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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.'"
It must have been hard to build an industry changing motion sensing controller with spare GameCube parts and duct tape. Nintendo must have hired MacGyver!
Hecker said the console isn't powerful enough to provide the next-gen experience he has been waiting for ... Although he stated the system is "severely underpowered," Hecker noted that he wasn't simply referring to the Wii's graphical capabilities. He wants to spend a console's CPU making games more intelligent, and he has found the Wii doesn't have the power to process things like complicated AI.
I guess it depends what makes a good game. Tetris was great, and didn't require complicated AI.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"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.
Perhaps this is an admission that Spore wont be any fun? But that will be OK because it's art and we will buy it for that.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
"It pains me to say this but I recently just took a job at EA. However, I worked for Will on the game you just saw, so.. [laughter] I'm going to rant about How Sony And Microsoft Are About To Screw Your Game Design. Look, how are we going to get where gameplay, graphics and physics are all evenly well balanced? At the moment we're the 120lb weakling, except nowadays his right arm here, graphics, is enormous."
--Chris Hecker, GDC, 2005
To paraphrase his annual edgy developer commentary:
"Game consoles aren't designed exclusively around my own personal favorite part of game design at this point in time."
This is notable? This is news? 95% of game developers probably feel this way. User interface people adore the Wii for exactly the same reasons next-gen artists and AI/physics programmers are frustrated by it. Parents adore the Wii's price for the same reason that high-end next-gen developers abhor it (because big honkin processors, it turns out, are not particularly cheap).
The real problem with his claim is the idea that serious and/or artistic games need massively powerful AI or physics routines in order to affect players. I do not agree that powerful technology is the only key to making an artistic game, or a game that has an emotionally powerful effect on people, or a fascinating narrative. Art direction and writing and getting rid of the publisher committee-approval ideology is a lot more important than neural networks. I am sure that there are certain types of artistic games that will become more prevalent as computing power increases, but to pigeonhole artistic games as games that have really good AI...isn't that just a little self-centered?
What was disturbing to me about his rant was not what he said, but how ill-defined his terms were. He professed that Nintendo does not take gaming seriously as an art form. What is this "art" he speaks of? As someone who studies philosophy, it's very important to me that such an objective argument as "Nintendo hurts art" is defined properly.
... dare I say "in the box" developers... improve AI so that the same old game is harder to the same old player. While this may be nice when playing a genre game, I fail to see the argument that it has been applied artfully from system to system. Granted, it can be. It just has not thus far and I do not see a majority of developers as taking full advantage of it any time soon.
When one speaks of art, they speak of aesthetics. What he argues is that function possesses the highest form of aesthetics. This is an extremely shaky ground for argument. One could easily weigh other factors of a game in with beauty... graphics, challenge, and enjoyment seem to be the pervasive accounts of beauty in gaming. Let's focus on these three and see if we can try to understand why Nintendo chose to focus on enjoyable rather than pretty and smarter games.
Graphics: Since the PS1, graphics seems to be the focus of most games. Higher texture density, more polygons, faster processing. These were what made a game "good" for a very very very long time. And while game sales were still increasing, more and more gamers were complaining that games seemed too much like their predecesors. Racing games were prettier, but they were still racing games. Fighting games had more characters with greater detail, but they were still fighting games. Sandbox games like GTA were getting sharper graphics and interfaces, but they were still GTA. Gamers were catching on that the industry is merely eating glitter to make the same old crap sparkle more.
Smarter: With the same old games comes the same old play. The only way to improve this is through design changes, which serves for temporary "newness" but quickly becomes associative in a near one-to-one nature from previous games in the genre. Final Fantasy games, for example, had a completely different play style from game to game, but functioned on the same basic prinicples as the last game (until 12). Fighting games may have different dynamics of button mashing and combo systems, but they were still button mashers. And racing games? Pfft. So in lieu of breaking the mold and trying to make games that challenge the mind in new ways, developers
Enjoyability: Remember the first time you played a side fighter? Remember the first time you played a virtual fighter? Remember the first time you played an RPG? Remember the first time you played GTA? Wow, wasn't that fun? And so much so, it's had many gamers chasing the carrot on the stick for the companies that put out those games ever since. Remember the first time you played a 3D game with an analog stick? Do you remember all the other games you played using the same analog stick? That was enjoyment you got out of EVERY SINGLE GAME from a simple interface change. Nintendo has been the pioneer in that market since the Super Nintendo (and arguably sooner). Sure, they made a lot of sacrifices to graphics and processing power. But let's face it, the Wii is enjoyable. They chose a different definition of "art". To Nintendo, making games a social experience, making them widely available, and making them "fun" was what "art" is. To Nintendo, their system is THE system to progress video games as an "art form".
To say that Nintendo does not do for gaming as an art form as much as the other two major systems does is rather blind, I think. No other company has been as influential on the other two systems as Nintendo. Top buttons on the d-pad? Sony used it. Trigger buttons? XBox. Analog sticks? Sony and XBox. Force feedback through controller rumble? Sony took it again.. this time illegally. And now, full motion sensing capabilities... SONY TRIED TO COPY IT. So my question to this man would be,
Finder of the any key.
First off, I have to question Chris Heckers developer quality, since he's one of the I need more power because I can't get my stuff run fast enough people. Quite often the issue is that the resources at hand aren't used optimal, either because the tools at hand lack the quality or the developers lack the quality. For example, I'm really impressed with Final Fantasy XII: the developers managed to squeeze quite nice graphics out of the total of just 36MB RAM they have at hand, especially the level of detail implementation is really good. Overall, the PlayStation 2 is a very good example at how developers had to learn to use the resources they have available: the first generation PS2 titles looked awful compared to the games that hit the market in the last few months. And I also remember playing around with graphics programming on my 80386. I never managed to have it do smooth animations, let alone smooth scrolling. Yet others proved that the hardware was not the problem (e.g. Doom), so the problem wasn't that the machine wasn't fast enough, the problem was that I didn't understand to use the resources adequately.
Also, the guy completely ignores Nintendo's situation: unlike MicroSoft and Sony, they don't have money to burn. They have to make a profit off their consoles from day one since that's all they do. They don't have other businesses with which they can make money (apart from licensing, of course). So they can't subsidize their consoles like MicroSoft and Sony do (they sell their consoles for less than their production costs).
This and other issues led Nintendo to conclude that they can't compete with this generation of consoles from MicroSoft and Sony. So if you can't play in the same market as the other guys you have to find another market, and that's just what Nintendo did, and successfully so. They managed to attract people to the Wii who wouldn't play console games otherwise. I know two couples who never had a console but found the Wii to be fun and bought it. They are both in their mid-/end-twenties and only now entered console gaming through the Wii and simply don't care about the PS3 or XBox360 since they don't appeal to them. Chris Hecker simply doesn't recognize that Nintendo is targeting a completely different audience than both MicroSoft and Sony.
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
Honestly, I don't think he cares what you think. This was directed at other developers -- and Nintendo itself. Remember the name is 'Game *Developer Conference'. He wants Nintendo to change before it's too late for them to get out of the trap of DS and GameCube rehashes. Do you seriously want to play the same games you played since the SNES over and over -- never getting something really different and new? That's what he's arguing with just a little bit of venom turned up to be sure it gets across.
He's just putting his foot down now before all the Wii is first party games and movie licenses. Toss in a DS and PS2 port ever so often. I think he's already too late for that personally. All Wii users seem to want is more Wii sports and mini games, and he's actually standing up and saying that's not good enough for Spore.
The weird thing is;
Microsoft and Sony talk about "games as art" on their websites.
Nintendo doesn't, but makes the most "art" type games of the three.
Apparently Hecker equates "art" to "high budget productions". Is a movie like "Pi" any less art then "American Pie" because it didn't have "next gen" recording equipment?
Besides; ever since slamdance(?) pulled the Columbine game, it seems the public isn't ready to accept games as an artform yet.
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As an owner of pretty much all of Nintendo's consoles, I'm not sure what the hell you're talking about. Are you telling me that Twilight Princess is the same game as A Link to the Past? Or that Super Mario Sunshine is the same game as Super Mario World?
Or are you implying that there are no artistic, fresh games on the DS? Kind of... absurd. The Wii will go the path of the DS: Some movie licenses, sure, but also a ton of innovative games you simply can't get on any other console.
Seriously, if anyone can be accused of constantly rehashing old ideas, it's certainly not Nintendo. Ever looked at the games available for Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2 or PS3? Frankly, I feel like I'm living in some kind of bizarro alternate universe.
You get what you sow. Sony used to be great, but they have constantly fucked with their customers for a few years now. Nintendo used to censor their games and be generally jackasses, but in recent years, they've put out great, fresh hardware and fun, innovative software, and they've shown that they've changed for the better.
People are annoyed at Sony, and they are happy with Nintendo.
So we have a so-so new product announcement from Sony, basically copying Miis, Achievements, Second Life, and adding an unhealthy dose of Micropayments. Big suprise, people don't fall for it.
Then, we have some developer basically explaining that the Wii is shit. Big surprise, people don't agree.
Both companies get what they deserve right now. So, what's your point?
I believe there is some confusion over the term developer here. A lot of people use it to mean a company that creates games. In this context Hecker is working for the developer of Spore.
I don't think Hecker is even a Jr. Developer or anything of the sort of the actual game though. He's just another indie hack who wants to think games are some art form (as if we need that particular elitist disease in video gaming).
He's got a bit of a reputation as a ranter about this sort of thing. It's no surprise he'd take this sort of position because Nintendo's mantra of "just make it fun!" is pretty much directly opposed to the idea of games as an art. It's kind of amusing he works for Will Wright though considering Will is probably the most likely dev in the industry to throw art out the window and worry about fun factor first.
I think you are using a very narrow definition of art ...
...
... Games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Brain Training, Nintendogs, and Wario Ware have all changed how the industry sees games or how a genre is seen.
You're saying that for an author to produce art it has to be a novel or epic-poem, for a painter to produce art it has to be a grand mural, or for a composer to produce art he has to produce an opera.
A haiku can be art, graffiti can be art, and a pop-song can be art
Sometimes the most important way to define art is that it changes the medium after it has been produced
Whether some people would like to admit it or not, Wii Sports could be seen as art because it was produced by the artists frustration with complicated control mechanics and massive budgets; and the industry will never be the same for having experienced it.
I don't understand why you feel so comfortable just dismissing the Wii as a gimmick without offering any sort of reasons why that's the case. I love my Wii to death, much of my free time is spent playing it, yet I still wouldn't get rid of my Xbox. This whining game dev isn't any more serious than anyone else. Are you claiming that Miyomoto, who's developed many of the most highly regarded games of all time, for decades, often games that were vital to the long term viability of an entire company... are you claiming that he's not a serious developer? This whining guy has his own agenda for where he wants to take his games, and that's fine, but to expect that the rest of the world is going to bend over to fit the master plan in his mind does not make him a serious guy, it makes him an unreasonable fool. And the fact that's he loudly bitching about it, rather than just saying "no thanks, not my thing." probably means that he's a little starved for attention.
Guitar hero is totally awesome, but as far as I know, it's on its way to other platforms. I haven't heard about Buzz. If Sony really wants into the casual market that Nintendo is after, they need to chop about 60-70% off of their console price. Of course, that's not really feasible for them in any sane economic sense right now. Sony may really have understood what "people" are after, but if that's the case, it's a new revelation for them. And sadly they've painted themselves into a corner by designing a console less for the generic "people", and more for the "hardcore gamer".
That was their decision to make, and there's plenty of money to be had in that market. The occasional frothing Nintendo fanboy aside, most of the generic people who have been having fun with the Wii are perfectly happy to let the powergamers quietly play whatever they want. It's too bad the "hardcore" crowd can't show us the same curtesy, instead feeling the need to constantly remind us that they think we're playing with a gimmick, and all of our fun is going to suddenly dissappear one day.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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."