Stanislas Mettra, the I Am Alive creative director who made controversial remarks about PC gaming this week, has attempted to retract/explain/downplay his outburst.
What Stanislas Mettra originally said: PC gamers were “bitching” about I Am Alive not being on PC. He then questioned whether PC gamers really wanted I Am Alive on PC, or were just “making noise” because they felt hard done by. Mettra went on to say a PC port, which may take a team of 12 people three months to make, was “not worth it” if only 50,000 people bought it.
In a subsequent email to IncGamers, Mettra wrote how he would “really love” to see I Am Alive on PC, and that his comment ‘the game won’t happen on PC’ was “probably and English language miscommunication” (English isn’t his native tongue).
“What I meant,” Mettra explained, “is that the PC version did not happen yet. But we are still working to see the feasibility of it, which is not necessarily simple. I gave some examples to illustrate the problematic [sic], but obviously it is not in my hands and not my part to talk about this.
“Honestly, which game maker would not love his game to be playable on as many platforms and by as many people as possible?”
Mettra ended his email with a word about “the pleasure” of the game mattering more than the platforms it was on.
Mettra’s original comments were unlikely to have gone down well with I Am Alive publisher Ubisoft, for which PC gaming has become a sensitive subject. Late PC conversions of multi-platform games and intrusive DRM have dogged the publisher’s desktop reputation. And yesterday it was discovered that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier won’t be released on PC – free-to-play adaptation Ghost Recon Online will be the equivalent offering.
The unwritten supposition of Mettra’s comments and the Ghost Recon Online news is that Ubisoft no longer wants to develop multiplatform games for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Published: Nov 25, 2011 12:00 am