Last weekend was the Develop conference over in the UK, which featured many keynotes from people such as Tim Schaufer, as well as presentations from many different spectrums of the gaming community, including indie developers. Of course when you get a lot of creative people in a room together, there's bound to be some people that butt heads.
Of course, you don't expect people to be complete douchebags at something like this, do you?
Apparently Epic's Mark Rein felt the need to open his fat mouth and talk shit to a panel of indie developers DURING THEIR OWN PRESENTATION.
The panel was made up of the UK indie developers (read: they run their own game development studios, and don't have a "bigger boss" to answer to other than maybe their investors)Cliff Harris (Positech Games), Robin Lacey(Beatnik), Sean Murray(Hello Games) and Mark Morris(Introversion). They were discussing the topic of how Indie studios get a lot more of the ability to have a one-on-one conversation with their consumers, thus creating a more positive experience for those who buy their games, when a snort (which probably sounded like this) arose from the audience. It was none other than Epic's Mark Rein, and he had something to say. Taken directly from Cliff Harris's blog post on the subject:
"At this point, there was this derisive snort from this guy in the front row, who said something to the effect of ‘one guy? who cares, that’s a waste of time’. He then started to lecture us on how that’s a silly way to do it. I’m 95% sure that all four of us on the panel thought ‘what the fuck?’ as well as ‘who is this guy’? compounded by Robin asking him if he worked in marketing.
Anyway… it turned out this guy was Mark Rein from Epic, although he seemed to assume everyone within earshot knew exactly who he was, and why he must obviously be right. I got the impression he was there to laugh at the little guys, or to just inform us how we are all wrong."
Yeah, it seems like a pretty douchebag thing to do. Even Cliff Bleszinski [Epic Studios] (via twitter) didn't really approve of what was said, though he said he was sure that he had a reason for acting in that fashion, though he hadn't spoken with him yet.
Well, this week he's apologized for his statement, saying in the email that:
"It was completely rude of me to interrupt your panel with my opinion no matter how well intentioned. I'm supremely passionate about the plight of indie developers, and game developers in general, and I heard something I thought was incorrect advice and I just couldn't keep my big mouth shut."
Now, that doesn't really seem like that much of an apology. He still sounds like he's saying that the indie developers were up there and what they were saying was wrong. I don't personally know Mark Rein, but a lot of other blog sites have said that he isn't much of a douchebag, only that he seems to speak his mind, and is very excitable. Either way, I don't think that (by any stretch) excuses the fact that he interrupted another developers panel (not even raising his hand to comment or anything) in front of a lot of people, and then rattled on about how wrong they were.
It makes sense to me that indie studios get more one-on-one time with their fans. A smaller-scaled operation is always going to be better at communication than something as big as Epic. I mean, think of it this way: You have more of a chance of getting to know the people who run the shop of a family owned and run grocery store than you would to know the staff of a large chain of grocery stores.
Simply put: because there's less of a target market, you have a little more availability to talk to everyone.
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