Nintendo Praises Independents, Devalues "Garage Developers"

[Axelhander]

Nintendo needs to either clarify its point or admit it is peddling a bunk philosophy.

 

[Issurru]

Says the company that pours out damn near nothing other than mini game collections and rehashes of anything good its ever done (don't get me wrong, I love me some zelda, but honestly nintendo wtf?)

 

[Quaidis]

I like what Satoru Iwata says, not what Regi says on behalf of America. Put Satoru Iwata back on.

And while I'm out making demands, I want One Piece: Unlimited Cruise 1 and 2 to be brought to all parts of the world, not just Europe and Japan. One Piece: Unlimited Adventure was a spectacular game and is near impossible to find now. What, they didn't bring it over because of a lack of a dubbing cast? So what?

 

[Catalyst6]

Independent developers are garage developers who have sold a game.

Quoted for truth.

I'm afraid that I must evoke Sturgeon's Law here: "90% of everything is crap". However, that 10% is where we find games like Minecraft and Super Meat Boy.

Really, what Nintendo is saying is that BAD games are clogging the industry, not cheaply-made ones.

 

[ohellynot]

Oh yeah and Nintendo changes it's policy about what is a game worth the Seal of Quality lately.

I have a nintendo t-shirt, the seal of quality actually peeled off.

 

[Gralian]

*Snip*

Your passion is remarkable.

However, i must point you to something that Jeff Brown, the Vice President of corporate of communication at Electronic Arts said. He said that "Social gaming as a whole aggregates into a business that is undeniably big money. When it's that big you are forced to pay attention." You might say that corporations like Zynga and social gaming don't make up the hobbyists and garage developers that Nintendo is decrying, but look at the roots of it. In particular, social gaming, which evolved from browser-based flash games like those found on Kongregate, or as you say, Newgrounds.

It's not a revolution that's happening here, but rather, an evolution. Hobbyist gaming evolved from simple flash games into social games. Hobbyists banded together to form indie developers. Major indie developers were able to further evolve into corporations like Zynga. At the rate of this current trend, more hobbyist games will continue to flood the market and continue to fuel these social and smartphone games. This is where the cause for concern lie. As saturation becomes inevitable, investors will see this paradigm shift in the industry. Mums and casuals would rather pick up quick and cheap one dollar titles that are not complex to play and don't require much involvement or emotional investment on the behest of the player. They won't be overwhelmed with interfaces. This 'new gamer' is born purely through the evolution of hobbyist media.

I don't think the industry needs big developers to keep going. They need investors. How many "big developers" create games for iOS systems? And yet, it generates a remarkable amount of revenue. While it's true that major developers can learn a thing or two from indies and draw on innovative ideas, it's too much of something that can have the adverse effect - and i believe this is what Nintendo is seeing happen right now.

I don't think hobbyists should stop doing what they love. That'd be very oppressive of the industry and as a general way of thinking. Free enterprise means people should be able to do what they like and sell what they like, so long as it's lawful. It's just that free enterprise can have a knock-on effect with big and small business alike. For all the innocence of it being a "hobby", it's all too easy to see it more as a way to make lots while spending little, if this sort of thing should ever be corporatised. It's almost like planned obsolesence, in that regard. You create dirt cheap one dollar titles by the dozen for the sole purpose of someone paying and playing it for half an hour before moving onto the next one. I'm not quite so cynical, though, so i won't turn into Pachter here. Just remember that as i've said before these kinds of statements tend to be rather hyperbolic and pessimistic. It's all about predicting the future, and the future always tends to be bleak.

 

[Flames66]

Microsoft and Apple have wholly embraced the "garage developer" to some degree with Xbox Live Indie Games and the iOS App Store.

Wholly embraced it to some degree? That's a nice contradiction you have there.

I am personally in support of garage developers.

 

[Dana22]

Said Nintendo, which is milking the same franchises over and over and over again for almost 30 years now.

 

[Tiswas]

Yes, because everyone should be rehashing the same series after 10 or so years.

Halo
GTA
Call of Duty
Final Fantasy
Fifa

to name a few *sniffs* MMMMMMMMMMMMM SMELL ALL DAT REHASH.


I love how people are saying it's Nintendo making the shovelware. Just because it's ON the Wii doesn't mean Nintendo had anything to do with it. That's like saying Microsoft were behind Left For Dead because its on the 360

 

[Catalyst6]

Independent developers are garage developers who have sold a game.

Quoted for truth.

I'm afraid that I must evoke Sturgeon's Law here: "90% of everything is crap". However, that 10% is where we find games like Minecraft and Super Meat Boy.

Really, what Nintendo is saying is that BAD games are clogging the industry, not cheaply-made ones.

The irony. It is purple XD, The Wii has become syonomous with the very very worst in quality of games, more so than any other system i can remember. Nintendo making money of shit that cots £20-£30 that could very well put people off games is worse for the industry than a £3 XBL game made by a 15 year old not being that good. The thing is with Garage games is that thay are ultra cheap to make and therefore can be ultra cheap to sell.

When you buy a game on a disk for a system you expect some measure of quality. The Wii is lacking in that much of the time. It is not a very good console.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I have a Wii, and I totally play...-ed it, for the first time in half a year, about a month ago when I GameFly'd Red Steel 2. I realized that they released a new peripheral that was required (required) to play the game. Boxed it up, sent it back, let it gather dust.

Yeah, Nintendo releases a lot of crap. Why do you think they rerererererelease their old games?

 

[Eveonline100]

hell pong was made by what less than 10 guys so

 

[Tuqui]

They're just grumpy because Mojang kicked their asses in the march mayhem.

And I though only Nintendo fans would get grumpy about it.

Depends.
I'm a fan of good Nintendo games, which pretty much excludes 90% of the Wii titles right away. Sure, Mojang might only have one game playable currently, but its worlds better than the meager 10% left on the Wii.

I'm not saying all fans of nintendo will get like that, I mean I though only Nintendo fans could get like this, not the nintendo company

 

[fulano]

Not much they can do about it. The bigger and more stagnant the current games industry becomes, the more actual gamers will be willing to give different things a try.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Hobbyists on PC give things away for free that are way more fun than a lot of the shovelware that Nintendo allowed to be published on the Wii. They should view these people as competition since they drive up expectations of quality and value.

 

[Sylocat]

So, Reggie's at it again, huh?

 

[Enrathi]

Fils-Aime worries that the flood of low-priced, low-quality software on various services today will disparage the value of games in general. "When we talk about the value of software, it could be a great $1 piece of content or a $50 piece of content," he added. "The point is: Does it maintain its value over time or is it such disposable content that the value quickly goes to zero?"

One could argue that the metric ton of shovelware on the Wii that tends to come in at around $20-$40 on average devalues gaming more than a crappy $1 iPhone game.

Amen.
In this day and age, gamers will communicate online about which games are crap and which are good. We don't need Nintendo's seal of approval.

Obviously not, since I've seen some of the crap they put out on the DS and Wii. Nowadays it seems more like the Nintendo Seal of Licencing Fees.

 

[Kadamon]

Nintendo stopped taking chances with their games, and made a bunch of unoriginal crap titles.
I stopped taking a chance with their games.

 

[googleback]

And what's the difference? even if you have a big office and a million workers? you're still in a room with a computer. that's like saying someone's not a musician if all they have is a guitar, regardless of talent.

Nintendo, get with the times. the seal of quality isn't relevant anymore. and that's YOUR fault. Not garage hobbyists?

and I don't work in a garage, I have a laptop.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I gonna point out the no true Scotsman argument here and then go on to say that due to nobody defining what makes developers "garbage" developers their arguments hold no weight since they are not grounded in definable or solid facts. It's a bunch of nebulous statements about a nebulous group.

 

[Lenriak]

Oh yeah and Nintendo changes it's policy about what is a game worth the Seal of Quality lately.

Wasn't the Seal of Quality nothing but a self imposed censorship program? I mean, even fine examples of gaming greatness such as Rise of the Robots and Shaq Fu earned the Seal of So-Called-Quality.