Blow: Consoles Are Handicapped by Corporate Culture

[The Wooster]

Blow: Consoles Are Handicapped by Corporate Culture

Braid creator, Jonathan Blow, criticizes the 360 and PS3 dashboards while praising iOS.

Microsoft's certification process for digital games has come under public scrutiny once again following Fez developer, Phil Fish's, claims that the red tape surrounding title updates has made it impossible for him to fix a broken patch. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/firstperson/9817-Why-Phil-Fish-Ought-To-Patch-Fez] Indie developers have been complaining about the hassle involved in getting a digital title onto consoles for years. World of Goo developer, Ron Carmel, called working with Microsoft "excruciating." Joe Danger developer, Sean Murray, referred to XBLA as a "slaughterhouse" for small developers and Derek Yu, creator of Spelunky, has warned other developers away from the service, citing huge costs. Now Braid developer, Jonathan Blow, is once again adding his voice to the chorus.

"There is almost no certification process for iOS, so by the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo theory, the apps should be crashing all the time, everyone should think of iOS as sucky, etc," he told Ars Technica. "But in fact this is not what is happening. There is no public outcry for more testing and robustness of iOS software."

Blow also had harsh words for the consoles' interfaces, accusing them of serving corporate needs before those of the user.

"The edge that both Apple and Valve have going into the future is that they both genuinely care about the end-user experience and want to make it as good as possible," he said. "Which coincidentally seems to be the place that these consoles are handicapped due to their corporate culture. Can anyone look at the current 360 or PS3 dashboards and legitimately say that those are products of an entity that deeply cares about user experience?"

Source: Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/how-certification-requirements-are-holding-back-console-gaming/]


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[ReinWeisserRitter]

Me: Pretty much everything is handicapped by corporate culture.

 

[odBilal]

Im not a indie developer but I dont think you can compare a iPhone to a PS3 or 360 in terms of hardware and whatnot. There is just to much stuff that could go wrong on a console and the manufacturers dont want to risk to brick thousands of consoles because some developer doesn't like their certification process.

 

[FalloutJack]

Me: Pretty much everything is handicapped by corporate culture.

I see what you did thar, and raise you one agreement.

 

[chadachada123]

He contradicts himself a bit, first he's saying that it's the certification process that's at fault, and then he says that it's the dashboard itself that's at fault.

Just what exactly is the problem, here?

 

[Alchemist08]

He contradicts himself a bit, first he's saying that it's the certification process that's at fault, and then he says that it's the dashboard itself that's at fault.

Just what exactly is the problem, here?

How is that a contradiction? Both are likely huge problems on their own but when put together, make dealing with consoles incredibly frustrating for developers. I fail to see how more than one issue being pointed out is contradictory.

Anyways, glad to see people bringing attention to these issues. The industry does seem to be improving in regards to allowing indie developers a greater chance at getting their game to the market, but there is still a lot of room to improve.

 

[kortin]

He contradicts himself a bit, first he's saying that it's the certification process that's at fault, and then he says that it's the dashboard itself that's at fault.

Just what exactly is the problem, here?

Johnathan Blow, my good friend, is the problem here.

Every time he pokes his pretty, little, arrogant-ass head out from wherever the hell he lives (presumably in a world like braid, but instead with gigantic statues of himself everywhere that are constantly telling him how awesome he is for being one of the few who managed to rip off two completely different games and claim it's his own unique invention and that everyone else (especially anyone from the AAA industry) should piss off) I find myself sickened.

 

[Morti]

"The edge that both Apple and Valve have going into the future is that they both genuinely care about the end-user experience and want to make it as good as possible," he said. "Which coincidentally seems to be the place that these consoles are handicapped due to their corporate culture. Can anyone look at the current 360 or PS3 dashboards and legitimately say that those are products of an entity that deeply cares about user experience?"

Anyone care to speculate on what he's waffling on about here, I've no idea what's so "anti-user" about XMB or the Dashboard?

 

[chadachada123]

He contradicts himself a bit, first he's saying that it's the certification process that's at fault, and then he says that it's the dashboard itself that's at fault.

Just what exactly is the problem, here?

How is that a contradiction? Both are likely huge problems on their own but when put together, make dealing with consoles incredibly frustrating for developers. I fail to see how more than one issue being pointed out is contradictory.

Anyways, glad to see people bringing attention to these issues. The industry does seem to be improving in regards to allowing indie developers a greater chance at getting their game to the market, but there is still a lot of room to improve.

I guess I just don't see how the interface has ANYTHING to do with handicapping the indie market. He certainly doesn't give any explanation but acts like it's equivalent to the updating process being messed up (which it certainly is).

 

[Allthingsspectacular]

When I think of a good end user experience, I think of is making it simple to getting to where you want to go, making easy to sift through as much information as possible without straining the eyeball and generally having a pleasing aesthetic.

What I don't think of is menus being shoved to 1/8th of the screen to make way for huge ass advertisements.

This goes double for websites. I really hate it when a website touts a redesign. I get myself thinking "Oh, they're going to make it more user friendly."

Nope, just this stupid, huge flash advertisement thing that takes up a huge part of the screen and making it harder to get to where I need to go. On the Escapist for example, I need to use a workaround just to find archived videos of, say, The Big Picture. Where it was simple to do in the previous version.

Gotta make room for the advertisement thing.

 

[Something Amyss]

Apple loves you so much it grossly restricts what you can do with the hardware you purchased.

But at least yuo can get thirty angry birds knockoffs for a dollar apiece.

Gotta make room for the advertisement thing.

Gotta make sure the end user experiences it. Even if they're then unable to experience the website.

 

[lacktheknack]

On the Escapist for example, I need to use a workaround just to find archived videos of, say, The Big Picture. Where it was simple to do in the previous version.

Gotta make room for the advertisement thing.

I hover over "VIDEOS", click "ALL", then click "THE BIG PICTURE". Boom.

What do you have to do? Is it not the same for non-Pub-Clubbers?

 

[josemlopes]

These guys never shut up, do they, they complaint about Sony and Microsoft but still keep doing stuff for it. Just make a PC game, man.

And even then there is no need to cry over every single bad detail, Limbo was a better game then Braid and Fez and those guys havent complainted a thing.

Learn how to be professional

 

[Xman490]

Me: Pretty much everything is handicapped by corporate culture.

see: any advertisement, including PSAs and campaign ads, that fails to fulfill all of its promises

Maybe intelligent Communism might catch on, though. Companies and other campaigns would focus primarily on gathering and sustaining customer support by providing superior or substantial products. For example, Obama-type politicians would grow souls and go by their promises instead of leaving dissatisfied customers, er, voters.

 

[weirdee]

Well, when I use devices with smaller than widescreen visuals, opening a video with the new content banner on it (which is my name for ads that seem to have a contract for squeezing into the borders of recently posted videos on the escapist) causes the video to lodge itself firmly into the center of the screen, meaning that given the small screen size I am using, I cannot actually reach the tiny X in the upper right corner that closes it, since it follows the scrolling up and down. I have to close the entire tab so that I can then reopen it to click the comments link.

but that aside, i haven't really had any issue with giant ads, either because i've got an adblocker that blanket targets everything because certain sites do not seem to understand that flash ads have an adverse effect on performance for less than state of the art machines, and that i tend to avoid places that are considered advertising hotspots.

aaaaanyway, we'll see if the stress of dealing with this many customers won't end up wrecking everything in the long run

as for braid guy, i don't really care about what he's done

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

He contradicts himself a bit, first he's saying that it's the certification process that's at fault, and then he says that it's the dashboard itself that's at fault.

Just what exactly is the problem, here?

How is that a contradiction? Both are likely huge problems on their own but when put together, make dealing with consoles incredibly frustrating for developers. I fail to see how more than one issue being pointed out is contradictory.

Anyways, glad to see people bringing attention to these issues. The industry does seem to be improving in regards to allowing indie developers a greater chance at getting their game to the market, but there is still a lot of room to improve.

I guess I just don't see how the interface has ANYTHING to do with handicapping the indie market. He certainly doesn't give any explanation but acts like it's equivalent to the updating process being messed up (which it certainly is).

It doesn't. What he's saying about the dashboard is that it's clunky and pretty obviously designed by a company that doesn't care much about user experience. It's a separate problem from his complaints about the certification process, aside from it being an illustration of something else that is screwed up and consumer unfriendly about XBL.

OT: You know, I usually can't stand the guy, but he has a point. The whole walled garden deal with consoles is only viable for the big guys. Charging bedroom programmers the same kind of fees you charge multinational corporations is just ridiculous. Then again, the whole certification process is ridiculous. It boils down to a way for the hardware manufacturer to make money off of all third party software on the system, both on a per program and on a per copy basis.

 

[GenGenners]

On the Escapist for example, I need to use a workaround just to find archived videos of, say, The Big Picture. Where it was simple to do in the previous version.

Gotta make room for the advertisement thing.

I hover over "VIDEOS", click "ALL", then click "THE BIG PICTURE". Boom.

What do you have to do? Is it not the same for non-Pub-Clubbers?

I'm on the PS3's browser, and finding videos is easy for me. I'm not sure what 'workaround' he is referring to.

OT: Bad interfaces? Like I said, I'm on the PS3's browser, and have been since my computer bricked in December. The XMB is surprisingly intuitive for all-round usage. This guy is clearly just using his position in the industry to big-up his favourite platform, while nit-picking ones he doesn't personally like.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I'm not sure what 'workaround' he is referring to.

I think he means the ad blocking programs. Which you don't need if you become a Pub Club member

 

[mike1921]

It seems to me that he just went off on a tangent near the end, forgetting that the focus is on certification issues and not the corporatism that causes them on a whole.