Jason Rubin To Leave Naughty Dog 23
Thanks to GameSpot for its story revealing Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin is leaving the company after Jak III is completed. Rubin, who has a long history in the games industry, helping create both the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises, mentions he's "made a conscious decision to leave Naughty Dog and explore other options in the gaming sector", arguably not a surprise since his recent DICE Conference speech on the disrespect paid to game developers. The GameSpot article notes: "While Rubin's speech took game publishers to task for not valuing talent, he maintains he was not singling out Sony", and a separate interview fleshes out Rubin's feedback from the speech, noting: "So far nobody has said anything negative, but those who do not want to hear what was said won't be the types to comment directly."
WotW 2? (Score:5, Funny)
It's been years since we've had a fighter with characters filmed entirely in garages and hallways.
Sure, it was a crappy game, but there wasn't much else to play on the 3DO.
Rings of Power (Score:2, Informative)
It was a massive epic of a game, with such an immense challenge and great combat system that it kept me intrigued for 2 months.
It was under promoted by EA at the time because they were just realizing how much money could be made from fifa x (where x == next year)
Re:WotW 2? (Score:1)
Re:WotW 2? (Score:3, Informative)
As a fan of Naughty Dog's work, I was kind of saddened to hear about Rubin's leaving, but I have a feeling he knows what he's doing, and that gamers definately won't be hearing the last of him.
More power to this man (Score:5, Insightful)
I read this and was reminded how sad the reality of this is. Of those of us who are gamers, who can name the lead designers on our 5 favorite games? I can't name any of them myself. I can name all of the publishers though. It's really sad that the most important people responsible for the game are hardly acknowledged.
Until this changes, we can expect the game industry to further spiral into sequal and cross-licenced stagnation, since those are the "safe bets" that publishers are generally only willing to finance.
Re:More power to this man (Score:5, Interesting)
I learned to follow designers as best I could, not publishers. Their games aren't necessarily for everyone, but they consistantly make the games I want to play.
Though I certainly had to make a concerted effort to follow the games closely to figure out where the common level of quality was coming from.
I give publishers credit only when they hire and cultivate the talent I appreciate, but when they frustrate it till it leaves (Roper, et al.), they lose that credit in a hurry.
Of course, I don't mean to discount the teams of professionals that make these games I love, nor the stacks of other designers who have consistantly chipped in with key supporting roles and technology. I'd like to know and recognize and celebrate them as well.
but Rubin's absolutely right. The talent is not celebrated nearly enough. You can see this simply in how many more actors, writers, and directors casual film fans can name off, as compred to designers, programmers, and producers that even hardcore gamers know.
Trust me, I can rattle of a much longer list of movie professionals whose work I consistently enjoy, even though I love games more.
I'd love it if development talent was more celebrated. Though, mainstream attempts to celebrate talent in the past haven't exactly been productive for anyone involved. (*cough*Romero*cough*)
Re:More power to this man (Score:2)
Wright - Will Wright, Sims series
Meier - Sid Meier, Civiliation series
Koster - Ralph Koster, Star Wars Galaxies/Everquest
Spector - Warren Spector, Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex
Watamaniuk - I have no idea...
Cooke - I have no idea
I personally cannot name the 5 designers of my five favorite games, but I can at least name the developer houses in addition to the publisher.
Re:More power to this man (Score:1)
as for clarifications:
Raph Koster is from UO, SWG, and legendMud (not EQ: that would be McQuaid and Smedley chiefly)
Monte Cook
Re:More power to this man (Score:2)
Re:More power to this man (Score:1)
Out of curiosity (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think that American games designers don't deserve even the level of attention that their Japanese counterparts get?
Do you think the talent in the game industry is less worthy of celebration than the talent in the film industry?
A very big implication of Rubin's point is the way the indy film scene is much more active than indy gaming. With films, the
Designers and developers just aren't known to the public (and thereby investors). And the existing publishers certainly don't want to support any sort of trend that might pit their other products against 'their own' designers.
With publisher dominance of gaming, professional designers can't even lend a hand in an indy game design without threatening their employment.
Tolerating publisher dominance results the glut of uninspired rehash and licensing that we're currently seeing. Except, our gaming standbys are already more pronounced than Hollywood's. I'd much rather have a system where the talent is recognized, so they can gain clout and leverage, so they can help the indy scene (and thereby the genre) expand.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:1)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2, Informative)
I've been having an argument with a couple friends about this for the last hour, and one of them just pointed out that Jason Rubin tried to hire one of my top five developers (Mitzuguchi). I retract my previous statements.
I guess I've just been burned one too many times by guys with a good head of hair and a high ranking position. My apologies.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:1, Flamebait)
Because he's being a whiny bitch. There's nothing there. At the end of the day Game Designers are game designers. They're not rock stars or movie stars and nobody gives 2 shits about 99% of what they do. The life of a game designer isn't glamorous.
And this is where I call bullshit. There are those peopl
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
But why shouldn't developers be featured more prominently? What is inherently more glamorous about making a movie than making a game? That you're in Hollywood? That you direct a camera to take pictures of actors, rather than directing level designers to populate scenes around 3d meshes?
What is inherently more glamorous about writing a movie script as opposed to a gameplay s
Re:More power to this man (Score:2)
Re:More power to this man (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the gaming industry, I am not by any mea
Cult of personality (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of all the actors/directors who continue to produce crap and get paid $20 million for it because they have a recognized name. Without celebrity worship, we might have been spared Terminator 3, Gigli, and everything Michael Chriton has done since Andromeda Strain or perhaps Westworld.
(momentary pause to appreciate memory of the burning Yul Brynner robot)
Think of all the afternoon TV slots dedicated to what Brad Pitt had for breakfast or what kind of fabric is squashed up J-Lo's ass this week.
Rubin makes the argument that unrecognized developers become jaded and content suffers. I'd be afraid that celebrity developers would become blinded by the crowds and the content would suffer. Or maybe we'd be distracted by so many award shows and "G! True Siliwood Stories" that we wouldn't pay attention to qaulity.
There must be a better way to recognize and reward talent than the American Idol route.
Game developers (Score:4, Interesting)
One could say that you cannot compare the situation of recognition in the games industry to that of recognition in the films industry, but after all, why not? When you think about it, in some way, they really aren't so different. That's why I believe it's also unfair game developrs do not get as much recognition as their film equivalents do.
For example, just about everyone knows who George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are, and that just thanks to their films -- even if some people haven't seen them. But most casual gamers do not even know the names of the producers of the biggest games. Of course, a lot of them know who Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto are, but these same people couldn't name the main producer of their favorite games.
I think the problem lies in that the game developers' merits are not publicised enough. Whereas when you go to see a film, the directors' name is in a font as big as that of the actors' namers, when you buy a game, you'll only find the credits once you've finished reading the manual, or finished the game. Most gamers cannot recognise a game developer simply because the people who are actually behind the games do not revendicate their involvement in the making of the games enough.
On the other hand, I had hardly played MDK when I developed an obsession for David Perry simply by reading what he had done in the booklet attached to the game which my friend had handed to me.
It is clear that the industry needs to attach much more importance to the people behind the best games.
Re:Game developers (Score:2)