No more dev blogging for Jeff Minter

by Richard Mitchell { Nov 26th 2007 at 11:45AM }

Following last week's sour rant about the poor sales of Space Giraffe, and more importantly after the response to said rant, Jeff Minter has announced that he will no longer use his LiveJournal blog to chronicle game development. Minter has a new set of harsh words for those that felt the need to disagree with his rant, while he has words of gratitude for those that encouraged him. He also reassures the masses that he is not giving up game development, and is in fact halfway through his next project. Furthermore, Minter notes that there are "a couple of reasonably quick games" in the works, which he believes is "the way to make it work out" for Llamasoft.

So there you have it folks, the world hasn't heard the last of Jeff Minter. Frankly, we're glad to hear it.

[Image (minus the caption) via Gamasutra]

Tags: jeff-minter, llamasoft, space-giraffe

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

itsburnsie @ Nov 26th 2007 11:48AM

Maybe if this guy spent less time being an internet A-hole and more time on the actual development of his games, they would sell.

/just sayin'

xenocidic @ Nov 26th 2007 11:49AM

what the f___ is he doing to that llama?!

as I stated in the previous post, I think Jeff's lashing out is designed to generate (negative) publicity for his game. i certainly checked it out due to his ranting about OXM's 2.0 review.

which will certainly increase the trial side of SG's trial to purchase ratio , and maybe even generate a few sales.

TORO @ Nov 26th 2007 11:56AM

I never heard of this guy, but I already don't care about his "work"

AnOffday @ Nov 26th 2007 12:02PM

I agree with #1. This guy's annoying.

Gemini Ace @ Nov 26th 2007 12:03PM

Can nothing make him stop? I think an internet petition is in order to get him to stop. Then he'll have more time to spend growing his hair and humping llamas.

AnOffday @ Nov 26th 2007 12:05PM

lmao. Best post ever goes to #5.

Deezul @ Nov 26th 2007 12:05PM

Didn't know who made Space Giraffe, and I thought it sucked. Now I KNOW who did, and what games to not even waste a trial download on. Thanks Jeff!

krusty @ Nov 26th 2007 12:12PM

Jeff Minter is the Derek Smart of the 360 platform.

AnOffday @ Nov 26th 2007 12:13PM

He's basically a hippie who releases drug trips over the form of what he considers a "video game." I like how on the website he refers to himself as a "legend." Go do more drugs, llama boy. Your games suck.

dunnypop @ Nov 26th 2007 12:22PM

he should make to something that will sell... like Heroine Hero.

I Dex I @ Nov 26th 2007 12:30PM

You all have Jeff Minter on your 360. When you play your music and view the trippy visuals that sync with your music...that is Jeff's creation. He also did the Tempest remake for the Jaguar, I believe.

TX2Step @ Nov 26th 2007 12:41PM

That's David Jaffe said and he's still blogging. Whiners.

peeweejd @ Nov 26th 2007 12:47PM

quick someone call the care police!

malren @ Nov 26th 2007 12:57PM

This guy can kiss my X-hole.

For those of you unfamiliar, the X-hole is a special void created on your body after being reamed by the RRoD more than twice. It is widened, and begins to ooze slightly, whenever said victim is then faced with terrible games made by jerk developers.

This, in all it's gaping, partially putrified, oozing glory is the hole I invite Minter to kiss.

gameblows @ Nov 26th 2007 12:58PM

When you install WinAmp and it launches and plays "WinAmp- it really whips the llama's ass", are they talking about whipping Jeff Minter's ass?

I bet he grows some sweet, sweet bud though on his llama farm.

door0122 @ Nov 26th 2007 1:06PM

That's a great way to implore new consumers to buy your product. Bitch them out for disagreeing with you. You thought you made a good game. The masses disagree. Get over yourself. You want to make a "quality" game, then be prepared for it to not be as successful as a mainstream game would be. Anybody with a half a brain would know that's what's going on in this industry. Such is life. Get over it. Make a product that people will enjoy more and it'll do better. Don't whine about it and yell at people for not agreeing. Seriously, what kind of upbringing did you have? My parents taught me from an early age that complaining about something was pointless. Either do something to correct the problem, or let it go.

felkdogg @ Nov 26th 2007 1:11PM

I've been reading this stories as if this guy actually deserved a moment. I just looked up his wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Minter and realized what a worthless developer this guy is. I'm pretty sure a hobby programmer with half an education could produce a better body of work then Jeff.

Deano @ Nov 26th 2007 1:12PM

I'm a fan of Jeff's work having grown up with 8 and 16 bit machines. Anyone who's played those games know that he cares passionately about making fun, quirky shooters. Personally I think he should have been a bit more thick-skinned about the SG experience and not worn his heart on his sleeve quite so intensely. I posted some thoughts about what could be learned along with others and I'm disappointed he pulled those comments.

Nevertheless I went back to SG a few days ago and I have to say the visuals are nowhere near as impenetrable as many have claimed. If players actually use their eyes and *focus* everything is there to be seen. And it is a beautiful, pulsating game with a clever redesign of Tempest that makes me wonder why it wasn't like that from day one. Not for everyone of course, but then neither is say, Halo 3.

And oddly after playing alot of GHIII my SG performance improved a lot...

stinger503 @ Nov 26th 2007 1:13PM

THEY CONTACTED HIM TO DO THEY VISUALIZERS! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING! Couldn't they have just put in the bars and scope like media player!? That would make me happy.

J @ Nov 26th 2007 2:14PM

I actually kind of liked space giraffe. It was a tip of the hat to some old school games that I grew up with.

John Williams @ Nov 26th 2007 3:38PM

So basically, he's taking his ball and he's going home...

AttilaButurla @ Nov 26th 2007 3:52PM

I actually think Space Giraffe is a lot of fun. It took a good 30 minutes or so to get used to, but after that I had a blast with it.

I think the problem here is it is a deep game that can easily be dismissed as a Tempest clone. Most people probably just play it for 5 minutes and don't it the time that it requires to get up the learning curve.

Etchasketchist @ Nov 26th 2007 4:17PM

I'm going to try to avoid a fight with the haters because "Yourgamesucksgofuckallama" isn't really a good place to start a debate so I'll just see if I can explain why SG is dope.

It's not really a shooter. It's definitely not a Tempest clone. In Tempest you basically shoot everything and if they come up to the rim you're fucked and you die. A classic shooter mentality where you just blast everything that you see on the screen is a very boring and incorrect way to play SG. The way to play and appreciate its brilliance is to use the gun to sort of herd as many enemies as possible to the rim while keeping your powerzone extended. You're constantly looking for the balance between picking off a few baddies to keep the zone extended or release jump pods (which also extend the zone) and letting them all crawl up to the edge so you can "bull them off". Bulling is an incredibly satisfying feeling because it jacks your multiplyer up and is the only way to get decent scores. Then he adds all kinds of risk/reward factors into the mix so you constantly have to make strategic decisions. And he uses the simple vector graphics of Tempest to make some really brain-twisting levels that are just a marvel of perspective and surface geometry. So just as you think you've got it figured out on the simple, flat early levels, later levelts flip things inside out and upside down in ways that give each of the 100 levels it's own particular character. Then their are feedback monsters which are one of the coolest bad guys in videogamedom. Killing them totally disrupts the visual field and make it harder to see what's going on. But seeing is not the only way to navigate SG. After you've decoded all of the audio cues, you can practically play the game blindfolded. So when it's all working and clicking, it's pure videogaming awesomeness: sound, graphics, mathematics, controls and software working in sync with your brain. Easy to play (admittedly tough to learn with the bare bones tutorial but the controls are pretty basic) but really hard to master. It's pure gameplay, no story or cut scenes or even boss battles. It's really quite great. That said, I grew up on Atari and 8-bit games and experimented with psychedelics in high school so I'm the target demo.

For all you sweet super dudes who are so much cooler and awesomer than Jeff Minter, go write some more love letters to your bro Cliffy B and quit beating up on the poor dude. He's a shareware developer who gets pissy on the internet. Big friggin' deal. Save the hate for EA.

Steve @ Nov 26th 2007 4:37PM

Just ignore this asshole. he's trying the "Derek Smart" approach. Stir up shit and let the negative pub. drive traffic to you. Fuck him and everyone like him.

fretster @ Nov 26th 2007 5:07PM

I think Minter is a hero, Space Giraffe has saved me easily over $200 in 'shroom costs; well worth the paltry amount of points being charged for it.

In all seriousness though, I remember all of the hype about him working on a new game and stuff... what did it all amount to? A pile of crap. The only reason it probably got thrown on XBLA is because of his past work experiences, but one must never rely too much on their past accomplishments as it leads to being a lazy twat who has nothing to do but cry about his poorly selling title.

Anticrawl @ Nov 26th 2007 5:28PM

@Etchasketchist

So we should hate EA blindly eh? Even when they aren't actually developing the game and only function as the publisher? I suppose garage/indie developers should give up all hope of hitting the mainstream or making it big because we should all boycott everything big-house publishers label?

You're a bigger jackass than I realized Etchasketchist. I can tell now why you're such a fan of the sheep.

I'm a fan of good games, no matter who publishes them, what platform they're on, or how much "heart/time" one put into said games.

Etchasketchist @ Nov 26th 2007 6:14PM

@Anticrawl

Chill baby-bubba. No need to get all ad hominem up in my grill. EA's cool. Whatevah. NBA Live is crap though. Sorry my little throw-away line threw you into such a tizzy of rhetorical questioning. Sounds like you got a lot on your mind. Wanna talk about it?

Congrats on being a fan of good games, by the way. That's really awesome.

Anticrawl @ Nov 27th 2007 12:10AM

@Etchasketchist

Someone has some issues. I never once said I was a fan of those games, and I perticularly find in-house developed EA titles to be terrible, but to blindly hate everything to come from them is foolish. All the titles you mentioned were developed by EA, my comment was on the publishing aspect. How the hell else are small developers suppose to get on their feet without the help of big publishers? Smaller publishers aren't typically willing to risk spending money on an unknown rag-tag group of kids making a game on their spare time, no matter how good the game is.

You keep doing what you have to do Etchasketchist, I'm gonna go enjoy some quality game time.

brad77 @ Nov 27th 2007 2:03AM

"You keep doing what you have to do Etchasketchist, I'm gonna go enjoy some quality game time."

Wow. Simmer down now. You work at EA or something?

Anticrawl @ Nov 27th 2007 2:11AM

@brad77

Actually at the moment I don't own any EA published or developed games. Haven't since Battlefield 2 but it's ignorant to blindly hate a corporation as a whole when they have put several small developers on the map by publishing there games. If you were trying to get in the business, made an honest great game and had the chance to get the game funded and distributed you're telling me you wouldn't take that option? And if you did would you want people ignoring your game just because of the publisher label? I'd think not.

While I don't like giving money to big corporations the fact of the matter is that even big publishing companies can help out the industry.

Bud Light @ Nov 27th 2007 5:48AM

My word. What an unpleasant bunch of children you all are.

Scott Ores @ Nov 27th 2007 9:41AM

I think that if he just stopped whinning and playing with his llama's he might be able to focus just enough to maybe make a decent game...

dan stabbingworth @ Nov 27th 2007 1:16PM

@ Etchasketchist

SG is dope to you. The other 99.9% of us think it is shit. Here's an easy way to look at it: add "to me" to the end of your sentences.

"Bulling is an incredibly satisfying feeling" (to me)

"So when it's all working and clicking, it's pure videogaming awesomeness" (to me)

I suppose you could add "to me and a handful of other people"

Regardless, this game deserved the 2.0 it got and the poor sales that ensued.