Reviews WebVideo / The Spoony Experiment

DEVELOPER RESPONSE (RE: DEADLIEST WARRIOR):

Thanks folks, we know the game is not perfect and are working to fix things in the TU. These kinds of reviews from people that don’t really give the game more than a glancing look are discouraging but the feedback on these forums helps us as developers see what real gamers think about the game. It was discouraging that nowhere in the review was mentioned the price point, the dodging, stamina or parry systems but oh well… you can’t please everybody.

The fact that DW is even in the same sentence as Tekken, SF, MK is good enough for us. Even if they are only comparing them to tear the game apart. If we had 20 million dollars and two years to build a game I wonder what that would be like? Oh we can dream… When you pay for milk and expect honey you’re going to end up with milk and be pissed about it. It’s not our fault that you are delusional.

I’d love it if someone on this board made a comment on spoony that shed some light on what this game is all about.

But thanks again for your support!

cheers, Spike Games.

ANTWILLER'S COUNTER-RESPONSE:

u mad bro?

Sorry, I mentioned how every other aspect of your game sucked, I just forgot to talk about how the dodging, stamina, and parry systems suck, too.

This argument amuses the hell out of me. “Yes, our game is crap, but for $10, what did you expect? It’s like ordering Cup O’ Noodles and expecting something edible.” And I’m delusional for expecting entertainment out of my $10. So sorry, Spike, I’ll remember what you consider to be $10 of entertainment next time you release a game.

And next time, Spike, spell my fucking name right. It’s Spoony. With a capital S. As in, your game is Shit with a capital S.

Remember it, because people listen to what I have to say. [Emphasis mine, not Spoony's.]

SELECT POSTS FROM ANTWILLER'S TWITTER ACCOUNT OVER THE PAST WEEK:

• Waa, Spoony's being mean and angry again, and he's banning people. And he took my lolly. It's my site, ban-meat. I'll do the fuck I want.
• Honestly, I'm glad I'm pissing so many people off lately. Means I'm doing my job. I tell it like it is. I'm in your way. Get used to it.
• Honestly, one of the joys I get out of life is in banning whiny, ass-wounded punktards. Keep it up.

About the "Spoony regularly banning people on his site" thing, I may not know the full story on the forums thing, but people on Spoony's site are well known as being assholes, if not outright trolls. To the point where at one point he commented that his fellow reviewers were not OK with him posting their collabs on his site solely because of these guys, and he had to remove at least one video because of them. So I can't really be so sure that what your telling us here is the full story on the matter. Maybe you are right, and Spoony has gone mad with power, or maybe he is dealing with the asshole crowd from before. In your evidence comment, you didn't really give any proof of which it was.

I'll be honest, I didn't get the "He claims his reviews are free but they are not!!" thing. I don't recall him outright asking for donations recently, and the complaint about ads can be thrown at anyone, reviewer or otherwise, who uses that video service. I feel that served just as a opener for the "Ultimate Warrior" review and follow-up rant. If you wanted to express your feelings on that, then just come out and do it. People have reviewed about other reviewer's individual reviews before.

On a less professional note, you seem to really have a grudge against this guy. Was the comment about his hair really necessary?

Thanks for reading and for your comments. You're right that I wasn't quite fair to the other side of the issue, because as I understand it they did have a really serious issue with trolling that peaked from late last year through early this year. But there's legitimate troll-extermination, and then there's just plain quashing dissent, insisting that everyone read what amounts to some 5-10 pages of rules (if one were to print them all out onto paper — hm, interesting idea by the way), and locking random topics for reasons that you just pull out of your ass as you go along. For example, someone asked about a particular image of Spoony's face that's referenced on this wiki, and the thread was locked before anyone could discuss it.

And what I was getting at with the $10/free issue is that Antwiler has, in the past, argued that one needn't have any expectations on free content. Well, $10 is much closer to being free than the usual $60 price tag of X Box 360 games, so why should a person have high expectations for that? I guess it depends on whether you think that expectations should be somewhat proportional to price, or if you think that it's more of a binary distinction (free vs. not free), in which case you could reasonably argue that if you are paying anything at all, then the developers should really deliver. I'm not personally opposed to that line of reasoning, and from what I've seen it does appear as if the game is not even worth $10 except for potential So Bad Its Good value, but I was annoyed by the contradiction with his earlier stance.

No grudge actually — I've never disagreed sharply with a review or been modded on the forums. I just think that to the extent that an online reviewer "can" or "should" be professional, a basic level of cleanliness is a reasonable expectation (the same way you'd expect them to wear clothing). But that's very much a side-note and probably unnecessary, you're right.

Don't be so butthurt! I never noticed anything wrong with Noah's videos.

Nobody has ever been banned over disagreeing with Spoony. In the issue regarding the Deadliest Warrior review or previous stuff, they were banned for flagrant disrespect towards either people Spoony was working with or the mods themselves. People have said they've liked the game or other projects Spoony's ranted on and haven't been banned or warned at all. The thread you have mentioned is more likely to have been locked due to there already being an image thread and there being no need to take up further space.

The argument regarding price wasn't the expectations, but the fact it was just lazy. Rather than churn out a game that may have worked well, it turned out to be poor and worse than a fair number of games that have been independently released on a far smaller budget than a company backed by Spike TV for pretty much the same price. Added to that was Spike's inane dismissal of Spoony as 'delusional' and basically admitting the game wasn't really all that good anyway and other poor excuses didn't endear them to Spoony.

Also, when you're on a forum or anywhere else, why shouldn't you read the rules? It's basically what's expected of anyone to keep it tidy. The rules themselves are laid out in a single post by a mod and aren't very hard to read unless you're exceedingly impatient and generally are the sort shown in any forum, not just the Experiment.

IIRC the video that was taken down was an acceptance video for an award and he had his girlfriend with him and his fans pretty much all decided she was an evil fat bitch that needed to die and decided the best place to put this was in the comments section. so yeaaaah...

Spoony's a Papa Wolf, that's one of his good traits.

Quote: "One wonders why, since these vlogs have no meaningful visual content, he doesn't release them as podcasts."

Personally, I find Spoony's actions and facial expressions in those V-logs to be entertaining. They may be unscripted, and just be him in front of a camera, but they're still fun to see. Especially his V-logs on the Twilight movies and, of course, TNA Impact (his 'Wrestle Wrestle' show).

Other persons' V-logs aren't quite as ... animated. With them, they might as well be podcasts. You can leave the computer or multi-task, and just listen to the sound, and not miss much. But Noah's facial expressions and his movements, in addition to what he says, really enhances the effect, and, in some cases, makes some things funnier.

On the Deadliest Warriors thing, he said in that Vlog he did that his main argument with it was that they set their scope too high, so when they came up with a shoddy product they had no excuse. If they were really low on money, then they should've attempted a simpler game, then build upwards as their reputation and funds increased.

Those are all good points. Chris Lang, it is true that Spoony has a better than average screen presence. Since he speaks more or less fluidly (i.e., without lots of uh's and um's), they're engaging enough, and with the way that he kind of turns to address the camera some of the time, you almost get the feeling that he is talking *to you*, like that you're sitting next to him on a sofa, and so when he says something that you would agree with, you kind of want to jump in and be like, "Yeah, that's true actually!" Gerkuman, I didn't realize that, thank you for pointing that out..

I have to say, I agree with the majority of this. Spoony has an UNBEARABLE ego. Follow his Twitter, listen to him DM in the Deathklok Campaign and you'll see he has no tolerance for... well, anything. In the chat of the D&D games, he's kicked and banned countless people for simply making jokes that did not amuse him, jokes that weren't even slightly derogatory to him or anyone else. And with as much as he personally insults much of the T&A staff on a regular basis, being unable to accept any sort of criticism (and face it, the guy can't at all) is just really hypocritical. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds his "track down Final Fantasy fans and kill them" "jokes" to be unnecessarily tasteless. Honestly, I watch Spoony because he is generally a funny guy, but he's the only member of TGWTG that I would never care to meet in person, because I would probably want to punch him.

And yeah, he could benefit from a good shower every now and then if he wants to look professional, but that's really a minor nitpick.

EDIT:I edited this comment just to correct some wiki formatting, since I'm OCD that way, no content edits. -depaderico

You crutch on the word "as" to join thoughts. Most of the instances of "as" in the review can be replaced by a period to form a new sentence, resulting in a clearer writing style.

It's a useful conjoiner. I am preferential to long sentences, as breaking them up leaves the impression of being someone who can't handle big thoughts.

@arcanedude34: Where can I see Deathlok Campaign? I really, really want to find some evidence that Spoony has an ego. I mean, a lot of people keep saying it, but I just can't see it. But I'm certainly open to the possibility.

People have compared my rants and reviews to Spoony. I'm not too familiar with the guy (and really don't have the time to sit down and watch his catalogue... I spend enough time on TV Tropes as it is...), but from the looks of things here, I'll assume they're complimenting me?

Depends on the people's views. Some like him, some hate him.