American McGee needs no introduction. The veteran PC developer has a lot of experience under his belt and in an interview with Forbes, he revealed his thoughts on the recent SimCity debacle and why both the parties need to calm down.
“There are right and wrong ways to solve the problem, for sure. Customers have a right to expect that products they’ve purchased perform as advertised,” he said.
“That being said, developers and publishers face extinction if they can’t solve the piracy issue while at the same time addressing the demands gamers make regarding connected and accessible games (I see these two things going together).”
He is based in China and there are plenty of gaming companies there that aren’t affected by piracy and make profitable games.
“Western developers have some obstacles to overcome before they get there. Not sure I see how incendiary media coverage or player reactions are warranted when things don’t work as expected,” he revealed.
“Do gamers or the media think EA or Blizzard wanted things to go so badly at launch? Do they think all the screaming and gnashing of teeth actually helped resolve those issues more quickly? There’s got to be a balance to the relationship.”
His analogy was quite humorous as well.
“Just because you’ve given a restaurant your business doesn’t entitle you to throwing molten cheese fries in your waiter’s face if your margarita comes out frozen instead of on the rocks. People need to relax a little and stop turning everything into World War III – Gamers vs. The Man. There are no winners in that scenario.”
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