I realize there are always people that operate on the edge of what we consider periphery of “acceptable” social standards.  They march to the beat of their own drum.  They have their own little fixations and fascinations.  Sometimes, they even have honest to God skills in one area or another… my experience has taught me it’s usually in the arts, but not always.

This week’s “incident” from Jeff Minter’s blog made me laugh.  Jeff Minter is just such an iconic curmudgeon from the 70’s.  He looks like a hippie, has a strange fascination for llamas, and had programmed some decent (if not derivative) videogames in his time.

His recent entry went a little like this (okay, it went EXACTLY like this as this is a quote):

“not seeing a lot of reason to continue even trying to make games, at this point, when a remake of Frogger, 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, by more than ten to one, in one week.

OK, we get the message. All you want on that channel is remakes of old, sh*te arcade games and crap you vaguely remember playing on your Amiga.

We’ll shut up trying to do anything new then.

Sorry for even trying.“

Wow.  Bitter much?  I mean, yeah, you put out a crap game and people aren’t going to buy it.  That’s what happens when people have access to “good” games and you put out “bad” games. Also, being angry that people bought Frogger instead of Space Giraffe should make you look at your product and your company a bit more than all the people buying Frogger.  If you had provided a compelling game, I’m sure they would’ve bought your game instead.

But I didn’t want to really focus too much on the bitching and moaning of Minter, but I wanted to take more of a look at what exactly got him to the level he is now that he thinks whatever he releases should be “taken in” by the masses.

Do you remember when the 360 was about to be released and Jeff Minter was hired to do the visualization for the audio player?  I remember seeing interviews, sneak peeks, behind the scenes stuff, etc. on the visualization built into the 360.  But you know what?  It’s nothing special.  There.  I said it.  I get more pleasure watching the Goom or G-Force visualizations from Xbox Media Center… the 360’s visualization doesn’t impress me.  Jeff Minter, you don’t impress me.  At least not in the way you think you should.  Any coder that still gets by coding in Assembly automatically gets a certain level of respect from me, but when you come off as arrogant, expecting people to automatically “get” whatever it is  your games are inspired by, then you’re out there (likely) on your own again buddy…

Minter’s thing seems to be “trippy”.  You know what?  I don’t really care for trippy.  I don’t really care for llamas and their strangely long necks…  I mean, yeah, they have long necks but Giraffes have longer necks.  Who cares about llamas?  I’ll tell you who, llama farmers care about llamas.

I don’t “get” the fascination with Minter’s work (at least in today’s gaming landscape).  I don’t get why people put the guy up on a pedestal.  To me, and this may be incredibly naive of me, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, the guy comes off as the nerdy, socially challenged “live on a farm with my animals” guy that happens to write games.  Nothing in there suggests he should be getting any special attention.

The guy seems to have written several visualizations and arcade clones over the years… I find it rather ironic and hilarious that he combines the two things he’s done best and when it flops, he points the finger at anyone but himself.  Maybe it’s time to branch out a bit there Jeff.  Come up with a NEW game.  One you can see.  Sober.  Go away.  Come back when you have something worth releasing.  Am I wrong?  Am I too harsh?  Tell me what you think (no, really!)

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