A little over the top

Chris Hecker has apologized for calling the Wii a piece of shit! If you missed out, Chris Hecker, one of the developers for Spore, attacked Nintendo during a session at GDC 2007 this week. Calling the Wii “…Two Gamecubes haphazardly stuck together with duct tape”, and saying that “Nintendo for not taking games as a serious art form”.

Chris has done a complete 180 today, apologizing and saying that he “was trying to be thought provoking and entertaining and fun, and a lot of the stuff went too far over the top”.

You think?

Chris won an award at last year’s GDC for his very thought-provoking speech on how we, as a people, are privileged to be living at a time when the medium of video games is emerging, and how we need to be careful how we craft it. He’s not a stupid guy. I really do believe he was speaking out of personal frustration with the processing limitations of the Wii from the perspective of someone who’s trying to implement a very processor heavy game. That said, there’s a time and place to vent those frustrations, and blasting Nintendo up and down during a public talk is not exactly what we would refer to as Politico.

The Wii was never supposed to be a power-house. Nintendo decided to move in a risky and wildly different direction as one would expect they would, because that’s how Nintendo avoids playing in a three way tug of war for quality content. Criticize that if you like for being the wrong move, but don’t just upend them as if they have, in some way, completely taken a face-plant just because the platform isn’t appropriate for YOUR game.

I suspect that a lot of his friends and co-workers ripped him a new one after that talk. Lesson learned I hope. Go back to making Spore as good as it should be and leave Nintendo to do their thing.