What Would Matt Do

I don’t really know where I stand on this:

The Consumerist printed a letter from a reader, Grant, who claims his Xbox Live gamertag, "theGAYERgamer," was banned from Xbox Live. When he called Microsoft customer support, a rep reportedly told him that while she wasn’t offended by his gamertag, "the greater Xbox community" had found his it offensive, thereby warranting a ban.

Personally, it doesn’t really bother me. thegayergamer didn’t pick that name with anything in mind but to stand out. Whether they are gay or not, the point of the name is to rile other people up. I’m not saying other people are stupid for getting miffed about it, but the reality of the internet is that people will respond…and not well. So whatever.

This leads me to a larger question though. Who’s complaining about this? Should the small subset of people that whine to microsoft directly decide who is allowed to have what name? Much like the hundreds of thousands of complaints the FCC gets about random things on tv, it’s not the general population, it’s whiners targeting things that bother them. Here’s the kick though…they don’t speak for me. They don’t even speak for a majority of the population (as studies have shown).

Like usual, the whiners are deciding things for the rest of us. Lovely.

What Would Matt Do: Sigh. A lot. Maybe I’ll pout too.

This is pretty funny stuff:

Each language has its purpose, however humble.  Each language
expresses the Yin and Yang of software.  Each language has its place
within the Tao.

But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.

Very astute thoughts.

What Would Matt Do: Follow the way.

I’m also jealous Tom Chick scored this interview with him. Maybe I should try to go the short route like Tom to stardom so I too can interview awesome people. And by short route I mean working in the industry for more years than I know.

Seriously it’s a very good interview.

Chick: Are you officially no longer a real-time strategy company?

Reynolds: Well, we’re no longer an exclusively real-time strategy-focused company. The announced project, the biggest thing we’re currently working on, is a role-playing game. And we have another product that’s kind of unannounced, but every now and then I see something on the Web about it. Clearly somebody knows a lot more than we’ve officially announced.

Chick: So people who loved Rise of Legends don’t necessarily have to think that Big Huge Games will never do another RTS?

Reynolds: They certainly don’t have to think that.

That kind of things makes me happy, but really, the whole interview is really good. Tom and Brian touch on Rise of Legends (honestly not my favorite, but it was all right), Rise of Nations (loved it), and even some Alpha Centauri (I still have it installed). While I don’t agree with the Rise of Legends full on spooge fest (I think it was an RTS that ended up feeling generic even though it was trying for so much more in so many ways), the whole article touched on things I didn’t know, how well each one sold relatively and a hint at future plans.

I think Tom is right about educating and expanding gamers minds with the likes of SMAC though. That game is awesome in so many ways and it really did include sci fi (and real theories about math and science) in a very approachable manner that many games miss.

More from the interview:

Chick: I sort of a see a parallel with what you did in Alpha Centauri.

Reynolds: Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes, in some sense, we went against the lesson of [our own] history: that you can sell a lot more Civ IIs than you can Alpha Centauris. One reason we did it again anyway is because we did make a good amount of money on Alpha Centauri. We just didn’t make truckloads of money like we did with Civ II. So we did it.

But it was a lot harder to explain even the most basic science fiction concepts to people than it was history. Everybody knows what a bow and arrow do. Everybody somewhere back in their genetic programming understands the possible benefits of discovering the wheel. The concept of mathematics doesn’t sound very frightening, but then when you get into nonlinear mathematics and special quantum laser gun theory, then — no matter how socially relevant the biting commentary provided by your game is — there’s still this accessibility issue. You have a lot more work to do to get people into the story.

So you could say that we should have known.

See, I’m of two minds about this. Yeah, it’s harder to sell a non-standard game to the public. But I don’t think it was the factions or the setting that killed RoL, but the way the game didn’t quite meet the goals it was striving for, imho.

What Would Matt Do: Me, I really like to work with Brian Reynolds. See what their design processes are like, see how they come up with some of the awesome simplicity they often do and see how the magic happens.

This is pretty funny shit. Matt Damon is big fat jerk:

So here’s the bottom line: nowhere in this train wreck of a telephone game does Matt Damon ever say he’s not OK with game violence! Furthermore, he doesn’t even say he’s okay with movie violence. You’ll note that Jason Bourne kills relatively few people, and he certainly doesn’t shoot them. In fact, he takes pains to disarm his opponents and throw away their guns.

What Would Matt Do: Laugh and laugh and laugh.

Yeah, it probably shouldn’t be news when when one large conglomerate calls another empty and says:

"It’s almost the opposite of Electronic Arts, which has commoditized development. It did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired."

It’d be liking Wendy’s saying, at least we don’t treat our employees like McDonald’s does. Which kind of ignores the real point, they both treat their employees like shit.

Yeah, EA is notorious for literally stealing the soul of the development houses they buy, but I don’t remember saying Activision was particularly good at preserving the autonomous of the guys they buy either. As a matter of fact, the only guys I’ve heard are good at that is Microsoft and then only with Bungie (i.e. - REALLY successful dev houses).

Except…EA is so bad at it they actually admit it themselves:

Bullfrog, Origin Systems, and Westwood Studios rank as some of the best development houses of all time. They also happen to represent three of EA’s most spectacular failures. "We at EA blew it," said EA CEO John Riccitiello at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas this morning, "To a degree, I was involved in those things, so I blew it."

To be fair to them, they claimed that in the context of we’re trying to fix things, but still.

You know what I’d love to see? Development houses that didn’t have to be bought up to exist. Development houses that could find good publishers that weren’t always looking to buy them out instead of work them. Baring that though, I’d love to see publisher slash developer houses (EA, Activision, Ubi, etc) that care about the development teams they have working under them and give them a bit of freedom.

Not to over use the statement or anything, but I’d also like a moon pony.

What Would Matt Do: Were I made of money, I’d start a publishing house and run it the right way. Of course, I’d first have to go to business school and learn what the right way was beyond respecting your employees. Though respecting my employees would put me a huge leg up on competition.