After a small debacle took place during the ‘Rise of the Micro Studio’ panel at the Develop conference, Cliff Harris of Positech Games made it clear that he was none too pleased about Mark Rein’s comments.
Harris accused the Epic VP of looking down ‘on humble indies,’ after Rein lectured the panelists from the front row during the conference. Rein responded with an apology e-mail to Harris earlier today.
"I want to apologize," said Rein in his email. "It was completely rude of me to interrupt your panel with my opinion no matter how well intentioned. I'm supremely passionate about the plight of indie developers, and game developers in general, and I heard something I thought was incorrect advice and I just couldn't keep my big mouth shut."
The e-mail has been given directly to Develop, who put on the show last week. Rein has made it clear to Develop that he in no way intended to insult the indie developers and that he is a huge fan of indie development.
"My only motive is to help people," said Rein, calling Indies "both my friends and customers" and explaining that he is always happy to give advice to people currently in a situation with which he can readily empathize.
The entire apology can be read here.
3 Comments
July 19, 2010
Very decent of him. He says he was misunderstood and he explained to Harris that Epic has been an Indie developer in the past.
Rein explained himself and his argument which was to say, save your news for the Journalist so they can turn it into big news or else they might not report it as news at all. The strategy is definitely an attention getter. I have seen forums explode when Information is posted about games like Resistance 2 or God of War 3. It's certainly effective when letting the masses know. Sites like Gamespot get loads of comments for interesting gaming news. Really though it's more of a business relationship with Journalists as with Gaming Mags; they really need some exclusive huge news to compete with the Internet. The Internet Gaming Journalists need a reason for people to visit their site (first).
The thing is, what might work wonders for you might do a lot less for someone else. As huge as the Internet is now. You can't simply brush off word of mouth (or word of text in this case) when rumors and news spreads so quickly this way. Seriously you could do a test where you give away some secret news and a picture to one guy and in two days watch how many of those who are interested will have learned of it. With Video hosting sites like Yube it's extremely easy for you to often upload update vids talking about what you're working on and show some footage of your games. Not to mention E-mail. Huge fans will gladly do the marketing for you. Just give them a forum banner (pic or animated gif) saying such and such about your game and they'll run with it.
To be honest it annoys me when Developers side step or are dishonest when they are asked a question just for them to announce what was asked about (and they had an answer for) 3 months ago as news now. That may establish a nice relationship for you and whatever game reporting organization you made a deal with but not so much for customer relations. Not that it even matters, when most times gamers will support you no matter what you do or say anyhow.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah... you just have to try and make a steady balance of the way you distribute information. Maybe sometimes it's to Journalists and other times it's directly to the fans/customers.
July 20, 2010
I'm glad someone was willing to be an adult about all this. Of course, Rein does have his business contracts at Epic for the Unreal Engine to think about.
July 20, 2010
The comment that started it all about indie developers having the opportunity to communicate with a fan in hope that 1 fan will buy the game, word of mouth in the game industry goes a long way so that 1 purchase may turn into a hell of a lot more. Big companies have 100000's players all over their forums and its just impossible to read everything but when I post on Bioware forums the community there makes me feel that my comments and feedback have some meaning, or Id like to think so anyway lol.
Rein's apology saying that communicating with a fan one on one is bad advice seems kinda dumb. If the developer has the time to do so then why not? But as Rein explains that releasing 'news' to the odd fan through an email is bad and should be saved for PR and advertising on gaming outlets, which makes sense but initially it didn't seem like that was the argument at all.
"At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy? who cares, that's a waste of time'."