Spore developer: Wii is a piece of shit!

[Dominus Atheos]

IGN

One of Spore's developers rants about Nintendo's "two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape."

During a session at GDC this morning entitled "Burning Mad - Game Publishers Rant," time was taken about half way through to allow developers a chance to spew their own rants. One speaker, Chris Hecker, currently working on Spore at Maxis, took the opportunity to call out Nintendo for not taking games seriously.

"The Wii is a piece of s***!" Hecker began his talk, which was called "Fear of a Wii Planet." He blasted a few bars of Public Enemy to set the tone. Hecker said the Wii is nothing more than two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape, and that 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.

Hecker 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," he said. To illustrate his point, he searched for references to games as art on all three console manufacturers web sites. While he found numerous such references on both the official PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sites, Wii.com had none at all. He then shared quotes from executives at Sony and Microsoft talking about games as a serious artistic medium, and then a quote from a Nintendo executive saying the company only wanted to make "fun" games.

Hecker ended his spirited rant with two demands for Nintendo: First, recognize and push games as serious art. And two, "make a console that doesn't suck ass."

[Vympel]

This post amuses me greatly. My opinion of the Wii is practically non-existent, but then, I have no great love for consoles. I just mooch off my brother's purchases.

[Stark]

Design decisions and pretentious game 'artists' aside, the Wii's performance point is a strange one. I think the low performance really *isn't* enough to provide everything that's expected, and of course this will only get worse as it's life continues. My mind may be changed if I eventually see an attractive FPS on Wii (something it's control system really leans towards) but I don't think I will. Tradeoffs must be made.

[Ghost Rider]

Ah, a nobody screeching against the wall. So if he was a developer for WoW or Bioshock, I'd take his word better because?

Backs up nothing, screams at phantoms pretensions, and calls the weakest of the three consoles...the weakest.

[General Zod]

So, essentially he's screaming that the Wii's not pretty enough? Hardly shocking.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Anybody expecting the Wii to deliver Cray level processing is obviously out-of-touch with reality. When you go that route, you get the PS3 which is oh so much more popular and loved, right?

No one bought a Wii for the HD graphics it can't process properly, the stunning new disc formats it can't play or the future AI I expect I'll never be impressed with anyway given these claims are two a penny now. They bought the Wii for the use of that Wiimote to get an experience that is innovative, rather than just shinier, much like the DS vs. the PSP where the latter had only a few truly great titles, but was otherwise just a trimmed down PS2 with horrid battery life and the most bogus new disc format of them all.

Frankly, the screechings here do nothing to me, though neither will I get a Wii until there are far more games for it. I can't see it being that much harder to make a good game using the new control system, not when the games are barely GC better in graphics at the end of the day and the GC has been out yonks.

[Praxis]

Oh dear, Nintendo wants to make games "fun", they don't care about the art form!

I'll take the fun, thanks. Art's nice if you got it though.

[MKSheppard]

Design decisions and pretentious game 'artists' aside, the Wii's performance point is a strange one. I think the low performance really *isn't* enough to provide everything that's expected, and of course this will only get worse as it's life continues. My mind may be changed if I eventually see an attractive FPS on Wii (something it's control system really leans towards) but I don't think I will. Tradeoffs must be made.

But But Stark, you're not understanding what the wii is about!

[Flagg]

Design decisions and pretentious game 'artists' aside, the Wii's performance point is a strange one. I think the low performance really *isn't* enough to provide everything that's expected, and of course this will only get worse as it's life continues. My mind may be changed if I eventually see an attractive FPS on Wii (something it's control system really leans towards) but I don't think I will. Tradeoffs must be made.

But But Stark, you're not understanding what the wii is about!

Flailing around like a retard?

[Darth Wong]

Was he ranting about why people should use PCs for gaming?

[MKSheppard]

Was he ranting about why people should use PCs for gaming?

I just find it interesting that people are discounting this guy's thing, completely forgetting that he's a programmer on Will Wright's Spore.

And he's bitching about the shitty CPU on the Wii, which is like I always said it was; a Gamecube CPU overclocked and hopped up; meaning he's finding it a bitch to program for in terms of actually getting the AI in spore to run at a reasonable approximation.

Way to go Nintendo! You've recreated the 1990s!

Anyone remember the Genesis/SNES ads, and how much faster responding the Genesis was for sports games, due to it's faster CPU?

[Admiral Valdemar]

I don't see why anyone would get Spore for a console anyway when it's primarily a PC title. There's far more advantages to such a game on the PC from a mod perspective and general tinkering.

[Davis 51]

One developer working on Spore thinks the Wii sucks.

*reads article, stares at Wii, reads article again, stares at Wii, shrugs, gives Chris Hecker the finger, and goes back to playing Zelda.*

I'll get back to you when they release Spore.

If a good game is released multiplatform, including PC, I usually get the PC version anyway. To me, this is nothing more than bitching about why the PC is the best platform anyways.

[SirNitram]

Was he ranting about why people should use PCs for gaming?

I just find it interesting that people are discounting this guy's thing, completely forgetting that he's a programmer on Will Wright's Spore.

We ignore because, surprise, it's an Appeal To Authority Fallacy.

I realize you don't know how to argue otherwise, but hey...

'GAMES ARE ART. WHY WON'T NINTENDO RESPECT ME. HOW DARE THEY MAKE GAMES THAT ARE FUN.'

God, this guy is such a pretentious peice of shit.

[SAMAS]

Was he ranting about why people should use PCs for gaming?

I just find it interesting that people are discounting this guy's thing, completely forgetting that he's a programmer on Will Wright's Spore.

Actually, we're not.

Although I am looking at my Spore-less game collection, and wondering why the hell doesn't he get back to work instead of wasting our time with this pointless shit.

[RThurmont]

One could reply that at any rate, unlike Spore, at this time, the Wii is not vaporware. Anyone remember the 4Q 2006 release date target???

[Flagg]

One could reply that at any rate, unlike Spore, at this time, the Wii is not vaporware. Anyone remember the 4Q 2006 release date target???

I would hardly call Spore vaporware. By all accounts it's very much in development and signifigant progress has been made. The delays so far haven't been at all unreasonable. It's not like Valve with it's "episodic content" that takes a fucking year for 2-4 hours of gameplay.

[Stark]

We ignore because, surprise, it's an Appeal To Authority Fallacy.

I realize you don't know how to argue otherwise, but hey...

'GAMES ARE ART. WHY WON'T NINTENDO RESPECT ME. HOW DARE THEY MAKE GAMES THAT ARE FUN.'

God, this guy is such a pretentious peice of shit.

He even 'plays a few bars' to 'set the mood'. I'm not sure how anyone can take this guy seriously - bar people who already hate the Wii and just look for soundbytes to giggle at.

[Sharp-kun]

Although I am looking at my Spore-less game collection, and wondering why the hell doesn't he get back to work instead of wasting our time with this pointless shit.

Because of course developers have to develop all the time or be wasting time. Heaven forbid they have free time to give opinions.

[salm]

The guy does have an interesting point, though. When i bought the wii i knew that the graphics would suck ass and didn´t really care that much. But i didn´t think about the fact that it might not be able to process reasonable AI.

[SirNitram]

He even 'plays a few bars' to 'set the mood'. I'm not sure how anyone can take this guy seriously - bar people who already hate the Wii and just look for soundbytes to giggle at.

They should find someone whose not a total retard, but then again, these are people running around for excuses to bash consoles.

[petesampras]

One could reply that at any rate, unlike Spore, at this time, the Wii is not vaporware. Anyone remember the 4Q 2006 release date target???

I would hardly call Spore vaporware. By all accounts it's very much in development and signifigant progress has been made. The delays so far haven't been at all unreasonable. It's not like Valve with it's "episodic content" that takes a fucking year for 2-4 hours of gameplay.

Spore - that's the game that's, pretty much, trying to be everything in one game right? From gamespy....

So up went a slide that showed the eight distinct phases of Spore, and the types of gameplay they most resembled:

Molecular ->> Tetris
Cellular ->> Pac-Man
Creature ->> Diablo / FPS
Tribal ->> Populous
City ->> SimCity
Civilization ->> Civilization / Risk
Terraform ->> SimEarth
Galactic ->> Masters of Orion

Am I the only one that thinks this absurdly over ambitious project is gonna turn out a complete mess?

I looked forward to the extremely ambitious MOO3. In the end, it was just too much to put in one game and it ended up a mess. Spores scope makes MOO3 look like a carbon copy starcraft clone.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I thought MoO3's problem was a poor user interface and an overemphasis on micromanagement, not a gameplay scope that was too large...

[Xisiqomelir]

Poor Chris Hecker. They have a rantfest at every GDC, but this year E3 is weaksauce so there were plenty of spare journos to make sure even a trivial thing like this was on the record. I'm sure he was just trying to let off some steam and be funny (and he probably has a Wii himself), but the internet age has left him looking like a hater to all the world.

[petesampras]

I thought MoO3's problem was a poor user interface and an overemphasis on micromanagement, not a gameplay scope that was too large...

I think one flowed from the other. The initial scope was huge. This led to a huge bust up in which the lead developer left. The remaining team was then forced into a damage limitation exercise and try to salvage a game from the mess that they had. With limited resources from now concerned backers, loss of the lead developer and a massive descaling of the project - it's hardly surprising that the interface and gameplay was a mess.