dude it’s just one customer, don’t waste your energy
In the heady days of the 1990s Britpop scene, Liam Galagher threatened to actually beat up Blur’s Damon Albarn, using his fists and everything.
I think our industry can never hold its head up high with truly grown-up media unless we too are prepared to get physical with some proper fisticuffs. All this name-calling would be quite hard if we were 7 or 8, but for grown ups it is merely a prolegomenon to actually getting a bit tasty.
You could write a blog post calling Mr. Rogers a twat and the anonymous internet gaggle would pile on. The subject doesn’t actually matter, people just like to gossip. We’re descended from monkeys, jostling for social position in the tribe is genetics, man.
Yeah… Comments on an indie dev blog about a big company guy being a dick are, not surprisingly, supportive of the accusation.
I’m talking about actual corroborative stories of Mark Rein being a dick. I haven’t seen them. This is not like Bobby Kotick, where we have actual audio of him on investor calls making dick comments. The interviews I’ve seen of Mark Rein make him seem like a normal guy.
Also, it doesn’t rhyme.
I stand in awe.
Now cliffski gets to find out if his reputation will help or harm his business.
I’m sure it will help him. People love a good story about the little guy defying the big bad businesses.
That picture of Mark is awesome. I don’t know why I love it, I just do.
Mark Rein lecturing this particular group ofindie guys is like a Hallmark card writer lecturing Billy Collins.
Sure, Hallmark Cards sell a ton … but, how do you compare that to a poet laureate.
Oh FFS…
I enjoy GSB, don’t always agree with cliffski on the boards, but I think he is perfectly on the nose here. The main point being that someone from a huge studio was at a presentation about indie developers and basically scoffing at the fact that they actual deal with their customers on a 1on1 basis.
I do a lot of support with a local small theater troupe here and I have seen this same type of behavior happening. Basically, the success of these small, independent troupes (game developers) is to do ground breaking work that is original, and often doesn’t mesh well with mass market sensibilities. Because of this, they need to make sure their audience that they do have, they interact with well and can count on over the years to support the troupe. This means their managing directors often have a completely different required skill set than say a managing director for a Broadway theatrical show. It would be extreme arrogance for a managing director of Billy Elliot to tell a managing director of a small experimental theater troupe how to handle customer relations. Now, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t talk about managing talent, booking locations, salary negotiations and such. But the way to market and interact with your customer base is completely different between these two groups even though they technically work in the same field.
The same type of overlap is on display here with Mark Rein. To presume that your knowledge of mass market success somehow means that you can scoff at others who survive in the independent market shows extreme levels of arrogance, and jerkiness. Does this mean Mark might not have advice on how to move into the AAA levels of success, or how to build a technical engine or strong brand? No, and if that was the type of advice he was giving (and had been asked for) then cliffski might be off the mark. But in this instance, I think he is dead-on. Of course, there are tactful ways to handle this, and this might not be that. But I don’t think cliffski is too concerned with burning bridges between himself and Epic, so he doesn’t seem to really need to worry about the tact in this situation.
That’s what you get for delving into Kotaku comments, Warren. You should know better.
You haven’t read many interviews with him then. He’s done this kind of thing a number of times before. He just typically picks on bigger companies like Nintendo when he acts dismissive.
Links?
I’ve read the comments he’s made about PC development that everyone went crazy over, but it just didn’t strike me as dickish. Other than that, he just seems like a normal business guy. Perhaps that puts him in a category more arrogant than the newspaper vendor on the corner or the average desk-minion, but I didn’t see anything that makes him out to be a roving asshole just looking to belittle indie devs.
I’m not calling cliffski a liar, but I just haven’t seen any compelling evidence.
Is there no audio or video of this panel? That seems unusual in this day and age. SOMEBODY must have been recording it, right?
Mark Rein’s hobby is saying stupid things that betray his ignorance. Usually he just does it to the people who have nothing better to do than interview him, though.
He looks like Adam Corolla in that picture. And I remember him looking a lot bigger the last time I met him. He reminded me of a large soccer dad or something.
True, but hurling empty whiskey bottles has a lot more drama than hurling empty two-liter jugs of Mr. Pibb.
I mean, seriously, what kind of a name is “Alan Wake”?
I don’t see any reason to doubt cliffskis version of events. I can’t see what he has to gain etc for saying it if it’s not how it happened or it made him feel.
The fact he may have not acted like a dick, prick or any other thing before doesn’t mean he didn’t then. All of us at some time act like dicks and deserve to be called on it that includes Mark Rein, with or without You Tube Video proof, undercover camcorder recordings or whatever else you seem to think we need to have as proof.