Bufr Overflow

What Happens When You Piss Off the Internet

I like open source. When I sought out on the endeavor to create a mobile tower defense game, I announced that the game would be open source, and it would be free. The game is called Meme Defense. As one might guess, it’s about Internet memes. Not exactly an original concept, but I was more concerned about the engineering aspects of the game rather than the skin. Tower defense games, to date, are an over saturated genre consisting of very little evolution. Therefore, I spent most of my time worrying about innovation, making the game fresh and addicting to play. In fact, I had no concerns at all about the memes.

Clearly, I should’ve been more concerned.

Last month, I launched a kickstarter project for Meme Defense with a $5k goal. The money would go into the $7k it would take to hire an art studio, and the $2.5k it would cost to hire a musician. The money would’ve been nice, but mostly the campaign was to feel the pulse of the community, and see how they might receive the game, or how they feel about playing a game featuring the memes they helped to create (Sadly, it probably won’t be funded).

And they responded in the way they know best.

To date, the video has over 35,000 views, 1,000+ comments, and 3,000+ likes. It was launched yesterday.

And then came the hate spam:

Sirildo ”You are the scum of the Earth.
You are the cancer.”
JulesBondTF2 “PLEAAAAAAASE DONT MAKE YOUR SHITTY FUCKING TOWER DEFENS EGAMES MEMESD XDD LELELE XDD Just kill yourself, man.”
HolanderSSF “you piece of shit”
TheBigDeniz “You are a horrible person, just wanted to tell.”
TheOldFatDuckGamer “You’re human shit.
AltF4Games “die”
MmmCouchPotato “you’re a fucking cancer to the internet. die.”
bl00dpk145 “Support for your epic meme project!!!! please read!!!!
No just kidding, kill yourself.”
OddlyOriginal “Hey cunt,
fuck you and your game you ugly fucking piece of shit. ”
Gerard De Vries
- I hope you die, you are the cancer of the world

And this was before I got out of bed this morning.

I’m building a mobile tower defense game which includes Internet memes, and I’m the ‘cancer of the world’ for it? It appeared as if I was caught up in a flame war between 4chan and Reddit. I went for my morning tea (decaf), still chuckling at how funny the video was, and decided to look up the creator.

His name is Ken Ashcorp, pretty talented guy from the UK. Sings, plays instruments, draws, makes Internet videos, enjoys World Wrestling Entertainment. You name it.

But something seemed familiar from the YouTube description he put on his video. It seemed familiar because I wrote it (except the parts in CAPS) and I had only sent that draft out to Gizmodo (and one other publisher but I can’t fucking for the life of me remember!). So clearly, someone from Gizmodo (or other) forwarded the email.

Out of curiosity, I tweeted him. Here’s how it went:

I said: “@KenAshcorp Hilarious video. Even though I was the butt of your jokes, you’ve done the Internet proud.”
He said: “@_buf hahaha oh shit. I was going to say, I respect your making it free and your ability to code but come on bro :(“
I said: “@KenAshcorp Guess I should’ve used something other than memes. Could’ve saved myself a lot of shit. How did you get that email I sent out?”
He said: “@_buf I can’t reveal my sources on that, but I can understand why you picked memes and the market appeal that they hold ): Hope you do good”

Hmm, well at least his 9 minute video wasn’t personal, right? By this time, I’m casually deleting hate emails until I see that Whynne, the creator of the famous trollface, has sent me a personal audio recording:

Just before this recording, he threatened to send a C&D. Btw, he’s the same guy who issued this letter to Reddit last year for using trollface.

I think I’ve learned a lesson in all of this. Most of what Internet communities like 4chan, Reddit, and 9gag produce are highly-regarded garbage. If you try to harness that garbage to make something out of it, you will be put in the center of an unending war of whose garbage is better (or made first). And that is a dangerous place to be.

The point that I’m trying to make is if you’re going to spent months of your time and thousands of your dollars drafting a concept, hiring a team, and building a free and completely open source video game as a hobby, you better use zombies as your theme.

Sharing is caring -