Ron puts grumpygamer.com down for a while

[KestrelPi]

Hey at least this'll all turn into pretty good fodder for a Mojo retrospective in 2047

[Jake]

41 minutes ago, Zaxx said:

Yep, there is definitely a problem with really bored or obsessed people just scanning the land of the internet looking for arguments even when there is no place for that. I value my early internet experience more mostly because it was just easier to find small, welcoming communities where small talk and respectable debates both just worked and even if the occasional "flame war" did end up occuring it was just more tongue in cheek and less "I'm going to destroy you and your livelihood for saying that thing I partially disagree with."

Yeah small self contained bubble communities of early internet had a lot going for them. They were only really interrelated by people consciously making an effort to do so, they had many soft bumps to entry (even something as simple as making a new account, or in the case of places like IRC channels, finding the webpage associated with them to begin with), and because of that I think people ended up getting to know each other more. Social media, for all its positives seems to mostly be predicated on introducing like-minded people to each other with no filters or speed bumps in the way. Those connections provoke unchecked radicalization of opinions, echo chambers, and drive bys. It's really easy for one to have a degenerate thought, type it into a social network search bar or post bar, and be introduced to anyone else who has typed that thought straight from their brain into a computer with nothing in between. Obviously pre-internet that was sorted by usually having to look someone in the face before saying the thought aloud and seeing what their reaction was. If you "try out" that thought on a good friend and they say "dude no, what the hell is that?" it's a hugely valuable data point for you, coming with context and trust built over the entire time you've known the person. In smaller early internet communities that was still somewhat possible to facilitate by the community memberships being relatively static where everyone knows each other, slow to grow, and hand-moderated - the personal connections, trust, context were still there. On social media there is literally no filter. Again, some positives to this exist, but the way social media short circuits all accumulated cultural checks, and thoughts go straight from your interiority to another's interiority unfiltered, is wild and makes bad things happen. You think something, and instead of getting to "test it out," your thought is immediately confirmed, you are told not only is it correct but also we have identified others who agree with you, maybe you want to form a community and even an identity around that thought. I think people who argue this is inherently good are often only arguing that because they like the high of a system that tells them they're right all the time.

 

Again sorry for the long jag. That said, writing this all out further makes me believe Ron was correct to mostly leave social media for his own blog, and was right to close his blog when the world started intruding on it past his boundaries (if this is in fact what happened).

[Udvarnoky]

For me personally, the biggest bummer about the militant wing of the online fandom is the grumpiness they would occasionally make me feel toward Ron himself. For something like twenty years now, every time Ron would allude to his hypothetical return to Monkey Island, it would ignite all over again this collective expression of desperation and entitlement from the usual corners. The supportive reactions could be alarming.

 

And it grew tiresome to see it happen over and over again, since it was such a dependable cause-and-effect. Ron says "Monkey Island"; the volunteer troops assemble. And so whenever Ron would make an innuendo, or hint at how he'd continue his story if given the chance, or express his interest in buying the IP from Disney, I'd say to myself, "Would you please stop kicking the beehive?" Because whatever Ron's intentions were, people would get riled up anew at everything he said.

 

But in retrospect it was unfair to hold Ron even indirectly responsible for the behavior of his most irrational devotees. In a way, I was probably being too optimistic, because I was in effect trusting that the mob needed any help from its messiah to whip itself up into a frenzy. That he's had to resort to locking down his blog goes to show that the mosh pit will swap from carrying you to trampling you on a dime.

 

While I don't want to overdramatize it, I do think what happened to Chuck Jordan's relationship with the series is instructive. He's talked more than once about how Monkey Island was the reason he switched majors in college and pursued a career in the games industry. A total fanboy, who winds up landing a job at LucasArts and somehow working on the third game in the series. Straight-up Cinderella story stuff. But in the years after that, it seems the bloom came off the rose for him, and, reading between the lines, I infer that his constant exposure to the "But you know that wasn't a real Monkey Island game" drumbeat played a non-zero role in that.

 

And the irony is, it's probably the very same people that have made Ron lower the portcullis now. That uncompromising mentality victimizes everybody in the end, because it's really just a kind of fanaticism laundered as something else. It could style itself as "pro-Ron" only because until now Ron's Monkey Island comeback had the convenience of being an abstraction. Now that it's going to be an actual thing and thus revealed to be, you know, a mere video game, the church is going to have to subtly shift its dogma. First the holy grail was whatever game Ron wanted to make, and when that one turns out not to cure leprosy after all, the object is going to be recast as the one he would have made. The fantasy never has to end so long as you keep reengineering the game such that you can never actually make the touchdown.

[ThunderPeel2001]

In my limited experience it seems to me that people have lost the ability to debate over the years. Both online and in real life. 

 

It often seems now that if you disagree with someone it's often automatically taken as a judgement against their character, and so people dig their heels in -- defending their character, rather than their argument. (Worth bearing in mind that we ALL have bad days where we can do that, no point in pretending we don't.) It seems we forget that you can be a good person, and worthy of respect, but with a bad argument. There's no allowances to be "wrong" anymore.

 

And because there's this feeling that disagreeing with someone is an attack on their character, it can sometimes be seen as bullying (although when it's online, it sometimes is: tens, hundreds, even thousands vs one individual).

 

Which brings me to another problem I feel I see: Tribalism. "If you don't agree with me, then you must be the enemy." It seems all grey areas are ignored, and everything is partisan. (Especially in the USA: "The longer a debate happens between two Americans, the closer it gets to becoming a partisan issue.") So if you criticise Biden's wife, you must be a pro-Trump misogynist, for example. 

 

And more than that, the "other side" aren't just wrong anymore; they are Satan worshippers. Pure evil personified. They must be stopped! It's only a shame we can't shoot them all into space!

 

There's an old Voltaire quote that I like: "Man is never so cruel as when he sure he is right."

 

And there's so many echo chambers making sure everyone is convinced they're right these days. (I personally try to avoid this: I'm extremely liberal, with very liberal friends, working at a very liberal company, living in a very liberal city -- I already know what my side thinks! So I read bipartisan news and try to find centre-right leaning editorials to hear different viewpoints. But my social media experience still reflects my take on the world...)

 

Debates are important for exploring and testing ideas, so it's sad that this skill seems to be dying off. (I engage in debates with people I don't agree with in order to understand their logic and to test mine against theirs -- sometimes I won't learn anything, but often I will hear a new argument and reconsider my position. I often like it when I'm proven wrong because it means I've learned something.)

 

The ability to debate used to be considered one of the most important pillars of knowledge and learning: Critical thinking is one of the greatest gifts humans have and it was believed important to cultivate it. But I think these days everyone is exhausted by the seemingly never-ending cultural debate. There's often no respite from it in media, so we don't want debate in our personal life, too.

 

I can't wait for this weird period in history to end.

Edited April 26, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Zaxx]

2 hours ago, Udvarnoky said:

it was unfair to hold Ron even indirectly responsible for the behavior of his most irrational devotees.

I don't think it's unfair to consider Ron's responsibility since a lot of what he wrote in the past did encourage this weird "CMI isn't really a Monkey Island game!" cult like behavior. Crazy people like that are created through various factors and one of the 100 or 1000 factors is that previously Ron Gilbert did want to distance his hypothetical Monkey Island 3a from the rest of the series and that he has been saying for decades that he wouldn't have continued the story the way CMI did. That's not blaming him, just admitting something in order to understand the situation better.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Zaxx

[Glokidd]

I do think it's fair to say however that Ron likely didn't say these things to specifically galvanize a distase for any Monkey Island that wasn't his work. That was the assumption the not-my-Mokey-Island-ers have taken out the ether and made a mantra on their own accord.

 

It didn't help that a few very popular youtubers in the genre took the stance as well against everything past 2. A well written post or cleverly presented video monologue can have the effect of influencing a large group of people to have the same opinion as you, especially if you have a strong following. Basically I place at least a strong  part of the blame for this on (almost) anyone who spouted for the last few or more years that anything after 2 isn't Canon, a voice and sentiment I have only heard getting echoed more often than ever ever since a certain extremely popular adventure genre youtuber made a vid ripping apart COMI as a monkey island game specifically...

 

I mean I get it, i always wanted to hear Rons story, whether or not LeChuck really is Charles L Threepwood or whatever and to know where he was going to take it from there, and I know the feeling is mirrored by many of us here. I think the difference between that and what these others are doing though is for the last few years they have been crapping all over everything other then their holy 2, the hard work that others picked up to continue stories we love. These devs are people that have become friends of our community and even people who come from the community who worked hard to earn the right to help make monkey island for us all. I hope one day to achieve that myself somehow but I know if I do I now will have to deal with this distaste by default from a small but very loud few even though they likely never took the time to give it a chance or came into it with preconceived notions and a crummy attitude.

 

I know in that case, i would have to let places like this be where I check the response to what I'm doing. I hope im not assuming too much saying this myself as im not esactly team or anything but its fair to say mojo was built on love of these games, out of the want to talk about them and to share excitement with every new piece of new/media/etc. Pretty much the whole of my early web experience *was* the scumm bar and the Monkey Island webring,  this has always been where I find myself gravitating too and I can't remember the last time I was at a computer and there wasn't at least one Mojo tab open. These are the opinions about the games that I share and why Mojo has been a constant for me for so long (even in the worst times)

 

That being said, I really don't recognize most the names of the loudest detractors claiming to speak for all old true fans... not saying mojo Is the litmus test for our fandom but I honestly don't know how you can be a diehard fan, have access to Google but never come across this place... that's bonkers. I mean I'll allow for lurkers don't get me wrong but these are not quiet people who would just hang back clearly

[KestrelPi]

Yes, I don't doubt that things that Ron has said over the years come from a mixture of the extreme bluntness he's ALWAYS exhibited (we're talking about the person who preceded Monkey Island with an essay called Why Adventure Games Suck), and a genuine desire to talk about the most beloved thing he ever created.

If he can be accused of one thing (and I have sometimes been exasperated by his posts, I admit), it's of being a little slow to understand just how much a particular corner of the internet hangs off his words, and as such a little unrestrained in saying things which were just inevitably going to stoke flames.

 

And I kind of get that. We've all been there to SOME extent, I think, deciding to say something on the Internet and then later wondering if we should have just left it alone. If Ron's worst crime is to do that repeatedly, it's not all that bad. Even if whenever I saw Ron and Monkey Island in the same headline my heart would sink, I wonder if I wouldn't also, in the same situation, be unable to bite my tongue.

What's important is his behaviour now, and to me there's nothing but good news there. His approach to this announcement has been very collaborative. It was an excellent decision to announce Dave, Dom and the 3 composers straight away and follow up with a string of other team announcements. It was an excellent decision to nod to CMI in the announcement video. It was an excellent decision not to position this as a fan-pleasing throwback, but another game in the series.

It's just a shame that, probably in part because of the way he's talked about the idea of a sequel in the past, a small number of fans are choosing to see this as a betrayal before it's even out the door.

[Zaxx]

12 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

we're talking about the person who preceded Monkey Island with an essay called Why Adventure Games Suck

And what a great article it is! Yahtzee's video regarding RTMI's announcement reminded me of it a bit:

 

[KestrelPi]

10 minutes ago, Zaxx said:

And what a great article it is! Yahtzee's video regarding RTMI's announcement reminded me of it a bit:

 

Interesting piece... not sure how much of it I agree with. I agree with the bit about Monkey Island's puzzle design being pleasingly varied from regular inventory puzzles, though, and many adventure games being too reliant on 'use x with y' at the exclusion of everything else you can do (and I don't just mean verbs - I don't think having lots of verbs makes an adventure game better in any meaningful way, I mean stuff like the seagull, the grog puzzle, the maze directions, the ship bartering, following the shopkeeper and so forth).

But that said, I still feel like the basic gameplay loop of adventure games of exploring, talking to people and collecting items and trying to think of how to use them to proceed  basically works for me, and I don't overly feel like that basic idea has had its day and needs to go away. I just think that it needs to be backed up with really solid characters, writing and story to keep it interesting.

As for Ron's piece I mentioned, yeah - I like it, and I think it holds up remarkably well. But it's nothing if not blunt.

[Zaxx]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

Interesting piece... not sure how much of it I agree with. I agree with the bit about Monkey Island's puzzle design being pleasingly varied from regular inventory puzzles, though, and many adventure games being too reliant on 'use x with y' at the exclusion of everything else you can do (and I don't just mean verbs - I don't think having lots of verbs makes an adventure game better in any meaningful way, I mean stuff like the seagull, the grog puzzle, the maze directions, the ship bartering, following the shopkeeper and so forth).

But that said, I still feel like the basic gameplay loop of adventure games of exploring, talking to people and collecting items and trying to think of how to use them to proceed  basically works for me, and I don't overly feel like that basic idea has had its day and needs to go away. I just think that it needs to be backed up with really solid characters, writing and story to keep it interesting.

As for Ron's piece I mentioned, yeah - I like it, and I think it holds up remarkably well. But it's nothing if not blunt.

Yeah, I think he's right in that "adventure games aren't that good in a modern context" but I just don't see the mixing of genres replacing adventure games in any shape or form. I was always a huge fan of "action-adventure" games while they actually had adventure game elements so things like the old Tomb Raiders and the Prince of Persia Sands of Time series that combined mechanically dense, challenging platforming and combat with puzzles were always huge winners for me. But then the puzzles disappeared, after that the challenging platforming disappeared and Uncharted arrived with the whole "I'm just a shooter for kids and everything else serves as downtime between two shootouts" thing.

 

Overall I can only name one game that I consider to be a pure action-adventure game that had all the elements of both the adventure and the action: Outcast. That game not only had challenging puzzles but it also had the aspect of exploration and talking to people in order to get hints and a lot of it was really just learning the culture of its open world setting. And while doing all that it even had like 6 upgradeable weapons and a ton of shooting, it's amazing what an excellent game it was for 1998... but it flopped and I'm pretty sure that the sequeal that got announced last year won't play like the original did.

 

The other genre that "almost got it" was the survival horror where some games (like Silent  Hill) played like an adventure game with the added survival gameplay based around limited resources. The puzzles almost fully disappeared from that genre too though and they were usually very lonely adventures with not much character interaction and dialogue happening in them.

 

So I'm just not seeing the "Dark Souls" he's referring to and I never really thought about DS as a game with adventure game elements. I think it was Tim Rogers who put it really well when he said that Dark Souls is basically all the old games you used to play as a kid, it's this genre mix that can remind you of absolutely anything and everything except for maybe CoD.  It's wonderful but it's doesn't scratch the adventure itch.

 

Overall I think that a possible way for adventure games to improve would be to introduce an amount of "mechanical density" that keeps the gameplay part of your brain more engaged but something that's also not like "okay now shoot a few things before the next puzzle" (and also not how Tim Schafer and co. did it with Grim: by adding tank controls to make your life more complicated :D). Until that magic combination happens I'm perfectly fine with adventure games being adventure games with a lot of pointing, clicking, talking and tough puzzle solving.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Zaxx

[ThunderPeel2001]

2 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

Yes, I don't doubt that things that Ron has said over the years come from a mixture of the extreme bluntness he's ALWAYS exhibited (we're talking about the person who preceded Monkey Island with an essay called Why Adventure Games Suck), and a genuine desire to talk about the most beloved thing he ever created.

If he can be accused of one thing (and I have sometimes been exasperated by his posts, I admit), it's of being a little slow to understand just how much a particular corner of the internet hangs off his words, and as such a little unrestrained in saying things which were just inevitably going to stoke flames.

 

And I kind of get that. We've all been there to SOME extent, I think, deciding to say something on the Internet and then later wondering if we should have just left it alone. If Ron's worst crime is to do that repeatedly, it's not all that bad. Even if whenever I saw Ron and Monkey Island in the same headline my heart would sink, I wonder if I wouldn't also, in the same situation, be unable to bite my tongue.

What's important is his behaviour now, and to me there's nothing but good news there. His approach to this announcement has been very collaborative. It was an excellent decision to announce Dave, Dom and the 3 composers straight away and follow up with a string of other team announcements. It was an excellent decision to nod to CMI in the announcement video. It was an excellent decision not to position this as a fan-pleasing throwback, but another game in the series.

It's just a shame that, probably in part because of the way he's talked about the idea of a sequel in the past, a small number of fans are choosing to see this as a betrayal before it's even out the door.

 

It seems unfair for a certain sect of fans to expect him to walk a higher road than the rest of us  Ron is just a human being, with all the normal contradictions and inconsistencies. It seems people want to hold him to everything he's every said. I'm sure when he wrote that "If I Made MI3" post, he sincerely meant every word.
 

Edited April 26, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Rum Rogers]

It's back, with a great new post that addresses some of those morons.

Long live Ron Gilbert.

 

Edit: sorry I just woke up and noticed you've already been talking about this for hours in the RMI thread.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Rum Rogers