You Meet the Nicest People Making Videogames

By: Paul Eres

On: June 11th, 2010

You Meet the Nicest People Making Videogames was actually a Kickstarter project before Indie Game the Movie was but wasn’t funded on its first attempt. While that one focuses on more well-known indies, this one focuses on more offbeat ones, like Gregory Weir and Amon26 (All Your Friends Are Dead). You can even see Daphaknee briefly in the video above, behind Anna Anthropy. Hopefully the movie will interview her too.

I’m sure both this one and Indie Game the Movie will be fun to watch when they are finished. In an attempt to get this one made I’m posting this up here and going to be contributing myself after this is posted. You can see a breakdown of what they intend to use the money for on their tumblr.

Posted in Community, Developers, Videos

Peevish

I'm going to pretend that by “deviance” you meant “deviation.”
Ssss

Are you kidding? I have not watched Indie Game, but I can tell you that in certain cases, using six different angles while interviewing a person who is always looking away from the camera is certainly superfluous.
Jamie Carrie

I have identified myself as a 2000 dollar bill, does that make me so? I doubt it. he's just a wacko that somehow in his little world thinks he's a girl. He's not.
Sne

It's hardly bigoted to use language in a descriptive manner – most of us do. Additionally I have no problem whatsoever with him referring to himself as a “she”, but that's not how I personally use language.
NinjaPirate

if he actually meant what he said then that's being honest, regardless of the fact his intentions being malicious or not. An honest opinion doesn't really have to be constructive. Not saying I agree with he said though.
NinjaPirate

So, is anthropy a dude turned woman or a woman turned dude ? I don't want to be offensive or anything, I just can't tell.
rinkuhero

fair enough; to me though usually honest means 'not lying' rather than 'volunteering negative information'.

i mean, if someone asked him how they look and he said they were ugly, that's one thing, but just going to someone and saying 'you're ugly' doesn't seem like it'd qualify as honesty to me (except in the sense that that's what he really believes). or rather, it'd be honest, but it'd be primarily invective, not primarily straightforwardness.

it also seems to go with a trend of the last year and a half or so of there being more and more hostility towards indie developers here (which isn't present on other blogs about indie games, like timw's blog or playthisthing).

i think at least part of the reason there are fewer posts nowadays on tigsource is how hostile the comments have become whenever something is posted. not that that's the only part, laziness and such are also present.

but typically i think twice about posting a game, wondering if it's really worth it to expose the author to such hostile personal attacks (which are inevitable and happen on virtually every single post on tigsource in the last year or so) just in order to get the game in front of a few more eyeballs.

even with this entry, before i posted it i thought 'this post will probably do more harm than good to the project considering how anti-indie developer the tigsource commentators have become'. so far i fear that may have been correct. there were a total of two (just two) new donations to this project over the last two days that this post has been up.

were those two donations really worth exposing the people in this video to being called ugly, being called not really female, called disgustingly egoistic, called not really a game developer, called pretentious, and much more?
rinkuhero

you could try clicking on the link her name leads to — i put those links there for a reason
Saul Eres

Paul, shut up.
Saul Eres

The sad thing is that there are actual rad women making games, but fat ass dudes who call themselves women to get attention are laming up the joint.
Saul Eres

He's just a dude.
Saul Eres

Fairly accurately too. :)
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

jam toothpicks in your eyelids and don't look both ways before crossing the street please, you close-minded fuck.
Malasdair

TOLD
rinkuhero

so you're saying that all transgendered people are actually the gender they were born as, no matter what they do or how much surgery they have? if not, what's the cut-off for you?
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

relentless animosity is so indie
JWK5

What would it matter? Deviance, deviation, divergence, etc. it all means pretty much the same thing when used in that context.
Dominic White

I remember when this used to be a vaguely friendly community. Now it's as bitter, reactionary and hate-filled as the rest of the internet. And it's onl getting worse.

Really, to anyone who feels compelled to shit on this video, I can only reply with two words. Coarse as they may be, it sums up my feelings as succinctly as possible: “Fuck you.”
chrknudsen

Classy.
Squax

The Internet is sorry ;_;
Dinsdale

hey, Amon turned out to be a pretty cool dude!

and I know it has been raged upon already but seriously – “anna antropy” is a guy!? I could've sworn that deceitful tub of lard had a picture of a woman hanging under portfolio on his website a while ago! that interview Lesbian Gamers did with him is funny all of the sudden – “We wanted to find out more about this mysterious lesbian game designer.”, “Anna: I’m already a big dyke.”
nice trolling there, ANCIL.
bateleur

Further to which – at the point you start making a movie about the whole thing it's appropriate to shift the view onto the people and the human interest stories a little bit. People who are interested entirely in the games can just get on and play them.
bateleur

The first person you're referring to sounds like Alexis Janssen, who now works for Wizards of the Coast as a Magic the Gathering designer.
rinkuhero

yep, i think that's her name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iysXgCUVcMk

apparently nowadays she wants to distance herself from the zzt community (and refused an interview about it by clysm), perhaps due to the way so many of the people treated her in it..
xot

A lot of people think “deviance” implies some kind of moral judgement. I'm guessing that's the case here. It simply means doing something that is not the norm. Unfortunately many of those same people think “normal” is also some kind of moral judgement.
NinjaPirate

whoops my bad. Now i'm well and truly confused. He's a dude turned woman, but dates a girl (from what I read in an interview). I guess he must have a thing for stirring up society, which I gotta say I admire him for.
rinkuhero

actually i believe the reason she kept all this secret for so long was because she wanted to avoid the inevitable controversy, which is the opposite of trying to stir things up.
NinjaPirate

wow dude take it easy. It's the internet, there will always be a couple of assholes who will say shit because they are hiding in the front of the monitor, that's nothing new.
Like you said, being honest is “not lying”, and then again, if he meant what he said then he wasn't lying, regardless of his intentions.
But anyway, if everyone thought like you, that you shouldn't have posted that video because people would use that as an excuse for bashing, then this site would have 0 posts and the people involved in that video would be complete unknowns.
rinkuhero

of course, but it's no longer 'a couple', but 'the majority'. it's no longer 'once in a while' but 'every post'. take a look at the comment threads from 2007 and 2006 on this blog, you won't see anything like it is now. and that was the internet too.

sometimes i think these guys aren't actually indie game fans at all, and that the tigsource frontpage has become a sort of informal contest to make fun of the games and people posted about in the most awesome way.
Dodger

It's amazing to me how judgmental and negative people are towards one another, and for no apparent reason. It's almost as if some of the individuals who leave comments are vindictive towards others simply because those others were born. Usually that's a sign that those people with the negative comments and snide remarks are immature and it only reinforces the idea that people who make such comments rather than participate in a discussion are closed minded, fearful, and have a low self-esteem. They are basically taking some form of revenge on the world for perhaps being mistreated at some point in life and by belittling and making fun of others they in turn believe they will make themselves feel better. However, there are even a number of those same people who want to instigate and perpetuate some form of hatred simply because they can hide behind anonymity and because they know that if they spoke and commented this way out in public, and face to face, and attempt this in the same way they spread their hatred for others on a public forum, they would get their asses kicked in a most embarrassing and humiliating way. So, in lieu of common sense, open-mindedness, and understanding for others, these negative people absolutely must hide themselves and live in constant fear, taking out their anger and frustration (most likely sexual frustration), by cowardly posting negative drek towards others who have no personal connection to them, just so they can feel like are a part of something. In other words, they don't feel very good about themselves. They don't feel special in any way, and since nobody usually takes notice of them, they must participate in a way that makes them detached from what is actually being discussed so they do not have to fear physical reprehension and still feel like they've contributed to something while hoping someone will actually notice their little negative remarks.

I guess if I was a paranoid person who lacked self respect and self esteem I'd go around posting hurtful and hateful comments about people that I don't even personally and I certainly wouldn't want to do it face to face in public since I would be a fearful individual who probably walks around in fear of constantly getting their ass kicked, because people who behave like this truly are wimps. That's only in regards to the people with the hate-filled and negative commentary though.
Psykohomey

WHO FUCKING CARES
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

shit in your hands and rub it in your eyes and get horrible pink eye in both eyes.

just because you don't understand the term “transgender” does not invalidate it, you irreverent fuck.
Anarkex

I think saying that Anna's games have a heavy emphasis on mechanics is being far too nice. I put a lot of stock into mechanically deep games, and with the exception of Jill Off not a single game she has produced has entertained me for more than a few minutes. They usually have a few clever “I see what you did there” sort of screens, but they only ever amount to the level design equivalent of a bad joke you already know the punch line to. They're frustration platformers with less depth than Mega Man games, and all her abortive theories about “storytelling” ensure that they'll never be anything more.

I'm sure she's entirely sick of hearing my dissent (I've posted replies on her blog multiple times before) and has already concluded that I get off trolling her, and that's probably partly true. To me, her smug attitude and completely unwarranted popularity makes her the perfect target. But I do mean what I say as genuine criticism, which is something the indie community is sorely lacking.
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

how is REDDER a frustration platformer

p.s. i don't suppose you think braid is the pinnacle of storytelling in games
JWK5

Unless you intend on dating or having sex with them I really don't see what difference it makes what gender, implied gender, former gender, etc. the developer of a game has, let alone anyone else.
funny

Cool video, it is good to see faces and hear voices behind the names behind the games. Definitely a different crowd from the usual dev videos I see on IGN and such.

—

On the people freaking out over the trolls here, thereby giving them a voice:

“Oh, FUCK YOU.”

“Oh, DIE IN A FIRE YOU FLAGRANT FUCK.”

Yeah, like people are going to hang their heads in shame because you TOLD them SO. All you've done was add to the shitpile that will attract more flies. Nice work guys, all of you.

Here's a shout out for the people who post walls of text responses that 3 people will read. They form the bedrock of the said shitpile. Your services are much appreciated.
JWK5

Once, just once, I'd love to see that be a winning quote in a fighting game (preferably Dan Hibiki after an impossible win against Akuma). “Die in a fire you flagrant fuck.” I don't know why I find that comment comical, but I do.
moo

Get thicker skin.

Anonymous comments are how you find out what people really think about a given topic–something that makes the internet a treasure trove of free, open opinion. If you can't handle that without whipping out your inflatable psychology degree and diagnosing people left and right then stop reading comments.

“I guess if I was a paranoid person who lacked self respect and self esteem I'd go around posting hurtful and hateful comments about people that I don't even personally and I certainly wouldn't want to do it face to face in public since I would be a fearful individual who probably walks around in fear of constantly getting their ass kicked, because people who behave like this truly are wimps.”

You seem to know a lot about how people with low self esteem think. It sounds like this topic has struck a chord with you. When that happens to normal people they just keep walking, but I guess you feel like you have to project every insecurity imaginable onto people you know nothing about. How sad.
Dinsdale

…actually, yes, it does.

and I love it how it's worse that I called him a guy than tub of lard.
Saul Eres

Or to rebel against the tyranny of the Erestocracy.
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

you seem to be a big fucking hypocrite with your dogshit diagnosis there
Saul Eres

The reason he kept it a secret was probably because he realized it would be impossible to hold up a position of criticizing the world for not being real enough, when his whole online identity is a fabrication.
Saul Eres

In this video is one of the biggest reasons why this community has become unfriendly.
Saul Eres

It matters when the faked gender reveals the person in question to be a huge hypocrite.
Saul Eres

Your existence is superfluous. :)
Saul Eres

Is your head stuck up your own ass?

Let me answer that: Yes.
Saul Eres

Good. Hopefully your head will explode soon. :)
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

please enlighten me how ignorance and disrespect invalidate anna's sexual identification.

i want to hear this.
http://twitter.com/alecspurse Superfly Johnson

“faked gender”

never reproduce
Saul Eres

Wow, great critique. Very well thought out and concise, you're definitely going to spread lots of love and understand with your tactics. :)