Jeff Minter Moans About Space Giraffe’s Unpopularity
Author: Rees | Date: November 23, 2007
Bearded Hippy Programmer-Extraodinaire In Internet Rant Shocker!
One of my all-time heroes and creator of some of the best games of the 16-bit era, Jeff Minter, has gone off on an emo whinefest today about the lack of downloads of his most recent game, XBLA’s Space Giraffe. He specifically mentions the popularity of old arcade games such as Frogger, which outsold his game 10-to-1 in one week.
Straight from the llama’s mouth:
“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.” - Stinkygoat
Let’s forego the discussion of how the bastard lovechild of Tempest and the 360’s visualiser isn’t a remake of an “old, shite arcade game”, and instead try to picture Jeff right now. He’s sitting in the corner of his bedroom, black eyeliner on, screaming “I hate you!!! I wish I could fucking die!!”, listening to some My Chemical Romance and attempting to slit his wrists, but giving up because it hurts too much.
Of course, we only have to look at the popularity of other great, modern games like Geometry Wars, Small Arms, Boom Boom Rocket, and Zuma to know that new games can indeed be big sellers on XBLA. They’ve proven that the system can work, it’s just that Space Giraffe didn’t. It’s not even a bad game at all, it just wasn’t that well received after all the hype.
I like Jeff Minter and I’m a big fan of his work, but this is just silly. I’m hoping that this is all just a clever marketing ploy, or maybe a bout of depression bought on by LSD flashbacks. We shall see.
Could be down to the general gayness of it’s Achievements?
So what… The game rocks, and at least it’s achievements are not just ‘Complete level 1′, ‘Complete Level 2′, etc… There was actually some thought put into them. Just because you haven’t actually got any of them!
I think this game was hit bad by lots of hype, then a complete panning by the reviewers who tried to play the game without playing the tutorial…
“Let’s forego the discussion of how the bastard lovechild of Tempest and the 360’s visualiser isn’t a remake of an “old, shite arcade game”” - Exacty what I was thinking…
Well, he has a rebuttal. Two, in fact. One for the people who criticised him, and one for his fans who love him and support him. I guess that means that both of them are for us!
“To those who came on here to have a go at me and tell me how much I suck - just piss off, I don’t care. If you do that I shall delete your comments and ban you. Guess what, I think you suck too, and I don’t give a rat’s arse if you don’t like my games; they aren’t made for you anyway.
And thanks to those who gave me a bit of encouragement at a low moment. Rest assured I’m not giving up; I’m just getting on with it quietly.”
He also said that he won’t be blogging about game development anymore, but that he does have another XBLA project in the pipeline. Go Jeff!