i have no idea what that person's specific bone to pick is but i created an account to say: wow! they sound completely out of their mind!
this article's really good, cheers. this is absolutely an underdiscussed part of text game history and i've been consistently very impressed with the different angles this series has taken when talking about a medium that resists easy narratives much more than most
i assume you wouldn't be put off by a comment like that but: you shouldn't be. very excited for the home stretch
Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of your work and greatly respect your skills as an author, not just here during this series but also your master's thesis, which I found to be particularly brilliant.
However, this particular entry left me incredibly disappointed and even mildly outraged. It feels like it was hurriedly edited and published, and I strongly disagree with some of your conclusions as well as the reasoning behind selecting Pixelberry to be the entry for 2016.
First, the obvious stuff, the grammar and typos:
1) There's no such thing as "biggest gross." Even in strictly financial terms, it's either an adjective (highest-grossing, gross income) or else an articulated noun "the gross."
2) Asian-American is hyphenated, always.
3) "next to the railroad tracks" is the end of one sentence and needs a period.
4) No comma is needed for "emerging mobile games market..."
5) In 2005, COMMA.
6) ...remaking Surviving High School for THE iPhone (or iOS without the "the").
7) "Left as an exercise for the reader." is a broken fragment.
8) The Freshman, THE most successful of the launch stories...
9) "The impact that might have on the medium in the decades to come..." needs a second "that" or a "this."
And so on and so forth.
As for the topics addressed in your article, however, this feels like you shoehorned in Pixelberry (PB, hereafter) purely due to its superficial credentials rather than for its impact on the IF community/industry.
1) Even though you repeatedly mentioned "Episode," they somehow get the understudy role in this story. Why? Not only has Episode vastly outsold PB, Episode is also a company primarily staffed by women that serves a largely female audience.
2) Episode, from Day One, clearly positioned themselves as IF in the tradition of CYOA whereas PB only figured out that these kinds of stories sell through trial and error.
3) Unlike PB, Episode lets the USERS create and publish (and even sell!) stories on the platform. One more reason why Episode is clearly the first-mover and largest player in this space. Episode is so popular, in fact, that some users make a living by providing secondary services such as creating outfits and drawing background scenes and props. Need I add that the majority of these authors and creators are women, and many are LGBTQ+?
4) For all their "woke" creds that PB love to tout, The Freshman is a gender-locked story featuring an incredibly cliched story of a female character competing for attention from older men.
5) What is up with paragraphs about people who are unable to convert currencies? I dug into all the links associated with this quote, and they all reference American subjects. The USA is probably the only place on Earth where people spend their entire lives without ever needing to convert one currency to another. Furthermore, the entire digression on in-game currencies could stand to be deleted as we all know how they work and PB did nothing innovative or pioneering in this field except for managing to simultaneously a) successfully separate young children from their parents' money and b) fail to make a profit (see below).
6) What ISN'T particularly well covered in your article is just how much PB succeeds... at losing money, although there are a few hints here and there. Out of all the competitors, including Chapters and Episode, only PB has successfully managed to be unprofitable year after year after year. Their gem-free choices might be uplifting, but they sure as heck don't pay the bills.
Other than that, I'd have loved to see at least a MENTION of the entire Otaku genre of games in this article, the true pioneers of the space that PB would later claim. Yes, maybe English-language media outlets rarely cover games like PB, but for decades, Japan has been exploring and creating entirely new genres of games, games that are immensely popular and clearly paved the way for wannabes like PB.
On a lark, I went over to IFDB and saw that there's not even a listing for The Freshman or, as far as I can tell, any other PB title, so it's hardly just the "core" gaming media that has ignored this genre. Furthermore, I don't believe a single IFComp entry has ever been in this Otaku/Episode format.
Perhaps that's because PB and the like barely qualify as IF. For one, they're heavily visual media while IF has traditionally been text-centered. Far more importantly, however, is the fact that (as you mentioned!) the choices really don't matter, making it less "interactive" and more of a visual novel. An entire "chapter" of a PB game has fewer than a dozen choices, and most of them are just "flavor" choices that don't even affect the gameplay!
Last, but certainly not least, PB is a company that is dangerously addicted to its own hype. Back in 2017, when remote working for a Silicon Valley company was rare, PB was all over the employer boards, looking for new authors (who never get credited, UNLIKE their competitors) across the country to work remotely. However, several people I've spoken to told me that PB categorically refused to hire anyone who was male and/or couldn't add "diversity" to their roster. Lovely...
Again, I remain a huge fan of your work, and I look forward to better entries to come in this fantastic and wonderfully written series!
i have no idea what that person's specific bone to pick is but i created an account to say: wow! they sound completely out of their mind!
this article's really good, cheers. this is absolutely an underdiscussed part of text game history and i've been consistently very impressed with the different angles this series has taken when talking about a medium that resists easy narratives much more than most
i assume you wouldn't be put off by a comment like that but: you shouldn't be. very excited for the home stretch
Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of your work and greatly respect your skills as an author, not just here during this series but also your master's thesis, which I found to be particularly brilliant.
However, this particular entry left me incredibly disappointed and even mildly outraged. It feels like it was hurriedly edited and published, and I strongly disagree with some of your conclusions as well as the reasoning behind selecting Pixelberry to be the entry for 2016.
First, the obvious stuff, the grammar and typos:
1) There's no such thing as "biggest gross." Even in strictly financial terms, it's either an adjective (highest-grossing, gross income) or else an articulated noun "the gross."
2) Asian-American is hyphenated, always.
3) "next to the railroad tracks" is the end of one sentence and needs a period.
4) No comma is needed for "emerging mobile games market..."
5) In 2005, COMMA.
6) ...remaking Surviving High School for THE iPhone (or iOS without the "the").
7) "Left as an exercise for the reader." is a broken fragment.
8) The Freshman, THE most successful of the launch stories...
9) "The impact that might have on the medium in the decades to come..." needs a second "that" or a "this."
And so on and so forth.
As for the topics addressed in your article, however, this feels like you shoehorned in Pixelberry (PB, hereafter) purely due to its superficial credentials rather than for its impact on the IF community/industry.
1) Even though you repeatedly mentioned "Episode," they somehow get the understudy role in this story. Why? Not only has Episode vastly outsold PB, Episode is also a company primarily staffed by women that serves a largely female audience.
2) Episode, from Day One, clearly positioned themselves as IF in the tradition of CYOA whereas PB only figured out that these kinds of stories sell through trial and error.
3) Unlike PB, Episode lets the USERS create and publish (and even sell!) stories on the platform. One more reason why Episode is clearly the first-mover and largest player in this space. Episode is so popular, in fact, that some users make a living by providing secondary services such as creating outfits and drawing background scenes and props. Need I add that the majority of these authors and creators are women, and many are LGBTQ+?
4) For all their "woke" creds that PB love to tout, The Freshman is a gender-locked story featuring an incredibly cliched story of a female character competing for attention from older men.
5) What is up with paragraphs about people who are unable to convert currencies? I dug into all the links associated with this quote, and they all reference American subjects. The USA is probably the only place on Earth where people spend their entire lives without ever needing to convert one currency to another. Furthermore, the entire digression on in-game currencies could stand to be deleted as we all know how they work and PB did nothing innovative or pioneering in this field except for managing to simultaneously a) successfully separate young children from their parents' money and b) fail to make a profit (see below).
6) What ISN'T particularly well covered in your article is just how much PB succeeds... at losing money, although there are a few hints here and there. Out of all the competitors, including Chapters and Episode, only PB has successfully managed to be unprofitable year after year after year. Their gem-free choices might be uplifting, but they sure as heck don't pay the bills.
Other than that, I'd have loved to see at least a MENTION of the entire Otaku genre of games in this article, the true pioneers of the space that PB would later claim. Yes, maybe English-language media outlets rarely cover games like PB, but for decades, Japan has been exploring and creating entirely new genres of games, games that are immensely popular and clearly paved the way for wannabes like PB.
On a lark, I went over to IFDB and saw that there's not even a listing for The Freshman or, as far as I can tell, any other PB title, so it's hardly just the "core" gaming media that has ignored this genre. Furthermore, I don't believe a single IFComp entry has ever been in this Otaku/Episode format.
Perhaps that's because PB and the like barely qualify as IF. For one, they're heavily visual media while IF has traditionally been text-centered. Far more importantly, however, is the fact that (as you mentioned!) the choices really don't matter, making it less "interactive" and more of a visual novel. An entire "chapter" of a PB game has fewer than a dozen choices, and most of them are just "flavor" choices that don't even affect the gameplay!
Last, but certainly not least, PB is a company that is dangerously addicted to its own hype. Back in 2017, when remote working for a Silicon Valley company was rare, PB was all over the employer boards, looking for new authors (who never get credited, UNLIKE their competitors) across the country to work remotely. However, several people I've spoken to told me that PB categorically refused to hire anyone who was male and/or couldn't add "diversity" to their roster. Lovely...
Again, I remain a huge fan of your work, and I look forward to better entries to come in this fantastic and wonderfully written series!