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Know Your Developer


Colon Leftbracket

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You know what really gets on my nerves? People who can't get their developers right!

 

Recently I had a discussion with my friends about the THQ Bundle that just went on recently, and I chose to opt out of. I didn't want to help the cause not just on principle or my opinion on the company, but mostly because I didn't care for the games they were selling. Darksiders, Company of Heroes, Red Faction: Armageddon and Saints Row The Third (if you beat the average). On paper this sounds like a good deal! These games I suppose were all $60 titles back in their day and now you can pick them up in one big package for under $10.

 

That all sounds well and good, but all the games available outside of Saints I see as pretty shitty games. And I can't buy up this bundle to get Saints for cheap because I already own it.

 

"What, you say you like Saints Row the Third, but you aren't willing to help save the people who made it in their time of need!" says one of my friends. True, if the people who made Saints Row were going down under and gave me a chance to help them out with my pocket change I certainly would, but this isn't the Volition Inc Bundle now it it!

 

See my friend seems to have his developers and publishers mixed up. THQ is a publisher company who published these games. They didn't develop these games outside of maybe giving a few executive decisions to help the game sell better. And true publishers are an important part of of a game's development seeing that publishers are how a game sees a light of day, but it infuriates me when I see someone treating the publishers like they are the ones who made the title.

 

And really I don't see THQ publishing many games that I find all that great so I really wouldn't care if the company died out at this point. Yes, Volition Inc would lose their main place to sell their games, but they could possibly find a new home elsewhere.

 

Though this bundle only really scratches the surface of consumer ignorance. Nintendo seems to be the shining example on people forgetting about the developing company. When you see a First Party Nintendo franchise game, most of the time you just assume that Nintendo made the game. This can often be correct, but you'd be surprised that Nintendo has many other developing companies working on their big franchises. HAL Laboratory Inc., Retro Studios, Game Freak, Team Ninja, the late Hudson Soft, the "might as well be dead" Rare, and many more companies have made Nintendo titles in the past that seem to be forgotten. Though with most cases Nintendo does help develop these games so you aren't wrong in almost all cases by saying Nintendo developed the game, but usually these other companies do most of the heavy lifting and get forgotten.

 

"Nintendo doesn't make good games anymore," says another one of my friends. Well, they have been giving their titles to other companies more and more often lately, but they still make games. Though perhaps you are too quick to bash Nintendo if you didn't like Metroid Other M (which was mostly developed by Team Ninja), and too quick to praise Nintendo for their Metriod Prime series (which was mostly developed by Retro Studios). They still make good games though! Nintendo EAD Tokyo made the Super Mario Galaxy games which I personally love. Nintendo EAD has made the Animal Crossing series and New Leaf looks fantastic!

 

I feel the main problem with this is that people don't quite understand development process. Their only clue is the short showing of logos before each game launches and they just go along with the logos they are most familiar with which is usually publisher names. They don't understand that with most cases the company logos are both people who made the games and people who produced it and that there is usually a major difference between the two.

 

I tend to care more about the development side of the industry. The production side is still VERY important, but in the end I have less respect for them because they aren't the ones slaving over making the games.

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