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Badgers & Albums

1 year ago2,188 words

I saw two interesting things from familiar online creators this week, which I wanted to write about: a video by Weebl (a Flash animator from not long before I released MARDEK), and some old soundtracks by ConcernedApe (creator of Stardew Valley)...

No game dev news this week; I've effectively been on holiday. I've felt - and continue to feel - mentally better than I have in ages, at least! Looks like it's going to extend into next week, too, so I'll write more about all that then. For now, here are a couple of interesting things I saw earlier in the week.



The title of this suggests it's been two decades since the Flash version. Wow, that long? Time flies. The original version was a Flash loop, as I recall, meaning it played endlessly. I'm guessing in hindsight it was intended to be annoying? This thing - with its single repeated note and minimal rhythmic variation - is certainly like a drill to the skull! (But then again I think that about a lot of music other people listen to for fun...)



Far more interesting to me - and the one I saw first, when YouTube recommended it to me - was this one, which is a... I don't know, mock meta making-of or... something?

Watching these evokes fluffy feelings, memories of simpler times, when I wasn't so consumed by the issues that define my 'adult' life...

Weebl's stuff - which he hosted on the website called, well, that, and which I see ∞ still exists ∞ - came before I published Flash games. I remember going to the computer room during school lunchtimes with the people I knew back then, and watching animatons on Newgrounds by creators like Weebl and David Firth (or going to their sites directly to watch things there). Quite a contrast between those two creators; Weebl's was comparatively mild, silly rather than horrendous (which so much of the Flash content back then seemed to be for whatever reason), though even he strayed into areas that might be considered inappropriate these days!

I vaguely recall a series he made called Weebl and Bob, where two egg-like characters (based, I assume, on ∞ weebles ∞) rocked back and forth while exchanging silly dialogue spoken in a weird way that's almost identical to ∞ the cavemen from this comedy sketch show ∞ (which I only saw years later; I wonder if there was influence or if it was coincidence). I remember thinking at the time the episodes seemed so easy to make, as the animation was extremely minimal, and that maybe I should make something like that myself... but (shockingly) I never did. No doubt the episodes are up on his site and/or YouTube, but can I be bothered to look for them? Ehh, maybe later.

I also remember checking his forums, and learning that he was something like 30 - some ancient old man - though I didn't exactly participate. I remembered his real name for years, but the thought of forming a personal connection with any of these creators back then just didn't even register to me as possible. I don't know whether that was due to the culture of the time, or my various mental issues (the latter is more likely, considering plenty of strangers reached out to me).

He made that recent video together with other creators, at least one of whom I've been subscribed to on YouTube for years (ashens). Makes me sadly reflect on how my many issues have prevented me ever connecting with any other creators. (Instead I just write about them in blog posts like this and hope I'm obscure enough that they'll never read them!)

He also appears in the video, which is the first time I've ever seen his actual human form, which felt strange to me. Due to my many weird, unrelatable issues, I tend to feel uncomfortable when I see a face behind an identity I'd 'known' for a long time in text or audio only, though in this case it was so sudden - and I hadn't even thought about this person in forever - that my reaction was more like mild curiosity. I've had a video by David Firth in my YouTube Watch Later list for ages, which I'm guessing from the thumbnail he appears in, though I've yet to push through my weird fears to watch it.

∞ Weebl has a Patreon ∞, which I was especially curious about because, considering the connections he obviously has from the video, the impression I had of him being well-known in the past (not just online; I've seen television adverts here in the UK that he animated), and other old creators' patreons I've seen (David Firth comes to mind), I assumed he'd be doing enviably well.

Surprisingly, though, his patron count isn't much higher than my own. Interesting. Makes me feel less bad, maybe? I've felt for ages like I've fallen far, far behind all my contemporary creators. Maybe the truth is less severe, though I hope he's earning money elsewhere in ways I'm not. The About section mentions several people work on the videos now; I've seen similar arrangements before, mostly from YouTube creators. I always wonder whether things like YouTube revenue are sufficient enough to support them all.



ConcernedApe is an interesting case in that apparently we're the same age - as I learned when googling him earlier (and feeling bad that he's probably better-looking than I am!!1) - but I've only ever been vaguely aware of him as 'someone who made a game (ostensibly) by himself that did really well'. I've never played Stardew Valley, which is what he's most known for, and only even heard about it within the last handful of years. So I've never really thought of him as a contemporary, even though technically he is.

I rarely even so much as open Twitter (even though I'm someone who's generally open to change and annoyed by people who'd keep using old.reddit or whatever, I think changing the name to X is one of the worst decisions I've ever seen and I can only hope one day it's reversed), but occasionally, I'll get notifications alerting me to entirely random tweets by people I don't even follow or know. Maybe that's something that happens when you follow too few people, or something? One such tweet (or Xcretion or whatever) that was recommended to me was ∞ from ConcernedApe ∞, linking to ∞ a Bandcamp he made 10 years ago, which contains several albums ∞.

One of the few things I know about this creator is that he makes his own music, which seems unusual; usually I see indie devs buying the music for their games, but still claiming they made everything, as if it doesn't matter much. And since I compose my own music too, and he's apparently the same age as me, I was curious to hear some of his old stuff, and whether it's anything remotely like the old stuff I have on ∞ my own Bandcamp ∞.

Listening to it at all has been tough for me though, again due to the weird mental issues. It's something like... I assume it'll be better than mine, which will make me feel bad and worthless, so I avoid the experience/stimulus to avoid the negative feelings. Same thing as with Undertale, years ago, though not as extreme. It's neither rational nor reasonable, as is generally the case with mental illness.

(This is why I assume I have Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD), which I've written about for years on this blog.)

I finally listened to two or three tracks, and I... don't know if it's 'better' than mine or not? How would you even assess such a thing? As someone who makes my own music, I noticed that he clearly uses a DAW, understands at least basic music theory (unlike past me), and was influenced by popular genres of music whereas my stuff's more inspired by classical and video game soundtracks.

(I still need to try using a DAW, but I'm not sure which one and honestly haven't bothered to look into it, as I think they generally don't use the sheet music style of notation I'm most familiar with.)

He made use of things like glitchy distortion and samples which made me think of... two things, I suppose. One is ∞ several Bandcamp albums composed by a bunch of different composers (including Toby Fox) for Homestuck ∞, and another was the soundtrack of the surprisingly musical game Hypnospace Outlaw (also composed by several people; I just found ∞ the Bandcamp of Jay Tholen, the primary developer and composer ∞, with a bunch of old music that I'll have to listen to at some point!). I suppose those have been my main exposures to young indie/amateur bedroom composers, and I get a feeling of something like community influence; their works sound more like each other than than mine sound like theirs, because they were presumably part of online composer communities in a way that I never have been. I got this feeling from Toby Fox's Undertale soundtrack too.

(It's how I feel about people who make memes or who 'speak' in slang-filled internet vernacular; like they're all part of something, and like one another, while I'm this alien looking in from afar without ever belonging.)

And I don't know whether there's any objective 'truth' to that - meaning my music actually does sound noticeably different - or whether it's due to the underlying feeling that everything about me is different and alien in a way that makes connecting with others usually impossible.

I'd be curious to know how a listener who's not me feels about listening to ∞ my old Bandcamp music ∞ vs listening to ∞ ConcernedApe's ∞. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about that!

Also, this was particularly interesting to me now because I've been thinking recently about my own music, and what to do with it; maybe Twitter is reading minds now and that's why it showed me the notification?? They must be using alien tech behind the scenes. That must be it.

The albums on that Bandcamp ConcernedApe linked to are fairly short; only maybe half a dozen minute-or-two tracks. I have a bunch of pieces of never-released music that I've kind-of combined into albums, but I've never been sure how long they should be; that gives me some idea, then, maybe, as I'm assuming he's more connected and aware of what other people typcially do than I ever have been. The music I listen to doesn't really come in album form (or they're OSTs with dozens of tracks).

I'm curious how much money he ever made from them, though. Any? They seem to be from before the release date of Stardew Valley (2016), and he describes the Bandcamp as 'secret', so maybe he never tried to draw attention to it before? Though it's unclear to me who even made what on there; all the composer names are different, so was that just done out of some sense of humour I recognise but don't know a name for, or are they all actually by different people and I've written this whole post under a mistaken impression and looked a complete fool and and and-!

I've made a grand total of £492.56 from my Bandcamp, since setting it up in late 2020 (I also have another, older account, but can't be bothered switching accounts to check that one's stats, though they're probably higher). I get the feeling that people who pay at all do so out of general appreciation for a creator's whole body of work - a donation, essentially - rather than to actually get the music files. But I don't know.

ConcernedApe is probably a multimillionaire anyway from Stardew Valley (though at least one person assumed MARDEK made me one, very incorrectly, so I could be wrong), but I've been struggling financially a lot lately, and have wondered whether adding more albums to Bandcamp might be worthwhile...

Ehh, I don't know. The biggest hurdle is creating some album art, probably. I rarely draw these days, and I'm not familiar enough with albums to know anything about album art conventions (if there even are any). Plus it'd take time and might not result in anything, so I keep putting it off even though I'd like to have it done.

Story of so much of my life, that, and why where I am is hardly the pinnacle of Success Mountain!



Also, the weather's been annoyingly hot! A heat wave. So I've been sleeping poorly and feeling kind of out-of-it all week. I just wanted to complain about that somewhere!