CliffyB Gets Hate Mail

[hal]

Just to show you that life in the developer role is not a thankless task, here is but one sampling of the loving fan mail received by Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski, as posted on his website. I'll preserve the letter in its entirity in the comments forum for further discussion.

"It deeply saddens me that people like you get to make games. Save Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto, not many developers with actual IDEAS earn themselves recognition. Instead, the industry is flooded with morons like yourself who make the same damn FPS over and over again and saturate the market with so much crap that it's almost impossible for anything decent to sell well. Developers like you are the reason we have nothing but meaningless violence to choose from.

Now I don't hate violent games, but enough is enough. It's time for the industry to grow beyond making clones of games we've been playing already for 10 years and develop some meaningful *gasp* ORIGINAL ideas. And you are certainly not helping this trend. No, instead you settle for the lowest common denomenator and make a stupid sci-fi FPS to compete with the hundred other sci-fi FPSs on the market.

Read on...

 

[hal]

Read on...

"It deeply saddens me that people like you get to make games. Save Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto, not many developers with actual IDEAS earn themselves recognition. Instead, the industry is flooded with morons like yourself who make the same damn FPS over and over again and saturate the market with so much crap that it's almost impossible for anything decent to sell well. Developers like you are the reason we have nothing but meaningless violence to choose from.

Now I don't hate violent games, but enough is enough. It's time for the industry to grow beyond making clones of games we've been playing already for 10 years and develop some meaningful *gasp* ORIGINAL ideas. And you are certainly not helping this trend. No, instead you settle for the lowest common denomenator and make a stupid sci-fi FPS to compete with the hundred other sci-fi FPSs on the market.

Worse still, you give a terrible name for American developers. It's no secret that all the real innovation comes from Japan, where stupid retread games like Halo are treated as the shameless rip offs (watch ALIENS) that they deserve to be, not praised as the best game ever. Why not take your massive budget from Microsoft and make something meaningful instead of just more noise? You have been granted an opportunity to create that thousands of people (myself included) would kill for and you squander it. You, and everyone like you is hurting the gaming industry to a point where it may not be able to recover.

The time for praising games like Unreal, Quake, Call of Duty, Halo, and countless other clones of innovations from 1996 is -or should be- over. I sincerely hope you have read this through because you need to know that you should be ashamed to be showing Gears of War in the same building that something like Metal Gear Solid 4 is shown, and should be further shamed in being placed at a competitive level with Hideo Kojima. Shame on you for wasting the wonderful gift you've been given."

 

[Dark Pulse]

May this person be stabbed with the Spork of Painy Death Hurt.

 

[Plumb_Drumb]

Damn, all I get is spam mail
________
Group Sex Cams

 

[CyberSirius]

Original Ideas are extremely rare,period.

 

[Unregistered]

Sounds like a pissed off consumer of everything Jappo.

The same kind of dude who is thoroughly un-asian, and doesnt know the language, but who decides to get Japanese characters tatooed on his calf, and sleeps with a hello kitty doll.

****im'

 

[KoshiJoshi]

Lmao, the person who wrote that mail is a idiot, it sounds like he might be one of those jealous developers who is so crap at their job that they cannot get any recognition, as far as im concerned i've always enjoyed the unreal series and in my eyes it is miles better than games like quake, i dunno why i think that but the constant cratering in q3:arena made me scream in frustration(it was so easy to crater even if you didnt fall from a high place)

may death come upon this person with big pointy teeth(monty python)

 

[ThunderBear]

This just blows my mind.
I hope its an isolated incident.
Cause the B deserves way better.

 

[KoshiJoshi]

By the way, what is the URL of cliffyB's site? I want to get his perspective on the mail...

 

[Jackal]

So this ******* doesn't like FPS. Big ****ing deal. Do you think I like the 5th version of Mario? Or the 7th version of Zelda? Or even the 13th version of Final Fantasy? There is nothing new and original anymore. Everything is just a remake with better graphics and sometimes better replay.

 

[Unregistered]

What a moron. When did Kojima suddenly fix the MGS series and bring it back from being something other than a sloppy Splinter Cell clone? Because, you know, we haven't actually seen any MGS4 gameplay. Also, Miyamoto is currently working on his, what, fourth major Zelda game? We don't even know what these men are currently doing, so whoever wrote this is kind of just pulling his argument out of his ass.

What the hell is this kid talking about "people like you with no innovation"? We're not going to see any new genres, because we've hit the technological milestone where developers don't have to trade models for sprites due to processor restraints. Nobody is going to suddenly pop out of the woodwork and introduce an amazing new genre where you see out of your character's eyes, or a groundbreaking new combat system where each player takes turns. There is nothing left to invent. These days, a good game is a game that tells a good story and generally lets you do cool things. A good developer will combine the aspects of several games, and get something that plays well out of it. Whoever sent this hate mail obviously doesn't understand anything about games, about the industry, or about what makes a good developer.

Keep doing your thing, Cliffy. You and the rest of Epic are shaping the industry. Studio-wide licenses from Microsoft, Sony and Vivendi are not an indication that you're not doing an awesome job.

 

[Retodon8]

CB

By the way, what is the URL of cliffyB's site? I want to get his perspective on the mail...

Uhm, it's in the news update, as always.
Don't forget to read it from the main page ( http://www.beyondunreal.com/ ) though, links get lost in the forum posts that go with it.

Direct link: http://www.cliffyb.com/

 

[Mr. UglyPants]

May the author of that letter be poked repeatedly with the impact hammer than sliced a hundred times with the sword from Halo than shot at with ever BFG ever created... a billion times + one really pissed off FPS gamer with a really big Fork!



Man this guy is dumb!!

 

[KoshiJoshi]

Uhm, it's in the news update, as always.
Don't forget to read it from the main page ( http://www.beyondunreal.com/ ) though, links get lost in the forum posts that go with it.

Direct link: http://www.cliffyb.com/

Crap, need to pay more attention, i log straight into the forums though, i dont go through the main page.

Thanks for the link though!

 

[Bang_Doll]

In recent years Hideo has completely lost his touch. That is a poor example to bring up. It's obvious this guy is an MGS4 fanboy. I wonder what he'd think of somebody informed him that Hideo isn't even all that involved with his own series any more?

Or if somebody told him Hideo doesn't enjoy making games, and always wanted to do movies instead? He'd probably go into denial, goddamn MGS fanboy.


It's unfortunate because his email might have made much more sense if it was about realistic shooters and sent to someone at, I dunno, EA?

>_>

<_<

But using MGS4, and games that are from Japan (solely because they're from Japan goddamn those squinty-eyed bastards make hella good games DUN THAY?!) as an example... ouch.

 

[ilkman]

Yes! Because story driven games such as MGS have never been done before and its completely original!

Oh, and lets not forget Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, 3, and now 4, and also that one for the PSP, and werent there more? I havnt kept track.

We have a winner on our hands here.

 

[Starry Might]

Damn, all I get is spam mail

Anyways, this guy sounds like yet another armchair game designer to me. :tdown:

 

[totalloser]

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon there for a second and say: "that guy is an effing 'tard!!!!,STFU NOOB". seriously, has he played gears of wars to be calling it "the same old **** we played before".

 

[Lewis]

Haha whoever wrote that doesn't really know the industry very well. New ideas are rare because publishers are unwilling to have the risk of a product flopping when they know that a sequel or a sports game will sell easily. I could go on seems i did a 10min presentation on Creativity for my games design course, but i won't...

 

[mr non black 'n white]

what is wrong with his message? he or she didn't exactly put it very elegantly, but what about it is completely wrong? most of you guys seem to judge him based more around cliffyB fanboy behaviour than about the content of his complaint. I think he's right with the bottom line of gmes not really evolving, just gimmicking up instead. But the same goes for games from everywhere. Including japan. The Nth mario or zelda indeed. Same with metal gear by the way.

One more important point to whoever indulges in games.( I used to call myself hardcore gamer, not anymore, they're getting too creepy) the games he speaks of are about 10 years old!! there's so much more than games in life!
Hmm I suddenly get this vision of a bunch of very old whining people saying, "hmm in the good old days....." and other old people saying, "aah it's not true, times are changing, and we need to change with them...." Just how much time in life do you want to spend playing games?


Get out and get some fresh air. It'll do every one of you good.