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INTERVIEWS WITH OLEANDER GARDEN, CRISPPYBOAT AND ADAM PYPE

For my current video on fictional dead MMO/servers in games (https://youtu.be/AXSJ27bTRzw), I interviewed some developers with experience creating such settings. Oleander Garden (Autogeny), Crisppyboat (NetEscape) and Adam Pype (No Players Online) kindly took the time to discuss the creation of their respective games, with their answers compiled here:

What gave you the inspiration to use an empty MMO setting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

The post-vaporwave / hauntology / Dan Bell deadmall universe was at its apex when I started working on Autogeny in 2018; mostly I wanted to play with that sense of longing for lost futures, & put it in conversation with the ideas the Pagan games had been orbiting around (i.e. contemporary technological mythology, poetic-making, degraded game forms). The dead y2k MMO format was a fun solution that had a little tie in to everything I wanted the game to think about.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

The idea came to me when watching Redlyne's video series on dead mmos, and theories about cults within them. Just the atmosphere that brings with it, a seemingly derelict digital landscape, rich in history from past users, now occupied by some malevolent force (or one that’s always been around) really fascinated me! Especially with the popularity of liminal spaces, I really connected with the idea of exploring the online equivalent of that. For this game jam version it was on a fairly small scale (only about 4 areas) but we’d love to explore that idea with a more believable expansive online space, that was really the heart of the idea for me. Sitting alone at night and logging into an abandoned online game, shifting through the past memories of long forgotten players in a vast digital space. It has this sort of unnerving feeling to it, why's this still up after all this time and who knows what could still be around. 

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I was actually doing an exchange at the time when I was making the original version of the game (from 2019) at a game design school in the netherlands. i reallyy hated this class because it was super designed focus without much practical work, and im really more of a design-by-doing person. anyways, one of the assignments was making a map for Unreal Tournament, and it was this tedious process of having to block out the level and then write endless documentation about the design process. i guess the class was super triple-A focused or something. since halloween was coming up and i was still doing game-a-month at the time, i really wanted to give a go at making something super scary. and as i was doing this assignment i really enjoyed just walking around the little map without any bots, and just taking in the vibes. i did a little extra flair to my map by adding ambient sounds to it (i have a video of that actually, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_22Q_oNwk0) and it really did a lot for the atmosphere. then i remember that as a kid i used to play GMOD a lot with my friend, and because I was always hosting the server and our computers were very slow, it would always take like 10 minutes at least for my friend to join. adding that ambient sound really reminded me of that, because gmod maps always have this ambient sound in them that's a bit unsettling. i remember being so scared to wander around on my own because these maps were always known to have jump scares, so i would just wait at spawn for my friend. so i realised that this would make for a cool horror game. i originally planned to just port the map into unity, but then i decided against it because it wouldve been more work than it was worth. so i really quickly made a map that didnt make a lot of sense and made it somewhat symmetrical. ironically, not thinking about it too much made it so good, because the map is a bit disorienting, which is perfect for a horror game. it's a little bit funny that i found the most success by making a multiplayer map that was badly designed instead of what this class was trying to teach me. :-)

Did you initially have specific themes you wanted to explore or did the idea of having an empty mmo setting come first?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Ideas came first, setting later! A month before the game came out I still wasn't 100% sure I was going to commit to that framing device actually - otherwise it would have been a straightforward haunted-EXE type of deal, like luna game (2011) or those 2010s haunted video game creepypastas. I'm glad I went with it; 'digital space you inhabited' is a much cooler ('weightier?') frame for this sort of story.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

I think the setting had developed first before any specific themes came to mind, but to me NetEscape in a lot of ways represents the melancholy that comes from the loss of fun, safe virtual spaces. Like many people I grew up in these spaces and to see them shuttered in favour of a handful of social media platforms really fills me with a sort of nostalgic sadness, as genuinely I felt that these spaces were really important for kids and young adults. The term "dead internet" comes up a lot nowadays and I feel in part it can be attributed to the sort of forced migration towards a handful of social media platforms devoid of the liberties and expression niche online spaces provided for people. Other than that, existentialism as a theme kind of just fell into place when attempting to craft a story for the concept.

What was it about the empty server/MMO concept that helped you explore the game's themes?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I think the multiplayer and especially persistent-multiplayer character of an MMO makes that kind of game world feel a lot more like /a space/ and less like a strictly authored object; that helped make things feel 'lived in', 'decayed', 'lost', &c. in a way that really worked with the whole 'self-making out of techno-mythic-rubble' thing the game was going for.  Likewise, I suspect the 1995-2004ish era of MMO design in particular - which was much less authored, much more sandboxy, much more scattershot and weird - is (A) /especially/ good at producing that impression, and (B) developed out of a very specific mythical-ideological project which has now been abandoned: the prevailing y2k notion that one might live a 'second life' in a 'digital world', which seems almost quaint or pastoral today. I figured this would produce a certain feeling of dislocation, of 'living in the ruins'.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We use the internet as an escape from reality, and now with the progression of time a lot of these places no longer exist or stand dormant. The empty mmo, to me, represents a sort of time capsule for people you’ve never met. A public space where people put so much of themselves into it, you get to learn so much just through the fragments they’ve left behind. It’s this sort of melancholy nostalgia that I hope we can really channel in the game’s full release.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

the first version of the game had no story at all. i just did the whole setup of being alone in a multiplayer game, and then a ghost showing up and it ended with a jumpscare. i showed this off at an event on the last day of the month and was planning to publish the game the day after. people really liked the setup but they were dissapointed it just ended on a jumpscare and had no point to it. so on the walk home i thought about adding a story to it. at the time i was really kind of against (or uninterested even) in adding a narrative to my games. looking back on it it's a bit stupid, but i figured it would be a good opportunity to try out adding a story to one of my games. so that same night i quickly added in a story by having the developer join just before the end and explaining that the ghost was his dead wife and that capturing the last flag would undo all of his work. it was a bit rushed, and most of the critique i got was that it was a bit cliché. but without it the game would have been super uninteresting and nobody would have liked it as much. really goes to show that people really like a story :) lesson learned! now many years later we're doing this big version of the game because the original was such a success (mostly thanks to the ARG i think). since i'm now much more of a matured developer I wanted to really focus in on the story and work it into something that is actually interesting, has depth, cool characters, and not just a story about a dead wife stuck in a game (which is a bit of an overplayed trope maybe). but, i had to work with what I had, since it is a successor. i think the direction we're going in now is much much more interesting, making it about old tech more broadly as a vehicle for horror and also telling the story about the relationship between john and sarah, and giving sarah more agency. for the full game we are kind of purposefully doing the opposite of what the original did. by not letting john say anything until the very end, and making sarah more of the main character. in the end I think the game is also much more about grief and using the concept of a dead person stuck in a game and the obsession of the developer to revive her as a kind of allegory about creative work and obsession over your work preventing you from finishing it. this is something i personally quite strongly believe in, that it's important not to let a project take control of your life, and making it so important that it never gets done. the unfinished fps game prototype is so much about this, here is this game that had so much potential and interest, but the developers were so busy trying to make it into this impossible thing that people just lost interest and it never becomes something real or alive. the dead server is literally a testament to a dead idea, a dead person, an unfulfilled potential and a constant reminder of not being able to let go.

What is it about this setting that lends itself well to the horror genre? What kinds of things in the empty server/MMO space did you specifically think about including and/or subverting to make the experience scarier? 

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

 Living in the shadowed ruins of a gestalt social project which has fallen away and left monoliths behind - this is the essential characteristic of the 19th century European gothic novel, and the 20th century southern gothic that followed. Maybe we could say that 'living in the ruins of an MMO' works as a sort of '21st century gothic', i.e., that the dead server spooks us for the same reason dead castles spooked Bram Stoker, and dead plantations spooked Faulkner. It's not the space, precisely: it's the social field that created that sort of space, and the way its influence still lingers. Playing too much Everquest will probably destroy your life, but there's something fantastical and romantic about early Everquest stories - people waking up at 3AM to go kill a dragon with 70-odd strangers in their shared digital space. There's nothing romantic about Meta or AI-girlfriends: only the life obliterating part survived. In the home stretch of development I tried to give Autogeny lots of little details that would scream 'early MMO' in particular. Open world dungeons with bosses to farm, impossible zone transitions: this sort of thing. I don't know if it would have worked if it felt like Final Fantasy XIV, you know? It had to be an old MMO.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

We tried to play with sound and limitation to generate horror. Sound played a huge role, (masterfully provided by louceph) stuff like repeating footsteps and ambient noise really added a lot to the overall experience of wandering alone. Taking inspiration from Iron lung, I really pushed for the on screen navigation system to give a bit more anxiety in the moment, having it be limited, and a bit harder to quickly turn or walk if you catch something in the corner of your eye. We sort of quickly realized that there were a lot of pitfalls in presenting the game in a totally accurate, realistic way without confusing the player, we actually had to patch in a notification sound for the file system just cause a lot of people would never bother actually checking the photos they took during the game. In the games full version we’re going to try and add stuff like working text chat/emotes, and other core staples to really give it that believable feeling, the jam version turned out nice but I’m really excited to go extra hard on hammering down what makes a game feel like a real abandoned mmo. 

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

I think old tech, limitations of old tech and just old design standards or quirks or imperfections are all things that make something feel a bit uncanny and scary. games nowadays are so juicy and smooth and responsive you are constantly at ease because you're being taken care of, there is no friction. all those small things, those small barriers make the game feel like an ominous force, or like a big heavy lid on a tomb that you have to tear off. there's something powerful with horror when you have to make a player do something tedious with the anticipation of the scare. going through that old server list menu really feels like you're undusting something. you also can't jump, you cant look very far ahead. it makes it all feel so evil... then there is also the subversion of it, adding things for authenticity that have no point. you have a gun but there is nothing to shoot, you have a player list but nobody is online, you have a match timer but the match never ends, even delivering the flags doesnt have a point because there is no game because nobody is on the other team. it makes the whole environment feel like you're not welcome, like it's just this graveyard and all you're doing is trampling the flowers. another thing is that everything in the game is "in-story". the game's story is about someone being on this mysterious computer and discovering old and scary things. it's cool because everything from pressing buttons or opening applications, none of it is OOC, it's all supposed to be the experience of discovering this thing that wasn't meant for you, this invasion of privacy and literally uncovering some old skeletons. this is kind of the core design principle for the game, if one of the games in the forum is a bit badly made that's like part of the story cause it's a hobby gamedev. everything is supposed to be authentic and part of the narrative. the full game will have no open ends, every single file and link or application has a point or some subtext.

Has there been any interesting feedback from players that made you think about the empty server/MMO setting in a new way?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

Yeah! It especially makes me smile when I find some cool new dead-mmo game, and it turns out the developer liked Autogeny, and figured they could do the idea better, or in a different way. I wasn't sure if the conceit was too particular, but it seems like it really resonated with people - it's like I got to contribute a little formalism to the tapestry of weirdo indie-game culture, you know?  It's cute and it's probably the main thing that keeps me feeling positive about the game. Now I get to play different games, by different people, with their own ideas about the gothic digital-plaza.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Well, one thing that I sort of regret for the demo version was implementing the text chat and emotes as fun visual dressing rather then actually functional, a lot of people kept interacting with it like they’d be able to have full conversions in the game, it’s something we’d like to do for the full release but it wasn’t possible on this jam version. A lot of feedback was also related to the overall story and how it was presented. We plan on focusing way more on the actual exploration of the abandoned space, as that seems to be what people were mostly interested in (as am I haha). Of course the actual way in which the story was presented (taking photos to get files) was not realistic to a mmo at all but I think there's a lot of potential towards the connectivity between actions in the game and the desktop itself. Hypnospace comes to mind as a huge inspiration, doing something similar to that but in 3D would be great. It makes me really excited to explore mmo staples like photography, mini games and other realistic features, turning them into puzzles throughout the full game. We also found a lot of people were annoyed by the slow movement, but I felt that element would be super important for the kind of slow burn anxiety that we went for with this jam version, plus you’d move pretty slow in those old games haha.

There's a pretty big amount of interest in dead MMOs/game servers these days! What is it about them that you personally think is intriguing? Is it mainly just nostalgic elements or are there less prominent aspects that you think make them so interesting?

Oleander Garden (Autogeny):

I don't think it can just be nostalgia, in the empty sense of 'consumer fantasy'. If that was the case, you would expect consumer activity to follow a similar pattern to e.g. console game nostalgia (buying lots of knick knacks and status signifiers, attaching cultural value to a particular major corporation, &c.) Instead, we got this cool thriving scene of DIY horror, and illegal pirate revival servers! Critically, the dead mmo genre is not /just/ pro-forma nostalgic-horror (e.g. afraid of a terrible, romantic past) but also, as Mark Fisher might have said, essentially 'Hauntological' - it's oriented towards a speculative /lost future/. There's a certain longing for a separate digital world, and a new realm of human activity Online - which seemed totally possible, until the real world got digitized, and the digital world died an unceremonious death. From this the dead-mmo form can draw all the drama and emotional weight of a failed revolution, in our deeply repressed cultural milieu, where emerging revolutions fail before they get started.

Crisppyboat (NetEscape):

Honestly I think it’s just the generation that had been raised on mmos like this having grown up with nostalgia for these spaces. Online chat games have basically come and gone, contained in a specific generation of kids, and I think it’s pretty profound how impactful it still is on us. For me just the idea of an online games player legacy really fascinates me. In a way it's almost like exploring an abandoned home or school, where you get the opportunity to catch glimpses of lives and relationships etched into the environment. Like any abandoned or “liminal space” I think people find it intriguing based on the mystery of discovery, finding something clearly human made, and stopping to think how or why they did it. It's an extremely fresh and untapped market, because it is so relatively new, there’s a lot of potential. We see it a lot in internet horror, stuff that at this point has been around for decades, where we can start collectively referring to it in media.

Adam Pype (No Players Online):

everyone keeps telling me this but i haven't really looked into it! it doesnt surprise me though, i think this fear of being alone in a multiplayer game is a pretty shared experience and everyone who's had it is now old enough to make games about it. i wasn't really inspired by any game in particular, i would say the main inspiration i had was Petscop, which is also about an abandoned unfinished game that has a whole layer under it revealing some ulterior use for the game. this whole idea of a game being a facade hiding some grand conspiracy under it is soo interesting to me. it's like easter eggs or 4th wall breaking stuff, or little out of bounds areas. it makes you think about what's hidden underneath all of this stuff you were meant to see. i've always as a kid thought so much about "what if there is a whole other level behind this wall" or like these creepypastas like Ben Drowned or even the luigi stuff in Super Mario 64. the idea that this thing you know and love has something sinister and it was always there you just never noticed will always play well into people's fears.

A huge thank you to Oleander Garden, Crisppyboat and Adam Pype for taking the time to be interviewed.

Oleander Garden: https://x.com/void_hyacinth

Autogeny: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165750/PAGAN_Autogeny/

Crisppyboat: https://x.com/CrisppyBoat

NetEscape: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3344890/NetEscape/

Adam Pype: https://x.com/adampi

No Players Online: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2701800/No_Players_Online/

I’ve seen a lot of posts on my dash tonight about users who are threatening suicide, with other Tumblr members posting in effort to try to get ahold of them. I think you all should see this:

IF THERE IS EVER A TUMBLR USER WHO HAS POSTED A GOOD-BYE MESSAGE, SUICIDE NOTE, VIDEO, OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT, PLEASE FOLLOW THIS POST.

1. Scroll to the top of your dashboard.

2. See the circular question mark icon at the top? It’s the third one over from your home symbol. Click on that, and a screen similar to the one in the picture will come up.

3. Where you can type in questions, the box with the magnifying glass at the top, type in the word “suicide.”

4. Click on the first link that shows up. It should say, “Pass the URL of the blog on to us.”

5. Type in the user’s URL and tell Tumblr admin that the user is contemplating suicide and has posted a message indicating that they are going through with it or will be attempting. Hit send! Tumblr administration will perform a number of actions to contact the user and take the necessary steps to prevent the suicide.

TUMBLR: THIS COULD SAVE A USER’S LIFE. PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE SUICIDE THREATS.

Reblog this to keep other users aware. Suicide isn’t a joke, and neither is someone’s life. If you didn’t know this, someone else may not, either. Pass it on.

unfortunately going to have to make another post because things are getting bad again 

i work as a gas station attendant and accommodations were made when i was hired so that i could sit down while working due to my fibromyalgia / chronic pain . recently a customer complained that i was being “lazy” so my manager decided that i can’t sit down anymore . i can do that , sure , but i won’t be able to move the next day . i tried explaining this to my manager but she said that the decision was final . and so i’ve had to call off a lot of days these last few weeks because of the extreme pain that i'm in . my manager told me that we have to meet this sunday and i’m pretty sure i’m going to get fired . 

i live paycheck to paycheck and even then i’m constantly struggling to afford medication , food , gas , etc . i have no savings , so if i lose my job , i’m completely fucked . and honestly i’m just very tired of living like this , not knowing when my next meal is going to be or having to scrounge up every last cent i have for my insulin . 

i hate asking for help so often but i really feel hopeless right now . i don’t have anyone to turn to IRL , otherwise i would . even a few dollars means so much to me , it’s literally the difference between me eating or having to fast for another day . i do art commissions if you’re interested , you can find all of my links below . please boost this and spread this post around . thank you so much for reading this

p-yp-l c-sh-pp commission info

Art stream time! Still fundraising for Doctors Without Borders, please drop a $ or two if you have them to spare!

ya got any other pokemon besides bart?

if this post hits 100,000 notes i will adopt a salamence

COMMISSIONS: OPEN

my new commission price sheet!

This is my new and improved commission price sheet! As always, this is mostly just rough guidelines, prices will vary from piece to piece, but this should give you a general idea of what you can get from me for roughly what amount of money.

DM me if you’re interested or want to know more or whatnot. I’m pretty flexible about format, making changes, and the price, so I’m open to discussing every commission individually. And here’s a list of fandoms I’m in if you’re interested in fanart.

You can Support Sweet Beans Comix over at Patreon.com/SweetBeansComix

There is so much more I could say about this, but there is not enough room. Remember to check with reality rather than believing conspiracy theories promoted, supported, and funded by white nationalist hate groups.

Missouri is proposing 20% of the nation’s anti-trans legislation this session. Gender-affirming care for young folks is on the edge of being criminalized (so much love to trans friends in states where that has already happened).

Please keep up with the anti-trans legislation in your state and combat it. There are lives at stake.

Transphobes do not touch this post.

Image ID: a 10-image cartoon comic featuring Joey, a boy with short hair.

Image 1: Joey, upset, gesticulates towards an open laptop. Text reads: The reality of St. Louis trans kids. Last week, a former (non-medical) employee of Washington University’s Pediatric Transgender Center was featured in a viral article about how the clinic was “rushing” kids into medical care and “mutilating” us. Every single thing she said was a lie, but the media loves it. Footnote reads: I wouldn’t give any more attention to this, but it is immediately endangering the lives of trans people. Missouri has launched a state investigation and is actively attempting to criminalize gender-affirming care based on conspiracy theories.

Image 2: Joey points to a map of the United States where Missouri is singled out, and a map of Missouri where St. Louis is indicated with a star. The text reads: The Transgender Center, located in St. Louis, Missouri, has been the target of hateful attacks from the far-right state legislature for years. It is part of Washington University Hospital, a branch of a prestigious private university.

Image 3: A younger Joey injects his T shot in his leg while someone takes a photo. Text reads: I can tell you that everything in the article is false because I received care at the Transgender Center beginning at 16 years old. My medical transition has brought me nothing but joy. What a gift it is to be trans!

Image 4: A younger Joey sits on a couch and stims with a tangle fidget toy. Text reads: No one is “rushed”. I sat on many waitlists, had to have 6 months of specialized gender therapy and a diagnosis of gender dysphoria before even being referred to the Center, and I was denied as “not ready enough” by an endocrinologist the first time I finally got an appointment. Footnote reads: If you’re curious about what it looks like to be a trans kid, I did another piece on that! Check out tinyurl.com/transkidscomictumblr.

Image 5: A colorful map of the United States shows how many states have a Negative Gender Identity Policy Tally and how many states have criminalized gender affirming care. Joey holds a credit card. Text reads: St. Louis’ Pediatric Transgender Center is the only one in the region, meaning the waitlists are extremely long. Plus, no one in the only industrialized country without free healthcare is getting medical care for fun. Many American trans folks have to fundraise for our care.

Image 6: Joey, distressed, sits on a couch while talking on the phone. The person on the other end says: “That’s me!” Text reads: This former employee spoke about specific cases, and patients have been able to identify themselves. She shared our private medical info and called us horrifying.

Image 7: This is split into two panels. In the first, Joey holds up a box of condoms and a packet of birth control pills. Texts reads: She especially hated trans men such as myself, saying that trans ideology was destroying “girls”. She lamented about hormones making us “sterile”, which is a complete lie. We trans mascs have to actively prevent pregnancy. In panel two stands a doctor. Text reads: Every time I had an appointment at the Center, doctors reminded me: Remember: testosterone is not a contraceptive! Footnote reads: The wonderful Erin Reed wrote a breakdown debunking all the lies in the article. See tinyurl.com/erinreedmissouri.

Image 8: Joey, masked, sits at a circular table with his brother, an unmasked boy with fluffy short hair. Joey’s brother is showing him his phone. Text reads: Major newspapers continue to platform these complete lies because they bring in engagement and money. The Washington Post tracked down my little brother’s personal cell phone number to try to get in contact with our mom – the president of an organization supporting trans kids in Missouri. Freaky, right?

Image 9: Joey, looking disgusted, leans against a door frame while talking on a cell phone. Text reads: But no one wants to talk with me, the adult who medically transitioned at this clinic as a minor and has not “desisted” in six years. The Washington Post reporter, who didn’t know anything about trans people, talked with me for 20 minutes and used a sentence of mine in an article about “both sides of the debate”. She didn’t mention that this former employee is being legally represented by a recognized anti-LGBT hate group, nor that all of her claims are unsupported by reality or science.

Image 10: Joey looks angry and gesticulates. Beside the drawing are two photos of Joey, one of him happy in front of a trans flag, and the other of him drawing up testosterone to take his first T shot. Text reads: There is no debate. There are trans people, and there are people who want us dead. There is truth and there are conspiracy theories. Where is my viral article in a major paper?

Published Feb 16, 2023. End ID.

i'm a black autistic person with an autoimmune disorder + other disabilities and i need community aid while looking for a place to live. no set goal bc idk how much longer i'll be jobless and couch surfing, i was fired bc of my speech difficulties. everything helps.

green money app: $piscesmadness

blue money app: p-ypal.me/mojippang