| Smash_Brother said:
Bad answer. Not only was Nintendo funding development, but Miyamoto himself was cracking the whip on that one and providing what was no doubt a HUGE chunk of the direction on the game. Nintendo even forced them to shut down development of another of their games they were working on and forced them to focus entirely on MP. Just look at what Nintendo's supervision did for companies like Rare and Silicon Knights by comparing their post-Nintendo releases to their pre-Nintendo releases: Rare has become largely a joke (Viva Pinata excluded) and Too Human is sadly getting trashed in reviews right now. Unless Nintendo has recently taken Nibris under their wing and sent Miyamoto to personally oversee the project, then no, the comparison does not stand. Both of your points are just plain stupid and don't mean anything. As viper1 said, Retro's first game was one of the best games of all time. Braid was made by a small handful of people and it was their first game. Portal was or originally made by a group of students if I'm not mistaken. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game) Braid had a long and difficult road to get to release on XBLA, including being turned down by Sony early in its development and the creator, Blow, who must be independently wealthy because he invested over $180,000 of his own into the game over the 3 years of its development. Portal's concept was theirs, but the release was only through the watchful eyes of Valve. Let's not be forgetting that Braid is a 2D game which can be completed in 45 minutes (speed run achievement) and Portal is a game focusing on interesting puzzle concepts which lasts 5-6 hours, tops, and both games are primarily downloadable. Sadness has promised 20 hours with 10 different endings, moody atmospheric gameplay and unique use of the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities (something which most mainstream devs don't regularly do properly), and it's intended to be a retail game. Braid and Portal are not in the same league with what Sadness has been promised to be (this goes back to what I said about Nibris digging their own grave). And both of you overlooked this key part of my post... "There's no shame in a developer starting their career with a small puzzler/shooter/platformer which serves as a good test of their capabilities, acts as a learning experience for all involved and gives the development team a chance to cohere and learn how they can best make their team work well together." I don't think I can emphasize enough just how much teamwork is involved in developing even a relatively simple game with a simple premise, let alone an epic like Sadness. My simple point is this: don't get your hopes up. There's nothing worse than a company who hypes a game for years then delivers garbage. It's partially their fault for hyping it so much, but at some point, we gamers have to start accepting some of the blame for being duped into getting excited when we've learned so many times that we should know better.
How many Nintendo NDAs have YOU signed? This is the same company who waits until the last minute to reveal ANYTHING for fear of having the idea stolen by competitors. They recently even insisted that Miyamoto can no longer discuss his hobbies because they're afraid of the competition getting ideas based upon that. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to suggest that this same company doesn't want video containing their proprietary development hardware being displayed publicly. |
Blue Section
Miyamoto had a hand in the development but he didn't make the game. I'm trying to minimize his roll in the game, but by far the vast amount of the effort in that game is due to Retro. It would be a completely different game (for better or worse, who knows) if anyone else besides Retro made the game. I happen to know people that work there and they had a large amount of creative control in the game.
So yes, the comparison is still fine. You asked for a studio that has never made a game before and guess what, they hadn't.
Green Section
It's funny you talk about Braid's long troubled past. Why? Because you're thinking Sadness will be terrible because all it's troubles. Why is Braid different from Sadness? Because you think the guy who made it is rich (getting 180k in loans isn't real hard, paying it back is the hard part)?
As for how hard you think Sadness is hard to develop, nothing in it is particularly difficult.
20 hours? With the amount of time they've had, no problem.
10 ending? Again, they've had time so nothing special
Art style? As long as they have good artists, they're fine.
Story? Again, good people, good story.
I'm not saying Sadness is going to be amazing, I'm just saying your points are idiotic.
Red section
Well I work for a studio that has made Wii games but the easiest way to show you how silly you are:
So yeah, there is nothing against showing a dev kit and I completely fail to see the logic why you would even think that. So before you state a fact and then try to defend that fact still knowing nothing, do research.
