Jeff Minter is more that a little dissatisfied with the Space Giraffe sales on Xbox Live Arcade:
not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into, by more than ten to one, in one week.
OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.
We’ll shut up trying to do anything new then.
Sorry for even trying.
In case you don’t know Jeff Minter, he is a legendary game designer for people like me who grew up playing home computer games in Europe. Such as the original lawn mowing game Hover Bover!
Jonathan Blow has even compared Space Giraffe to Ulysses.
Now, the tricky issue is that Space Giraffe is a remake of an old arcade game called Tempest. Not shite, but still. Some of you may even vaguely recall playing it on your Jaguar or Nuon.
Perhaps that is beside the point – I am anxiously awaiting the Hover Bover, Gridrunner++, Revenge of the Mutant Camels or Sheep in Space remakes.
Okay. Really. If he remade a flashy version of an old arcade game and yet some crappy ass remake of an old arcade game outsold his.
Perhaps the crappy ass one was actually more fun? Or perhaps instead of love and effort, and focus on results.
When you’re playing a game, love and effort don’t matter. It’s whether or not you enjoy what you’re playing.
If we’ve learned anything from this, it’s that it’s never the designer’s fault if the game isn’t a success or regarded as unplayable but rather that people are stupid and it wasn’t made for them anyway.
Has his Wikipedia entry already been updated to “does not respond well to criticism?”
For the record, I bought Space Giraffe and I appreciate and enjoy it.
I rate Space Giraffe just above Portal as game of the year. It’s something I’m still playing on a regular basis and I fully expect to be playing it in 20 years time. Simple/lazy gamers assume it’s just Tempest and don’t bother to learn how to play it properly – then dismiss it as unplayable when they get their butts kicked to stop them having to think.
For Minter to quit games would be a terrible loss to the games industry, and I for one would sorely miss his unique brilliance.
I love abstract shooters, and I thought Space Giraffe was incredibly poor. I’m not saying nobody should like it, but I’m not surprised that almost nobody does. Horrible tutorial, rehashed gameplay and way too much self-serving flash for so little substance.