Slamdance Games ’08: What Now?

By: Tim

On: January 19th, 2007

As pointed out by Xander:

Did anyone see that Castle Crashers has pulled out of Slamdance too? From what I understand itâ€™s part controversy, part â€˜well since no one else is actually going now it seems like a waste of a tripâ€™.

Toblo was also forced to rejoin the competition against the wishes of the development team.

Personally I think Jason is right, the final paragraph in his open letter to all participants speak volumes.

For those of you who have already withdrawn, you probably feel that it’s too late to come back in (just like Peter Baxter feels like it’s too late to re-admit SCMRPG). We’re all familiar with the “stay the course” mentality, for sure. But I hope you will change your mind and come back. We can still save Slamdance, and make it our own, and use it as a platform to speak instead of shutting it down in a tomb of silence.

Toblo’s development team is rejoining, so to all finalists who have already withdrawn please reconsider going to the festival and participating in the discussion as mentioned on this page. The seat is still reserved for you.

I doubt that any other organizer would include SCMRPG as a finalist in their competition, so let’s not condemn all the good work that they had done up to this point. It’s as much of a learning process for them as it is to the rest of us.

Two sides fighting will only bring the matter to a standstill, plus if you’re vocal about the withdrawal of SCMRPG then it’s best to join the discussion because the ones who will be there to fight for your cause need all the help they can get. You don’t even have to resubmit your game anyway if you feel that strongly about it, just your presence at the festival is plenty of support.

Posted in Community

Miguel Rodriguez

No, condemn all the work they have done to this point. Condemn them to Hell for what they have done.
hanford

I think it’s all silly. I believe games can be taken as a serious art, but SCMRPG should not be the poster child for that movement. Why? because pure and simple SCM is just a poor game, and that has nothing to do with Columbine itself. It has to do with the art, the design, the gameplay.

I feel like supporters of the game are saying “Hey, you should be judging this game on lower art and gameplay standards because it’s an important subject”. And frankly, I don’t by that. This is a game festival, and gameplay should matter. Period.

Some people have said that this would never happen to a film … but we all know that there are tons of shitty films, even ones about important subjects, and many get left out of festivals all the time. This is no different: a crummy game about an important subject.

As an industry, we should choose our battles better. This is not the game to be waging the “games should be taken seriously” war with.
http://web.mac.com/shinjisixteen Shinji16

Listen to only half of what I say.

Listen to all of what I say.

CHEESE IS EVIL!!!

I think the Slamdance issue is like a bunch of high school girls trying to see who they can make unpopular by being ditzy douchebags. That goes for both sides.
http://www.datarealms.com/devlog Data

Very well put, hanford. The quality, taste, and underlying motivations/justifications (as per the author’s manifesto) of this title hardly make it something I’d feel compelled to rally behind.
Greg

If it was a game about poo people building things with poo, I’d rally for it.
Jimmy

It’s a bit weird to say “Personally I think Jason is right,” and link to his letter, but not really address any of the well-thought-out rebuttals in that comments section.

Shitty game or not, it was selected by the competition process, and the organizer dropped the game without outside pressure because he was uncomfortable with games covering that subject matter. That’s not a fundamental problem with contests in general, that’s a brain-dead individual running a competition into the ground.

And does that even matter? Let it die. Indy games don’t need to tie themselves to a film festival. Like the always-insightful Jonathan Blow wrote:
“There’s one important thing that changes the dynamics of this situation, compared to past ones: we have the internet. The internet is a great way of making public statements, as we have done over this past week. I think a statement made during a screening at Slamdance would reach many fewer people. And, whereas I would be sad if Slamdance decommissioned the game side of their operations (though frankly they are going to have to explain that public statement they made if they wish to continue without suspicion), the fact is that the internet is the biggest independent games festival in the world. Artists of earlier decades didn’t have it … but we do.”
Tim

linking to the letter shows the comments on the same page. can’t say any fairer than that, can we? ;)

it’d be silly to link to his letter, then quote the comments posted there. i’d be better off linking to one of the other finalists. :)

honestly i’m sure that a lot of the finalists won’t be there, and the stuff i posted won’t change a thing. but toblo re-entered and will be partaking in the discussion, so there’s a chance, eh?

the guys at slamdance are going to ask questions about the withdrawal of SCMRPG, and who better to answer those questions than those who withdrew? ;)
Tim

and may i add, just because toblo was forced to resubmit – i haven’t seen DigiPen students rallying around, writing open letters and quitting their studies. :)
Jimmy

“itâ€™d be silly to link to his letter, then quote the comments posted there”
It’s important, when making an argument, to anticipate counter-arguments. The comments provide a litany of well-written counter-arguments — you don’t even need to anticipate them! — which have not been effectively countered. The message I get from the page on a whole is that the poster was wrong, and the commentators quickly corrected him. If you want the page to convey a different message, to support you when you link to it, you would have to explain why the counter-arguments did not convince you. The letters of the other finalists might be also good to mention, if any of them directly address the letter you linked to.

“but toblo re-entered and will be partaking in the discussion, so thereâ€™s a chance, eh?”
… not because of any change in the ideological landscape, though. If you really considered it and thought it was a good idea to leave — and I imagine people did really consider it, because dropping PR and a chance at awards is a bit difficult to do — then the same logic you used to justify that still applies now.

“just because toblo was forced to resubmit – i havenâ€™t seen DigiPen students rallying around, writing open letters and quitting their studies.”
(1) DigiPen actually matters, and (2) it’s not against the purpose of a school to force publicity, whereas it is against the purpose of an awards ceremony to disqualify games on whim and completely outside of procedures.
Tim

so my opinion does matter and needs to be dissected/discussed, eh?

i can’t tell if you have a bone to pick with slamdance, jason, SCMRPG or me… hell, you should probably write your own column. ;)

i’m linking to the entire page for you (the letter and comments) to form your own opinions. quoting isn’t wrong, just like the way you hacked my comments to bits and pieces. give it a rest, it’s just a bloody link. :D
Jimmy

No bones. I just enjoy arguing.
Tim

I don’t. :(

But good to have discussions and comments nonetheless. :D
nullerator

I agree with Ron Gilbert: http://grumpygamer.com/1389788
Steve Chiavelli

“I believe games can be taken as a serious art, but SCMRPG should not be the poster child for that movement.”

There’s a big problem with this statement. If you are on the side of “Games As Art”, you don’t get to pick and choose which ones qualify. There are many people in the world, and I’m sure quite a few wouldn’t be on board with “Games As Art As Decided By Hanford”.

Or anyone else for that matter.