Slashdot Mirror
Spore Dev Down On the Wii
An anonymous reader writes "As reported by IGN, Spore developer Chris Hecker made a very quotable statement at a traditionally contentious GDC panel. At the 'Game Publishers Rant' event Wednesday morning, Hecker stated that he thought the Wii is a piece of sh*t. He went on to refer to it as 'two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape.' He also took Nintendo to task for not taking games seriously enough. 'It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form.'"
Chris Hecker & his coworkers look like he's putting out a great game, but he needs to take himself and what he does a little less seriously. As a games consumer I care less about what neato tricks a developer can contort the console CPU into doing and more about how much fun it is. Which is why I'm getting a Wii, as soon as, well, I can find one locally!
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
"It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a s*** about games as an art form."
Listen - I love insult comics. But look at you - stringing together accusations and a couple expletives and acting like you gave Nintendo a thrashing? Hmph - it's clear to me, you don't give a s*** about insulting as an art form.
Go listen to some Lisa Lampanelli, and THEN try it again, you miserable excuse for console troll.
Ryan Fenton
P.S. As you may have noticed, though I do like my insult comics, I personally suck quite badly at the game myself. You should see me in traffic - a dejected 'dude, you suck' is about at far as I can manage. Just saw the insult, and thought I'd give Lisa Lampanelli a plug.
I know pro sports people do infact play what is essentially a game - but I thought that didn't apply to video games and that games were still supposed to be fun.
So are game developers not even trying to make games fun these days then?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Probably not very much. This guy is a loon. I've shipped more videogames than this joker (hes shipped ZERO) and I couldn't hope to be half as opinionated as this pompus prick. Doesn't seem he can commit to a project long enough to actually ship the game as it stands. Find it amusing how hes bitching about the Wii when he pisses & moans elsewhere that there is a lack of creativity in the industry, while wanting alternative markets and models for small-scale video game production. I could have sworn thats what the Wii has going for it most. Guess hes sold out too far to, "the man".
Something I find odd is that a Wiki Admin deleted his bio barely an hour after this article went live.
Wiki Deletion
Google Cache
I've spent considerable time pondering the possible aesthetics of video games, and agree with you that any list of pure specs cannot lead to higher aesthetics. Tetris was simple in every possible criteria, but still could be seen as one of the more beautiful games ever, much like primitive cave paintings. Your last paragraph captures this perfectly.
- interactive-art-aesthetic.htmls -as-art-revisited.html
/. has been inundated with philosophers lately! I'm very happy that the esoteric crowd is ranting too!
That said, though, no one really has analyzed the aesthetics of games, and many people say that they cannot be aesthetic since they are A) mass produced for market, and B) interactive. I disagree with both of these premises, btw.
Its late, and I'm lazy, so I'll just link to articles I wrote about this topic:
http://nonservium.blogspot.com/2006/09/prelude-to
http://nonservium.blogspot.com/2006/12/video-game
Yeah, self promotion AND laziness, I now embody the modern internet.
Obviously his idea of art revolves around complexity, and not the limitations of the medium. If he was a poet he would be Kerouac with massive free-flowing strings of consciousness, and his haiku would be as broken and unstructured as Kerouac's too. This is a relatively routine distinction in art, some people think that the limitations of a medium or style increases its merit, while others are too lazy, limited, of whatnot, to see the point. This is becoming more and more common in digital media, we're spoiled by ever increasing power, and have a hard time respecting even out current low limitations. Imagine this guy developing on a 8-bit system, or worse a text adventure!
I personally think that good are is a sort of metaphorical collaboration between the artist and the medium.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I think it's fairly ironic that the guy works for the company that makes The Sims, one of the ugliest, most technologically behind games I know of that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following, yet he blasts Nintendo, company that makes the most technologically behind game systems that just happens to be addictive and have a crazy following.
Foot, meet mouth.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I think that may be Christ Hecker's problem as well. I'm just gonna copy my comment from gamesarefun...
How is it Nintendo's job as a console developer to push games as a "legitimate art form?" Or Sony's? Or Microsoft's? Criticizing the development side of their buisness for the type of games they produce would be valid, however the job of the console side of their business is to produce a machine that will sell well and will enable developers to easily produce games that will sell well.
Microsoft and Sony produced consoles with lots of graphical power and a high price tag. Nintendo produced a console with a new method of control and a cheaper price tag. It is now the developers' jobs to produce whatever type of game they want, "artistic" or not, for whichever consoles they want.
If Chris Hecker feels that the type of games he wants to develop require the horsepower of the PS3 or 360 that's fine. If however he feels that the higher level of graphics is a _requirement_ to produce "art," then he clearly doesn't have any notion of what art really is.
(I would certainly have trouble defining what art really is myself, but i'm not so deranged as to try to claim that it requires a high definition display or any other specific kind of media to produce.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank