's video of Braid, showing his 'Mario in the future' almost falling into spikes, but then rewinding time so that he doesn't touch the spikes while they all go "whoaa whoa ohhhh" and Soulja Boy finally says, "Ain't got no point to the game, you just walk around, jumpin' on shit."

[droqen]

Cut back to a (very dramatic) silhouette of Jonathan Blow. "They're not seeing the most important thing."

[droqen]

In my research about irony, I've come to understand where all the varying and seemingly incoherent definitions come from, or at least to my own theory; irony is when party A communicates a message with a secret meaning to party B, with the shared understanding between both parties that there is a party C who, if they received the message, would not understand the message, and would only understand the surface-level message. This formula describes verbal irony (A speaks to B, and C either exists or is imagined) but, rearranged, also describes dramatic irony (Writer and actors A speak to audience B, via the character C), and rearranged further, can describe situational irony (Situation A is revealed to present-self B, looking back on none-the-wiser past-self C).

In one or more of these senses, it seems ironic that Jonathan Blow says "I found that there was this perception of me on the Internet that was running away very quickly from who I think I am, and that was kind of disturbing, and there didn't seem to be much that I could do about that" while being presented in this particular way. Maybe he did actually choose to be presented this way. It's not really important for me to guess one way or another.

[droqen]

I visualized that I was gonna . . . have some kind of connection with people. through this game. And, they think it's great, but the connection isn't there? because they're kind of living in a different world, still.

[droqen]

This is the part that I want to carry around with me. This relatable, shining jewel of a thought. It's taken me damn well long enough to move on from this. It's strange to have found it in Indie Game: The Movie, but I guess in another way it's not so strange at all. This is about the internet, about society on the internet, and what were indie games if not born of internet society?

I visualized that I was gonna have some kind of connection with people on the internet. Maybe with people in general. And the dynamic that Blow describes, yeah, I feel that. Keeping in mind that this is like over a decade old at this point, I so deeply feel him, the him of over eleven years ago when he says, "they think it's great, but the connection isn't there."

[droqen]

Pancelor said something similar.

Connection, as it turns out, is hard.

But not impossible.

[droqen]

I was talking to Chris and realized another thing: I had the same experience as Jonathan Blow but reacted differently — I felt positive about it, but because I accepted that perception (that incomplete "surface understanding" of my work and my self) as my identity.

That obviously was bad and caused a lot of problems, though it took a long time for me to actually be capable of perceiving it.

[pingback: CONSENSUS games]