Ex-Zipper Employee Sends Anonymous Letter

[Kresnik]

Dgc1808 said:

M.U.G.E.N said:

Xxain said:

oh wait lemme be a cynical wise ass and take an annonymous email that was sent to therealsocom at 100%

I am not that stupid...or I will think wiiU is last gen or something

And the fact that sony have given more freedom is not PR...it's shown in the games and also the devs without being annonymous have said so. The games speak for themselves.

I wanted to clarify few things before anything...and so far the things that were implimented doesn't sound like that big of a deal..at least not enough to create such a horribly critically and user recieved game like socom 4. Given how socom and zipper games have performed sales wise I honestly wouldn't be surprised if sony did put some preassure on them for this game...however the overall fault lies mainly with the dev for poor execution. 

Lesson of the day, take stuff like this with a mountain of salt...even if this guy actually did work for zipper, taking a disgruntled employees words as 100% accurate is a stupid thing to do

Generally, yes. SONY does offer a lot of freedom to their devs. This isn't the first time we've heard of SONY getting a game to take a drastic turn from what the devs originally wanted, though. Really, it just seems to come back to not biting the hand that feeds you.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1063301/naughty_dog_gritty_xbox_shooters_shaped_uncharted.html

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was originally a 'fantasy' game until orders came from Sony to make it more 'realistic'.

"It had elements of Tolkien in for sure. Sony kept pushing for a more realistic game in all respects. The market had changed a lot by then. The demographic was older and gritty shooters were really dominating. Sony wanted very much to get into that market share, it pushed all of its developers in this direction."

"So the big push from Sony, not just at Naughty Dog but at all of Sony's development companies at the time, was to craft games for PlayStation 3 that were much more realistic. The pressure from Xbox's success with gritty shooters was a very real force on our direction at that time."

We had a lot of internal grumbling about the realist bent. More of the old dogs were from the Crash and Jak era and preferred that more whimsical style. But alas, that was a losing battle."

Is Zipper to take any blame here? Of course. Naughty Dog didn't like the hand they were dealt initially but they made the best of it and made a hit franchise for SONY. Zipper just couldn't do the same.

Thanks for linking that, it was really interesting to read.  

I would LOVE to see ND return to making whimsical fantasy stuff next generation.  With 2 development teams, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.  I just hope they're not too entrenched in realism now.

I mean, don't get me wrong - I love Uncharted, but they did the fantasy stuff so bloody well too.