In Defence of the Apparant Shitstorm
Well, apparently our Gamasutra interview is controversial. Probably we should do what all the professionals have advised us to do, and just stop reading comments it is the internet after all. But lets instead take one last stab at dialogue.
First of all,
everyone weve worked with at Microsoft have been terrific smart, helpful, bright, and passionate. Obviously we havent met everyone working there, but those who were involved in N+ were great to work with. Were sorry if our criticism of the service hurts them, because we know theyre doing their best. The most games suck problem really seems to be a pervasive institutional issue rather than the fault of this or that person.. more on that later.
Secondly:
the interview was done before N+ came out.. hence were not complaining about our sales. We are surprised and thrilled by our sales were just happy that people are trying N+, and that some of them are enjoying it.
Third:
the interview happened about an hour after we found out that the royalty rates for XBLA have been adjusted to the point where our whole business plan moving forward was totally shafted.. hence the bitterness.
So: what the hell were we thinking?
We didnt intend to provoke outrage, we simply spoke candidly. Actually saying what you think rather than being fake in an interview situation is apparently just not done, but dont shoot the messenger
its not our fault that the vast majority of XBLA games suck! Literally every single person weve ever spoken with is in agreement on this, and yet its apparently shocking for gamers in general to hear (assuming thats who reads *******/kotaku).
If you think back to when these downloadable channels (XBLA/PSN) were announced, they were supposed to be the anti-retail: good royalties for all involved, smaller/less epic games (quirky ideas which would never have been approved by a publisher), basically a mecca for small teams. In hindsight we were perhaps naive to buy into what was apparently empty marketing speak, however we really believed that something worthwhile and interesting was happening.
Fast forward to now: royalties (allegedly) suck, casual games outnumber proper video games (this will have to wait for a future post for further discussion),
the vast majority of titles are disappointing (this is perhaps a more politic choice of words than utter crap), and small teams are being actively funneled through publishers.
As gamers it was unbelievably depressing for us to try literally 80 games and enjoy less than 8 of them.
As we mentioned in the article we no longer bother to try XBLA demos because of this.. we just wait until we hear something good about any given game. So, were back in retail-land!
The fact that the channel is glutted with crap IS a real problem that shouldnt be dismissed. The diamonds will always stand out argument doesnt work when gamers have ceased to pay attention to XBLA due to how badly the last 10 demos they tried sucked.
As developers it was incredibly frustrating to see Nick pitch his game which is sort of an arcade melee combat racer, and which looks AMAZING (it uses shaders!) in addition to being really fun and physics-y only to be told that racing games are oversaturated. Theyre only oversaturated because, for example,
a piece of crap like Street Trace somehow got in early and is now preventing actually good games from being made. Before you call us arrogant for bad-mouthing another XBLA game, note that in this case it was a direct quote from X360 Magazine UK (A piece of crap. [Issue 26, p.118]).
Those who point out that retail has the exact same problem as XBLA are correct but that doesnt somehow diffuse our argument, if anything it just reinforces it since XBLA was meant to correct the problems endemic to retail games and that whole shebang. If my soup tastes like garbage, I would hope that the waiters explanation isnt yes, but most of the food we serve here tastes like garbage!
This ties in to the larger rant of why do the majority of games TOTALLY SUCK ASS?, which is a very complex topic. Certainly everyone is to blame gamers, developers, publishers, press. Hopefully someone will figure it out before consumers become totally jaded and its music-industry-style meltdown time.
We dont expect everyone to be perfect. Weve made some crap games ourselves. Making a game that sucks shouldnt be a big deal it happens, you learn from it. What is inexcuseable is when you make an utterly crap game, and then RELEASE IT ANYWAY.
Whats even worse is when your job is to decide which games to release, and which games to cancel, and you choose to release, for example, some lightweight neon bunny match-3 and then cancel something interesting like a physics-puzzle-based Thrust-like game.
Also, we should mention that any developers whose games we singled out shouldnt feel too bad, since we also think that The New Super Mario Bros pretty much sucked (especially when compared to SMB3 or SMW), and we didnt like Halo or Halo2 (havent tried 3 yet). So.. take it with a grain of salt? Youre in good company at least.
And, be cognizant of the fact that this is all our (very?) subjective opinion N+ receives its share of poor reviews, too its impossible for any game to resonate with every single person who plays it.
Hopefully well have something good to write about next post heh.
p.s - were not fanboys as some have accused..
we just cant afford a PS3 yet! SSD:HD is pretty crap though, so it looks like Sony arent immune either.
