Spiderweb Software - Interview @ Don't Die

Myrthos

Myrthos

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Jeff Vogel did a lengthy interview with Don't Die about indie game development, the state of the industry, how games are reviewed, the internet and more.

So, I'm just gonna zoom out meta really quick. Everything on the Internet now works on clicks. Everyone from the lowest blogger to The New York Times gets paid by clicks. You write something for 1,000 clicks, you make $n. You write something that gets 2,000 clicks, you make twice that. This is an oversimplification, but that's the basic idea. When you write something, you don't want to be telling the hard truth. You don't want to make the world a better place. You want to get clicked, and that's how you eat. And that's the system.

I think that the system has certain effects on how people communicate and how people think. If you write an article that makes people angry and people get super-angry and they keep going to it and arguing about it and going to that page and arguing about it, that's the most efficient way to make money. And the most efficient way to make people angry is to go to certain sorts of politics and certain sorts of identity politics and just bang the drum and everyone gets mad, and then they'll go to your comments section and they'll get in big arguments and that's more and more and more clicks. And, you know, I can't change the system. It just developed and here it is and we all just have to deal with it in our own ways.

I delete a lot of bookmarks. A lot of websites that I love get infected by it to varying degrees, and I just go there less. When people write a headline -- clickbait is really popular and I think it is a very accurate term. You will see a website like "Five Things You Didn't Know about Cherries" or this next one's a real example from Slate: "You've Been Making Scrambled Eggs the Wrong Way Your Whole Life." Let us tell you the right way. The headlines themselves are designed to make you angry.

The headlines themselves are designed to raise your blood pressure just to click and go, "Oh hell yeah I know how to make scrambled eggs. I'm gonna go to the forums and let's argue about scrambled eggs."

Let's not. Scrambled eggs are fine. Scrambled eggs don't need our help. Videogames are afflicted by this, but everyone's afflicted by this now. Identity politics are the best ways to get the clicks. If I was working for Kotaku, I would write articles all the livelong day that was like -- what's a game? Splatoon. Splatoon's a game that just came out.

"Splatoon's an Example of White Male Privilege." Say I wrote an article with that headline. It doesn't matter what the article is about. People are going to click on that link. It doesn't necessarily -- I don't know. I've never played Splatoon. For all I know it is all about white male privilege. So, if anyone wants a quote to pull out of context: Splatoon is all about white male privilege. There. "Noted Indie Developer Calls Splatoon Racist." [Laughs.] Why not? I need the attention, too. We don’t get a lot of press.

People single out the gaming press for it, but all press works like that on the Internet. And because the Internet is the only press -- in my country now, that's how all the press works. I personally think it kind of sucks but that's just where we are. All of everyone's wants and needs have added up to that and we just kind of have to live with it, but every once in a while, I'm still gonna say, "This isn't great. I'm not enjoying this very much." It won't change anything, but at least once in a while people should say it.
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More information.
 
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Mythros - you're obviously doing it wrong ... your title should have been:

Spiderweb's Jeff Vogel says RPG forum commenters are a bunch of rabid brain-dead trolls!

:)
 
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Jeff Vogel is always a good read. But what is the deal with the font size at that site? Definitely needs a little editing review.
 
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Nephologist said:
Jeff Vogel is always a good read. But what is the deal with the font size at that site? Definitely needs a little editing review.
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I didn't worry too much about that ... I was just happy that it wasn't spread across 12 pages for extra clicks and views. ;)
 
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Before the internet, you can change the world "clicks" with "sales". Nothing new here.
 
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Nephologist said:
That seriously is the worst preview I've ever read.
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Honestly it is hard to read so many sites these days ... even places I used to write for I can barely visit, and some I have totally removed from my RSS feeds! I can't think of the last time I have fully read a review on a commercial site. I read stuff here, running gear on specific single-author blogs (one for GPS watches, one for shoes), and so on ...
 
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Gwendo said:
Before the internet, you can change the world "clicks" with "sales". Nothing new here.
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While that may be true to a limited extent, there is something new. What's new is, at least here in the United States, the Internet, coupled with the corporate consolidation of surviving news outlets, have, in large measure, killed real journalism. There used to be guiding principles and standards that governed new reporting. All that, with few exceptions in the entire country, is out the window now. Journalism is junk. What is called news reporting today does not come close to passing the litmus test to seriously use the term 20 years ago.

People have always scoffed at and looked down on reporters and the news, often with good reason, but the lack of an active and responsible fourth estate is detrimental, at the very least, to a healthy democracy.
 
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That Guitar Hero preview was definitely worth reading. It isn't a bad article at all. I enjoy the prose and he covered all important aspects of the game in between his musings. Here are my favorite parts-

All video games are stupid, of course. That whole thing of, 'you're not really shooting terrorists or winning the World Cup, you're just pressing buttons' is patronizing and simplistic but every now and again you come across a game that has so little emotional connection to who you are that you end up standing there, gazing at the screen and saying "I'm just pressing buttons and my life has no meaning," to a slightly bemused PR person.

and

I'm not entirely dislocated from the appeal of this feature. There was a time when half a bottle of gin and a copy of Lips on Xbox 360 basically turned me into Boy George. I can do a gorgeous "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me," assuming there's no-one else in the house.

But I found, with that game, that I could sing it worse and score higher, by doing what the software wanted me to do, rather than what my Tanqueray-fueled inner-Culture Club needed to release.
 
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Capt. Huggy Face said:
While that may be true to a limited extent, there is something new. What's new is, at least here in the United States, the Internet, coupled with the corporate consolidation of surviving news outlets, have, in large measure, killed real journalism. There used to be guiding principles and standards that governed new reporting. All that, with few exceptions in the entire country, is out the window now. Journalism is junk. What is called news reporting today does not come close to passing the litmus test to seriously use the term 20 years ago.

People have always scoffed at and looked down on reporters and the news, often with good reason, but the lack of an active and responsible fourth estate is detrimental, at the very least, to a healthy democracy.
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It's still there, you just need to get away from all cable television venues and yellow rags.

I pull from a combination of sources: the local paper, Washington Post for center-left perspective, Wall Street Journal for center-right to right, NY Times for fairly-left plus in-depth work. For science and tech, I avoid Wired and go to Ars Technica. For gadgetry I try to stick with Anandtech. For sports I go the leagues themselves. For games, I'll pull in a combination of this site, Polygon, and a couple others.

Otherwise I've got a variety of Youtube channels that are primarily science focused (Veritasium, Minute Physics, Smarter Every Day). For gaming I'll check in with Fluent sometimes, though he's so prolific I can't hope to keep up. Otherwise I just stick with Scott Manley and his aerospace and sci-fi bent.

The takeaway is that the fourth estate and the effort to enlighten and educate is still out there, but that you have to find the right sources. I don't have television cable or watch television, but I'm still fairly well informed. It also helps to not ever see the yelling-heads garbage out there.
 
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Ah Vogel, the leprechaun of game development :D

I love how he gets worked up over 'all video games are stupid'. Well, all entertainment is stupid.
Eating is stupid. The only reasonable part about it is supplying your body with nutrients, which can be done more efficiently. Everything else is just abouf fluff and being a glutton or a snob.

In fact I appreciate it when people realize that video games are stupid, because that puts all the bigotted, frenzied discussion about them into perspective. Some people nowadays try to turn this silly hobby into a battleground for one political agenda or other, or just try to promote their own elitism and artsiness. If only they'd all just stuff their mouth with rancid eclairs instead.
 
I agree. Everything is stupid, including people. The same thing that killed journalism also killed science. We are become death. Destroyer of…whatever. The only real truth is there are two groups of people – those who know they’re stupid, and those who are too stupid to see just how stupid they are. The rest is noise. (But oh, the noise! Crawley said.) It can be graded, and ranked, and labeled, and is. And the stupid elitists with their glutinous snobbery will laugh at the moral atheists, philistine moralists, and other current procronisms of the ants until it’s time for the curtain call.

Or maybe not. Who knows? Not me. I’m just one more fucking idiot in this humdrum world of monkey-savages, whose most distinguishing feature is a glorious sack encompassing two beautiful nuts that makes the juice that feeds the gerbil as he spins the wheel of life. But oh, the noise!
 
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Unrestigered said:
I’m just one more fucking idiot in this humdrum world of monkey-savages, whose most distinguishing feature is a glorious sack encompassing two beautiful nuts that makes the juice that feeds the gerbil as he spins the wheel of life. But oh, the noise!
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Man, I usually have a comment to follow on just about anything, but this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av44AaOGakA
 
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