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Indie Statik: The Most Expensive Game Jam In History Crashed And Burned In A Day

Hey JonTron was there... I'm going to blame him o.o

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Pikawil said:
This disgusting show of misogyny is the secret of their new subsidiary the Disney empire never wanted the masses to know. Unfortunately, the masses know now. The Level Infinite Disney Lawyers will have a PR shitstorm on their hands to clean...
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I mean, its sort of the worst kept secret ever. Their number 1 seller makes pretty frequent rape and N-word jokes. If Disney actually wants to use this thing for anything serious, they're going to have to clean house.

firehawk12 said:
Sponsored game jams seem like an idiotic idea.
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Sounds like the powers that be changed from wanting a game jam to a youtube celebrity showdown that they could brand and sell. The powers that be probably had no idea what a game jam was before 12 hours prior to the event starting.
 
JimmyRickard said:
What's a Game Jam?
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Prophet Steve said:
You create a game, in a team or alone in a certain time limit. Usually two days or something but can even be a few weeks.
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This man is a liar JimmyRickard. While he may be right within "this" and "context". He failed to mention the origins of "game" "jam" as "I" recall "it" which is "game 'jam'" is the sticky black discharge that comes out of old NES cartridges if you blow them for too long. People would blow the cartridge head because it had the sensitive contacts where the bits came out. Your games wouldn't play right if the bits couldn't discharge correctly.
 
Calabi said:
What the hell, how does this happen... I cant fathom this.
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Very, VERY easily.


Reverend said:
Jesus this is fucked. This is what happens when old media dips their toes into new media.
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OH MY GOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

I have NDA's signed up to my ears but...modern media is looking to make you hate everything you loved growing up, because its profitable to do so. Like fucking whoa.

This Disney Maker merger is super interesting because a lot of people are about to lose their preferred form of entertainment and haven't realized it yet.
 
I got the jist of it, and it sounds like a terrible affair, but is this part 2 of something? I don't really know any of the players or companies outside of Mountain Dew and Pepsi, which... makes me feel pretty lame.
 
http://msminotaur.com/blog/?p=187

He is the one who headed up removing even un-labeled water bottles from being allowed on our desks. He is the one I heard asking around if there was any way that we could drink the water out of empty Mountain Dew cans.
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I'm not a medical expert, but drinking Mountain Dew literally "all day 'erry day' does not sound healthy at all. Fucking Hollywood. I don't think this all has so much to do with just Maker, Polaris, Mountain Dew or Disney for whatever reason. But has more to do with fucking assholes like Matti Leshem ruining everything for everyone in a disgusting way.
 
JonTron and Zoe butting heads was something I was worried about from the second I saw their team lineup. Tensions were high and everyone was out of their element, but if any two personalities weren’t going to gel, it was them. And they didn’t, to no one’s surprise, but the pair quickly left to talk in the hall instead of letting it sour the group dynamic. The second their feet left the competition floor, however, something happened that I didn’t expect: cameras. Cameras from every angle and direction, marching in to the discussion as someone started feeding the fight with inflammatory comments, and all of it filmed for what would likely be some of that legal “misrepresentation.” Zoe was horrified.

The backlash of Depression Quest appearing on Steam Greenlight is not lost on me, and it’s still a fresh wound to both Zoe (who had to change her phone number due to death threats and harassment) and many female game developers and journalists who call the industry their home. The potential backlash of being “the bitch with a beef against JonTron” was all at once shockingly real, and by even having it on film the risk for a fight to be cut into the show began to grow on everyone’s mind. Jon didn’t want that. Zoe definitely didn’t want that. Serrato, Umetani, and the many producers spectating didn’t want that, and it went against everything game jams stood for – but Matti pushed the angle. And as the challenge went on we discovered that he had cornered Jon in a room to try and get him to speak poorly of Zoe, the only negative “story” they could muster out of all fifteen contestants.
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This part really got to me.
 
What the FUCK IS THIS. SERIOUSLY?

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/450744703932063744

Jared Rosen (@notquitefrodo), reporter behind today's piece on the busted game jam reality TV show, appears to have lost his job over it.
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But wait there's more:

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/450745036708139008

@omglazerkittens @notquitefrodo The site he wrote it up for is not the one that fired him.
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So wait, was it... Maker/Polaris who fired him? It looks like it wasn't indiestatik
 
Jared Rosen with the real reporting.

What a shitshow. Was pretty excited when I learned Cale and Zoe were going to be in this. Now I learn how stupid the entire thing was. Gonna go drink a MTN DEW and do a 360 fakie off a cliff now.
 
LTWood12 said:
No kidding. It's like Polaris wanted to make this an even bigger shit show firing Jared
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If anything I think they actually diverted a good amount of the angry piss and shit towards them. If it was Maker/Polaris who fired him, then... Well, shit. Before this it really did seem like Maker/Polaris merely got a sponsored deal with Mountain Dew or something and were just led on and then misunderstanding and rage occured... Now this is something else entirely. Before people start internet lynching people/companies we still need more confirmed information. Right now we can INFER it was Maker/Polaris since the whole thing was their baby.
 
KnightHart said:
What the FUCK IS THIS. SERIOUSLY?

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/450744703932063744



But wait there's more:

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/450745036708139008



So wait, was it... Maker/Polaris who fired him? It looks like it wasn't indiestatik
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Polaris was his main job, where he worked as a contractor. Indistatik is more of a passion project (they had to have a kickstarter to pay their writers). Looks like Maker canned him.

A LOT of people lost their jobs over this. I'm guessing the higher-ups wanted all the firings to happen behind the scenes. Jared (for better or worse) put a harsh ugly light on it and let us all see.
 
Reading through that, the entire time I just kept thinking "I'd have left by now." I'm surprised so many people lasted so long into the bullshit contracts and reality TV approach to everything.
 
The drama of indie development and the drama of youtube personalities mixed in with tons of reality TV BS? Yeah, this was a category 5 shitstorm just waiting to happen.

KnightHart said:
I can see why Jontron and some of the other Youtubers involved basically tweeted stuff along the lines of "Fuck this let's go to Disneyland" (literally, they did actually) the past few days. Apparently TotalBiscuit was one of the judges chosen but declined the offer. Looks he like he kinda dodged a stupid and infuriating bullet.

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/450738675849371648
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Regular bullets ain't got nothing on stupid bullets!
 
Crazy. I had no idea Youtube personalities were popular enough to fund the existence of such a large-sounding company. And that Matti guy sounds unreal....it's insane to me that people like that exist. How did he have a job?

Also, why did JonTron have issues with Zoe? I can't find any reason online. But he's always seemed like a cool guy. Was it just clashing personalities?
 
I guess I didn't know "Indie games" was actually a kinda small group of people who all know each other and thought that it was in their interest to let Mountain Dew sponsor them up the ass.

Live and learn, I guess. I don't watch Reality shows so I guess I wasn't prepared for the sheer level of complete bullshit involved in shows like that.
 
Archaix said:
Reading through that, the entire time I just kept thinking "I'd have left by now." I'm surprised so many people lasted so long into the bullshit contracts and reality TV approach to everything.
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I mean, for a lot of people, if they left, that's it for their channel backing and monetization.

For a lot of these personalities, they are, in a few cases, being held captive by their contracts. Now that Polaris and Maker got picked up by people who know what they're doing (in the industry), a lot of shit is about to change.
 
Dennis said:
I guess I didn't know "Indie games" was actually a kinda small group of people who all know each other and thought that it was in their interest to let Mountain Dew sponsor them up the ass.

Live and learn, I guess. I don't watch Reality shows so I guess I wasn't prepared for the sheer level of complete bullshit involved in shows like that.
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Big media is sleazier than you can ever imagine. Everything you see is part of a brand deal. Everything.
 
Mesoian said:
I mean, for a lot of people, if they left, that's it for their channel backing and monetization.

For a lot of these personalities, they are, in a few cases, being held captive by their contracts. Now that Polaris and Maker got picked up by people who know what they're doing (in the industry), a lot of shit is about to change.
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The Youtube creators I completely understand, these are all people already working for Maker/Polaris. I mean more the developers on hand. They had no reason to put up with that bullshit from the start.
 
I don't even mean this sarcastically. With Matti being a 'Brand Awareness Consultant.' It will be interesting to see how he navigates his own 'brand' through this.
 
Honestly you can't even make this shit up. It all just falls into place perfectly, like theres a sitcom god in control of everything. It being Mtn Dew of course. OF COURSE.

lewisgn said:
Also, why did JonTron have issues with Zoe? I can't find any reason online. But he's always seemed like a cool guy. Was it just clashing personalities?
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Found this pretty interesting. "Knew they would clash" from early on is kinda damning.
 
Archaix said:
The Youtube creators I completely understand, these are all people already working for Maker/Polaris. I mean more the developers on hand. They had no reason to put up with that bullshit from the start.
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They had plenty of reasons. Shedding more light on their industry, females in game development, and just plain giving people a view into what indiegaming is like.
 
Archaix said:
The Youtube creators I completely understand, these are all people already working for Maker/Polaris. I mean more the developers on hand. They had no reason to put up with that bullshit from the start.
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There has to have been something contractually binding for them to have been included in such an event, to the point where talking about it now that it's defunct would get them in trouble. This sounds like a TV deal, through and through, and you can't just walk away after you've signed on the dotted line, even if everything goes to shit.

This is why it pays to have a good lawyer if you're any type of entertainer. I would assume that, had these guys been part of established companies with their own legal teams, they could have just gone through those guys had any inklings of a contractual breach occurred. But they're just indies, a lot of people just working out of their homes...
 
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