Think about it from Nintendo’s perspective as well. Nintendo just released Smash4 and it’s getting mediocre-to-negative responses from the competitive community (at least from what I’ve seen) and they already don’t like Smash being a competitive game. If Project M took over it devalues Smash4 and Nintendo’s efforts so they probably wouldn’t look too kindly on Project M (even if they sanctioned it). From their stand point they probably want people to switch over to Smash 4 and give up on Melee.
Uhm, I’m not sure!
I’m Edmonton, but I’ve been around CC and EVO a few times so at the very least I might have seen you in passing.
i like PM and wish it well, but nintendo has no reason to support them at all. the fan backlash from shutting it down is basically nil when you look at the big picture of who’s spending dinero on smash and why. big mods - successful mods - like CS and DoD and TF had huge followings, original material, and sanctioned use of existing assets.
all that time spent using copyrighted material in PM could have been spent on an actual game that those people owned the rights to (that nobody would buy because it doesn’t have any pokemon in it).
if the community doesn’t like smash 4 (or brawl, which is easier to talk about because the history is clear for that one), it’s nintendo’s job to make a good game, not continue to force feed us a game we don’t like until we somehow like it
like… i can’t say i have any sympathy for nintendo. they chose to make the game they made. if they’re happy with the casual sales, then great! but many in the competitive community are not happy. either they care about that scene (in which case, they should have made a better game with the 15 years of data they could have gathered), or they don’t (in which case, they shouldn’t care that we prefer older games and fan mods)
there’s just a massive disconnect between what nintendo thinks we want and what we actually want, but they don’t want to hear us out when we try to explain ourselves (ie, by making project M and everyone in the scene continually supporting melee)
but you’re right, the main reason they want project M gone is because they’re scared people will find out just how FUN it is to play and/or watch. if PM was a terrible game that wasn’t exciting at all, nobody would play it and nintendo wouldn’t have to worry about anything. OR, if they were so convinced smash 4 was a better game/better direction for the series, then they should have no trouble putting it up against melee/PM and letting it slowly win because it’s actually the best.
i don’t think nintendo is scared at all ricky. i doubt they give 2 shits what some nerds are doing with a mod of a decade old game that 0.001% of total smash players have played, or even heard of. it’s more an issue of - here are some people using OUR property to promote THEIR game. we have no control over that experience. are people going to think we made this? what if this prompts a whole slew of like-projects for other properties? it’s easier to just wave our hand and make it go away, because we have 100% of the power in this relationship and they have 0.
well, the casuals aren’t playing PM, you’re right, so why does nintendo care about shutting them down so much? smash 4 sold really well and will continue to sell, so what do they care that a few hundred people really like it, if it has no true impact on their bottom line? they might care from a lawyer point of view and wag some stupid finger, but history has shown time and time again that doing this to well-meaning fans is just a bad idea.
i think it’s pretty clear, like killey said, that they’re even scared of melee, their own game. nintendo really wants people to move to smash 4, even though the game isn’t well received. i don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume that pretty soon, nintendo will “force” events they sponsor to only play smash 4 and give up on melee.
i’m just really, really sad that nintendo continues to be this blind, dumb elephant stumbling around and not learning ANY lessons about ANYTHING they ever do. this project M thing is far from an isolated incident showing their ignorance towards modern gaming.
well, i think these two statements are kind of contradictory… clearly nintendo cares what nerds are doing with a mod, if they’re willing to invest resources to shut it down. they might not care about the game itself, but they DO care.
but in reality, the second half of your message is correct, but no less frustrating. rather than taking control in a positive way, they incite 80% of the smash fan base with their decision. now… i guess you could say that the tournament fanbase for smash is so small that they shouldn’t give a shit, and maybe you’re right, but then why is nintendo trying to take such an interest in smash events recently? strangely, this is not even 1.5 years removed from nintendo trying to outright shut down melee at evo.
interestingly, project M would actually boost sales of brawl, lol. (yes you can pirate the game and play PM that way but you can do that for everything)
nintendo plugging their ears and shouting loudly over things like project M and the fan-made mother 3 translation and whatever else is just bad business. fans are telling them what they want, and then they’re even willing to do it themselves for free when nintendo decides it’s not something they’re interested in. shutting it down, instead of looking at dozens of other cases in modern gaming that show how you can actually leverage these amazing projects for the benefit of everyone involved, is just really, really stupid.
my brother has basically told me he will never buy another nintendo product again after a few years of watching nintendo be idiots towards a bunch of stuff. he’s sick of their attitude towards gamers and their lack of understanding of gaming and he’d rather support companies that do good things. sure, he’s just one person, but this attitude might become more common the more they do stuff like this.
The Project M guys should just make their own game from scratch. They’re competent people. They could do something like this and put it on Kickstarter.
as you can tell this is an important issue to me, because this is my fucking hobby and i’m sick and tired of seeing a million ways of improving it (with empirical data/observations to back up my and a million other gamers’ ideas) and literally getting nowhere. in fact, it’s worse than that, nintendo is outright regressing the smash scene
2014 was a pretty hard year for gamers in general, with everything released mega broken and companies basically proving they don’t give a shit and telling you straight to your face, both sony and MS showing disdain for supporters of their past consoles with lack of backwards compatibility for games and peripherals (which make fighting games insanely expensive to support), and i’m starting to think i should just find something else to do because the enjoyment:frustration ratio is starting to be really lopsided for me
a good idea in theory, but smash is only popular because of the characters. it’s a solid game with solid mechanics but it would never succeed without the nintendo IP.
i mean, would i play a perfect port of project M with 41 new characters? probably not
anyway, back to your regularly scheduled thread
Didn’t someone link a kick starter of a fan made game using the smash engine and the touhou franchise?
Shutting a project like that down doesn’t take any resources, their in-house legal department could handle it and the C&D is probably just a template they fill in the blanks on. Project M can’t even afford a lawyer… they should just take their game knowledge and move it to a new IP they create with thinly veiled copies of the Smash roster. But then if they would lose most of the player base, what’s the point? They had a good run and it’s going to look pretty good on the resumes of the top designers involved. Hopefully they can find rewarding jobs.
2014 was an awful, worst ever year for gamers. Not because of anything the big companies did tho… it was all that gamergate bullshit. What an epic, history making embarrassment that is
ricky, this is business. Nintendo can’t be allowing people to modify their games. you wouldn’t like it if i took your Killer Instinct website and modified it and “made it better”.
2014 was pretty good for me, gameswise (ps i realize this might look like a jab @ ricky but i was just thinking about it and nintendo made up most of my fav purchases this year)
dk:tf
titanfall
mario kart 8
hyrule warriors
smash4
I probably would, though? lol
because I’m a person who cares about that site, if you a) had real evidence as to how to make my site better (for example, not just taking a template off the internet like i did and actually designing a KI-centric site) and b) were willing to put in 100 hours of work to see your vision become reality, I would almost certainly work with you to improve my site
some of the most successful games in the history of gaming have been made in the last 10 years, almost all of them started because somebody modified an existing game. so yes, i think nintendo can (but obviously won’t) allow people to modify their games.
also in doing research of what came out this year:
THERES AN HD JAGGED ALLIANCE GAME??? WATTTTTTTTTTTT
plz take my money
nah, even in a really bad year for gaming there will obviously be some good games released, i’m glad you found lots to enjoy
Who cares? Obviously they don’t have the advantage of brand recognition, which is why they make something completely new for a niche who does care.
<3
I’d (almost) love to see Nintendo be super dicks and try to force everyone to stop playing melee in efforts to make them play smash 4.
The blowback would be epic. Maybe force them to finally wake up?