Minter halts dev blogging News

Er, no I like new, interesting games on XBLA, it's just that Space Giraffe was a load of tosh!

I think Arnie would have something to say to him:

"Stop whining!"

Agreed, Spaec Giraffe was total poo, no matter how much everyone wanted to like it becasue they all like Minter. I'll be honest, I enjoyed Frogger more. At least I could see what was happening on screen.

He really would be better off by responding with better games, not words.

Depends who's buying the games - if it's a bunch of moms buying Frogger for their six-year-olds, he's got less cause for complaint.

I've never really got on with Minter games - probably because I don't have a spliff on the go while playing them...

Man, his feeling are hurt.
Quick, somebody call the WAAAAAHHHHHHMBULANCE.

Space Frogger. Now you're talking...

Achmed the dead terrorist says "I KILL YOU!"

What's wrong with playing old Amiga games anyway? My A1200 is in my mum's loft so it's kinda hard to dig it out and set it up for a game of Monkey Island. I appreciate new games as much as the next person that doesn't have time for anything beyond Halo 3 and Lego Star Wars at the moment, but bollocks to everything, I just wanna play SWOS!!!

And the Monkey Island reference was just in case anyone from LucasArts is reading :-)

I also wanna add, given the negativity in this thread, that I do like Minter, respect what he's done, but SG really ain't my cuppa tea.

He is right though. Frogger is shit. Always has been. While Space Giraffe isn't my kind of game, I do reckon that it is one of the better of it's class.

The attack on the Amiga was really unnecessary, since Frogger wasn't even released on the Amiga. He must have mistaken the Atari for the Amiga.

Although, considering his library on the Amiga, I'm not surprised by his bitterness.

http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?find...

Not to mention how his last Amiga release was in '92, which was a shareware version of Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

next game to be a throwing toys out of pram simulator called nappy rash

Huh. So how did people respond to the blog rant anyway? By buying even fewer copies of space giraffe?

The attack on the Amiga was really unnecessary, since Frogger wasn't even released on the Amiga. He must have mistaken the Atari for the Amiga.

I think that was more of a reference to Speedball 2, SWOS and the like.

It's funny that only Minter can't admit that space giraffe is crap. He went overboard with the lighting and busy graphics. As a result anyone who plays the demo is totally put off by it. Dispite what some people say. YOU CAN'T SEE THE ENEMIES!

I tried liking this but, after the 150th death due to invisible bullets I had to conceed that it's just a very poorly made game. Frankly if this is what minter has left in him then he really should give up game making and go write a book or something.

I purchased and played Space Giraffe on the strength of Minter and my memory of the gaming in 80's.

Yes the game is a mess, not a total disaster but close enough and best played only when you are so high or drunk and wanna be pushed over the edge!

As everyone say, the visual information is too much, that the brain get mushed!

I bought SG without playing the demo (silly me - won't do that again). I just found it too confusing and hard to see what's going on. Wouldn't mind a version of Gridrunner though. But clean, crisp visuals so that I can see what I've got to shoot.

It's just not the case of a good game that didn't sell well. It was a mess of a game that not many people got.

"Frankly if this is what minter has left in him then he really should give up game making and go write a book or something."

On making games? :)

I grabbed SG without even trying the demo, its a shame, it was nearly great, but it falls short of that mark by a long distance. it is better than frogger though, the only other game I purchased without trying!

Half way through the next one eh?


So I'm guessing that involves changing the Giraffes for LLama's.

Honestly this guy has been churning out the same shite (to anyone who'll give him money) for years. Llama's, goats, sheep with "trippy" graphics.

Please go away and take Molyneaux with you.

"it was nearly great, but it falls short of that mark by a long distance. "

So what you mean is " a long way off from great" rather than "nearly"?

Yeah space Giraffe was crap and so is Frogger, but saying that he is totally right!

XBLA has just become a bitch being pimped out to old crappy remakes, and when a dev does make an original game, reviews seem to miss the point that they are supposed to be £5 worth of fun not tying to be a £50 blockbuster.

So OI MINTER NO I respect your point of view but stop promising us Giraffes and giving us crap!

Isnt calling frogger one of the worst games in history effectivley doing exactly what he is moaning about. Berating someone elses game ?

Games are released all the time that the developers think are great, and no-one else does. Cant think of an industry it doesnt happen in, be it games, movies, music etc.

Why doesnt he have a coke (or a spliff) and a smile, shut the fuck up and do another one. Maybe this time without all the excess trip-tron type backgrounds and rhytmic music in the background !?

Infact, time im on me soap box, why doesnt he actually try writing something NEW instead of rehashed versions of games that were ports of an old arcade game that was a bit average in the first place ?
And if he cant manage that, try updating a game he did that was actually any good - like gridrunner.

"Why doesnt he have a coke (or a spliff) and a smile, shut the fuck up and do another one. Maybe this time without all the excess trip-tron type backgrounds and rhytmic music in the background !? "

Because there wouldn't be much left? It doesn't seem like a very good idea to spend that long developing an engine that's so inflexible that he's now forced to make 2 more very similar games to recoup some of the money he's invested...

"and we need to re-use the [Space Giraffe] framework for a couple of reasonably quick games"


Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Can the man not see what is going to happen there?!!!!!!!!!

Space Giraffe was actually one of the best games of the year (and I'm saying that without having played a Minter game before in my life). There is some truly excellent design behind the almost impenetrable tutorial and first hour of gameplay. Unfortunately most people can't put up with the game that long (and that is of course the game's fault) but that doesn't mean it wasn't any good.

"and we need to re-use the [Space Giraffe] framework for a couple of reasonably quick games"

Oh, the irony.

"OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, shite arcade games..."

Er...so SG isn't really a new version of Tempest then, Jeff??!! Admittedly Tempest was NOT a shite arcade game, but SG's still a remake deep down, no??"

Isn't Frogger one of the XBLA games you get with the 'Arcade' pack? If so, that's probably the reason why the sales spiked...

Please go away and take Molyneaux with you.

So what kind of fantastic games have you made? I'm sorry but these guys have brought tons of new gaming concepts into existence and made many fantastic games. Telling them to fo without having something to add yourself is stupid beyond belief.

"Er...so SG isn't really a new version of Tempest then, Jeff??!! Admittedly Tempest was NOT a shite arcade game, but SG's still a remake deep down, no??"

The difference is that SG takes the basic Tempest template and builds on it/alters it to the extent that it plays significantly differently. If SG is a remake of Tempest then Halo 3 is a remake of Doom.

I used to love Jeff Minter's wacky psychedelic games on the Commodore 64 but I thought Space Giraffe was absolutely dreadful, far too confusing to play and get any fun out of. The Xbox 360's Neon Music Visualiser thingie that he wrote was more enjoyable to be honest. And, yes, I did find Frogger to be the better game. Sorry Jeff but if you make a good game then I'll buy and play it. ;)

Granted, Jeff was letting off steam and giving an emotional as opposed to a rational response in that post. He's always been a very open, heart on sleeve bloke when it comes to diarising his thoughts and deeds - which he does because there is the demand for it and always has been, back to the early Eighties where he sent out Llamasoft newsletters because there was no such thing as livejournal. This happened because there was a demand for it.

People who dislike a game are far more likely to make a big noise about it online than those who like it, who will post that it is good, then get on with playing it. For a marmite title that negative comment is enough to dissuade many from even trying it, which is what has happened with SG. These days it is much easier for every Tom Dick and Harry to fire off a comment and go about their day and as such the vitriol Jeff has received is disproportianate to how people actually feel, I reckon.

I'm not defending any specific comment he has made, nor am I commenting on the quality of Space Giraffe - I've not been near a 360 since way before it was released and I may well be one of those who can't fathom the graphics. I'll still download it untried before I find out.The thing is that Llamasoft is a 2-man self financed independant on the smallest possible scale. They've been to hell and back getting a game through the system that M$ have for publishing online stuff and it is very important that such folk can - if the new downloadable games model is the future, independants cannot do without a good general level of support at this early stage otherwise we'll have nought but a new way for Electronic Arts and Sony to recycle tat.

You can't buy two pints of ale for £3.50 - you can use that money to vote though - for small independant games developers. You also get a title that you may love or hate, but which is a pretty individual addition to any games collection. If people support the likes of Llamasoft, other independants will follow. Your £3.50 is an investment in gaming, not just the game itself. That's why I am surprised at the sales figues, not because the game is good, bad or inbetween.... but because people don't seem to be considering any kind of big picture. Maybe I credit my fellow gamers with too much intelligence, or maybe I'm too much of an ideologist?

As for the blogging - well, the dude is stressed to heck and letting off steam. Welcome to a genuine coders blog, uncensored by the PR people at the company he works for. There's a button below this box that invites me to 'speak my brain' and that's what Minter has been doing all these years. Fair enough if people don't like what he is saying but it is a shame indeed that there will now be one less voice gving a blood and guts emotional diarisation of the game making progress. Those who scorn Jade wossername's Ubisoft calculated media blitz should get behind the like of Minter, because games development is interesting and a subjectively honest account of it should be valued, whoever writes it and whatever they say. Offhand comments from consumers are something they have every entitlement to make but if the cost is fewer dev blogs, I don't think it is worth it.

For the record, I rather like Frogger. Or Acornsoft Hopper, on my BBC B at any rate!

/edit - homerramone..... Gridrunner? Watch this space ;)

As for the engine used on SG - I've seen it do quite different things at the experimental stage. Development time and plenty of money to back it up will see cottage industry more able to bring those ideas to fruition. You are probably looking at three to four times the length of dev cycle for something utterly unique instead of a proven gameplay environment like Tempest with the play style turned on its head. Factor in that you don't get paid until the game is being bought - what are you gonna do first? The SG engine can do much but people need to create a financial envirnment for a platform like that to see the best use made of it. This doesn't just go for Llamasoft but such a company is a great case in point - Unity was the last game and without a fat dev team it was not going to be publishable in time for the Gamecube to still be a viable current console so it had to be canned, and that's with the backing of Lionhead.

New and original is not easy nor cheap - look at how many games make truly good use of the PSP, DS or Wii. The software houses will make their money on Medal Of Honor before they bankroll something new and unique on Wii. For independants all over the world, the customer needs to be bankrolling them future to some extent. All developers can do is try their best to make the games that cause this to happen in the first place. Not every one will get it right first time. I'm banking on Llamasoft being able to make it in the long run, though - there's too much potential to not be optimistic. And for less than four quid, I can put my money where my mouth is on that, regardless of what someone says in their blog.

Never mind, Jeff, have a bang on this, mate. *blows perfect smoke ring*

I'd be more interested to see how sales of Geometry Wars are holding up against Space Giraffe. Two years older, but the same price and by far the better game.

I've got a lot of respect for the developers of old continuing their passionate work in the modern-day, tripe-saturated, hype-driven world also known as the Video Games Industry. Thing I find wrong with his comments is his failure to acknowledge how his game is not much more than one of these "revamped for the 21st Century" games that he's slagging off.

Team17 tried it and they were very successful. I imagine (and hope) SWOS will be equally as successful too. The main difference is those games were actually quite good to begin with...

Xerx3s

I don't dispute that these guys may have made some contribution to gaming in the past.

But they now seem to think that they have a divine right to keep shovelling us the same shite, and we should just lap it up.

If I'm tired of the trippy graphics with woolly mammals genre that Minter specialises in and chose to spend my money elsewhere, then that's just tough.

What the XBLA stat's should be telling Minter is that either ....

A) That game is up and nobody is interested in these games anymore.

or

B) The game was shite.

or

C) Both

Minter's whinging will not alter any of these scenarios.

That is all.

Grandmaster - But... but..... I found Geometry Wars to be Robotron, only it was harder for me to follow what was going on on screen ;)

You can't buy two pints of ale for £3.50 - you can use that money to vote though - for small independant games developers. You also get a title that you may love or hate, but which is a pretty individual addition to any games collection. If people support the likes of Llamasoft, other independants will follow. Your £3.50 is an investment in gaming, not just the game itself.

While I mostly agree with what you're saying in principle, and wish there were more maverick spirits like Minter still working in the industry, isn't that a rather low form of emotional blackmail? You're making it sound like a charity. Go on, give them a few quid - doesn't really matter if you actually enjoy the game in question, but it might save an independent developer.

Surely the onus is on the developer, as a business, to create games that people will enjoy and want to buy? I fully support people like Minter who choose to create games from a place of uniquely personal inspiration, but that shouldn't automatically mean that gamers should feel obliged to buy their products, regardless of how cheap it may be.

Games like Katamari, LocoRoco and even Portal all show that original ideas can still flourish and succeed. You just have to come up with a concept that appeals to people.

hear hear.

Mm, Dan's right there. I absolutely love Space Giraffe, but Jeff is his own worst enemy, and if people did want to "donate" money to a small independent developer on principle, I doubt it'd be one who's, well, such a *cock*.

I think the price of spouting whatever's on your mind is the ability to take criticism and not hold it personally.

Dan is entirely right. I'm not trying to establish independants as charity cases and all games have to stand on their own merits, but I do firmly believe that the consumer needs to speculate to accumulate just as much as a developer does.

The masses will judge each title in and of itself, nonetheless a bigger picture remains and we'll see more Locorocos if devs get the money to experiment, which will happen if people buy the games which 'test the water' as SG has done.

However people spend their money is up to them, I bought my DS and Wii as early as possible, not because of the wealth of good titles on there (ha!) but because of what Nintendo were trying to achieve in the industry. Ideologically sound, but without Joe Public spazzing his week's pay on the same for Wii Sports or Brain Training, neither would have gotten anywhere. I guess both sides contribute, but the wider public make or break the situation. If the SG saga has taught Llamasoft and other independants any lessons at all about XBLA, it'll have been worth it.

Space Giraffe is great.

Space Giraffe is one of the best, if not the best, game on XBLA, and one of the best game of th year... and no, it's not a Tempest clone, it just looks similar, but it plays in a completely different way (twitch shooter should stick to Tempest, SG is more like a thinking-man shooter, it's almost strategic at times).

That said, I think Jeff is wrong in his outburst of rage against the old classic. Frogger may not be a good game, but people are entitled to buy whatever they like. If Jeff is in for the money, then he should try to make more commercial games... if he is in to do whatever he wants and actually sell it to fans that love it (which is more than the majority of people/developer can do in these time of corporations and majors), he should stick to that and actually enjoy the fact that there are thousand of people out there that are praising his game as one of the best ever made.

@Xerx3s

Every single time someone says something negative about PM, you hove into view telling them they aren't allowed an opinion because they haven't made any games themselves.

Utter rubbish. A gamer does NOT have to be a dev in order to express their opinion AS A GAMER. If a gamer finds a game to be lacking in fun, they need no qualification in order to say so.


"one of the worst games in the history of old arcade games, can outsell Space Giraffe that we put so much love and effort into"

I'm not sure that "love and effort" is really a commodity that means anything to the average gamer. I'm a gamer too and I would much rather spent my money on a really fun game that was born of a souless code mill than a !fun game that was the result of sacks of misdirected passion. We as gamers might say that passion and originality is important, but its games that are fun to play that actually get our cash above all else most of the time.


I don't know how many times I have said that originality is overated. Implementation is where the fun lives or dies. Every. Single. Time.

An original title that is well implemented is the ultimate goal. But an original idea badly realised will almost always be bobbins, whereas a wholly unoriginal idea that results in a well put together game will almost always be fun.

FPS's tend to get better reviews than any other genre. Generally because they showcase the latest graphic engines to best effect. But you can only refine so much. I'm (and I'm sure I'm not alone here) really crave a different experience from my games. Things are getting stale if you've played games for a number of years. And yes for every shooter it will be someones first time with such a game. If they want to keep and develop an audience they really really need to lose some money on originality. Someone like EA could easily afford this development risk. Churn out your dollar titles and release a few high-risk innovative titles.

Most games released these days are generally of a high standard and the biggest complaint is not they're badly put together but they do nothing new.

The masses will judge each title in and of itself, nonetheless a bigger picture remains and we'll see more Locorocos if devs get the money to experiment, which will happen if people buy the games which 'test the water' as SG has done.

LocoRoco is a bad example of your point though, since the money for that experiment came from Sony. Tsutomu Kouno came up with an original idea, but one that also had clear appeal.

Regardless of what hoops must be jumped through in order to get a game on Live Arcade, the beauty of that system is that it absolutely allows "the masses" to judge each title for themselves. Space Giraffe received a lot more coverage and attention than most XBLA titles, and anyone who was interested was free to try the game at no cost, using a demo that Llamasoft put together to showcase what they had made. If it's not selling as well as other titles, that's because more people want the other titles.

If independent devs want more money to experiment, they should make sure that their experiments will appeal to enough people to justify their expenses. That doesn't mean "selling out" or making derivative tat, it just means considering the actual audience rather than the audience you wish still existed. If Minter, or anyone, really wants to produce games to satisfy their own personal mindspace then they either need to accept that many people won't "get it" and take the financial hit accordingly, or go back to the truly democratic way of distributing fresh ideas, make them shareware or freeware and get a day job to pay the bills.

Maybe one of the problems of having such a small and independent outfit is that perspective is lost. I can't believe that anyone involved could look at the finished product and believe that Space Giraffe was going to have broad appeal. Its "love it or hate it" nature is apparent almost immediately. Complaining that something like Frogger is outselling it is like complaining that more people are buying Only Fools And Horses on DVD than are buying Chris Morris' Blue Jam. It's the nature of the beast, and I'm surprised that Minter hasn't made peace with that yet. Maybe he needs to follow Mel Croucher's example and point his creative energies in another direction.

I agree with Dan, he wasn't exactly aiming for the mainstream with SG.

To be honest, he should go the cynical route, and blat out a few of his 8-bit classics onto XBLA. If people really do just want old stuff they remember playing, he may as well make some cash out of it, and use it to fund his next proper venture.

It seems a very long time since Jeff did anything other than Tempest-a-likes and updates of classics (yeah, I know SG isn't really Tempest etc.). He used to come out with such a varied bunch of stuff, not all overburdened with trippy visuals that turn off mainstream players. Back in the C64 days, Llamasoft were a pretty mainstream software house, not wilfully out on the fringe (possibly because technical constraints in those days meant that Jeff's games didn't look too different to everyone else's).

I just wish someone would rein him in a bit, 'cos I'm sure he could come up with some cracking stuff that would sell well, if he would concede to a few constraints in the name of commercial appeal. Everybody needs an editor, after all.

Half way through the next one eh?

So I'm guessing that involves changing the Giraffes for LLama's.

Honestly this guy has been churning out the same shite (to anyone who'll give him money) for years. Llama's, goats, sheep with "trippy" graphics.

Please go away and take Molyneaux with you.

+1

Exactly what I was thinking. I've played a few of his games and haven't enjoyed any of them. I think a few people have rose tinted spectacles when it comes to Minter.

I imagine him laughing to himself at home when he's thinking up his next game; "Ha ha ha! What do you think of this one dear? A mutant swimming orangutan, which shoots lighting bolts out of its arse at equally mutant ...things...! All in trippy graphics of course! Genius!"

And whats with all the animal references anyway? Is he a closet bestiality freak?