Jeff Vogel Soapbox Thread

[duanth123]

He exposes himself to criticism by seeking a public presence on the interweb. If he doesnt like people criticising the quality of his work and his creative decisions, then he shouldn't post blog posts, have a Facebook or Twitter or forums.

Also, what precious snowflakes these people are that they get upset about what someone says online.

Walk yourself over to Spiderweb forums and you'll quickly come to understand Jeff's particular strain of delirium.

He has a hidden army of sycophants over there, like an unintentioned cult, who have in all likelihood over-sensitized him to Other People's Opinions (TM) such as those of our dear Codex.

That or he's simply too old to be in the 'Biz

 

[Mustawd]

People on the internet who constantly rage at you or others are either:

1. 14 years old and live with their parents

2. Is an adult who is acting like he is 14 years old and lives with his parents.

That covers 90% of shitposters out there. Otherwise, you're left with very relevant and reasonable (even if you disagree) opinions on stuff. And this is what he gets butthurt about? Meh, I guess. I mean the SWAT thing as well as the posting personal info online falls into the category above. IMO that shit is out of bounds. But if I want to call him a fat fucking whiny bitch retard for throwing a tantrum over how iOs changed, then that's a valid opinion., Even if he disagrees.

I think he's just too sensitive and takes everything personally. Most people say shit online in the most unflitered way possible, so if you take it at face value you're gonna get your feelings hurt. You need a thick skin to navigate the nuggets of information out there. Or you know...maybe not have an online presence at all?

 

[Llama-Yak Hybrid]

People on the internet who constantly rage at you or others are either:

1. 14 years old and live with their parents

2. Is an adult who is acting like he is 14 years old and lives with his parents.

I'm neither and I'm always raging.

 

[Tacgnol]

I think he's just too sensitive and takes everything personally. Most people say shit online in the most unflitered way possible, so if you take it at face value you're gonna get your feelings hurt. You need a thick skin to navigate the nuggets of information out there. Or you know...maybe not have an online presence at all?

I agree, but as duanth123 said, I think his personal forums have given him a thin skin. I think it's probably a danger of personal forums as a whole, they aren't good places to get a balanced view.

 

[Doktor Best]

The point he was trying to make was more about toxic opinions being able to really hurt a small developer financially, which is a reality.

 

[Infinitron]

Here we go again! http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2016/06/to-be-pro-is-to-be-abused.html

To Be a Pro is to Be Abused.


Trigger warning: Bears.

I want to say a few words to young developers on the value of resilience and the growing of a thick skin.

Slow down there. Hands off the keyboard. I an NOT talking about abuse, harassment, and threats. I've already written on this topic. Certain behaviors online are clearly unacceptable, and you should not be subjected to them.

What I AM talking about is learning to endure criticism and occasional hostility that is an inevitable part of being a creator in a public way.

Because you will be criticized. You will be insulted. People will be mean to you. Also, because you are only human and will occasionally make mistakes, sometimes that criticism will be justified. So you should be ready.

I'm going to tell two instructive stories. One about me, one about an ambitious young developer. (Well, as of this writing, ex-developer.)Know enough to be afraid.


You WILL receive feedback like this at some point. Prepare in advance an appropriate reaction.

A Time That PC Gamer Was Mean To Me

In November, 2000, PC Gamer. reviewed my game Avernum. This was a huge deal for me, as PC Gamer was the biggest press outlet around. The game was already selling very well, but we were eager for a hit. Also, press attention for a small developer has always been really hard to get.

Imagine my surprise when the review, written by a Gentleman I Will Not Name (GIWNN for short), came out and my score was 17/100. Yes, 17%. I'm sure a lot of thought went into it. I imagine GIWNN up late at night, agonizing. "I mean, this game isn't quite good enough for a lofty 18%, but it's also not the sort of hackery that merits a mere 16%."

But it gets better. The review also says my game is worse that choking to death on your vomit. (I swear I am not making this up.) The review included a helpful sidebar that listed rock stars who choked to death on their own vomit. (Again, I SWEAR I am not making this up.)

If you are upset by the current level of journalistic standards in the games industry, I assure you there have been issues for some time.

Some developers would be given pause by a review like this. Some might even be slightly upset. I was not. I was still being given a full, free page of coverage in PC GODDAMN GAMER. I know that review brought me a bunch of new customers. I heard from them. I'm sure I got more extra cash from the review than the GIWNN got for writing it. (And, when you get a few drinks in me, I still get the review out sometimes to show to friends.)

Are you an aspiring game developer? Picture the largest games press outlet publicly treating you in such a manner. If you have any response besides, "Hey, any PR is good PR," you might want to reconsider your career path.

I got that review, and I went on to have a highly lucrative and satisfying career. PC Gamer went on to give very kind coverage to quite a few of my other games. And the GIWNN went on to achieve his True Destiny: being a negligible non-entity.


Since I was taking pictures in my office, I thought my more devoted fans would like some sweet backstage info. For example, I work surrounded by my classic vidya gaem collection. Here is a tiny portion of my Atari 2600 games.

The Tale of Bear Simulator

What brought this article on was the sad story of recent indie title Bear Simulator, written by an ambitious fellow named John Farjay. Full disclosure: I have not played it, as bears are Godless Killing Machines.

Bear Simulator was funded on Kickstarter with an impressive haul of over $100K. Farjay then broke from Kickstarter tradition by actually finishing the game in a reasonable period of time. He delivered it to backers and released it on Steam.

At this point, and I'll admit I'm a little fuzzy on the exact particulars. The game received some negative press. There was a particularly brutal takedown by renowned INTERNET TOUGH GUY Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (sometimes referred to as PewDiePie). This review ended with him getting a refund on Steam, which is now the traditional way for a vicious hack job to spike the ball in the endzone.

John Farjay quit, announcing this in a poignant little post on Kickstarter. Since it might not still be up when you read this, I'll include an excerpt:

Well the game didn't have a great reception, has a stigma against it's name and there's plenty of other problems so making any updates or going further is basically a lost cause now. Plus not skilled enough to make the game better than it currently is or write better updates than previously.
Was really hoping the Steam release would go well but why would it, should have just gave the game to backers and not bother with Steam.
Also don't want to deal with the drama anymore. Can't ignore it because that causes more drama and can't do anything about it because that causes more drama.
It was really fun making the game, trailers, updates, websites, tutorials, blog posts and stuff, hopefully you all liked those things.
Am glad most of you guys are happy with the game though, unless you were just being nice

I mean, seriously, if you don't find this at least a tiny bit sad, you have an even harder heart than I do.

The Thing That Makes Other Indie Devs Raise Their Eyebrows

There are so many of us who would give a lesser body part to be savaged in a video by PewDiePie. Man, I would love for him to tear apart my work in one of his videos. I'd salve my hurt feelings by using the extra sales to buy a Tesla.

But that's the difference between a hardened veteran and a new recruit, isn't it?


Some of the piles of junk that form my nest. Yes, those are two functional Vectrexes. I am amazing.

THIS IS NOT A HIT PIECE AGAINST JOHN FARJAY

If you know anything about me, you know that I would never savage a young, earnest developer. Others enjoy lashing out when there's blood in the water (especially when there's tasty, tasty clicks to bait), but I don't.

I have no problem with John Farjay. He offered a game on Kickstarter, delivered a game, became unhappy, and tried to extricate himself from the situation in as ethical a way as possible. The only real criticism I've heard leveled against him is that he didn't provide Kickstarter updates that often, but that isn't a crime as long as the game eventually arrives.

Here's what this situation sounds like to me: This guy wanted the job, applied for the job, got the job, decided he didn't like the job, and quit. This happens 10000000 times a day. It's not a big deal. It's only the public element that made it newsworthy.

And here's the cool thing: There's still hope. Suppose John Farjay changed his mind. Suppose he caught up on sleep, went for a few restorative walks, and went, "Wait! I do want to write games!"

He could write a Kickstarter update, say, "Sorry. I went nuts for a few days. I'm better now, and I'm back to work!" If he did this, I promise that he'd be welcomed back with open arms. It's a great story, and people love indie devs because we're quirky and human.

This shouldn’t have ever happened, though. Aspiring developers need to hear tales like these, so that they know what they are in for.


A shareware award I got in 1997, next to notes from my new game. My work notes very strongly resemble the opening credits to Se7en.

But What Does That Mean Exactly?

It’s easy to say “Toughen up.” But what does that mean? How do you modify your behavior and reactions in a way that enables you to withstand being in this business longer. Because that’s the goal: Creating a stable, sustainable business you like to run.

This will, in the end, vary from person to person. I don’t know what your mental fault lines are. I don’t know what freaks you out. I only know that, when you find the thing that freaks you out, you should probably modify your behavior or inputs in a way that leaves you calmer and more able to do your job.

For example, a lot of devs I know worry about weird metrics. They obsess over their Steam wishlist numbers, or their user reviews, or if they can compete with some new game that’s coming out, or whether keys they chose to sell through Humble Bundle are being resold. The world presents us with infinite trivia to worry about.

If a piece of input worries you, and you can’t control it, and you have no crystal clear idea what its impact on your life will be, feel free to ignore it. In fact, you probably should ignore it. If something upsets you, do everything you can to ignore that something.

Being harassed is VERY difficult to ignore, so do what you need to to keep from being harassed. Forums are nice, but you don’t HAVE to have them. Twitter has its points, but you don’t HAVE to be on it. (This is true. I ran a successful business for many a year before Twitter went live.) If a forum or public-facing account is a hive of harassment and nastiness, shut it down for a month. Most of the trolls will move on.

If you say, “I have to be on [web site] no matter what!” you are giving the crazies a weapon they can use to hit you. Don’t do that. “But they can drive me off of a site? That is wrong and not fair!” Yes. It is wrong and not fair. I’m angry about it too. But this isn’t an undergraduate ethics class. It’s business. Who ever told you business was fair?

(Fun aside: What percentage of online abuse against developers is secretly being launched by their competitors to push them out of the business? It might be 0% now, but, as the industry gets even more competitive, it won’t stay 0% forever. Sleep tight.)

This is a TOUGH, competitive business. It’s a blood sport. To have even a small chance of success, you will need to bring your A game, day after day, for years at a time. If something distracts you from that, you must cut it out without mercy.


My latest game's Metacritic. It's entirely fair. When I disagree with something someone wrote, I send them a respectful rebuttal.

Quick Aside About User Reviews

Most indie developers write games aimed at niche audiences. Therefore, the games they write won’t be liked by most gamers. This is pretty much the definition of ‘niche.’

Alas, indie developers also tend to really freak out about negative user reviews on places like Steam. They worry about this too much. It’s easy to forget that, if you write a game aimed at only 10% of the gaming audience, 90% of players will hate your game. A lot of them will leave bad reviews. This sort of review is not harassment. It’s the system working as intended.

Sometimes, when a dev expresses an unpopular political opinion, those who disagree will organize a brigade and spam your Steam page with negative reviews. This sucks, and they shouldn’t do that. (Although I would gently observe that, when your goal is to run a profitable business, political activism will only very rarely help in this.)

Not all clumps of negative reviews are signs of evil intent, though. Maybe you just wrote a game a lot of people don’t like, and they told you, and that’s the end of the story. Be ready for it.

I suggest making sure that the sliver of users who like your games are paying you enough money to stay in business. Then do what I do and don’t read user reviews. EVER.

But Getting Back To the Main Point

John Farjay was living the dream, and he fell apart. It's far from the first time, and it won't be the last. Life in the public eye, even in so lowly a role as indie game dev, can be tough. It's not for everyone.

It's the job of me and others like me to prepare the neophytes. They need to be ready for these jolts. They can't let one nasty review or article collapse them.

Assholes and hacks exist. So do reasonable people who will call you out when you inevitably make mistakes. You must be ready for all of them.

How do you get to this lofty point? I don't know. I just wish you luck, and I won't hold it against you if you find you aren't cut out for it.

Brace yourself. Good luck.

###

(You can read my moment to moment thoughts on Twitter, which I am on for the moment. Finally, I can't resist ending with a link to this.)

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I'd like to read that PC Gamer Avernum review if anyone has it.

As to this blog post, strikes me as a bit of false braggadocio along with not being entirely fair to Farjay. Spiderweb was already a self-sustaining success by the time that PC Gamer review was written. So Vogel could afford not to care. If PC Gamer had given Exile a 17% on release, though, one wonders if the result would have been different.

 

[pippin]

I remember a CGW where one of the Exile games was reviewed in a positive manner. Grimoire was also reviewed and it was said to be an excellent rpg, bound to be released some time soon.
This was 1996.

 

[MRY]

Some developers would be given pause by a review like this. Some might even be slightly upset. I was not. . . . Are you an aspiring game developer? Picture the largest games press outlet publicly treating you in such a manner. If you have any response besides, "Hey, any PR is good PR," you might want to reconsider your career path.

I think this is basically bad and dishonest advice. I suppose it is possible that despite every indication that negative commentary usually hurts his feelings, this one time Vogel was an uberalphagorilla whose only reaction was a Pepe-esque smirk as the dollars came rolling in. It's possible, but it's unlikely.

Far more likely (as is suggested by Vogel keeping tabs on the author to make sure he's never found success) is that Vogel was quite hurt by the negative review, but soldiered through it. It seems to me that much better advice would be, "You will no doubt get negative reviews, and they will make you depressed and angry enough to spend the rest of your career monitoring the reviewer to make sure that he winds up a loser. That is perfectly normal, and even MRY feels the same way, so don't feel bad. But if you quit making games, you will not be able to someday look back and say, 'He wrote nasty things about me, but I went on to make a dozen RPGs, while he wound up scrounging for crumbs on Patreon.' So, if you enjoy making games, you should keep making them, despite people saying things about them that rankle you."

 

[pippin]

I distinctively remember an Age of Empires 2 review where the game got thrashed for being a dull and boring piece of shit. The reviewer was mostly butthurt about it not being Command and Conquer, so much so that 85% of the review was something like "uh... this is a boring pos". The last few paragraphs said it had nice graphics and music. The review, all in all, told me more about the person reviewing it than the game itself, and I had played AoE2 at that point. This should tell you that sales numbers are often a better review than reviews themselves.

 

[Sceptic]

Far more likely (as is suggested by Vogel keeping tabs on the author to make sure he's never found success) is that Vogel was quite hurt by the negative review, but soldiered through it.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, especially in light of the huge drama he created when someone here (Elwro I think?) didn't like Avadon. He's making himself seem like he has a much thicker skin that he really does. That said it was not a bad piece, and props to him for poking fun at that youtube celebrity with the stupid name, who has got to be the single most obnoxious person I have ever seen, heard, met, or known of. I do like your own advice a lot.

The one bit that I didn't like it at all was this:

This guy wanted the job, applied for the job, got the job, decided he didn't like the job, and quit. This happens 10000000 times a day. It's not a big deal.

This is a disingenuous analogy, and goes to the root of the problem with Kickstarter in general and the way people view video game and internet "entitlement" in particular. The real analogy is "This guy wanted the job, applied for the job, got the job, decided he didn't like the job, and quit, taking with him the money but without fully delivering on what he was paid to do." That last part always gets conveniently forgotten, and I've said this repeatedly before: try doing this in a real job and see how far that gets you.

I don't particularly blame Farjay. He wasn't ready for something like Steam, but it's not something you can easily know in advance, and I would have had nothing to criticize if he'd decided to withdraw from Steam or stop updating the game there. But shafting the Kickstarter backers because his feelings got hurt by the Steam crowd is not a good thing to do. Even less so when you consider he's shafting the people who brought him the money and the good feels because he got greedy and wanted the money from the Steamtards too.

 

[Mustawd]

Sometimes, when a dev expresses an unpopular political opinion, those who disagree will organize a brigade and spam your Steam page with negative reviews. This sucks, and they shouldn’t do that. (Although I would gently observe that, when your goal is to run a profitable business, political activism will only very rarely help in this.)

Probably the truest thing said about the Dragonspear bruhaha.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Probably the truest thing said about the Dragonspear bruhaha.

Nah, they're just not understanding that crowd. Feminists, tumblerinas, LGBT - they're all fucking huge narcissists. So you have to play to their ego. You have to play with ramping it up to eleven. Just one mention here and there - they won't give a fuck, they won't even thank you. No, the entire story needs to be built their way if you wish to please them.

So if some mysterious deity, say, changed gender of a huge part of Sword Coast's population overnight and if the "crusade" was actually getting that part into concentration camps ('cause they're evil and stupid normies) and your hero was obviously trannified by this and enjoyed the trannifying, then yeah, that crowd would appreciate that. But that's not enough, though - you also need to have a team that is mostly composed from womyn, faggots and trannies, as SJWs despise nothing more than their "allies". They wouldn't buy a game from an ally - why would they pay for something that he, in their mind, is obliged to do anyways, as his penance?

So you can run this business. It's just that to sell to a dumbfuck, you must become a dumbfuck.

 

[Beastro]

they're all fucking huge narcissists. So you have to play to their ego. You have to play with ramping it up to eleven. Just one mention here and there - they won't give a fuck, they won't even thank you. No, the entire story needs to be built their way if you wish to please them.

Sounds like the average Codex poster.

 

[Beastro]

A very odd article to post after his "games need more arguments"... the guy posts he likes to debate, than says he doesn't post more because he's afraid of angering people.

In all honesty, I saw his previous article on Gamasutra and thought about starting a debate on his sales figures & humble bundles... maybe ask if he thinks his game design approach can survive much longer among so many great indie RPGs. But then I remembered how he usually handle this kind of thing and gave up. You can't have a good, open debate if people are reading every single line in fear of HARASSMENT. And he clearly is.

I can see both points and at the very least he seems to not view arguing in a negative light.

The issue in the latter article is that there is tons of bullshit out on the internet, we all need filters to strain it and ignore the crap thrown at us from all directions while preventing it from creating an echo chamber. In the end people need to experience the internet and learn to seek out criticize while finding out how to distinguish the dramawhoring squabbling from the creative debates.

I just don't think his antics do him any favours sale wise.

I guess I'm just the type of person who doesn't give two shits about his antics and buys games based on how much I enjoy them. Personally, I think he just gets a lot of shit here because he tends to wallow in self pity a lot.

Which incidentally, normally has zero impact on his games (except for avernum 2 ios port).

The dudes called himself a living legend.

Whatever sense he does make, I get the feeling he feels he deserves more recognition for what he's done, but doesn't get and has settled comfortably into a bit of a persecution complex, like J. Michael Straczynski and how he talks as much about being fucked over by the entertainment industry than he does his own work.

He at least hasn't gone full JMS by actively injecting said criticism and his replies to it into his stuff.

How many people have been "prank" SWAT-ed total? Is this like tens of thousands or a dozen?

Edit - a 2013 FBI estimate apparently said it was, "in the hundreds per year" (amazing specificity)

So say it's happened... 3000 times all told (probably overgenerous)? There were about 16000 murders in 2013. There are well over 300 million people in the US.

This dovetails with his article about filtering crap on the internet: Everything on it is amplified and our minds make it a bigger deal than it is. Institutionally this stuff is alarming for brains used to only getting abuse said to us face to face. Having more in a month, or even day, than you'd get in a lifetime without being on the internet is too much for our minds and we have to do what we can to mitigate that.

That's what the filters about, not about discounting valid and constructive criticism because it isn't what you want to hear.

You need a thick skin to navigate the nuggets of information out there.

That's the gist of what he was talking about, to be prepared for wading through the mire and not assuming it won't mess with you and to do what you can not to let that torrent of BS posting fuck you up.

 

[Zeriel]

What a coincidence, the shareware award in that picture is for the last good game he ever made.

(I always end up excluding Geneforge when talking shit about his post-Exile output because it makes it less interesting to say "Yeah, it's all shit... uh, except Geneforge, which is brilliant. Err...")

 

[gaussgunner]

I'd like to read that PC Gamer Avernum review if anyone has it.

The portion visible in the photo is an accurate critique of Avernum 2: Crystal Souls 2015 Ultimate Rehash Edition. It was better than Avadon, but still... what a fucking slacker.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I'd like to read that PC Gamer Avernum review if anyone has it.

The portion visible in the photo is an accurate critique of Avernum 2: Crystal Souls 2015 Ultimate Rehash Edition. It was better than Avadon, but still... what a fucking slacker.

i never played the original avernum and exile games, but played escape from the pit and crystal souls. what exactly makes it a slacker?

 

[Mustawd]

I think he's talking about the fact that Vogel just remakes games instead of making good new ones.

 

[Zeriel]

The original versions of the games are also better--making the remakes even more tragic. Kind of like BG:EE, really.

 

[Mustawd]

The original versions of the games are also better--making the remakes even more tragic. Kind of like BG:EE, really.

My understanding is that the Exiles were better, but I rather enjoyed Escape from the Pit more than the original Avernum. Although the tutorial in the new version kind of sucks ass TBH.

 

[TigerKnee]

Voggy basically dumbs down his games every time he remakes one - like you go from 6 men free form skill points party building to rather linear talent trees and I wouldn't be surprised that in the 10th remake of Exile it goes into WoW's "you get to pick 1 out of 3 talents every level" system.

Also took out some of the more "broken but fun as hell" abusive spells like Quickfire and Simulacrum in a rather Sawyer-like fashion.

 

[Nim]

He also likes to introduce stupid shit like this,

"Monsters and other non-player characters don't get their defenses from armor. Instead, each creature has innate protection:
Poison/Acid Attacks – 1% protection per level.
Physical Attacks – 5% protection per level.
All Other Attacks - 3% protection per level.
Note that these resistances stack like regular armor. If you strike a level 30 character with, say, 300 points of physical damage, that amount is reduced by 5% thirty times (not 150% once)."

making magic damage about double as effective as physical around lvl 30.

 

[Infinitron]

Somebody wrote a puff piece about Jeff: https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...ar-vision-of-videogame-designer-jeff-vog.html

The Singular Vision of Videogame Designer Jeff Vogel

Exile: Escape From The Pit was released as shareware in January of 1995. I discovered it a few years after that on a disc designed to prey on the ignorant and uninitiated in PC gaming during the 1990s. Several CDs crammed into a jewel case labeled with something like “One MILLION Games!” held closer to a few hundred shareware games, and the company doing the packing was literally just pulling demos from wherever they could to compile into sets to be sold at the Circuit Cities and mom-and-pop electronics stores of the world.

Those discs contained some of the games that I still cherish today: Hugo’s House of Horrors and its multiple sequels, Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, and Jeff Vogel’s Exile: Escape From The Pitand its sequels.

Despite being limited to shareware copies of all these games, I threw hundreds of hours intoEscape From The Pit, Crystal Souls and Ruined World, all of which told the story of a vast underground cavern the size of a continent used as a prison system and its relationship to the large fantasy empire living on the surface. These games were hugely important to me because of the wellspring of imagination that they evoked. As a kid who was spending most of his time playing shareware games, the Exile series was miles above whatever else I was interested in. Eventually, like all entertainment before the age of 13, it faded from memory.

Then, years later, I wondered what the hell had happened to these games. From what I knew of game development, I thought there had to be a tight team of a few creators, and knowing what I did about fabled design teams like the one at Looking Glass Studios that eventually spawned the creative leads of Bioshock, Deus Ex and other massive hits, I assumed that the creators of Exilewere all firmly entrenched in the game industry in various positions of power.

It was then that I discovered Jeff Vogel.



At the age of 24, Jeff Vogel was working on a PhD in applied mathematics and fiddling around with Exile: Escape From The Pit. After shareware release, Vogel abandoned the PhD in favor of the greener (or maybe more fulfilling) world of independent game development in the tail end of the 20th century. 1995 was more than a decade before the rise of the current independent gaming scene with the release of games like Braid and World of Goo in 2008; it was also a decade after the ascent of fantasy moguls like Richard Garriott and his wide world of Ultima IV. Releasing computer role-playing games during the ascent of the game console was a tricky thing, and I’m not the only person who might have lost track of these kinds of games at the tail end of the last millennium.

What’s remarkable about the work of Jeff Vogel is not the struggle of grinding out 22 games in 22 years. Don’t get me wrong—that number is shocking, but I think what should be celebrated about Vogel’s work is not merely that he did it but instead how he did it. The method here is much more interesting than the volume.

In the first half of the 20th century, the director Howard Hawks was known for his particular style. Across comedies, gangster films, westerns and other genres, you could recognize a Hawks film from its dialogue, character interactions and constant driving force. There’s a momentum, or a fatalism, to his work across its many variations.

Making new films within a familiar format of a certain style is a way of honing the edge of skill, but Hawks went the distance by repeatedly remaking his films. Making the same thing over and over, with little variation, might be the most testing thing an artist can do. Hawks turned Rio Bravo into El Dorado and then into Rio Lobo. While there are variations within the films, including a bent for comedy in Rio Bravo, the fundamental structure of all remain the same. Hawks built a new creature from the same skeleton each time.



This is also what makes Jeff Vogel unique in the world of independent game development in 2016. Since 1995, Vogel has created four unique series of games: Exile, Nethergate, Geneforgeand Avadon. Each of these games is a unique blend of fantasy and science fiction elements, withGeneforge leaning furthest toward the latter and Avadon bending toward the former.

While Geneforge has remained untouched and Avadon is too new to be remade, each of the other games have been remade and revamped by Vogel. As I am writing this, Exile: Escape From The Pit has been remade three times: the original, Avernum in 2000, and Avernum: Escape From The Pit in 2011. Each of these games has been a jump forward in graphical fidelity, writing quality, quest design and general ease of use. They have also opened up the franchise to newer players with newer computers, solving the compatibility problems that many games have with newer operating systems.

I cannot think of another figure in videogames who has so diligently focused and refocused on a world and collection of ideas as Jeff Vogel. It’s this constant repetition, finding new notes within old songs, that I find so engaging about his work, and it’s work that I don’t often see praised or even addressed in articles about him or interviews with him. Vogel has an uncompromising aesthetic vision that returns to these same ideas of imprisonment, rebellion and triumph over systemic forces that is tragically unrecognized and undiscussed in critical circles around games. Even worse is that Vogel seems to still be a niche (but, thankfully, a large niche) creator who is adored by a wide pool of hardcore fans and the additional players they gather by word of mouth.

Jeff Vogel is the videogame version of John Waters, Mark Kozelek, Evan Dorkin or Jandek. While the vagaries of time have placed him, variously, in the limelight and in the back seat, his gradual increase in profile has not compromised the singular modes of creation that make his artistic products fundamentally about him. Booting up Avadon: The Black Fortress in 2011 grabbed me in the same way that Exile did more than a decade ago. That kind of singular, unchanging, always-iterating design philosophy is rare today, and Jeff Vogel will be remembered long after the design fads of our contemporary era have rotted away to dust.

 

[TigerKnee]

I cannot think of another figure in videogames who has so diligently focused and refocused on a world and collection of ideas as Jeff Vogel. It’s this constant repetition, finding new notes within old songs, that I find so engaging about his work, and it’s work that I don’t often see praised or even addressed in articles about him or interviews with him. Vogel has an uncompromising aesthetic vision that returns to these same ideas of imprisonment, rebellion and triumph over systemic forces that is tragically unrecognized and undiscussed in critical circles around games.

What the hell am I reading.

Yes, I do wonder why repeating the same ideas over and over ad nausem isn't often praised