Bores Got Duped. His Side of the Irate Gamer Game. Also, Green Screen

Since it seems Friday will be the “new main episode” day for whatever he felt like working on, this post will cover the first two videos the week.

Monday’s video covered a long-dead topic. The iOS Irate Gamer game. It’s been two years and NOW he’s addressing it.
To recap, the Irate Gamer Game was teased sometime in 2010 (might have been 2009) with nothing more than pictures. It spent years in development hell with not a single video of gameplay. It went through (to my recollection) three art style changes.
Then, August 2013, Mad Media Labs shook off the cobwebs and somehow made the game appear. It was crap.
It was a platformer made for an entirely touch-based system, that’s already a major mark against it. Precision jumping was a pain, and there were major design issues that somehow got overlooked, like random ladders when you can’t even go up or down.
The graphics were ugly, like something on Newgrounds, with assets taken from Metal Slug and Mario. Then came the reveal that the game was nothing more than a reskin of a different iOS game called Commander Cool.
The game only lasted 3 months on the App Store and was quietly delisted. I suspect that Apple finally enforced their quality control rules and took it down. Great, now delist all the other crap.
Many people believe the rushed nature and timing of the game were to purposely coincide with the release of a different platform game featuring a notable video game critic  There are times Chris feels like the Asylum of internet critics.

Here are the “highlights” of Bores’ 8 minute rambling on the matter.

- Chris claims he gets a lot of people asking about it. He says it was put up on “iTunes”, then “the creators took it down”. They did? Was it really them? Maybe it was since the game’s price kept getting lower and lower until it was eventually delisted. Maybe they realized they weren’t getting any money at all and gave up.

- The purpose of this video (as he claims) is to show the concept art from “years and years of research and development”. Pffff

- Huh, seems this game dates all the back to 2008. Meaning this crappy platformer has been planned for five years. That is fucked up.
“I was getting lots of offers” Uh huh…

- He shows the first concept art. It has IG, Wise Sage, and Ronnie. IG is ugly as sin, and holding two guns. Wise Sage has glowing orbs. Ronnie is shooting lightning… That’s just weird.
“These guys must be serious because some of these looked really really good” … *looks at picture* I don’t know what I’m seeing differently.

- The Mad Media Lab team asked Bores if he wanted it in 8-bit or 16-bit. Bores said that since he reviews 8-bit games, he would want an 8-bit game… but do it in a 16-bit world.
“I don’t know, I was kind of confused” No shit, you clearly don’t know the difference with how often you confuse “NES” and “SNES”.

- Second concept art. An altered Mega Man sprite as IG on a stage with Ronnie shooting lightning at him. Okay what is up with Ronnie shooting lightning? Was this something Bores planned from the beginning but never went through with? Like how the Simpsons Arcade game has Marge’s bunny ears?
Third picture. Random assets like blocks and trees.
Fourth picture. An IG body shot, and various expressions. I don’t know, they need to be stiffer to match the real deal. There’s also text saying “Sage gives Chris Sacred Light Guns @ Stage 2” Man, even Wise Sage wasn’t spared, he didn’t even show up in the final product.
Speaking of Wise Sage. Fifth picture is a Wise Sage body shot with various expressions. There’s real life photos next to them as examples, and for some reason there’s photos of Wilson there. I don’t get it…
Sixth picture is more IG facial expressions. Seems to be trying to copy expressions from the show.

- Chris reveals that he was only getting an update every three months, and felt like things weren’t moving forward. He kept asking for gameplay but was never given anything. Hold up, was Chris actually aware he was being duped?
They broke contact, until a couple years later when they called up and asked to continue. This was “before Season 4”. He gave them what he planned for Season 4- oh please you did NOT have a plan. It’s clear to anyone that you just made that shit up as you went along.
Also, “before Season 4” would date it around 2010. So 2 years spent doing nothing, and another 3 years spent on a rushed reskin.

- His new request was to make something like “the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game”. So he wanted a beat-em-up. I can’t imagine that would have been any better.
He chose TMNT specifically because it had four players, he wanted the ability to play as himself, Wise Sage, Tony, and Ronnie. You could have just said four-player Arcade games of the time, there were so many of them.

- First picture of the new concept. A black & white image in a suburb with IG facing two HAL-bots, one with a gun and one with … I can‘t tell what he’s spinning. There’s also a paperboy in the background. Not sure if that’s meant to be a reference to the game.

- Second picture has four different kinds of HAL-bots with different body types. From left to right: A short & fat one with a bazooka (probably meant to be the Super Scope), a big muscular one with broken cuffs, a tall one holding NES controllers ooooh that’s what he was spinning in the previous image, and an average sized one with a gun (likely the Zapper). Would have been nice to see differing HAL-bots in your actual show Chris, but that would require effort and you clearly don’t care to show some. Also would have been nice to see these in the final product, but all we got was giant and purple, and they didn’t even have weapons.

- Third picture has IG in what I assume is a city street fighting a controller-holding HAL-bot and a muscular HAL-bot. I’m not sure if the muscular one is lifting a garbage can, or just holding his arms up and the can is in the background with weird perspective. There’s also a figure in a hood and cape in the background. No idea who that’s meant to be.

- Chris claims to have a binder full of notes and mock-ups for this game. Could we see it to see how much “work” went into the game?

- Fourth picture is just a layout plan, showing the gameplay window.

- Once again, only three months of communication at a time and all he got was artwork. Could you imagine if a real developer did this? “Hey Naughty Dog, it’s Sony, you mind showing us some gameplay for The Last of Us 2? No just more artwork? Okay I’ll check back in 3 months and hopefully see something”

- The next picture is a VERY rough sketch of the title screen used in the final game, followed by the actual screen.

- He then says they started sending him “storyboards”, but he probably means the cutscenes since those are the images he shows. The comic book style cutscenes. Maybe they told him that was what the game would look like. Falling for bullshots, don’t worry Chris, you’re not the only one to fall for bullshots.

- “I think it was last summer” The game came out two years ago… Chris once again screwing up his timeline.
He was pushing for gameplay, he really wanted to see gameplay. At least I agree with him here, I wanted to see if this crap was real or not.

- They finally sent him gameplay screenshots and it was the 2D side-scrolling platformer we eventually got. In fact it’s not even the same, the button UI is different.
Bores was shocked as this wasn’t what they agreed to. Mad Media Labs, being the snake oil salesmen they are, said that making the game he wanted was “too expensive” and it would be better to make a “cheap app game” and it would be only cost $2 or $3. It ended up being $3.99 until it was slashed to $0.99 before delisting.

- For some reason, he still thought it looked good. You really need a better eye for quality Chris.

- “They took it down a month later” 3 months actually. It was on the App Store for 3 months.

- People were telling Bores that this was just something that could have been slapped together in two weeks and was a rebuild of “some other game” “Captain something”. Commander Cool. At least he’s aware of THIS aspect.
And he was actually shocked they went the lazy way out. I’ll give Bores this, he actually realized he got scammed and didn‘t try to deny it. Though I wonder how much money he gave them in the first place.
Hold on, wasn’t he praising the game in the video he made about it? The one that isn’t up anymore because he put it on Private?

- “I wanted to show you some of the artwork because it is phenomenal” A lot of it really wasn’t. The only good art was the comic book cut scenes. The rest was pretty bad.

- This leads into the REAL purpose of the video. To advertise that he’s selling the comic book cutscenes at his site. He is selling them for $8.99. From a game that originally cost $3.99. Oh hey, a use for the other definition of “rip-off”. Also, you can see these cut scenes for free here: http://irategamersucks.blogspot.com/2013/09/spoiler-images-from-irate-gamer-game.html

- “This happens all the time in the gaming industry” It really doesn’t Chris. Games aren’t in “development” for years and the final product ends up being something thrown together in a week. It’s pretty obvious you were scammed.
He really wants his dream of a four-player beam-em-up to happen one day. … Not in a million years.

That’s about it. Huh, typed up more than I thought I would.
I did notice that he didn’t bring up Angry Birds at all. Maybe he finally saw what Angry Birds looked like and realized “my game looks nothing like that!”. Maybe the Mad Media Labs guys told him that and he believed it hook line and sinker. Or he forgot, that’s the more likely explanation.

Wait, if he’s selling the comic, shouldn’t the artist get credit? The artist’s name isn’t mentioned at all. Is he or she getting a cent of what he might make? This seems criminal…
EDIT: The artist is Geoff Hassing. You can find his site here: http://www.geofftoons.com/
His Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/geofftoons
Thank you Uatu for finding him.

Wednesday’s video has convinced me he is already running out of ideas.
He shows how he sets his green screen up… that’s it.
Really?
He brags that he didn’t have to play “$100 or $200” for a Chormakey green backdrop, and bought a bunch of $3 table cloths at Walmart and stapled them together. That would explain why his green screen work is always shoddy and terrible. Also, where the fuck did you hear $100-200? I just checked Amazon and you can get a 6x9 backdrop for $20! God, you really are cheap aren’t you? You won’t pay your new blog writers, you won’t pay any fans that offer Amiibo, and you’d rather have shitty table cloths rather than real Chromakey for your green screen backdrop.
He also shows how he holds it up by combining rings from a shower curtain with ceiling hooks.
Is that all you're going to say? Why not show us how you incorporate green screen into editing? Or how you light the room? Anything?

He says that the next Irate Gamer episode will be up by the end of the week. Which means I will be posting this now. I expect pain.

Until then, Bloodborne!