Epic’s Mark Rein has made himself look like a bit of a tit if Positech’s Cliff Harris is to be believed. The indie developer was at Brighton’s annual Develop conference, claiming that indie developers have an advantage over big-name companies due to the personal relationship they can build with customers. Apparently, Rein didn’t think this was worth taking seriously.
“At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy? who cares, that’s a waste of time’,” writes Harris. “He then started to lecture us on how that’s a silly way to do it. I’m 95% sure that all four of us on the panel [which also included Robin Lacey (Beatnik), Sean Murray (Hello Games) and Mark Morris (Introversion)] thought ‘what the fuck?’ as well as ‘who is this guy’?
“… Anyway… it turned out this guy was Mark Rein from Epic, although he seemed to assume everyone within earshot knew exactly who he was, and why he must obviously be right.”
Harris then poured a bunch of verbal gasoline on Rein and mercilessly toss a matched: “He may laugh when me and Mark discuss the pitiful money our companies make, and giggle at the fact that we reply to gamers on a one-on-one basis… But fuck him. I would rather earn minimum wage making indie strategy games for the PC, as my own boss, with an original game, satisfying a hardcore niche of friendly customers (the one-thousand-true-fans-philosophy), without a publisher telling me what to do, and without having to leave my house to go to work, without having to do ‘crunch time’ (because, dude… its like so macho to work until 3AM and never see your family)… Than I would work at epic for megabucks.”
And that’s just one paragraph of a massive diatribe! We didn’t even get to the part where he says “f*ck off” yet! You really should read Harris’ blog though, as it’s stellar stuff. Some might say it’s unprofessional, but it’s still jolly good fun.
Epic can ‘f**k off’, roars indie dev [CVG]
