"STOP LAUGHING AT ME!!! I can hear you through my modem."
-Drefsab
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#1  [166782] | | dblt-67-158-144-74.gtcom.net | | My approving of this report in no way represents an approval of drug use. It does, however, represent an approval of the comical retelling of the effects thereof. | | #2 Timid[166783] | | cpe-72-134-57-242.socal.res.rr.com | So I'm glad to see a new report, but was expecting one more like your others, however wasn't too dissappointed....
All the same, its goo to see a new report after 4 months of barrenness. | #3  [166785] | | 74-129-3-112.dhcp.insightbb.com | | ill go ahead and endorse drugs: cocaine owns | | #4 mattzarella[166795] | | 133.19.102.97.cfl.res.rr.com | Before I rate this, I think I'm going to need some more explanation.
I just don't think I get it. I went to the website on your "score" image and found the game. It says it was designed by Kimberly Kubus, not Okkerstrom. Did she just get married between your report and this comment? Apparently she's made not one, not two, not even three, but twenty-seven god damn incarnations of Johnny? What the hell? Not to mention the title of Johnny 26 is "Nipple Stimulation." Whaaaaaaat? This website looks like it was designed by the inverse of Martha Stewart, whatever that might be. I feel like there are colors here that no human has seen before. I assumed it was a throwback from when the internet was still populated by dancing 7-up .gifs, but she just updated her website the other day. She just recently made Johnny 27 in June!
This all makes me extremely uncomfortable. I feel slow and delirious just looking at the website. I don't want to watch any of her movies or listen to the music because I feel like it might be one of those deep emotion white noise deals where you listen for 30 seconds with headphones on, vomit, and start seeing people climb out of television sets. This all makes me think that cocaine WAS the motivator behind Johnny and not just a sick urge to expose us to subtle Jewish stereotypes about long noses and breathing fire. If that was the case, though, then this report is less of a parody and more of a serious interpretation of a work of art, which confuses me even more.
Please, explain yourself.
| | #5 KingWombat[166796] | | c-68-55-228-223.hsd1.md.comcast.net | Well first of all, I should clarify that the person behind all this is male. If you go to the 'Music' section on his website, and check out any of the album covers, you will see that no woman was meant to look like that.
Also, Kim Okkerstrom is the dude's real name. He used to go by 'Spartalacus' but has since moved on to 'Kimberly Kubus'. I think it's a Marilyn Manson type stint. If you run the original Johnny game (or any of his earlier games) and press F1, it displays a little blurb where it states something to the effect of "all graphics and programming by Kim Okkerstrom (Spartalacus)".
From what I know, the guy has become pretty well-known in the Game Maker community... when his games first started coming out, people of course simply dismissed them as novice trash. However, after many years in which his game programming/design did not improve at all, despite the fact that Game Maker has a pretty short learning curve (in my experience), people gradually began to see Okkerstrom's work in a different light. He wasn't simply someone who bombed at using Game Maker: after 50 or so games, that simply was not possible. But the thing is, with little to no explanation from the creator as to the reason for this constant flow of utter weirdness, people can't really decide what to make of it all. Every half-month or so, a new Okkerstrom game comes out, and people don't even bother bashing them anymore, because they've become so commonplace. The Johnny series even spawned two fangames, made by none other than tapeworm (I don't know if you've ever played Seiklus, but that was one of his animals).
So basically, since Okkerstrom doesn't bother explaining what the hell it all means, people are free to draw their own interpretations. Personally, I think there is no deeper meaning to any of it. Either he's just being weird for the heck of it (which is quite possible, since he seems to be quite an intelligent guy), or he makes these games while doped up on God knows what. Maybe these games are a cry for help. Who knows.
What really prevents me from considering these creations of his as being 'art games', I think, are the terrible mechanics. Lots of decent art games have been created with Game Maker, but those were at least playable. With Johnny, it seems that Okkerstrom intentionally made the game almost unnavigable, just to piss people off and cause a stir. In fact, I think that's what his whole act is. Just to create something that will make heads turn, and then perhaps invert themselves and grow long noses to top it off.
The one flaw in my interpretation of Mr. Kubus's existence, is the fact that this his weirdness isn't just a one-time thing. He's been making games since 2003, all in the same warped style. I mean, it might have been mildly shocking at first, but as I've said before, now it's just become a commonplace thing. This leads me to believe that on top of intentionally wanting to be weird, there may be something driving him to keep doing this over and over, be it drugs, some kind of disorder, or simply a desire to keep the Kimberly Kubus construct alive.
As for the report... well, I had recently graduated from the IB program at my high school, and if there's anything those 4 years taught me (aside from how to BS my way out of almost any situation), it was how to over-analyze anything until there was no meat left on it at all, and then analyze it some more. So I decided to take that little deal and apply it to a battlereport. But first, of course, I needed the biggest piece of garbage game I knew of, and that game happened to be Johnny. I'm sure Okkerstrom's other creations are equally enticing, but I don't have the time (nor the patience) to indulge in most of them.
Now that I had Johnny, I needed a theme to play off. The first thing I thought of when I ran the game was, of course, drugs. Hard drugs. So I took this seemingly pointless little platformer and turned it into a little boy's fight against drug addiction, taking care to assign some kind of meaning to every tiny little tidbit (no matter how far-fetched it all may seem) as a parody of the IB program and overanalysis in general.
Of course, I may be completely wrong in saying that Johnny is just an aimless romp through a strange little land, and Okkerstrom may in fact have sat down and thought long and hard about every aspect of the game's design. But I think much of the evidence out there, including Okkerstrom's physical appearance (no offense Kim, if you ever read this), the sheer volume of games that this man has produced, and the titles that he has chosen to assign to some of his games, films and musical compositions ("The Sperm Drinking Printers", "Flying Beans Make My Shoebox Smile", and "Nazi Fish Meets The Wack Paradise And The Hard Demons In Heart", to name a few) refutes that possibility.
| | #6 mattzarella[166799] | | 133.19.102.97.cfl.res.rr.com | Thanks for the explanation. Although I wasn't cool enough to go to an IB school, I did take a few AP classes (including AP lit). So I definitely know what you're getting at. I think that there are quite a few interpretations of classical literature that go well beyond the author's original ideas. It's particularly frustrating to try and come up with an interpretation of work that was barely relevant in the time it was written - which may have been hundreds of years ago - as a student who could care less about how everyone has the hots for Darcy and what it means for the empowerment of women. I usually ended up with papers that sounded ridiculous and forced.
With that being said, I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to rate this. It most certainly is not a traditional battlereport and that makes placing a rating fairly difficult. I think that the category of "interpretation of video game as art" hasn't been too popular on BR.com, although I think taking a literature critic's eye to a game like Starcraft might produce some hilarious results.
Even though it was purely a satirical interpretation, I still felt that some of it was forced. I don't really know how to describe it other than I think you tried a bit too hard. Your subtle mockery of the game's mechanics and relation to the hard world of drugs was probably the bit that worked the best for you. An example of what I thought was forced would be the interpretation of the game's icon at the very beginning. However, I do understand the humor in trying to creatively interpret the icon that an author probably spent 30 seconds on in MS Paint.
Had the game itself made attempts at a deeper storyline, I think you would have found some easier opportunities to mock it. I think you're right about Kim not taking his games too seriously, and that kind of takes the fun out of mocking it, don't you think? It's the Bebe's Kids of the world that would probably result in a hilarious interpretation; games with horrible mechanics and a semi-coherent plot that try to pass on a serious but vaguely racist message might be more successful in this style of report.
I definitely don't want to discourage you, or anyone else, from this type of report. I think it might be hilarious to take a mainstream game like Starcraft and make it into a critical analysis akin to the report of an IB student , with symbolism and allegory and a deep, underlying message when there really is none. But this game was already too ridiculous, in my opinion. I think you grabbed a good idea and ended up running a little too hard with it, perhaps even making it seem a little too serious.
Technically, there's really not much to point out. The HTML was fine and the pictures showed enough of the graphics to make me want to take up hard drugs myself.
7 | | #7 mattzarella[166800] | | 133.19.102.97.cfl.res.rr.com | | Also, this may be the most long-winded comments section ever. | | #8 mattzarella[166801] | | 133.19.102.97.cfl.res.rr.com | Except for that last comment.
And this one. | | #9 KingWombat[166802] | | c-68-55-228-223.hsd1.md.comcast.net | | Yeah I guess the concept seemed more appealing in theory than in application. I did in fact feel that much of the report was forced, as you correctly pointed out. | #10  [166803] | | user-142o1pd.cable.mindspring.com | | Am I awake? | | #11 [166820] | | 74-138-191-115.dhcp.insightbb.com | | Or am I asleep, and thee a dream? | | #12 wakiki[166861] | | 68-119-69-143.dhcp.mtgm.al.charter.com | Uh.
Nice report. |
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