Dear Jeff Minter…

The following is an editorial…

I have sat back and watched Jeff Minter post on his blog about his game – Space Giraffe from the very beginning to this point in time. At first, I was impressed with what I saw, and was looking forward to his game. I even sent some emails to get some assets and possibly the achievements. The response: Nothing! I couldn’t get one email back from him, and to this day I doubt it was even read.

Fast forward to this part in time, where Jeff Minter can be caught “whining” to the public about how Frogger has sold more copies than Space Giraffe. Now, like a normal caring human being, I felt bad, and was ready to give advice to Minter, explaining that he should keep his head up, and continue making games for people.

However, after seeing this post, I feel somewhat annoyed to a degree…

“I’m not going to be writing about game development here any more after this. Yes, I had a bit of a rant the other night because frankly yes, it is a bit disappointing to see a repackaged MAME rom doing much better than original content, but hey, that’s how it goes. People are more inclined to buy stuff they remember rather than stuff that’s new.”

This is such a crappy attitude to live by, that I felt obligated to post here on my blog to say A. Jeff Minter, shut up! and B. to correct his faulty thinking.

If you develop games your goal is to sell the game to an audience of some sort. Every game has to cater to some audience, cause lets be honest, not everyone in the world is going to be attracted to Viva Pinata. Instead, you find a market, and you cater to it, and obviously, shooting random objects in a rainbow world with sheep noises didn’t impress the gamers, whereas a simple game of crossing the street catered to a larger audience that appreciated retro games. Besides, Space Giraffe was nothing great, it was a ordinary shooter with a colorful background. What was supposed to be impressive about it?

So, if crying and hurting your own publicity is what your outcome is, then I say the best of luck to you, while the smart publishers will take criticism from gamers, improve it, update it, advertise it, and see the profits from working with the gaming audience, rather then against the same people who will be buying your games!