Dean's 1.2 million score is probably going to be ignored by the media

[homerwannabee]

And to be honest, outside the DK community, the number 1.2M doesn't register with the public. The word "world record" registers, but he already had that on MAME.

Again, I am not disappointed in the lack of world wide attention.  I am not disappointed in the lack of nationwide U.S. coverage.   Or even from Kataku.  This is about those closest to the community that are ignoring it.

Yep, Marky D.  In this case it's just about speaking out.  Basically I am saying what this guy said.  I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.

[marky_d]

I've never seen that movie so I don't have any context. After that famous quote, did he do anything else about what was making him upset?

[stella_blue]

What I was not expecting is that the 1.2 million game would not get any attention from the Donkey Kong blogspot.

Regarding the above quoted statement, I must respectfully disagree with you, George.

It's simply unfair to lump Chris together with what you perceive as a disinterested and/or vindictive media group.

Dean's epic achievement did receive attention over at Donkey Blog:

1,206,800

The blog post is brief (for now), but concludes with the following sentence:

"More on this history-making performance soon."

The abbreviated entry is also explained in Dean's congratulatory thread:

Dean Saglio breaks 1.2 million!

Chris has done an outstanding job covering DK players, events, tournament results, milestone achievements, and anything else related to the game.  When the time is right, I have no doubt that Dean's historic game will get the quality write-up it deserves.

[homerwannabee]

What I was not expecting is that the 1.2 million game would not get any attention from the Donkey Kong blogspot.

Regarding the above quoted statement, I must respectfully disagree with you, George.

It's simply unfair to lump Chris together with what you perceive as a disinterested and/or vindictive media group.

Dean's epic achievement did receive attention over at Donkey Blog:

1,206,800

The blog post is brief (for now), but concludes with the following sentence:

"More on this history-making performance soon."

The abbreviated entry is also explained in Dean's congratulatory thread:

Dean Saglio breaks 1.2 million!

Chris has done an outstanding job covering DK players, events, tournament results, milestone achievements, and anything else related to the game.  When the time is right, I have no doubt that Dean's historic game will get the quality write-up it deserves.

Sorry, did not see that.  That's why I said "Surprised".  I don't see him with any agenda whatsoever.  To be honest I think on Chris' part it's more either A)Not having the time, or B)Some other reason that has nothing to do with politics.


Edit: It's been awhile since I saw that movie, but that scene stood out.  From what I remember it's about a reporter that basically has a nervous breakdown live on air, and the public misconstrues this for something else, and soon he is thrown into the national spotlight with his own primetime TV show and everything.  After awhile he becomes what he stood up against in the first place.  Having said that, this is still an awesome quote.

[LMDAVE]

I think most know and accept things are not always going to be equal, acomplishing "A" does not mean you'll get "B"

Yes, Brian Allen, got a lot of attention for getting a killscreen. Was it anymore important than anyone else's KS? No. Everyone put a lot of effort into their first killscreen. Maybe, squeeky wheel gets the grease. Given that CAT was a fan of his and pushing for him to get it definitely helped get a TG article.

Allen Staal got an interview from Hank for acheiving 700K. Does that mean everyone who gets 700K now should expect that? Of course not, but given Allen's character, and animated ways of dealing with failure and keep going and the name he made for himself in the community, that is what got him the interview.

I'm not really sure what's left out there to spark a big news in the DK world anymore. 1.1M doesn't really do it anymore, beating Billy and Steve doesn't seem to be a big deal anymore. You can expect your own thread for that, but that's about it.

Perhaps a new arcade world record holder is all that left to spark big news.

[Zerst]

To Tim:

Not to drag this out too much, but Tim. From my point of view, Billy and Steve were paid to be actors in a fictitious film based on their lives and loosely centered around their rivalry in Donkey Kong. Over half the movie is about Billy and Steve as characters, the clash of their personal and professional situations, with DK as a backdrop.

I understand that you are ridiculously upset that you feel like you were cut out from the movie and subsequently financial compensation. I would be just as hung up if I felt I lost out on $10,000. But the absolute bottom line is, nobody outside of the CAG community gives two craps about Donkey Kong. Every person I've come across who has seen the film literally remembers nothing about it besides "Billy is a bit of an ass and Steve is a total ham."

Your skills at DK which were amazing at the time had ZERO worth to the filmmakers unless you were the owner of a statewide restaurant chain, or an engineering school graduate teaching high school science and playing drums in a band on the side because he got laid off from Boeing, both with wife and kids. That's why Sanders got in as well even though you're right that he never really got anywhere in DK.

Now, if you DID reach out and show you were an alright guy and had a wife and kids or at least an interesting career with an interesting backstory, and you STILL got shut down, then yeah, it was a bit unfair, but that's Hollywood. The guy next to you hits the Jackpot in a slot machine, you don't get any of it, and you can gripe all you want. Maybe you could have done a better job of making friends with them while they were filming.


To George:

I'm a part of the Speedrunning community as well, which has taken off and, with a ton of luck, started to make being good at single player video games profitable. The people who get 600-1000 viewers on their streams every single day, no matter what they are playing, make about $100-150 a month. How many of us can get 600 or even 60 or even 20 every single day?

There is a big wall around our community, fortified by the fact that the games we play are downright boring to watch, even though they're a lot of fun to play. A significant majority of gamers would rather watch the intro of Super Mario 64 for hours on end before they'd think twice about shutting off a DK 1-1 reset-a-thon. Unless you can make 20 hours of 1-1 and then ~2 hours of barrel board leeching anything but a snoozefest to people who don't really care about playing the game themselves, it's going to stay that way. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.



PS: And TG has always been a crapshoot when it comes to garnering notoriety, especially now as they're barely relevant to anything anymore.

[hchien]

I had to think a bit about this one.  My initial thought was that Dean didn't submit his score to TG, but as you pointed out neither did Brian.  To be honest though, Brian did not get much press either for his killscreen-- an article from PSP and TG.   I don't think it was on any mainstream website. 

First I think Brian likes the attention, not just from the DK community but a wider audience.  He seeks the attention.  Dean, on the other hand, shies away from it (except from within the community).

Secondly Brian is the "underdog" and people like a good underdog story (KoK is a classic example).  Because of this, a lot people will try to help Brian out by promoting him.   The 2 articles that were written about him had that tone.  It was almost expected that Dean was going to get 1.2M at some point, but Brian killscreening was not a certainty.

As I said last night, with only a few exceptions, none of us really play for fame or money (but ok maybe for the women).  Think about how many hours you've invested in DK and how much you could have made by working a minimum wage job with those hours.  Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Crowd's reaction to Vincent Lemay entering Kong Off row and taking off his shirt:



(Actually these are StarCraft groupies)

[Fast Eddie]

Network is an awesome film, and the satire was bang on...almost 40 years old and still totally relevant...

 

[TheSunshineFund]

It's just personal opinion of course, but as a whole, I think folks really don't need to get worked up about not getting asked questions regarding 30+ year old video games and their relationship with them.  I get genuinely creeped out by a significant portion of what I see in the hobby that literally has nothing to do with having fun playing video games.

[mikegmi2]

I always liked the UHF version better:

Life is Like a Mop

[homerwannabee]

Hank said "I had to think a bit about this one.  My initial thought was that Dean didn't submit his score to TG, but as you pointed out neither did Brian.  To be honest though, Brian did not get much press either for his killscreen-- an article from PSP and TG.   I don't think it was on any mainstream website.

First I think Brian likes the attention, not just from the DK community but a wider audience.  He seeks the attention.  Dean, on the other hand, shies away from it (except from within the community).

Secondly Brian is the "underdog" and people like a good underdog story (KoK is a classic example).  Because of this, a lot people will try to help Brian out by promoting him.   The 2 articles that were written about him had that tone.  It was almost expected that Dean was going to get 1.2M at some point, but Brian killscreening was not a certainty."


OK, that's a plausible explanation.  Having said that I still wish Dean got some small time pub for his accomplishment.

Steve said "It's just personal opinion of course, but as a whole, I think folks really don't need to get worked up about not getting asked questions regarding 30+ year old video games and their relationship with them.  I get genuinely creeped out by a significant portion of what I see in the hobby that literally has nothing to do with having fun playing video games."


Well baseball is a 140 year old game, basketball is over 100 years old, and so is Football.  Also here is the thing you need to know about this hobby.  It's a competitive individual game.   This is for the most part, not team oriented.  I would advice you to take a gander at other non team activities like Tennis, or Boxing.   Just take a look at youtube videos of John MaCenroe, Jimmy Connors, Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Mike Tyson, and Floyd Mayweather.

I am pretty sure you would be creeped out by some of their antics as well. 


P.S. "creeped out" in my opinion is a woman's phrase.  It's akin to calling something "cute".

[TheSunshineFund]

Well baseball is a 140 year old game, basketball is over 100 years old, and so is Football.  Also here is the thing you need to know about this hobby.  It's a competitive individual game.   This is for the most part, not team oriented.  I would advice you to take a gander at other non team activities like Tennis, or Boxing.   Just take a look at youtube videos of John MaCenroe, Jimmy Connors, Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Mike Tyson, and Floyd Mayweather.

I am pretty sure you would be creeped out by some of their antics as well. 


P.S. "creeped out" in my opinion is a woman's phrase.  It's akin to calling something "cute".

I'm still not sure why we compare a niche within a niche hobby to professional tennis or boxing where you get paid millions of dollars a year to perform athletic feats in front of millions of people on tv.  Like Hank said play something that South Korea plays or something.

Plus tennis and boxing are head to head.  I don't think people would pay money to watch John MacEnroe hit a ball against a brick wall which may have random outputs but is still inanimate.  Of course I could be totally wrong, maybe if he were to shout at it a lot or something....even a CAG tourney setting is like lots of people hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall and seeing who returns it the most.

[homerwannabee]

Well baseball is a 140 year old game, basketball is over 100 years old, and so is Football.  Also here is the thing you need to know about this hobby.  It's a competitive individual game.   This is for the most part, not team oriented.  I would advice you to take a gander at other non team activities like Tennis, or Boxing.   Just take a look at youtube videos of John MaCenroe, Jimmy Connors, Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Mike Tyson, and Floyd Mayweather.

I am pretty sure you would be creeped out by some of their antics as well. 


P.S. "creeped out" in my opinion is a woman's phrase.  It's akin to calling something "cute".

I'm still not sure why we compare a niche within a niche hobby to professional tennis or boxing where you get paid millions of dollars a year to perform athletic feats in front of millions of people on tv.  Like Hank said play something that South Korea plays or something.

Plus tennis and boxing are head to head.  I don't think people would pay money to watch John MacEnroe hit a ball against a brick wall which may have random outputs but is still inanimate.  Of course I could be totally wrong, maybe if he were to shout at it a lot or something....even a CAG tourney setting is like lots of people hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall and seeing who returns it the most.

Because they have a common thread. They are competitive.  And yes, that's my whole point in using those comparisons as well.  You would think that in competitive fields like Tennis that are hugely popular, that people would refrain from doing things that would "Creep you out".  I mean they are getting paid millions of dollars to do this, and millions of people are watching them, and they are still doing crazy things.

So why would you expect anything more of a competitive hobby where the repercussions are so much less.  I mean none of us is going to lose millions of dollars by doing something crazy.  None of us is going to have millions of people hate them "Unless your Billy Mitchell" for acting like a jerk.  Yet those who make millions, and have much on the line still act like tools from time to time.

[TheSunshineFund]

I honestly wish you the best of luck in attempting to make competitve classic arcade gaming a financially viable career choice.   

[homerwannabee]

Also it's nice to see speed running get some time in the sun in becoming more popular.  It would explain why Andrew Gardikis is more focused on his speed runs than trying to get a higher Donkey Kong score.  I don't think his 2739 followers would particullarly appreciate him mainly playing Donkey Kong.