Goat Simulator Post Mortem
gamasutra.com
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I had the fortune to work a high-tech job (in person) and also own a 20 acre farm for a number of years, where we attempted to produce some/most of the food we ate. (That's a really hard thing to do by the way.)
Of course we raised goats, for the meat as well as the milk.
For those of you who haven't interacted with goats, know this: there is a hilarity about them that is difficult to describe.
They have some sort of almost human, child-like curiosity and bravery that was always refreshing. Add to that their willingness/desire to climb on/stand on anything, and honestly, they were just a hoot to have around.
They roamed fence free on our property for a time. I'd go out in the morning to ride my motorcycle to work, and there's be a couple of goats standing on my wife's car, just standing there, chewing cud. Or there'd be a goat balanced calmly on my motorcycle.
Or a small goat standing on the back of a larger goat.
Or a couple of goats dancing joyfully. Or a few goats gloriously playing with a piece of fiberglass.
And many of them were really, really friendly to you. My (then toddler) son enjoyed playing with them enormously.
Goats are awesome. I do miss having them around.
I liked to say that you could add a goat to nearly any somber real-life situation and it would instantly become funny.
EDIT: 'add a joke' -> 'add a goat'. Ugh.
Q. Do you know how to keep goats from jumping the fence?
A. Build a little ramp for them so they can walk over.
Q. How do you keep goats from escaping their enclosure?
A. Rinse goat meat well, rub lime juice over it (from 1/2 whole lime), place meat in a bowl, then add salt, black pepper, Scotch bonnet, thyme, allspice, curry powder, scallions, onion and garlic. Leave to marinate for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator, longer would be ideal. Heat the oil in a skillet until it is very hot, and saute the meat until golden brown. Then add the marinade, tomatoes and coconut milk, if using, and simmer for approximately 3 more minutes. Add water, reduce heat and allow to simmer for 2 to 3 hours stirring occasionally until meat is tender.
Note: they could and did move things...often times to the fence.
It was good to get them out of those small enclosures later on, since we had a lot more of them.
What the parent said is absolutely true.
I know you meant "goat", but you're still speaking the truth :)
We also sold a number of them to Muslim friends and their associates for Eid al-Fitr, and even allowed them to consecrate part of our property to do the sacrifice. Previously they could find no place within hundreds of miles that would allow them to do that. That we were (and are) Christians, who not only allowed them to do this, but even encouraged it, kind of blew their minds. :)
I'll see if I can dig up some pics. It's a funny thing how so often you don't end up taking pictures of really neat, but daily things, but wish you did.
Not only "ritual" and "slaughtering" are words that should give goosebumps when used together, but even encouraging it, when you don't even believe in that barbaric procedure, it's frankly inhumane.
As for slaughtering an animal that you've enjoyed the company of, I'm not sure how it is any worse than slaughtering an animal you didn't enjoy the company of. The former will give you a more intimate understanding of the impact your eating habits have, if anything.
My grandmother was utterly sentimental; they always kept a calf, which was always called Bully, which was slaughtered after a year or so. She was quite capable of chomping though a steak while saying 'Bully was such a lovely calf that year'...
They did, however, tell stories (possibly true) about another couple of smallholders down the road who could never bear to slaughter their own pigs. So what they'd do was swap.
These days we are completely out of touch with where our food comes from.
> I don't think that the ritual slaughter of islam and conventional slaughter are different enough for the line between barbaric and non-barbaric to coincidentally somehow end up right between them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/outcry-after-...
> As for slaughtering an animal that you've enjoyed the company of, I'm not sure how it is any worse than slaughtering an animal you didn't enjoy the company of.
If you actually believe that which you're saying, you'd have no problem slaughtering your dog.
I'm really not trying to make a true scotsman argument here, but unnecessarily brutal treatment of animals is prevalent through the whole meat industry and sadly can't be pinned down to a particular religious practice or tradition.
I personally believe that this is an inherent problem of the industry. I think that repetitively performing these jobs hundreds of times a day requires that you have absolutely no emotional investment in the animals. Add to that otherwise stressful conditions, and you have to take care not to develop sadistic tendencies and loathing of the animals.
> If you actually believe that which you're saying, you'd have no problem slaughtering your dog.
I'd have a problem slaughtering my dog, but that's besides the point. I just don't believe that it would somehow be less humane than slaughtering some other animal. In fact, if I were to slaughter my dog, I'd probably take extra care to do it in the most humane way possible.
This isn't really a binary situation; we were friendly with our goats, but our dogs were practically members of the family.
Having said that, I'd have no trouble raising dogs for food if it made sense, and if we liked the way dog tastes, which we don't. Which has all kinds of cultural relevance.
I have always felt slightly conflicted about killing another living thing to eat it. But, if we are going to eat meat, I think there is some value in seeing where it comes from.
As far as the animals end, I always ensured the animal was eating some of its favourite feed, out by itself, when I shot it in the brain, top to bottom, with a .30-06. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield)
I'd argue that there's no easier way to die; the animal feels nothing. Though the shooter has something of a mess to deal with.
All in all, I'm kind of ok with this.
(Two Anglo-Nubians, long dead now).
The pics are here: http://www.realms.org/selling/
None of the goats are on conveyances, and you'll notice the fences and ropes, because this was pretty early on while we were still securing the borders of our property.
More importantly, there is a lot more cultural diversity out here in Santa Clara County, California compared to McDonald County, Missouri. We prefer that our son grow in a more diverse environment.
Send me an e-mail if you want to chat more about living in the country; to me, it's a very interesting topic. We spent a lot of time exploring various aspects of sustainability.
If you take a perfectly sensible game development sentence and replace one of the nouns with a goat, it becomes intrinsically funny.
Goat Space Program, Kerbal Goat Program, Kerbal Space Goat. Goats of the Old Republic, Knights of the Old Goat, Knights of the Goat Republic. Sins of a Goat Empire. Sins of a Solar Goat. Goats of a Solar Empire. Goat War: Rome. Total War: Goat. Total Goat: Rome.
Each of the variations tells the condensed story of an entirely different imaginary goat-game and all of them are good (the stories, not necessarily the games).
I met the same thing before, only with movies instead of games and Jesus instead of goat. Had an IRC channel full of people who don't mind religious jokes running for hours.
When you’re making a joke prototype game where the main character is a goat, you don’t exactly focus on thinking proactively. In hindsight, it’s resulted in a lot of extra work.
The entire bit about customer interaction was great too.
Kind-of tangential, but speaking of goat-themed video games... around the same time Goat Simulator was released, there was another video game released called Escape Goat 2[1]. I've played it and it happens to be a wonderfully-crafted, well-executed puzzle platformer. At the time it came out, I remember thinking it was unfortunate that a 'joke' game (Goat Simulator) got a lot of attention, while there many more heart-felt indie efforts out there that struggle for similar exposure. But I suppose that's just how it goes.
[1] www.escapegoat2.com
This had me cracking up.
Also, the MMORPG simulator is great.
I also remember the Beavis & Butthead game becoming pupular, even though it was a joke game too.
Uh, not to discourage anyone or anything.
Al Lowe gave that interview a little while back and it showed up here on HN. He said he was a little sad that people didn't make funny games any more. Well, sometimes they do, and it turns out, people are willing to buy them.
A friend made a platformer for an incubator called "Runnin' Around With No Shirt On" where it's basically about a (shirtless) guy running around in hell (and dodging all the basic platform obstacles like spikes, moving platforms, etc.). The goal of the game was to defeat Satan in order to get his shirt back.
It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever played but I couldn't go one second without laughing at how ridiculous and how much fun it was to play.
I love "serious" kinds of play and games with these awesome narratives but sometimes you just want something funny and fun to play!
Yet, according to wikipedia, they sold 2.5 million copies. Bizarre. Anyone want to explain that one?
Also Sanctum is another tower defense game in a market overflowing with them. It's interesting and does coop well, but it didn't set the world on fire because it is honestly pretty average. I like it, but I understand why it isn't super popular.
Either way good for them on their success.
The first PewDiePie Goat Simulator gameplay video has over 11 million views.
you are correct - especially the highly edited short-ish videos (ala, 10-15 minutes) of jump cuts to all the funny bits. Personally, i don't really like the game, as it seemed too gimmicky to play for more than a few minutes.
Those are two great games that lost me because of their excess.
Goat Simulator is a joke-game. It's absurdly hilarious all the way through, and purposedly idiotic. There is a lot of fun to be found on the game, but you got to have the right type of humor, and be very fond of goats, to find it.
Also it is a sandbox of sorts. Sandbox games please a range of gamers, but they're not for everyone. This could be your case.
The oposite could have been even a bigger mistake, "first impressions persist" but that first impression is much better that no impression at all, very often optimized games don't see the light, ending as that pet project that I'll finish some day.
A game 'Post Mortem' doesn't mean its been a failure, the 'Post Mortem' is just a discussion of the development project (now its mostly finished) with analysis of what worked well and what didn't.
edit: from the wikipedia page:
Ibrisagic stated that Coffee Stain Studios made their money back on the development costs within a few minutes of the game being offered on Steam.[16] As of August 2014, the studio has reported that nearly a million copies of Goat Simulator have been sold, outperforming their other games over the previous four years.[7] The mobile release for iOS and Android systems reached 100,000 downloads within 6 days of launch.[46] By mid-January 2015, over 2.5 million copies of the game were sold across all platforms
"Today it’s safe to say that it’s the most successful game we’ve ever made."
This is just an article talking about the development and reception. Doesn't mean the game is dead.