Spiderweb Software - Interview @ Don't Die

Jeff Vogel did a lengthy interview with Don't Die about indie game development, the state of the industry, how games are reviewed, the internet and more.

So, I'm just gonna zoom out meta really quick. Everything on the Internet now works on clicks. Everyone from the lowest blogger to The New York Times gets paid by clicks. You write something for 1,000 clicks, you make $n. You write something that gets 2,000 clicks, you make twice that. This is an oversimplification, but that's the basic idea. When you write something, you don't want to be telling the hard truth. You don't want to make the world a better place. You want to get clicked, and that's how you eat. And that's the system.

I think that the system has certain effects on how people communicate and how people think. If you write an article that makes people angry and people get super-angry and they keep going to it and arguing about it and going to that page and arguing about it, that's the most efficient way to make money. And the most efficient way to make people angry is to go to certain sorts of politics and certain sorts of identity politics and just bang the drum and everyone gets mad, and then they'll go to your comments section and they'll get in big arguments and that's more and more and more clicks. And, you know, I can't change the system. It just developed and here it is and we all just have to deal with it in our own ways.

I delete a lot of bookmarks. A lot of websites that I love get infected by it to varying degrees, and I just go there less. When people write a headline -- clickbait is really popular and I think it is a very accurate term. You will see a website like "Five Things You Didn't Know about Cherries" or this next one's a real example from Slate: "You've Been Making Scrambled Eggs the Wrong Way Your Whole Life." Let us tell you the right way. The headlines themselves are designed to make you angry.

The headlines themselves are designed to raise your blood pressure just to click and go, "Oh hell yeah I know how to make scrambled eggs. I'm gonna go to the forums and let's argue about scrambled eggs."

Let's not. Scrambled eggs are fine. Scrambled eggs don't need our help. Videogames are afflicted by this, but everyone's afflicted by this now. Identity politics are the best ways to get the clicks. If I was working for Kotaku, I would write articles all the livelong day that was like -- what's a game? Splatoon. Splatoon's a game that just came out.

"Splatoon's an Example of White Male Privilege." Say I wrote an article with that headline. It doesn't matter what the article is about. People are going to click on that link. It doesn't necessarily -- I don't know. I've never played Splatoon. For all I know it is all about white male privilege. So, if anyone wants a quote to pull out of context: Splatoon is all about white male privilege. There. "Noted Indie Developer Calls Splatoon Racist." [Laughs.] Why not? I need the attention, too. We don’t get a lot of press.

People single out the gaming press for it, but all press works like that on the Internet. And because the Internet is the only press -- in my country now, that's how all the press works. I personally think it kind of sucks but that's just where we are. All of everyone's wants and needs have added up to that and we just kind of have to live with it, but every once in a while, I'm still gonna say, "This isn't great. I'm not enjoying this very much." It won't change anything, but at least once in a while people should say it.