“Why are people acting so entitled about how indie shows should go and trying to push creator into following their story ideas instead?”
This is just speculation but I genuinely think this mindset started because of the indie mascot Horror space.
Where video games release chapter by chapter with some creators basing each new instalment of the game directly off the fans reaction to the prior one.
Most infamously outright admitted to by the developers of Bendy and the ink machine. Where they openly had admitted to even pulling ideas from fandom speculation straight up to put in the game when they didn’t know what to do next.
Due to the way a lot of smaller indie mascot horror function, fans started to feel like they had a lot more say in how their favourite media goes. They started seeing indie production as a deeply collaborative process between actual creator and audience. This being rewarded by small creators because it seems to make their jobs easier in the short term.
But not only can that process not work with animated series due to them not being produced in the start and stop way that facilitated that mindsets growth in the first place?
But it doesn’t even work long term in the indie horror space itself. With the example above having to very quickly learn to stop doing that.
The first Bendy game going out on a whimper because they had to write a conclusion to a game crammed full of other peoples ideas. Which turns out is hard! Because those weren’t their ideas!
They then completely fumbled launching a professional studio because they hadn’t left that mindset behind, killing their next game Showdown Bandit in the crib by ripping it away from the professionals they hired to work on it last minute in development. Basically to gut it of all its actual content to leave a “better” vaguely spooky blank slate for fan theories.
Their now ex employees Openly saying the game was completely different before that. In that it was an actual professional nearly complete chapter of a game telling a specific story. Which of course it was. They’d hired professionals. Who will want to do a professional job and make… a complete and satisfying product.
Not a start and stop train which has to park at every station waiting for the criticisms and theories to pour in so they know what to do next. They already know what to do next. Because they’ve already written the story. Even the chapters not yet in production have at worst been already decently outlined.
To an indie mascot Horror developer like the two people who worked on bendy? That feels like you’re making the game wrong. It makes them want to go “nononono- you’re putting too much in! Where’s the room for the fan speculation? The fans can’t just know what’s going on! They need to have the room to make that up!”
And they did. Very forcefully. And that made Showdown Bandit flop. Because it was obvious how it was fraying at the seams from where they ripped most of the actual story out. Even to the fans.
Which resulted in over fifty people getting fired because that studio they’d soft-launched called Kindly Beast was relying on the success of the game to sell not only the game itself but also all the merch they had produced. Which was planned to support the company financially since they wanted to keep bendy its own thing.
Which doesn’t happen if fans can transparently tell you’re selling them a shell of a game expecting them to do half the hard work of coming up with the story. You can only do that so many times before they catch on.
You have to start being more professional about it eventually. Or you’re just going to keep getting showdown bandits until no one trusts you anymore.
I would know. Because I was one of those fandom kids back then. I remember being excited for Showdown Bandit! I remember being really disappointed with it in a way I couldn’t yet articulate.
And then getting the words to articulate it when the Kindly beast controversy’s happened not long after.
I felt like we’d been used as a crutch.
Like I said the Bendy developers did learn from this. They took what few employees they didn’t fire and cobbled together a new focus entirely on their one successful game.
And they made a sequel to Bendy and the ink machine. Not another start and stop chapter train. A full complete sequel game. One they had fully made and released complete. Completely cut themselves off from the system that had both given them their initial success and their recent failures.
And it worked. They made a good game that people really liked. Just a solid complete experience start to finish. Like their employees had wanted to do with showdown bandit.
The fandom honestly liked it more. As it doesn’t suffer the chapter release rot.
It had a story that was actually thought about and completely intentional. You were meant to read into things a specific way. It actually had answers.
It was telling that story over being a choose your own adventure book with plausible deniability.
It a lesson most indie developers have learned now! Especially in formats that don’t really allow that formula like animation.
But fandom has not. They’re still trying to behave like their input can drastically sway the narrative. Like it’s this is still a collaborative process. It’s not.
It’s back to being the creator telling their story and the fans watching it as the audience.
If they’re taking criticism it will be after the story is over. And they’ll take it with them to keep in mind for the next story.
But not this one. It’s already written.
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
areudirty
