This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Editor's note: Penny Arcade's got its own video game. It only (doesn't) make sense that popular gaming forum NeoGAF gets one as well. Andrew gives us a closer look at how it all started. -Shoe
Dudebro has gone from meme to NeoGAF game-in-development. In this exclusive four-part series, we will explore gaming communities, independent development and the state of modern video games. In this first installment, we'll take a look at how NeoGAF users rallied around a comment originally cast as an insult and turned it into one of the funniest memes the board ever created — and how things got serious very quickly from there.
Part One: The Birth of a Meme and How NeoGAF Began Its First Video Game (You are here)
Part Two: It's Straight-Up Development Time!
"And your contribution to society is…what?"
With that private message, then VP of Global Marketing for Microsoft Jeff Bell became one of the most infamous NeoGAF members of all time. (Bell declined to comment for this story, by the way.)
If you are tuned into video games on the Internet, then in some way, shape, or form, you have come across NeoGAF, the world's preeminent message board on the subject. Boasting tens of thousands of members, its user base is a collection of fans and industry insiders. Not known for thorough analysis or civility, the forum is a dynamic maelstrom of fanboyism, cruelty, and sometimes, the celebration of video games.
Bell's comment was in response to NeoGAF user A Master Ninja's heckling of the corporate executive, and through the acts of less than trustworthy board members, his private message and his true identity were exposed. Gamers already considered his canned public appearances legend, and his trolling message, albeit intended to be private, solidified his status of "target" for the NeoGAF crowd. The statement became both a truth and an insult, rallying the community while putting the hobby in perspective. Looking at what he said, we can only assume that Mr. Bell thought that developing and distributing video games are valid contributions to society. Three years after that comment, NeoGAF as a whole is ready to start contributing to society by developing a game that could only spring forth from such a cynical group.
And it all started in the unlikeliest of places.
* * *
While indie developers and small studios struggle with creative expression through interactive experiences, the shelf of your video game store will continue to resemble the summertime marquee of a big-screen theater: huge but artistically bankrupt fluff. Violence, big explosions, manly men, and buxom babes are staples of the blockbuster — movies and games alike. Unlike movies, however, the audience and critics celebrate these aspects in games — the best-selling ones are usually the highest rated. If you are going to enjoy them, you will have to accept tropes that the film industry has disregarded as artistically void since the action craze of the 1980s.
This tension runs in a very specific undercurrent within the NeoGAF forums, and many posters are aware of this dichotomy. One in particular, board member Cuyahoga, started the Imagine: Babyz Fashions thread, in which he was going to play a game that, under no uncertain circumstances, was cannon fodder for the vicious words of the community.
Other members of the forum predictably took Cuyahoga to task, at which point he lashed out with a comment that may someday become as regarded as Jeff Bell's message:
"So, I'm a pedophile because I don't want to play Dudebro, My Shit is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time? To throw around these sort of accusations at someone who seeks to do something different suggests quite the insecurity on your part."
Forty minutes passed before anyone responded directly to his dig at popular games like Modern Warfare 2 (the time it takes for hundreds of posts to appear on the forum) and nearly 60 minutes before the first doctored photo appeared, a NeoGAF specialty. But once user [Nintex] posted a mock-up of the game's title on the cover of the upcoming reboot of the Medal of Honor series, there was no looking back. Dudebro captured the community's imagination and events quickly began to develop.
***
Dan Myers is a copy editor living in Ohio and an avid NeoGAF member (danthrax). He was active in the thread once the Dudebro meme began.
"When Cuyahoga came up with a fictional video game title that perfectly encapsulated everything hardcore gaming seems to be about these days," says Myers, "we jumped on the idea as a perfect muse for lampooning the gaming industry."
Myers also points toward the character of the community as a whole as to why this particular meme took off. "We're very jaded at GAF," he says, "and we think everything sucks about the hobby we love — that may be a slight exaggeration but only slightly."
Inside jokes and memes are nothing new to the community. You can see humor and conversations that are virtually impenetrable in just about any thread. If you have the occasion to visit the board during a press conference of particular note (especially for the three major console manufacturers at the annual E3 trade show), you will see dozens of posts asking for particular presenters to "shoot it on my face and tits" or asking them to "BOMB ZAL DROPPEN."
Myers summarizes how the Dudebro phenomenon grew beyond a joke: "The meme could have turned three ways: One, the laughter could die down and the idea could be forgotten quickly. Two, the meme could take a normal meme's path by being spammed all over NeoGAF — and eventually other Web sites — with very few people actually knowing where it came from, before it flames out and stops being funny. Or three, people could take it seriously and turn it into a real thing.
"Implausibly, we took the third option."
Officially, development began on Dudebro: My Shit is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time. Or as they affectionately call it, Dudebro: MSIFUSIHTS/SY2. And yes, that's an H instead of a G in the acronym. They are aware.
***
While the evolution of this meme may have been implausible, the idea of NeoGAF making a game seems, in retrospect, inevitable. The forum is the beating heart of the video game community, and it is filled with more than just enthusiasts. Jeff Bell may be one of the most notorious figures in the board's history, but other notables have had their own runs there — Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and God of War creator David Jaffe to name a couple.
Just about every member of the gaming press has an account — and countless people from the developer and industry side as well (often anonymously). NeoGAF has an incredibly diverse community that is representative of the entire industry. So it's no surprise that some members with skills relevant to video game production were watching the Dudebro meme develop.
The contribution of three members propelled the thread from satirical lambasting to a design idea with chops. Andrea Nicolò (NeoGAF user Jocchan) provided a particularly funny sketch that was complemented by Nayan Ramachandran's (Thetrin) witty scenarios and dialogue. When Miguel Alonso (Mik2121) jumped in and started rendering Nicolò's art in 3D, it began to snowball.
The whole process was organic. From the moment the community started creating pictures it was a hypothetical game, and the more people contributed, the closer it became reality. The whole while, the satirical bent of the premise expanded to include not only the machismo of uber-violent video games but poorly translated Japanese text, flimsy moral decisions, and an excess of convenient containers filled with a combustible fuel.
Eventually Myers and Alan Partridge (Earthstrike) took the helm as producers and organized a mass of contributors and volunteers to turn this thing into an actual game.
One of those volunteers, now the lead programmer, was Will Goldstone, author and university tutor. He wasn't even a regular NeoGAF user prior to the appearance of Dudebro but jumped on almost immediately. "I grew up with games like Rick Dangerous, Smash TV, Duke Nukem," says Goldstone, "and I love Left 4 Dead's style of play, so it was a no-brainer that the humor of a game that seeks to parody the whole macho 'bro' nature of today's games would be attractive to me."
By this time, the group had settled on a genre and style, and now with Goldstone, they had an engine and platform, complete with a competent programmer.
But one thing was at the top of the mind of all the amassed 95 (and counting) volunteers, now collectively called Grimoire Assembly Forge: This game has to be good.
Because for the first time ever, the tables have turned, and now the industry is watching.
Next up: It's Straight-Up Development Time!