Choose your battles wisely

Posted by ASandoval on April 5, 2009 under Fail, Games | Be the First to Comment

So the GDC Travelouge, what happened? Well, the week turned out to be about as hectic as I imagined, so keeping a journal of the event became pretty much impossible. Hell, I haven’t even had time to really write that down until just now. Something I’ve learned about vacations: You have to take however long your away and pack that much missed time of work into about a fraction of a day when you get back. Makes me wonder if it’s actually worth it sometimes.

So I got an email from Robert Pelloni, the developer of “Bob’s Game” the other day (If you don’t know what that is, Joystiq just recently did a quick write up about it to explain a response about it from Nintendo’s own Reggie Fils-Amie). Apparently I was placed on some mailing list, presumably with anyone else who had some… choice words about his professionalism in trying to get his game published via Nintendo. So Bob took the time out to let us all know our efforts were futile, because apparently he never meant for it to be published at all.

Ok, He didn’t actually say he wasn’t trying to be published, but the plot of “Bob’s Game” indicates his true intentions: an independant developer goes megalomaniacal after “Gantendo”, the world’s biggest and most loved publisher/developer of games all over the world refuse to publish his game. He realizes that said company has been taken over, it’s top brass infected by casual and shovelware games making them think more about the almighty dollar than actually promoting innovation in games. So he tries to take over them, and the protagonist of the game (Aptly named “Yuu”) must stop him while possibly learning the dark truth of his favorite game company. In short, the protest to get his game published was a viral marketing campeign, bringing the plot of the game to life in that very meta sense.

While I’m not about to laud Bob as a genius (very far from it, honestly), and while I haven’t had a chance to actually play the demo that was forwarded along with his revealing email (I will do so soon), I feel as though I must at least commend him for using game development, as well as a semi-elaborate alternate reality game, to push a message. We can go back and forth all day about whether or not the ruse was clever or not, but what’s important to realize that it actually worked and now has people actually thinking about Nintendo’s business practices. After all, Reggie had to respond to MTV’s Stephen Tolito about the ramifications of Bob’s Game and whether or not an independent developer stands a chance getting published if their game isn’t casual. However (And you’d know I’d have a however), despite the new found public awareness and discussion that Bob has generated, it doesn’t mean that his message is not fundamentally flawed.

It’s true that the DS and Wii libraries are heavily saturated with casual or licensed games, though most notably by third party publishers such as Ubisoft (While I’m on the subject, Seriously Ubi? “Imagine Doctor” AND “Imagine Family Doctor”?). While Nintendo certainly has plenty of games for non-gamers myself, I can only say really one of them (Clubhouse Games, two if you count Hotel Dusk, which is more of an interactive novel) isn’t innovative. Brain Age might not be your kind of game, but did you ever really see a compilation like it before? Didn’t it really inspire the other copies that came after it, all not developed by Nintendo themselves?

It’s also important to remember that these games make publishers money as well. Going back to the Ubisoft analogy, Assassin’s Creed did, you know, OK, not enough to really justify a multi-million dollar franchise. And yet, the sequel’s been one of the worst kept secrets in gaming. What about Beyond Good & Evil 2? It also did ok, but most of us only played it because we heard it was amazing after it was considered a flop. How’s Ubisoft doing it? I’m assuming that it has something to do with Ubisoft’s profits being raised 37% off of DS sales with titles like “Imagine Teacher” and “PlayZone: Sports Party”. When you’re making millions largely off of an installed base, it suddenly makes risky projects much less so, an important, if not necessary, asset when one big name title can make or break a company.

So is Nintendo specifically funneling only these kinds of games on their consoles? Are they really holding back fun, ‘innovative’ titles in lieu of money makers for screaming Hannah Montana fans and old people? I’m sure if we asked Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy, who got their 2-man physics based puzzle game “World of Goo” published as a downloadable title for the Wii, they’d say no. And what about Studio Pixel, who made a 2D platformer called Cave Story for free on the internet, and Nintendo gave them money to publish and sell their game. Finally, Lost Winds, a game about controlling and manipulating the wind to solve puzzles and fight enemies in a platformer environment from Fontier Development, which uses the wii controller in a unique in fascinating way. And this is only the best examples of Nintendo pushing innovation and supporting the little guy at the same time.

My question to Bob then, is this: If you want to attack figures in the game industry for starving innovation, why Nintendo? Why not the marketing exec who looked at Fallout 3, an engaging action RPG about frontier life in the wake of a nuclear holocaust with a unique retro-future feel, and decided the best way to market the game was with a heavily armored and masked soldier against a gun-metal greay background? Or how about why nearly all the big action game starts all sport a generic face with a buzz cut head, including a massive Star Wars title with a story enthralling enough to win it the Writer’s Guild of America game writing award? Bob, my point is simply this: It’s awesome that you have a message and found an effective way to spread it, but Nintendo is not your enemy.

Coming Next – Actual demo impressions of Bob’s Game. Hopefully less than a month from now. If we’re lucky.