Well well, looks like I'm not the only one a little disappointed with the Wii's capabilities. Take a look at this gem unearthed by IGN today at GDC. Combined with what Sony did today and what we've seen from Microsoft, how is it even possible that Nintendo can compete? -- I'd tell you the latest rumor we heard here about Nintendo, but then I'd have my fingers chopped off by men in masks. One of the devs on Spore had this to say about the wonderful Wii:
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.
Rant continued after the jump.
Haterade much?
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."
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Contest:
1:04 AM on 03.08.2007
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Since when was that a bad thing?
This guy is just being silly.
That's kind of what games do. Is it underpowered? Yes. Can fun games be legit art forms yes? Yes.
But at the $250 pricepoint - what do people expect? You're getting what you pay for: cheap fun.
Summary: "Video Games is Serious Business!"
This Hecker fellow really needs to get over himself. He's working on Spore, which is coming to the DS of all things. He's griping about the Wii lacking capabilities that he isn't using in the first place. The whole "games as an art form" is a piss-poor argument, if you look at Nintendo's first-party games.
'OMG WTF THE WII ISNT POWERFUL LIKE NINTENDO PROMISED... WAIT, they didn't promise that it would be powerful... WELL IM STILL PISSED OFF!! GRRRR NINTENDO HATES GAMES!!'
Not taking games seriously? Give me a fucking break. Nintendo's the only developer shooting for pure, raw enjoyment instead of baiting us with pretty graphics and falling short with, well, everything else.
Yeah, I know, the Wii isn't as good looking as the other systems. I've heard it about 80,000 times since the system came out. Hasn't made the thing less fun than it is.
HAY GUYS LETS ONLY PLAY PERTY GAMES.
and online gaming is a joke, too many people take it too seriously.
I thought it was Nintendo that started the whole motion sensing control scheme that Sony stole their idea from. I don't know what you mean by them not wanting to advance anything.
Dev says it's crap so it must be true amirite?
@Aaron Linde & anyone else disagreeing but taking the X-treme opposing viewpoint:
What's with this dichotomy that states you can have fun and you can have sophisticated technology but you can't have both? Implying that developers for the 360 and PS3 aren't interested in creating fun games that have mass appeal is just as lopsided as this rant from the Maxis programmer.
Yes, what he said was very narrow, especially coming from someone working on Spore, but hell, he's not exactly a power player who can have any affect on the Wii's success.
*And yet can't help but imagine Summa's head violently nodding in a spaztic knee-jerk agreement.*
Summa agreeing to an anti-Nintendo sentiment? Shocked, I tells ya, SHOCKED!!! I would never imagine in a hundred years (in two seconds, yes, but in a hundred years, never - seeing as I'll be dead by that stretch).
Since when it was art to make the same thing over and over again? Games like Cooking Mama and Brain Academy, are art to me, they are breaking the mold and making something different. When you have restrictions innovation thrives.
You can't say that Van Gogh is an artist but Seurat isn't just because they both aren't doing the same thing. I'm sorry but that is just how art works.
Has he looked at the game hes developing?? Spore?? Doesnt look like art to me, looks quite nintendo cutesy mixed with that humdrum PC feel. Now shadow of colossus thats art!!
One step more on the point, art isnt always what you see, its what you do aswell,and also the Wii it self looks great, sleek and compact. Not like some ones stuck an air pump in it and blown it up, ala PS fooking 3!! Pah next...
He has legit complaints about the Wii, but the fact of the matter is, Nintendo has been upfront about their approach to games since they announced the DS. "Fuck the norm, we're going for fun". Sony and MS don't use the word "art" because that's what they're dedicated to. They use it because it sounds better than using the word "shiny".
His complaints are from a tech-head dev perspective. I'm pretty sure Joe and Jane Consumer don't give a shit about how well the Wii can create intelligent AI.
Wrong way: "The Wii is a piece of s**t."
Right way: " I have found the Wii to be very disappointing. I feel Nintendo have neglected to meet my own personal desires to express myself in a visual form."
Thats brilliant, haha :)
However, as has been evidenced by those prequels as well as a host of others, it is not necessarily how many tools you have but how you use them. I can easily go out and say that the Empire Strikes Back had more art in 10 minutes than Revenge of the Sith did in the entire film.
To make the statement that art is tied to the technology is ridiculous. That's the same as saying that a pencil rendering is not as artistic as a CG painting.
Art is about utilizing your medium to the best of your ability. It is about knowing how to creatively circumvent restrictions. I would say that in most cases, restrictions help innovation. Sounds to me like Hecker is a lazy "artist".
I'm not a huge PS2 fan but Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Okami are three of the most artistic games I know of and being technologically inferior to its competing systems did not hurt their artistry.
Rez on the Dreamcast is another title I would put high up on the art list. The experience in that game provides more artistry and innovation in the art of gaming than 85% of the Xbox360 titles out there.
The fact that the Wii is underpowered doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that it is *SO* far underpowered.
Antialiasing? Of course you SDTV people don't need that.
Texture memory? Everybody else has at least 256, so of course we'll use just 3.
Performane? Hey, after 6 years, you should expect about double the speed and virtually no new features. Moore's Law doesn't apply to Nintendo.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget about having four controllers, and having to buy the rubber grips seperately. That just screams "intentional design flaw".
Yeah, the Wii is a piece of s**t. But, it does come in a pretty box, doesn't it?
That's all that needs to be said right there.
I happen to think Katamari Damacy's a very artsy game, but it's in no way serious.
I don't want anyone in the industry persuing the games as art idea intentionally. Last time anyone tried to target a culture we got alliwantforxmasisapsp.com.
Just let it come natuarlly.
I'd prefer the wii over that piece of overpriced shit ps3 any day!
Congratulations on continuing to push the envelope in one direction. The sandbox genre as a whole is glad to have your support.
If we're to consider Spore as art simply because the scope of the game has unique biological evolution then who cares?
Games like Okami that are considered art where deliberately made. It took someone sitting down and saying "okay we are going to do x,y,z with this game". They were going for something that was either visually or emotionally different, in the case of Shadow of the Colossus.
Those that think more power = more fun are deluding themselves too. Though I'd say that an underpowered console removes the eye candy crutch far too many developers are used to, potentially forcing them to up the fun factor to compensate. Bit of a gamble on nintendo's part, I know, but it worked with DS so...
@crazywes I definately agree with the art being subjective thing and that's why i resent his comments that seem to make art objective, that one way's better than the other.
Personally looking back, the title of his talk is revealing.
"Fear of a Wii Planet".
Seems to me like he's lashing out at Nintendo because their approach seems likely to dominate right now. He's afraid that what he wants as a designer and what the consumer wants are at odds. The talk is a result of frustration with the Wii's current success and I'm betting he's working on the Wii version of Spore and is not enjoying it. I don't really know but it's the only logical conclusion I can come tro based on the rant and the title.
Meh... 250 dollar smash bros machine isnt SO bad...