Tanukitsune

Armikrog: Earthworm Neverhood 2?

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I always wondered why there was an official Neverhood Facebook page, it seems it was to promote the upcoming Kickstarter for their latest project.

 

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It's says from the creators of Earthworm Jim and The Neverhood, do they mean Doug TenNapel... and who else? I thought Doug was the only person in common.

 

They weirdest part is that they are announcing an upcoming Kickstarter, this is a first, right?

 

I guess we'll have to wait for the actual Kickstarter to see who they actually mean and what this is all about?

 

Excitement level: Cautiously Optimistic. 

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This could be cool? I think?

I loved Earthworm Jim (like every Genesis player on this planet), but the only thing I know about The Neverhood is that its sequel had

.

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It will be interesting to see how things will change with the involvement of the modern, insane Doug TenNapel.

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The Neverhood is a game I have always wanted to play and always been super disappointed that IT IS UNAVAILABLE ON ANY DIGITAL DELIVERY SYSTEM, C'MOOOOON.

 

Earthworm Jim was fantastic. (The sequel, not so much, but hey whatever.)

 

I'm interested. Also this new trend of announcing Kickstarters is so hilarious to me. Makes sense, though. A Kickstarter with a strong start is more likely to succeed, and the strongest start is probably going to happen if you make people anticipate it before it even begins.

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This is a weird case in which I really liked those games and then I read up on Doug TenNapel and then I liked them a lot less. Earthworm Jim has a special place in my heart, but TenNapel being a gross bigot is going to stop me throwing money his way. A lot of creativity wasted on such a terrible person.

 

I kind of wished I stuck to the 'worship art, not artists' aphorism and kept my blinders on.

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What was the name of that metroidvania on which Oscar Scott Card worked on a little? It was pretty great, what I'm trying to say is that I doubt this case will be that different, he'll be an artist, the lead artist probably, but I really doubt he'll do anything that could harm the game.

 

 

This could be cool? I think?

I loved Earthworm Jim (like every Genesis player on this planet), but the only thing I know about The Neverhood is that its sequel had

.

 

I raise you one

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OSC's game was Shadow Complex, or something like that?

 

I had no idea about TenNapel's bigotry until I looked it up today. Eurgh. Just as bad as OSC.

 

Fortunately, I'm pretty capable of ignoring bigotry for the sake of enjoying art. Sometimes that makes me feel a little sick on the inside.

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Hmm, it looks Ed Schofield abnd Mike Diets did indeed work on both The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim, so maybe Doug TenNapel will have nothing to do with the project after all?

 

It also mentions Terry Scott Taylor which sounds promising, I guess they will try to make a "spiritual sequel" since they probably don't have the right to make The Neverhood 2? It does say in that post that it will be a point and click adventure.

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No no. TenNapel is the creator of the project, so this is his game design, puzzle design, story and art design. I think Schofield and Diets are the actual game developers and/or animators behind all his stuff. But TenNapel is definitely the project lead, or director.. whatever.

And yeah, I was pretty fucking bummed out when I read just a couple of months ago about his awful bigotry.. I used to worship this guy's art. I even donated to an earlier Kickstarter of his for publishing a sketch collection before finding out about all this.

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It will be interesting to see how things will change with the involvement of the modern, insane Doug TenNapel.

Yeah, my feelings exactly.

 

I gave to Doug's last Kickstarter even though I've known about his angry hate speech for what seems like nearly a decade now. Maybe I witnessed the birth of it? For whatever it's worth, he seems to keep friends around of the type he's bigoted of, like the people he worked on the Sarah Silverman Program with (as well as the crude but still liberal viewpoints of the show), other comic artists and animators he works with, as well that sometimes his blog posts are less hateful and crazy and more introspective, uplifting, or encompassing. He was doing alright for a while there until the Ratfist fiasco.

 

He often makes the argument that a lot of his favorite creators and artists do not at all share views he agrees with, which is fine, but TenNapel tends to easily turn into internet asshole and begin flame wars in various places over highly sensitive social issues (in the U.S.), which I doubt his heroes do/did. And every time he goes on one of his flame wars or rants, there ends up being the final phase of the cycle where he either starts deleting his inflammatory posts or just apologizing to people, lies low for a while, then another shitstorm again later. I don't know how much of it is him being sincere in that brief moment of remorse or how much is Doug wanting to keep having work (he has stated his mouth has lost him more than a few projects).

 

I'm often confused if there is a chance TenNapel has always went through bouts of hate in the 90s and during the Neverhood days or if this is something that burgeoned with him getting older, going more strictly to church and getting into his religion, or discovering how easy it is to use the internet as a platform to spew first and think later. The Neverhood making of video would indicate he's always been a Christian, as well as with most of the team, but outside of a few posts on God, I don't think I saw any kind of the psychotic Republican until around 2003 when he made some blog post about vegans and abortion, which I don't really remember but I surmise it was probably angry and offensive.

 

One of his first big comics, Creature Tech, seems to be a somewhat autobiographical journey of a young man who grew up in a more rural area with heavy Christian values which were later ignored by the man only to find god again in his adulthood. My guess is that somewhere along the line, TenNapel made his major reattachment with Christianity but instead decided to use it to get angry about the rules and regulations of the bible and then just throw it at his fellow man.

 

I don't know, just wanted to type all of that. Being a fan of TenNapel and not ever agreeing with any of what he says or being Christian has been very strange. I haven't read all of his books, but I must own about five or six and while they all tend to deal with being a Christian in many cases, I can only think of one that's mildly offensive about it, but it's often a subject handled with love and care in the books, I don't know why he can't do the same in real life. I've been so close to just dropping off all of his stuff at the nearest used book store many times, but I get the feeling he's going to figure it out. I mean he has kids that will be making it to their teens soon and he lives in California, there's sure to be more internal arguments than on the internet at that point. But then again, maybe nothing will change and I've just been supporting a bigot who will forever be one.

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Well, the Kickstarter finally started and it looks good? But it seems like they are asking a bit much. Yes, I know it probably needs more, but I wonder if it even make half as much as they ask for.

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900k actually seems like a very low number to me if they are going to have the game working anywhere close to the Neverhood where they just had rooms filled with a bunch of constructed hand made sets. Most likely, this is the reason The Neverhood was also very short.

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It looks great! The animation is better and more fluid than Neverhood's (stop-motion software has come a long way) By just animated film standards 900k seems like a low figure. But yeah, it might be a little hard to reach on Kickstarter. Who knows, maybe it has the following to reach the goal. How long has it been up? It's already at 50k, so it might get there fast.

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By high number I mean a high Kickstarter goal, I am aware it's going to cost more, it just seems a lot for Kickstarter... that isn't from Tim Schafer.

 

Hmm, Earthworm Jim was popular enough to get it's own cartoon, but it's hard to gauge it's popularity, do they have enough fans to reach their goal? How many fans did he lose with the bigoted comments he made? It's impossible to know, I guess if this Kickstarter succeeds we'll know.

 

And such a strange voice cast ensemble, Scott Kurtz? I don't know if he has more fans or haters... Veronica Belmont? Did they just hire faces they'd hope people would recognize?

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I backed it even though I'm not a fan of Tenaple's shitty political views. I think it looks cool and if I had to stop liking something because of the artist's political views or things they've said, there would probably be a lot of stuff I couldn't like.

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The animation looks delightful! The only concern I have is that they showed little to no gameplay. They talk about how the Kickstarter funds will go towards animating, but where does the game design factor into that? Even if it's 'done in Unity', I'd say you still have to spend a significant chunk of time programming. This just doesn't feel like a 900k game, more like 3-7m.

 

I haven't backed this, and probably won't, because Kickstarter frustratingly still only accepts credit cards and other European-unfriendly nonsense.

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Though I haven't throughout my life consistently never supported artists with political views I disagree with, I cancelled my pledge after reading this: http://gaygamer.net/2011/05/on_ratfist_doug_tennapel_and_w.html. Looks like a great game, but knowing I'd backed him made me uncomfortable. Not that it matters – they're not going to raise the remaining 40% in 9 days.

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Yeah that's kind of what I meant earlier. Somewhere in that mess of comments he apologizes, then starts acting like a total dickhead again, then apologizes again. Then it just takes the next outburst. It's like I can never tell if the guy is truly going to stop with this shit or not? I mean he must be learning since the Gay Gamer one, but I don't know. I don't even know if I care about what his personal views on gay marriage or whatever other liberal agenda stuff he's upset about, but he could make a major effort to just shut up about it or at least not be an insensitive jerk.

 

He did an interview for Armikrog with this podcast and starts tearing up with the realization that he probably jeopardized the project from the beginning from the way he's acted in the past: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSwzBShEFls He just emphasizes the project isn't just about him or his political views, so I guess take with that what you will.

 

My hope is TenNapel just doesn't let his career turn into Dave Sim type stuff and turns it around.

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It's a sympathetic interview, certainly. You know, on a basic level Armikrog looks like so much fun and I'd love it if it existed. What Doug should do is take a stance, apologize for stuff and let the hurtful views go. But with still so far to go, I don't think it'll get kickstarted. Shame, really.

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It's still possible since a lot of projects, especially the ones that haven't met their goal yet, usually get a pretty big boost towards the end of a kickstarter.

 

I hope it makes it. I think it looks like a cool project.

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Are those tears of having fucked up or tears of realizing you've been fucked up?

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