Pastelland Forum

Yeah, not to mention I sorta made BTM 7 for the specific reason of seeing if it would make people uncomfortable.

I've been thinking for a while that seemingly everyone has been heaping praise on both myself and Submachine, and I've been really afraid of that relationship turning into this "monolithic image that can do no wrong". I've also been feeling like people are assuming too much of the connection that Mat and I have. People are thinking that I'm some sort of undying supporter of everything that he does, catering to his every need and almost acting as a vessel to communicate to everyone else about his doings.

It's almost like the equivalent of a "teacher's pet" or a divine priest. Maybe not that severe, but a) I'm really against the idea that people love something to the point where they feel bad criticizing it at all, and then get their feelings hurt when criticism happens, or at least feel troubled. And I feel like with everyone getting caught up in the spirit of rabid theorizing over the past year or so and related activities and hardly hearing any actual criticism of the series, but having that bubble up inside me, made me make the video. I sort of alluded to some of this in my RambleRant I video, but I don't think I either got my points across effectively enough or my audience just wasn't shaken enough. And that's exactly what I wanted to do: to make waves, to spark debate, to cause arguments, because otherwise I thought that people would get too caught up and full of themselves to be able to see any area for improvement.

And it looks like it worked. This is the first time anyone has ever disliked a BTM video, which means I struck a nerve with at least one person, and guess what: that person is probably one of the few people that unsubscribed to me after that video was put out because they couldn't handle me criticizing Submachine. Which is good; I don't want to deal with people that can't handle criticism of either themselves or things they like.

I'd really be interested in Mat's takeaway from the video as well, since I know in the past he's also come out and stated that he hates constantly being surrounded by people constantly praising him (or at least avoiding pointing out criticisms) because he wants to be able to improve from valid criticisms. And that's something that I hold him and anyone else to; because you should expect the people who care most about your work to criticize it in order to help you grow.

It's like that quote from Anderson that I put in at the end said, where he's talking about "forming a twisted relationship"; where people either skirt over or fill in holes or drawbacks to something or someone and just build their own justification for it so that they feel comfortable and refuse to address actual problems that may be beneath the surface. "Of course you're going to like it; you made it" means that you're failing to criticize so that you may fully enjoy something without risking feeling anything but 100% satisfaction, which is unrealistic and ultimately dangerous.

And I've looked forward to every response I've gotten from the video, as I think how each person has chosen to respond says a lot about their internal character.

But I wanted this to change things. I'm not Mateusz's right hand man and I never was. And if people are having a hard time dealing with one of his most enthusiastic supporters suddenly deciding to deal out some criticism, then that's not my problem. And I will continue to be critical of all the things I like in the future, including Submachine (official review videos are on their way) so if you don't like that at least you have some prior warning and a chance to re-evaulate how you perceive the things you love.

it's like how people say "a friend who doesn't call you out on your bullshit is not a real friend". this also applies to media, and especially to people like us because we're few enough to have the chance to directly talk to the creator of the media that brought us here. criticism is necessary.

It is unfortunate we're this late to the party criticizing him as well. Sub10 is done, we have possible games in the future of unknown providence. Some of these ideas you've brought up have been kicking around for a while, but nobody has articulated them in a concise manner. People always got so caught up in the cool new stuff and the ever improving artwork we never stopped long enough for anyone to complain about the random notes and the lack of focus in the progression of the story. We tried to theorize as to why they were the way they were, but never said to Mateusz: "these inexplicable snippets of philosophical conversation are really pointless and feel like they're not going anywhere".

We were all the time on the side of processing everything we receive rather than inquiring something. One of the few instances of this was when RuloCore told Mateusz that Sub10 had to have more machine stuff as he was unsatisfied with all the ancient and spiritual looking stuff from the previous 3 Submachines.

Our community solely focused on the aspect of making theories around the games, never to give any suggestion to the author, to the point we had a sort of cred that "Mateusz doesn't takes suggestions", so nobody couldn't complain about anything on the games.

Is also worth that the aspect of the game that most people enjoyed wasn't the story but the world surrounding it, and our only desire mostly was to explore more of it. We didn't wanted to immerse ourselves in a story (Which is harder when we weren't given any clue of what the player is), we wanted to immerse ourselves in the fantastic world that is Submachine, which is why Submachine Universe was always probably the most satisfying game on the series.

I am not as much bothered by the fact that we do not know anything about the player, but the fact that we find out that everything in the games happened centuries before we come along lessens the tension and urgency built in Submachines 6 and 7 to a joke. The player doesn't need to be our focus or interesting as a separate character, but the player should not be trivially unimportant to the story.

Otherwise, yeah, I agree with the "Mateusz doesn't take suggestions" thing. Mateusz did cultivate this attitude himself a bit, by not answering the questions we had directly, instead saying things like "that's an excellent question" and "I think that it may be this". Still, we were definitely also at fault there.

ENIHCAMBUS wrote:Is also worth that the aspect of the game that most people enjoyed wasn't the story but the world surrounding it, and our only desire mostly was to explore more of it. We didn't wanted to immerse ourselves in a story (Which is harder when we weren't given any clue of what the player is), we wanted to immerse ourselves in the fantastic world that is Submachine, which is why Submachine Universe was always probably the most satisfying game on the series.

Correct, and this is also partly due to the fact that it's human nature to want to explore and make sense of the things you are already presented, rather than immediately second guessing everything and criticizing it. Two major points play into this:

1) If you're presented with a new world and concept such as submachine, there's so much to look at and discover, and that's what you occupy yourself with. Nobody is going to be as bold as to immediately question the creator of a piece of art, it's their creation, their vision, so who are you to tell them what to do with it.

2) The main series has spanned over a period of 10 years. As Apoc accurately explained in his video, Mat always made sure to give us just enough information to keep us occupied, and kept introducing new concepts and words to make people go "woah" and want to figure it out, again I believe this is due to natural human curiosity; I also think this is a deeply religious trait.
If you'll allow me to segue a little: Think about how religions began to evolve. Humans are thrown into a dangerous and confusing world, we have the burden of consciousness, so of course you're going to try to figure out something to make sense of it all, even if it doesn't. So we created a God. And God has a plan, and God knows what he's doing, so why would we question that.
And then we get Mat, literally throwing us into a new and beautiful world, and everything is eerie and dangerous and intriguing, and we want to know what's going on. We get people writing theories.

To get back to my point, due to all of this taking 10 years of scattered information and grandiose concepts, of course people would be preoccupied with trying to figure it out and find their own answers, because that's the natural response. The problem arises when after this much time you begin to realize, nothing actually is falling into place and we aren't getting any answers. Instead we get more scattered notes that don't make any sense. And now here we are, and people are demanding those answers, because the main series is over with.

I guess I'm trying to say I'm not sure it could have gone any other way, but at least it's happening now.

Addendum: My little segue there has some flaws and I'm not entirely sure how relevant it is to everything, but it's late and those are my thoughts spilling out, so.....apologies

It is not the critising. It just feels like the golden glow is off it. Like, the games exposted in their nakedness.

Good. That probably meant you overhyped them then, and now that's gone.

Apocrypha wrote:Good. That probably meant you overhyped them then, and now that's gone.

I don't think that is the case. Welp, I talked to much about this.

Ko9 wrote:

Apocrypha wrote:Good. That probably meant you overhyped them then, and now that's gone.

I don't think that is the case. Welp, I talked to much about this.

No, you really did not. I mean, you should not keep the Submachine games on a pedestal beyond all critique. Plus, if you have problems with our critique itself, please share.