I am disgusted by this! Imagine! Changing format willy-nilly! ;)

I've seen both Transformers and Die Hard 4, but didn't feel the need to brag about it on the front page of a web site.

...until now. ;)

He wasn't BRAGGING. He was kidding.

Are you being ironic or just a dick? Your post is awfully hard on a guy who's already written and shared reams of sketches. He doesn't owe you anything. You don't have the right to judge him.

Oh boy, here comes the Squidi fans .. *eyeroll*

Hmm, I think it's unhealthy to ditch a concept just like that, and this was a good concept too. He'd made a commitment and got recognition, he should have followed through with it. A shame.

Also, if he write the game ideas down on a beermat while in the pub, that would have been brilliant also.

Ok, I'm dissapointed too, but still cut the guy some slack..... Give him a couple months and he'll go back to AMD, and then we'll all be happy for 3 or 4 weeks, when he'll find a new distraction. The point though, is he doesnt owe us anything. If nothing else, he's good for a laugh every couple days.

Actually.. if you check back at the 300 page, he has stopped the whole site. One of his reasons is (although there are others) is actually to do with this Blog post.

Now, I'm not a "Squidi fan" - I don't know the guy from Adam. I was just someone who was very inspired by the ideas (most completely unique) that he was posting FOR FREE on his site. Although I'm sure that there were other reasons (some of which he's stated); to think that one of them was by a potentially insulting post on indygamer, is a shame.

Let's hope it doesn't put other creative minds from sharing their talent for fear of being criticised. :)

I don't think this entry was that insulting, it seemed more joking than insulting in tone to me.

On the other hand, I do think he has the right to do whatever he wants and I also hate when people complain about what they're getting for free. I've seen plenty of sites shut down in disgust because the people on it complained about the webmaster not updating on time or stupid things like that.

I'd never actually heard of his site before now, it's pretty impressive.

Honestly, I'm surprised he even made it to 50; I figured he'd Peter out at 20, tops. No doubt most of his staying power came from recycling and garnishing a lot of his old ideas. Regardless, it was an entertaining run while it lasted.

As far as implementation goes, he's doomed from the start. He's making the same mistake with this that he made with his MUD--trying to write a general framework, by himself, from scratch. Remember what happened with that MUD? After two weeks' work, he had a toy Telnet client with the barest skeleton of MUD code. In other words, he never made it to an actual game prototype because he'd bit off way more than he could chew.

His surest bet to actually turn out anything would be to update his old Pellet Quest prototype; for that, the boilerplate has already been written, so he could concentrate on the fun stuff before his inevitable two-week burnout. Ain't gonna happen, 'course, because he doesn't actually care about turning anything out; he just wants to play with his new toy--Mac programming.

Wow, what a self-centered, whining, internet self-esteem-powered prick you are... how about taking over the project and see if you make it... You know, every idiot can open a blog and write bullshit about others.. well, too bad you obviously are one of them..

Wow. I have to say congratulations to whoever wrote this. Now, because of this, Sean isn't going to make it public. So now, not only will there be one update a week, we won't know what he is doing. I hope you're happy.

I doubted he would finish the 300 ones after I saw that he kept reposting old ideas.

I even doubt he will ever complete a game. He will probably find other things to do with his time. And now he no longer has to keep his 'audience' entertained.

And I agree with lemeza (org poster) that it is a cop-out. But it was as expected, squidi never finishes anything he starts. He just changes his goals halfway.

i am amazed that people can react that way to someone who has an idea.

and the amount of times its happened through the years is stupid.

sean is brilliant if u ask me. these ideas of his could take him a long way. but as he has said you dont get paid to think, you get paid to act. and i guess thats one thing that he wasnt that good at.

its too bad that hes shuting down his site, but i must say that three hundred ideas was taking it a bit far. from how he was going he could have made at least 200 but in a little longer than a year.

im sad to say goodbye to his blog, and also the comic which i am still a big fan of and i dont think his continuing that either, but he has given us so much so much and we so little.

i say good luck to him and if u can find that lasting idea then ends up acting on it then i will be one to buy it.

good luck to im and all that

i hope he pulls back and finishes the comic but i dont think its likely and i hope he ends up where he wants to get.

Hi. I'm Squidi. I did not mean to single out this particular blog. It's just that I couldn't really post emails or link to posts in my forum (which required registration) and I didn't want to let people know what other forums I frequented. In short, this was a public site that echoed sentiments I'd seen elsewhere.

My point is that sharing things with people is hard. Other people can affect you. If they are nice, things get easier. If they are mean, things get harder. Everybody has a comment and they don't always consider how that comment will change things.

I like this site. I've got it bookmarked and read it daily. I do think this particularly entry was out of character, deciding to be spiteful rather than supportive. As a reader, I'd much rather see supportive posts. I think this site has been a huge positive influence on the indie scene, and I hope that it will continue to be. Indie developers have enough hardships without some blog making it worse.

I think you should take the beermat idea and run with it. It's ok, thank me later.

I enjoy Sean's work and all, but I gotta say, the guy is one hell of a pussy. He's worked so hard on the project and it looked like he might have been ready to do something with the ideas he had come up with too. But in the end he just shut the whole project down and destroyed all his hard work just because somebody hurt his feelings. Absolutely sickening.

yeah we all knew he couldn't finish it and even if he claims he could, a few of his ideas have been DONE already (hello worms) and a lot of the rest were just not fun to play so whatever game he's going to make is probably going to be pretty bad!

gotta love how he says OH I DIDN'T MEAN TO SINGLE OUT THIS POST and he does exactly that though! you're a real class act dude.

I did not shut down the 300 project because somebody hurt my feelings. I shut it down because I posted a half assed entry (thus failing the challenge) and because I really wanted to start working on these ideas. I will not be continuing the project because I want to concentrate my efforts on just one thing at a time. All the negative things said about me have happened AFTER I already announced the project was over.

What I've decided to do is NOT share the creative process as I go through making these games, and it is simply because when you expose a creative process (rather than a finished product), it is still in motion and can be affected by the audience. There are times, like a webcomic, where that sort of feedback is a good thing. But it's not always a good thing, as I believe to be the case of game development.

For instance, I announced my intention to do development on a Mac using Objective-C. I've had literally two dozen discussions on this matter. Some people want me to make PC game. Some people just don't like my choice of programming language. Some people think I should do Java, one guys says XNA, while another says python is the way to go. One guy even recommended RPG Maker to me and couldn't understand why I would choose not to use a pirated program to do my work.

Every step of the way, it's going to be like that. I say that I'm using 16x16 pixel tiles and somebody is going to suggest 32x32. I decide to use composition instead of inheritance, somebody is going to argue against it. I decide that shotguns should have a -3 to accuracy and somebody is going to say they need a -4. I decide to save my images in png format, somebody is going to suggest gif. I want turn based, somebody wants real time. I want a ten hour game, somebody else wants a fifty hour game.

Sometimes, you want to chat. But sometimes, you need to take the phone off the hook and shut the door so you can get something done. This has nothing to do with hurt feelings. This is about wanting to keep the project at a place where I feel it will be optimally productive.

Dark Phalli: A few of his ideas are SIMILAR to things already made. Saying that they already did #44 as Worms is a lie. It's similar to Worms, yet, but it adds a new dimension to it. Literally.

This is what I don't understand. Who cares that someone thinks you should target a different platform, write in a different language, or use bigger tiles? You have good reasons for making the decisions you did, right? Why not just stick those reasons in a FAQ on your site and ignore future questions/arguments on the issues? Something isn't adding up.

I enjoyed the comment someone made about not thinking he'd make it to 20. I was originally tempted to start a way of people being able to place bets on how long he could have kept going.

It's a shame that Squidi's given up on this but...that's his choice really. If he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't have to. Though I get this feeling that he's unlikely to finish anything else he does. Just by his attitude - he keeps changing his plans.

I also think that, in some ways, Squidi's been a bit of a dick. He did single out this blog. Putting a link to it on the front page of his website does that, especially when you consider the amount of traffic he's getting. He didn't need to link to this to show his point really, just to explain it.

I agree that nothing is such a big deal, but I can't understand why there's so many aggressive comments against squidi, who at least gave us (many of us at least, I don't know the rest of you) a fun time watching his project. Some of the ideas inspired me and made me think about designing (or creating hopefully) my own games someday, or at least others were entertaining to read. The other part of it (about there being a challenge) doesn't mean he deserves to get insulted now.

Actually what I don't get is why the aggressive comments are so many compared to the neutral or supportive comments.

I think that Seans done a good enough job so far, I mean, 50 game ideas, I don't know anyone who can think of 5! e's inspired hundreds of people, and he did say (or maybe I'm wrong, I don't have an exactly....smart brain) that he would add a few at a time in the future, but when I wrote this, I hadn't finished reading the July 2nd entry, so I might be wrong. But I read the sites comics before 300, and I read every page of every comic. When Sean started 300, I thought he'd make it. So i'd read the new ideas every day. And even when negative space popped in, I was inspired to make my own game. And so I set my site and animating aside just so I could search for a good software. I found one, and yes, it's hard, but I'm doing it, and it won't take long. I think Sean will make great games from his ideas, and he may even gain a profit from them. I dunno what will happen till it happens. PEACE!

So, to the people complaining about others complaining about Squidi quitting:

We're really just frustrated. Squidi turned out a great comic with the first AMD. And he's done some great stuff since then (AMD ep. 2 wrapped up in a great cliffhanger, if memory serves).

However, time and time again we've seen him try something new and fail. Starship Destiny was not too bad, while it lasted. The zombie one could've been cool if he'd ever gotten past the first scene. Basically, we have high hopes whenever Squidi tries something new, but lately he's been failing us. Often.

Yes, we're being unfair to the guy. But that's fame. I'd almost compare it to George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels. Everybody gripes about 'em because we had such high hopes, because we'd seen Lucas pull off amazing stuff before. Same thing with Squidi: while AMD wasn't Star Wars-calibre, it was nonetheless very entertaining, and so to see Squidi screw up all the time is a real let-down.

Since Sean's switching to implementation and a cursory glance at the shelves of any games store shows quite clearly that the industry is in desperate need of new ideas I'm going to attempt to do the same project, pick up where Squidi left off to the best of my ability. The site address is
http://nansiweb.0moola.com/, I posted a first concept up earlier tonight and am going to attempt to add at least one new one every week. And yes, the site is ugly, but then so is your mother.

Remind me to never post anything interesting on the internet, in fear that if I stop, you guys will want my head.

Yes! Anonymous' head is mine! ALL MINE!

No! Anonymous get your hands of Anonymous's head. I saw it first. It is mine, not yours!

Why is it every time a person starts doing something that shows potential, a buch of people start bitching and complaining about every little detail they can find?
Getting pissed off that he did 50 game ideas rather than 300? Then go off and make 300 ideas of your own before you start berating him. As Chad said, people are lucky if they can make it to 5. People shouldn't put others down when they know that they couldn't do any better themselves.

Let me ask you a question, since you're all desperate to make criticism out of something you get for free from someone as creative as Sean Howard, willing to post all of his ideas openly, so everyone can use them... :
If you had great ideas for games, would you share your creativity with all internet users who wanted to see them, for FREE, or would you keep them for yourselves, make games implementing these ideas and then sell them? Well he chose to share it all for free. The only reason he stopped is that the ones who received the benefits started complaining about the time he took to publish his ideas. So one of the major reasons he stopped were blogs such as this! Well, go figure why people being favoured by squidi.net would start whining about how many updates they'd be getting per week.
Call me a squidi fan, roll your eyes at me, I don't care! I wont stop expressing my opinion because of childish gestures!

"Call me a squidi fan, roll your eyes at me, I don't care! I wont stop expressing my opinion because of childish gestures!"

Well, your opinion doesn't reflect the facts. He stopped because he didn't think he had enough ideas to get to 300. And idea's are cheap enough, loads of people share them, and you to will get them by playing games, and reading about games. It isn't that special what he did, only the large amount. (with a lot of them being small variants of each other (such as the first three ideas). Idea's are cheap, implementing them isn't. He only gave us the ideas, he didn't want to share the art.

But don't trust me: http://www.sloperama.com/advice/idea.htm
http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson11.htm

Art on the other hand isn't cheap. And he never ever gave that to other people. (He intended to do, but because people whould use it in gamemaker he refused. So he doesn't want to share that).

Cop-out? One said he was amazed Squidi could reach at least 50 updates? I for one am amazed he could reach 50 updates without finally deciding to start making these ideas for real.

I don't know for you, but reading all these entries, with all these awesome and cute graphics, really cool and innovative ideas and gameplay mechanic explained, and not being able to play a single of these idea makes me want to poke my eyes out with an ice pick.

Squidi stopping to write 300 ideas to program 300 ideas? Hell, it's about time!

Squidi's kind of a whiny douche. Always has been, always will be. I'm not surprised that he gave up and went into hiding. The boy just has an unrealistic view of himself, and can't take even the mildest criticism without going fetal. It's a shame - I thought he'd actually do something worthwhile this time...

I kinda hoped Squidi would make it to the 300, but in the back of my head I knew that it's almost impossible.

I am a (amateur) game developer and I know how hard it is to keep motivated sometimes. Now what I don't know is how to cope with such an audience as Squidi has. NONE of you do. So quit your bitching, and leave the guy alone if he wants to.

nansiweb has now been updated and a second concept posted, this time for an RPG based upon the Crimsonland style of interface. The address again, for those who are interested, is http://nansiweb.0moola.com.

Dude... Sean was... no... is awesome... I have all his comics on my comp and freakin love him for it... he has no reason to be insulted... everyone who is trash talking him can freakin die for all I care... if any of you had half a brain youd leave the guy to his work... hes a genius... your just jealous... GET OVER IT!!!

Hi Sean.

"Dude... Sean was... no... is awesome... I have all his comics on my comp and freakin love him for it... he has no reason to be insulted... everyone who is trash talking him can freakin die for all I care... if any of you had half a brain youd leave the guy to his work... hes a genius... your just jealous... GET OVER IT!!!"

That is one of the stupidest things I've seen someone say on this subject. People who don't like Squidi should "die"? You "love" him? For God's sake man, he's just some guy on the internet who makes second-rate comics. He's also a stuck-up dick a lot of the time. Would we really be jealous of someone like that? I think not.

I don't think that comment was completely serious. I hope.
I think what happened here is just that Squidi overreacted, and the public overreacted even more (furiously) to his overreaction.
I'm no "fan" of him but it was a cool project. For a beginner like me it was very inspiring, even if ideas are cheap (It probably does have to do with the cute non-opensource illustrations). It's a shame that it ended but it was probably a relief for him.

Looks like idea #51 is up. It will be interesting to see how long he can keep up this highly slowed pace.