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PostPosted: June 29th, 2009, 9:02 am 
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Ghostbusters Apocrypha: Game Theory

Apocrypha Era Three
It's 2007, and Venkman has just returned to Ghostbusters Central with the news that a new video game is in production. And the Ghostbusters are not totally happy with what they're hearing...
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I wrote this in a rather depressed and bitter state about a year ago; it was sitting in my files ever since as the "Nuclear Option" if the video game sucked and/or sprocked up too much of the GBOT fan fic canon. The game's out now, and I think it's pretty clear that this story will not be needed. So note that I'm released it as an Apocrypha, which means it doesn't count in the continuity.

Still, if you're one of those fans who can stand absolutely no criticism of Dan Aykroyd or especially Harold Ramis, please do us both a favor and skip this one, okay?

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PostPosted: June 29th, 2009, 8:33 pm 
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Well I gotta say, I'm glad you made this apocraphal, but I also gotta say it makes me lose a smidgen of respect for you, this thing is just a flood of the usual assortment of "GB2 sucks!" and "Fuck the movies!" lingo. In your regular fan fictions I dont mind it at all, because there's REALLY good stories to focus on and you just sprinkle on your own opinion, which works fine.

This, on the other hand, makes the Ghostbusters seem like children. Throughout most of it, they act like someone got CANCER just because the game is taking liberties. Not to mention the fact that Egon probably could give a shit less if the VIDEO GAME community doesnt know how nuclear physics works. He'd be trying to push his theories and inventions on the SCIENTIFIC world, why would he give a good goddamn about some fatass nerds sitting around yelling into a headset till 5am?

The question I'm posing are not "WHY DONT YOU LIKE THE GAME!?", because in the end, you're completely entitled to your opinion on it, but the fact is: You made the Ghostbusters WAY too focused on the media versions of themselves. These guys have JOBS to do, and to guys like Winston, thats what it is, a job. As for Ray and Egon, they're scientists and I highly doubt that scientists are throwing a fit because of video games and movies that dont really make sense with their theories. Because that's all they are compared to the guys who actually do the work... MEDIA JUNK. I think PETER would be the only one to actually CARE about any of this stuff in the end.

Janine is an entire other issue altogether, does she do NOTHING else with her life other than be angry about Ghostbusters 2? Jeez, it was two decades ago, she's gotten married, faced down the forces of darkness and had CHILDREN since then... I highly doubt that every other word out of her mouth would be referrencing how much she hates Ghostbusters 2. (Just to clarify, I agree that Egon and Janine are a good couple)

Fritz, you do much better work than this on a regular basis, and I know you already said that you wrote it a year ago, but this is exactly the kind of stuff I've been going on about for all this time. Overly critical nonsense that has no reason to affect the Ghostbusters the way its being built up to.


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PostPosted: June 29th, 2009, 11:15 pm 
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Valid points mick but also cut him a bit of slack . He also said he was in a dark place when he made it .Back when all the proverbial shit was hitting the fan ,

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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 12:16 am 
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Well the story or should I say Critical review was interesting. Not sure what to think tho. Feels a bit too critical and the characters feel not quite themselves here. Especially Ray and Peter.

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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 10:02 am 
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Lol...I admit, when I decided to post this, one of the first things I thought of was "If Mick decides to read this, he's gonna have some words about it..."

I think all of the criticisms are valid. It's not a very good story, and I don't think it could have ever been made such--which is why I debated with myself about releasing it at all, and when I did I knew it would have to be as a Apocrypha.

So these aren't the "real" Ghostbusters--they're shallower, more media-obsessed counterparts of them (Well, Venkman I could see being this concerned, and possibly Louis due to his "Keymaster Cologne" days, but that's about it)

As for "hating the movies"...c'mon, without the first one noone would be here. The second one, for all of it's faults, was still good. But some of this story was a reaction to all the fans crawling out of woodwork at the time and now who're looking down on an animated program I dearly love and sneering "Well, it's about time we found out what really happened" like nobody nowhere had written a Ghostbusters story since 1989. I don't mean us, I mean JMS, Richard Mueller, Fil Barlowe, James Van Hise, Andrew Dabb, and everyone else who wrote great stories that were good enough to get Columbia/Sony's seal of approval, but get dumped on because Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis weren't involved with them.

(Never mind the fact that the movies' producers were. Never mind that Reitman had enough involvement to tell the cartoon producers to fire Lorenzo Music because Bill Murray paid enough attention to get his massive ego bruised because Venkman didn't sound like him.)

The snobs who wield variations of the phrase "This is RGB-ish" like an insult; those guys got up my nose and still do.

(And yeah, I know I love taking the potshots over GB2 and the Janine/Louis thing. Because it was stupid, sucked, and Ramis refuses to admit that. But look at it from Janine's perspective: an event she's come to regard as one of the biggest mistakes of her entire life was splashed onto the big screen without any sense of the "real" context, and played for laughs. Add in Ramis's approval, and while no, she certainly hasn't spent ever day for the last twenty years plotting to kill him, I could argue that the project could dredge up all that old resentment, at least temporarily)

I'm not exactly proud of this story, but I knew it would further some of the debates now in progress. In that respect, it's a minor success, I guess.

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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 2:47 pm 
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Fun as it is to read fiction-bashing, I'd like to point out that it wasn't just Sony, Ramis and Aykroyd who were responsible for the production of this game.

I feel that as a company which had tried to make the fans happy by incorporating the concept of fan franchises (and other fan-made stuff) in the game, and which even apparently went as far as inviting fans with their props to help make sure the pack design and the sound of running in suits was authentic as possible, Terminal Reality does not deserve this kind of fan response to their months of hard work.

Sure, bash the hell out of Clavet and Sony for screwing over the fans. Bash the crap out of Ramis for screwing with Janine's character and all but ignoring fan wishes. But bashing a company which has actually tried to work with the fans and accommodate them, it just seems... I don't know, a little petty, really. I'd like to point out that I'm not a great fan of either Ramis or Aykroyd, and I'd be making these same remarks no matter who authored this.

I wish someone had felt that angry to write something similar about how Ghostbusters fans were screwed over by Clavet, and basically scammed by him and his poor business sense. You'd think the Ghostbusters would have something to say about that, yes? Apparently they weren't angry enough to convene a meeting and rip Clavet a new one like they did the people behind this game.

I am aware this was written a year ago and that you were in a different state of mind back then, but what about a little revision? Maybe cutting these guys just a little bit of slack in the light of the fact that they have actually tried to make the fans happy?

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I hate to think that the guys who worked their asses off on this game and tried to make it as authentic as possible, discovers that someone (and not just any old someone, but a major member of the GB fan community) has authored and published a story on the net consisting entirely of a rant about how this game SUCKS in a major way, how they have screwed with continuity, how their science doesn't work, and how they've pissed off everyone, and put that rant in the mouths of the Ghostbusters themselves. If I were part of that creative team and discovered this, I'd never go anywhere near the Ghostbusters fan community again.

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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 4:36 pm 
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Fritz wrote:
Lol...I admit, when I decided to post this, one of the first things I thought of was "If Mick decides to read this, he's gonna have some words about it..."

I think all of the criticisms are valid. It's not a very good story, and I don't think it could have ever been made such--which is why I debated with myself about releasing it at all, and when I did I knew it would have to be as a Apocrypha.

So these aren't the "real" Ghostbusters--they're shallower, more media-obsessed counterparts of them (Well, Venkman I could see being this concerned, and possibly Louis due to his "Keymaster Cologne" days, but that's about it)

As for "hating the movies"...c'mon, without the first one noone would be here. The second one, for all of it's faults, was still good. But some of this story was a reaction to all the fans crawling out of woodwork at the time and now who're looking down on an animated program I dearly love and sneering "Well, it's about time we found out what really happened" like nobody nowhere had written a Ghostbusters story since 1989. I don't mean us, I mean JMS, Richard Mueller, Fil Barlowe, James Van Hise, Andrew Dabb, and everyone else who wrote great stories that were good enough to get Columbia/Sony's seal of approval, but get dumped on because Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis weren't involved with them.

(Never mind the fact that the movies' producers were. Never mind that Reitman had enough involvement to tell the cartoon producers to fire Lorenzo Music because Bill Murray paid enough attention to get his massive ego bruised because Venkman didn't sound like him.)

The snobs who wield variations of the phrase "This is RGB-ish" like an insult; those guys got up my nose and still do.

(And yeah, I know I love taking the potshots over GB2 and the Janine/Louis thing. Because it was stupid, sucked, and Ramis refuses to admit that. But look at it from Janine's perspective: an event she's come to regard as one of the biggest mistakes of her entire life was splashed onto the big screen without any sense of the "real" context, and played for laughs. Add in Ramis's approval, and while no, she certainly hasn't spent ever day for the last twenty years plotting to kill him, I could argue that the project could dredge up all that old resentment, at least temporarily)

I'm not exactly proud of this story, but I knew it would further some of the debates now in progress. In that respect, it's a minor success, I guess.


Fritz, I TOTALLY get your anger towards those new-age fans who act like jackasses in the ways you've already mentioned, but you can't blame the producers of the movie or the show for that, you DO make a LOT of effort to seperate the "Movie" universe from the show itself, even the SHOW did that by showing them MAKING the movie in "Take Two". So when people who dont know anything about the show come around and see this game being made and they say things like "Now we get to find out what happened!" thats pretty much correct as far as they know of. RGB never tried to make itself connected to the movie timeline, and this game was a continuation of those movies, so you cant really get mad at something you support a separation from. (not to mention you cant really get mad in the first place cuz its not like they're spitting in your face by not recognizing fan fictions)


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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 5:37 pm 
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Mick, I think I've worked as hard as anyone to make the movies and television shows work together. This whole fucking site was built around that work. It's gotten more and more trendy to treat them as two seperate things, and it's a trend I hate with a burning passion.

Anyway...

I don't see myself as one of those people who can't ever admit it when they make a mistake. Well, and I've made one.

After six years and one hundred and eleven stories, I'm deliberately pulling one down. Even as an Apocrypha, it's become clear that "Game Theory" is not serving any positive purpose. All links have been removed; if there's anybody still morbidly curious about what the fuss was about, PM me--the page is still in the file system, but the address has been changed so that the page in anybody's histories no longer works.

I apologize to any and everybody for my boneheaded blunder. I'll try and do better in whatever future I have left.

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PostPosted: June 30th, 2009, 7:29 pm 
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Mother fucking sun of a bitch people .

The man just put up something that he worked on . You put up a lot of work into something and so you just want to put it up . I know there is stuff that I put a lot of time in that has yet to be up . Like are last year halloween fic with me fighting jason .

Its not part of the God dam time line , its was made a yeah ago back when we thought this was all going to be the fucking end .

Fritz there or something i don't like in the story but I just let it go . I don't feel you did anything wrong by putting this up .

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PostPosted: July 1st, 2009, 1:20 am 
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I also didnt say anything about it being a mistake to put it up, I assumed that the purpose for it being put up was to DISCUSS what the message behind the story was, so I was doing that. Was I mistaken in assuming this?


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PostPosted: July 1st, 2009, 10:40 am 
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Eh...I think the message that was coming through was "A Year Ago Fritz Was An Even More Bitter Old Coot Than He Is Now". And the voices in my head had been arguing about whether to post the thing at all; I started to feel like I'd listened to the wrong voices.

I was pretty hesitant even when I posted it--you may notice it didn't get splashed onto any of the other boards I frequent, a change from every other story I do.

I still think some discussions are warrented, but I decided that this story wasn't the way to start them.

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PostPosted: July 1st, 2009, 1:47 pm 
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Well if you dont want the story posted, I suppose thats your choice, I'm just saying make it YOUR choice and not because of anything anyone is saying, its just discussion, which is exactly what the point of it is.


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PostPosted: July 1st, 2009, 3:13 pm 
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I don't think it was a 'boneheaded blunder' to write this at all. The premise of the story itself is sound, with the idea of the ghostbusters coming together in a meeting to discuss the implications of the game and what it means for them, and some of the criticisms may be warranted. However, I do think that in light of the fact that it is now clear to anyone who has played the game that the developers behind it DID take pains to accommodate fan wishes (by integrating some fan stuff, including elements of RGB and EGB and even a little E/J hug snuck in there), it might have actually been fairer to give the guys behind the game their due by giving them credit where they deserved it, while leaving the criticisms in place where they don't. If anything, it would have at least given the impression that the Ghostbusters were slightly more balanced in their views rather than vehemently and overwhelmingly against it. In the end, it seems the game hasn't screwed with the timeline as much previously thought, so why still release the old one-year version of this fic, written when feelings were obviously still raw and emotions were running high? Why not take the opportunity now that the game is actually out, to revise the original story and write a true impassioned but balanced critique of the game? People revise old stories all the time! Hell, Fritz is right now going over all his past fics just to correct the surname of Jeff's character, so revision is not exactly something which has never been done before.

I knew that Fritz had been compiling something fanfic-related about the game, but I assumed that it would be a little bit more even-handed in its approach rather than an out-and-out bash of it. The visceral disgust of the characters toward the concept of almost every element in the game was OTT. It may have been merited had the game absolutely sucked, but it didn't. I realise the fic was designed for the worst case scenario, it was written a year ago and Fritz wasn't in the best frame of mind, but there's still no reason why it couldn't have been revised to take into account new info, and the character reactions made slightly less like they'd just witnessed the graphic murder of Ghostbusters by Sony & friends. 

Yes, Fritz took a lot of time and effort to put together this fic, and he took a hell of a lot of time and effort to put together the timeline. But the company behind the development of game ALSO took a lot of time and effort to do things they didn't have to, either. That they've tried to put out a quality product, integrate some stuff by the fans and STILL got bashed to hell for it (not just on the discussion boards but now in fanfiction, too) it just makes me wonder why anyone in an official capacity would bother to try and appease the fans again. They might as well do whatever the heck they want with the property, seeing as they are going to get criticised for it anyway. 

I don't think this game deserves being ripped apart in such a manner. Lively discussions on message boards are great, but when you go as far as to write an entire story with each and every Ghostbuster almost boiling with outrage at a game which in the grand scheme of things didn't actually cause as many problems as it could have, in my opinion it takes it a bit too far.
 
I'm sorry, but that's just the way I feel about it. Flame me and swear at me if you wish to, but I'm past caring, really. I never asked for anything to be taken down or removed. In fact, I think it would have been interesting to see what other people thought about it. However, that was Fritz's choice and I totally respect that. 

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PostPosted: July 1st, 2009, 7:36 pm 
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I've never said I wouldn't release something expressly dealing with the game in a more balanced fashion later. I haven't committed to such a thing yet, but I won't rule it out.

I don't think "Game Theory" could have done that, even with a reworking. It would basically take rewriting it from the ground up; again, not something I will rule out, but it's not yet in my agenda either.

I've got two bloated epics I'm working on. Maybe when I get one or the other done, I can look into a more nuanced view. It might help if, by then, I have more information available to me.

I'm hampered in this by the fact that I don't have the game and don't know if I ever will. I suck at all video games manufactured since about 1988, because they require more skill, relexes, and button dexterity than I have (Grife, I was raised on those old Atari 2600 joysticks with one button. Modern controllers have, what, a dozen or so?) Marty Stu might as well just trip the explosive overload switch on his proton pack; me trying to play the game would net about the same result for him, but that way we'd both be out of our misery faster. :lol:

Perhaps the thing to do is wait until that more balanced look is done. Then I will considere re-releasing this story; it will do less "damage", perhaps, paired with the "final word".

Though I tell you, it's amazing how this piece has drawn more comments than most of the stories that are still up and available. :roll:

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PostPosted: July 2nd, 2009, 12:00 am 
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Y'know, I've seen on Youtube someone played through the Wii version and videotaped and uploaded the entire thing. Obviously, watching it all would take several hours...but it's an option.

Someone might have done the 360 version by now too, who knows.

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