Category Archives: Quick Quotes

“[Wii U is] definitely more powerful than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It’s kind of frustrating to see the rumours and speculation of people going back and forth saying it’s weaker or more powerful. It’s definitely more powerful. I think we were one of the first developers to see the Wii U.” – 5th Cell CEO Jeremiah Slaczka in the latest issue of Game Informer, via D’toid.

“Lionhead and the Fable franchise has been left in incredibly capable hands. Fable: The Journey is coming out this year, and when I saw it last it was looking pretty cool and I am sure Lionhead will take Fable to a very bright and interesting future. You can’t help but have thoughts and ideas of what you would do with something [like the Fable franchise], but I am so focused on what I am doing at the moment I don’t often have those feelings.” – Peter Molyneux to VG247 at Rezzed on whether he has any regrets leaving the Fable franchise behind.

“As an artist and producer you want to find other ways to spread your creativity. A game seemed a good way to do that. It’s no less rewarding than getting up on stage and doing a Shakespeare play.” – Actor Warwick Davis at Develop on working with studio Matmi on Pocket Warwick, currently in development.

If last week’s quote from the head of PlayStation software development, Scott Rhode, wasn’t enough to put your mind at ease with regard to highly anticipated and in-no-way-canned Sony title, The Last Guardian, here’s another. This time it’s from the beautiful mind that brought us Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and is helping to (eventually) bring us The Last Guardian, the man himself, Fumito Ueda, who told Kotaku that work is indeed coming along on the title, “It’s been business as usual,” he said. “The only things that’ve really changed are the terms of my contract.”

So, there you have it. What more could you possibly want? Oh, you want the actual game? Oh. Right.

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“I will not give you a detailed update, but I will say one thing and it goes back to innovation and to gamers and to quality. [The Last Guardian] is going to ship when it’s absolutely ready. It’s going to ship at sometime, and it’s going to ship when it’s ready. And I think that’s a really important thing to remember, is that it would be very easy to ship a game when it’s not quite ready because we need to meet a business plan. Gamers are first, and the experiences we provide are first. And that’s why we’re gonna talk about that game when we’re ready to talk about it.” – PlayStation software development head Scott Rohde to Gamespot.

“I am not really decided about Wii U. I watch people playing and they sometimes seem to be confused about which screen they should look at when they play with the tablet.
I also feel that monitoring both screens turns out to be a bit demanding, as some games make it necessary to change your view from time to time between both screens.” – Peter Molyneux to Games Industry Germany via Eurogamer.

“Do I consider myself doing art? Honestly, certainly not. I don’t think I’m doing art. I’m just doing it by passion, and I’m doing what I believe in. If something of what we create today, people still talk about it 50 years from now, then we’ll say, ‘Okay, it was art.’ But that’s really not something I have in mind every morning. Honestly, I don’t care. I spend a year writing this stuff. It’s one year of my life doing this from morning to night, non-stop, for a year. And I put [in] a lot of myself. I’m not talking about me — I’m talking about what I feel, what I think. In that sense, yeah, I think I’m an auteur, in a way.” – Dave Cage to Gamasutra.

“They are not good enough for adults. For adults to enjoy something, they need to have intellectual stimulation, something that’s related to real life. Playing poker teaches you how to deceive people, and that’s relevant to real life. A headshot with a sniper rifle is not relevant to real life. Can games make you and another human experience an emotion that’s deep enough to touch adults? Games have to be relevant intellectually. – Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen to Gamasutra.

“To be honest, I’m not that interested in technology or the next generation of consoles. If we could continue with PlayStation 3 for another five years it would be fine with me. Are there technical things I can’t do on PS3? Honestly, no. The limitation is much more about the ideas we have. When you look at the past, you realised that the technology evolved must faster than the concepts we rely on. As an industry we have pretty much have been building the same games for fifty years, despite the platforms changing.” – Quantic Dream’s David Cage to Develop.

“The incentives for driving me out of my seat and into a shop is becoming increasingly limited. I don’t go to retail to buy a film. I don’t go to retail to buy music. I don’t go to buy books any more. And I’m certainly not that interested in buying games in shops, myself. If you look at everything that’s exciting, from the resurgence of PC to iPad and iPhones, it’s hard to see where retail fits into that.” – Peter Molyneux to Develop via MCV.

“I’m a level artist so for me, it’s all about the visual quality. I want more creative freedom and more great graphics, that’s what really makes me want to create games. I’m looking for like real-life animations. It’s like pushing the limit again and again, creating bigger and greater stuff. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but I want to see this, these great graphics being there on the screen. I hope its time comes soon and we won’t have to fight about pixels on the screen but worry more about delivering a true experience, the real emotion we can deliver through the game.” – CD Projekt lead level artist Marek Ziemak on what he wants out of future consoles to CVG. [image]

“People on the internet suggest the most boring settings. The three most wanted are WWII, feudal Japan and Egypt. They’re kind of the three worst settings for an AC game. Writer Corey May really wants to do India. I would too. I’d really love to do the Raj.” – Assassin’s Creed 3 creative director Alex Hutchinson to OXM.

“Wii U could be the first real console on which running an MMORPG without compromise is plausible. The controller is perfect for lining up those rows of hotbars that are essential in most MMOs. A customisable touchscreen interface combined with the 3D spatial movement of a console controller could be a winner.” – Funcom developer Joel Bylos to Official Nintendo Magazine.

“Darksiders was a huge risk because it was an old game in a new shell for us and for THQ because it’s a new studio, nobody there had made a console game before and it was a new IP. On paper, to be honest I don’t know why THQ went for it. I mean, the tech demo really nailed it, but I think any other publisher would just say ‘No way, but more power to you’, but they did. Then the game itself was a risk – we’re talking about a game that has an almost old-generation mentality where we’re willing to challenge you and not spoonfeed you the whole time. We had a strong tech demo and it looked really good, plus we had an engine. We created that engine, so I’m sure that if Darksiders had failed, there’d still be that engine there that’s worth pursuing.” – Vigil Games’ Jay Fitzloff to MCV on the riskiness of Darksiders.

“When I was the head of R&D at Capcom, I was in charge of 900 people. Now with these three companies, all of the staff added up, it’s around 30 people, so yes. Easy task. One of the things that I can do now that I couldn’t do at Capcom is I can just jump into some new creative venture that I never could. Like at Capcom, even if I had a really good idea, I had to sit there and pass it by a bunch of approval processes and get the okay from people to move forward, it would take six months. Here, I can have some great idea, and the very next day just say, ‘We’re going to do that,’ and we start doing it. – Keiji Inafune to Gamasutra during GDC. [image]

“Yeah. I did a bit. What I thought I unleashed was a family game. If you’ll stop to consider for a second, what’s the ping pong game? You can’t play ping pong with yourself. It was meant to be played by two people. And we had four-handed ping pong and hockey games early on, also. I always thought of it as a family game. And it just sort of degenerated into a one player type thing which was never in my mind.” – Ralph Baer on whether he “unleashed a monster” with Pong to David Friedman. Baer turned 90 this week.

“Notch is the games industry’s Justin Bieber right now. Let me walk you through this. Justin Bieber has exploded, and Justin Bieber, as much as many want to hate him, is a very talented guy. If you did a Venn diagram of Minecraft fans and Bieber fans, I’ve no idea what that would look like, but each one via the internet has been born into a seemingly over night success, even though it likely took a huge effort over a very long time. Being like that can help put you in the spotlight. Notch and Minecraft deserve every success they have.” – Cliff Bleszinski on Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson to Develop.

“Digital TVs are including all of that media stuff. I think the mistake that the console companies are making is not a mistake of their choice – it’s the evolution they have to go through. Once the other media hubs can have games – and I don’t mean Checkers, but things like Call of Duty – the public will get confused. With that in mind, who is able to make a TV? Sony is already making them, so it will have to take all that stuff into its TVs. So: my prediction is that Microsoft will have to make a TV. What choice do they have? There have been lots of reports that Apple has bought out a large LCD panel-making company. It’s pretty obvious that they’re on the trail too.” – David Perry to CVG.

“There’s just south of 300 maybe in the Providence studio, which is the core of the [Copernicus] MMO team. I’s set in the same universe [as Amalur], so it will become obvious over the next, I don’t know how many months and years of time. This game exists in the same world. In a small way, if you think of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and World of Warcraft, those were tied together because they were in the same IP, but there will be story connectivity between what we’re doing in the games. In the MMO, there will be races that you can play are monsters in the RPG. Things like that. Same locations, there will be cities and places, there will be a familiarity to it that… Nobody else, I think, has gone in with the intent to do that like this.” – 38 Studios head Curt Schilling to VentureBeat regarding the Kingdoms of Amalur-based MMO Copernicus.

“I thought turning around the PlayStation business was going to be the toughest challenge of my career, but I guess not. It’s one issue after another. I feel like ‘Holy shit, now what?’ We can’t just continue to be a great purveyor of hardware products, even though some people expect us to do that. We really need to buckle down and be realistic. I don’t think everybody is on board, but I think people are coming around to the idea that if we don’t turn this around, we could be sitting in some serious trouble.” – Sony CEO Kaz Hirai on fixing the firm’s hardware business to The Wall Street Journal.