You may recall an independent developer by the name of Positech Games, best known for Gratuitous Space Battles, which we've provided some coverage of here in the past. A couple of years ago the owner and operator of the one man show Cliff Harris reached out to pirates, asking them why they pirate games in an effort to gain some understanding and hopefully, convert a few.
The results were profound, and proved not all pirates can be painted with the same brush, and some are actually decent people. This is not to defend piracy (we don't), but merely to note the importance of the dialogue.
Today we bring up Harris again because he's struck back against a studio much bigger than his: Epic Games. A sort of David and Goliath story, if you will. Harris and Epic's vice president Mark Rein both attended the recent Develop conference in Brighton, UK.
On one particular panel, we have Harris and some other small studios: Beatnik (who did the excellent Plain Sight), Hello Games (who did Joe Danger and are having their own troubles with bigger studios at the moment), and Introversion (Darwinia, Multiwinia). Harris was up, discussing the prospect of 'microstudios', having run one for 13 years and all.
Things were going well and jokes were abound, when Harris noted the importance of communicating with each and every customer where possible. We'll let him tell the rest (via his blog):
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’. 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 thought ‘what the f*ck?’ as well as ‘who is this guy’? compounded by [Beatnik's Robin Lacey] asking him if he worked in marketing.
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. I got the impression he was there to laugh at the little guys, or to just inform us how we are all wrong. Interestingly, it seemed there was someone from sports interactive (one time indies, as I recall) there, who seemed more on the indie wavelength than Mark.
Harris' conclusion: "Mark Rein is a jerk." Sure, he's taking it personally, but we'd say this is one of the instances one should take it personally. Harris explains if it's all about money as it seems to be with companies like Epic, then he'd take the other road.
Now Mark may well look down on humble indies like me. He may well think I’m doing it wrong. 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 f*ck 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.
He goes on to slam the Gears of War series which perhaps hurts the argument, so we'll leave that out. He explains it's not jealousy, though, simply anger directed at someone with misplaced judgment. Harris will listen to other developers in his position who understand what it's about, but "Triple-A studio bosses trying to lecture me on how to communicate better with gamers? F*ck off."
Now, obviously this is very one-sided, so we'll present the other side as best we can at this point. Epic's design director Cliff Bleszinski has defended Rein on Twitter, saying to a concerned party, "I've personally seen [him] reply to tons of random people who email him. He blind copies me constantly." We can confirm at least two instances of this, having e-mailed Rein ourselves (as fans) in the past and gotten a reply, the other time following the mild Gears of War PC controversy.
Cliffy B later notes the humor in the situation given lately he's been praising the "indy awesomeness" of Limbo (which we're currently reviewing).
Hopefully we get to hear back from Rein on this one. As always, we'll keep you updated.
Update: Epic tells us they believe Rein is currently on vacation as they haven't been able to get in touch with him today. They say he's travelling throughout next week, too, so they've declined contributing directly to the discussion.
Source:Cliffski's Blog
Alternate Source:Cliff Bleszinski (therealcliffyb) on Twitter
Sections:Microsoft Consoles, Console Games, PC Games
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