Project AM2R Creator Earns Job Working on Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Gz

Now to wait for the po-faced commentators saying he should be chucked into the seething pits of hell for his transgressions instead.

But really, this is fantastic news. I've said it before, but the chap has always conducted himself admirably, and the best outcome of the events would be that he got opportunities to work on something a little more 'above board' than high-quality 'fanmakes'.

The standard counter-argument against what he's done is that if someone is skilled enough to remake an existing game, then they should work on something original instead. But that misses the point that in order to develop those skills in the first place, it's often necessary to cut your teeth on something familiar. Pretty much every other creative field accepts some form of 'imitation' and 'learning from the greats' as a valuable part of the instruction. Imagine teaching someone an instrument but forbidding them to play anything ever written before on it because they should 'make something original'.

Of course, when you start putting your fan-project into the public realm, that's where things get hairy. Even if you're not making any money from it, you're still entering it into the marketplace, and the owners of the IP have every right to take it down. And with Samus Returns on the horizon, Nintendo would be foolish if they didn't.

The real mark of the creator is whether they can accept the decision with good grace, and this chap has done exactly that.

AM2R may not have had long in the sun, but its creation has provided opportunities for its creator to develop some technical skills and a thorough, hands-on appreciation of game design that may have been hard to come by otherwise.

And his detractors who've been telling him to 'go do something original' from the start? Well, they've got their wishes granted as well. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is not only 100% original, but looking absolutely fantastic. The only sad part is that it's (understandably) not coming to a Nintendo console.

Well he sure shot up in the world. Best of luck to him.

Microsoft hired them before Nintendo could.
There was the occasion to do so and they picked it.
Nintendo could have gone the Sonic Mania route, but they preferred playing it safe, hesitated, and lost a potential Metroid-only studio.

Good for him. I wish him well.

Great news!

Nice work! Shame the Project M devs weren't so lucky.

@AlexSora89 I doubt Nintendo cares about him, as long as he isn't infringing on their copyright. And besides they have 2 Metroid games already being made, one by a new team, whatever that means.

The first Ori is my favorite Metroidvania game outside of the Metroid series. Congratulations Milton!

That's tidy, well done to him. I never played AM2R but based on people's high opinion of it it was clearly a great advertisment of his capacity for this kind of work. Bravo!

Good for him, regardless of what you think about the legality etc of AM2R it's obvious he's a talented guy.

Great news for him. Wish him success

That's awesome! Congrats man.

Good to know his hard work and talents were recognized by someone out there, enough to offer him a job at least. Nintendo hasn't made a good metroidvania since Super Metroid, let's hope they still know how to do it and hired the right team. Games like Ori, Axiom Verge, and Hollow Knight have really stepped up to define and refine the metroidvania formula.

The Ori series belongs on the switch. Microsoft exclusive bah. shakes fist

That's good news, he deserved it.

I'd have preferred that he ended up doing something with Nintendo, preferably something Metroid related. This is a satisfactory outcome, though.

@RedMageLanakyn
You honestly don't think that among Fusion, Zero Mission, or Prime 1, 2, or 3, there isn't one good metroidvania game? Can you name some "good" ones, from your point of view?

Any dev that nintendo rejected went to Microsoft... just like Rare.

Good for him! That's quite a leap and a great opportunity.

The whole fan game thing is interesting business. If he'd made an original game, it's not likely he'd have had so much donated artwork or even been noticed. This got him right to the specific type of work he's good at.

Hope it works out for him and the new Ori game

So after being so openly censured by the company he once idolized, he immediately swears allegiance to the competition at the first opportunity to throw them the finger right back. The only proper ending to this fiasco.

@aaronsullivan I meant to say 2D metroidvania, my bad on that. I think zero mission and fusion were ok, but not nearly as good as Super. I've only played through each of those once, whereas I find myself returning to Super a couple times a year. The prime trilogy was great as well. Again, my bad on leaving out the 2D.

Great news! I love Ori and AM2R.

Good to see his hard work was rewarded in some way. It's a hugely impressive fan effort.

Reminds me: I really need to play the original Ori.

Ori and the Blind Forest is such an amazing game.
I can't wait for the sequel!
(also, congrats to the creator of AM2R!)

Good for him. He clearly has talent when it comes to building and/or reimagining games. And hats off to him for having such a good attitude when his work was taken down. Granted, I can see why Nintendo did what they did, seeing as they are releasing Samus Returns and it doesn't make good business sense to allow a free version of your product to release alongside a paid version you're trying to sell. But this guy always kept his composure when interviewed and didn't blame Nintendo for their decision. I'm glad he at least was able to get the publicity he deserves for his hard work now a job to go with it. And who knows, maybe it was his initiative that made Nintendo consider a Metroid II remake in the first place. If so, then thanks.

@BigYellow Unlike this guy, who built a game from the ground up and actually had to use imagination and design talent, the Project M developers just modified something that already existed. I don't think that's quite a skill set that warrants a game design career. Maybe a testing and balancing job, but nothing like this.

@thesilverbrick Very true, I'm just a tad bias as Project M did a lot more for me.

@BigYellow I hear you. A lot of people have a soft spot for Project M. I never played it, myself, but form everything I hear, it took all the best parts of Melee's competitive scene, polished them, balanced the character roster and added the parts of Brawl that were actually good. One of the biggest things I hated about Melee was that only about five or six characters were playable on a competitive level and professional play relied heavily on game exploits, glitches, and mechanics that otherwise were never intended to be part of the game. Project M fixed those glaring problems.

Ori is such a nice game. I know one of the graphic designers and the level designer of that game from the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 community, where their contributions were among the best user made content.

Seems like Moon Studio's really is finding talented people all over the world!

@thesilverbrick Same on Melee, what kills Melee for me is it's lack of buffering, meaning if you want to use one move right after another you had to have near frame perfect inputs and memorize frame data for each move. Also the PM community was so much nicer than the Melee community, there's so much infighting and immaturity there.

@BigYellow I'm probably going to get a lot of blowback for saying this, but the competitive Melee community is a stain on Smash Bros. in general. They are obsessed with a 16-year-old game that is fundamentally flawed and will fight tooth and nail to prop it up, even though it is one of the most broken and unbalanced games I've ever seen.

@aaronsullivan I'd add Kirby Superstar (The Great Cave Offensive), Kirby and The Amazing Mirror to that list. Not sure if full 3-d (Prime) counts in the category though, it's closer to sandbox, I think.

@thesilverbrick I love watching melee and a few select players, but you're 100% right, the community really affects how much I enjoy it. The fans and most mid-high level players are cool, but there's so much toxicity at the top. Just look at the current debate over Wobbling, you'd think banning an infinite off a grab is a no-brainer, but everyone's having such a tantrum over it.

@Exy Gets fantastic job offer to work on excellent looking game.

Accepts job offer.

Gets told by pious internet commentators that he is "swearing allegiance" to the enemy in order to deliberately spite the company he "once idolised" in an end to his self-orchestrated "fiasco".

Like, seriously, the guy made a game, probably decided he quite liked making games, and got a job making games. That's it.

The way you're describing the events makes it sound as though he has betrayed King Arthur by revealing Camelot's location to the Wicked Witch in a hideous act or traitory against King, Country, and the very notion of chivalry itself.

The disconnect between internet hyperbole and actual reality is quite remarkable.

@Maxz Can you just let me have my fantasy just this once? It's not like this kind of thing happens every other day.

Nice. And deserved.

@Exy Fine, the guy has commited the most barbaric act of treachery in human history and now lives as a King under whose rule we shall suffer forever more.

The Earth is become a blackened wasteland, and we must eat shoelaces and rubber bands to sustain ourselves.

We thought 'Ori and the Will of the Wisps' was only a game, but in fact it was the blueprint for all life on Earth, and now we live among the drifting howls of tortured spirits; their ghostly light reminding us of a time when the sky wasn't the wretched hue of charred bones and blackened cinders - the only remnants of those who came before us.

Good news for him.

Regardless of my mixed feelings towards AM2R, this guy obviously has talent. I don't begrudge him on his new job at all. A happy ending, all things considered.

@Maxz Nah this I wanted him to do from the start. Just apply for a job like everyone else haha. Glad someone gave him an opportunity.

That's fantastic. From what I know, Ori is a lot like a Metroid game. Awesome to hear he's putting his passion and talent into something close to his original project!

Good for him. I wish him luck!

That's pretty awesome. Congratulations.

@Exy

Yeah it suuuure is awful when a big company recognizes your talent and offers you a job huh? How dare that traitor take such an opportunity to go for their dreams! rolls eyes

It's sad how spiteful and petty people can be in the wake of other people's success.

@Tempestryke Yeah sure, oppressed fan programmer gets hired, betters his skills, gets real connections, all that stuff that goes without saying. But the undercurrent of betrayal and bitterness of leaving for your former idol's rival to ensure they will never have his services is too perfect to go unmentioned.

@AlexSora89 I don't think Nintendo cares about him as long as he doesn't illegally distribute work containing its copyright work again.

@Exy If there was any betrayal involved--and there wasn't--it was Mr. Guasti betraying Nintendo by infringing on their copyright. That wasn't betrayal, of course, but in no way is protecting one's IP betrayal either.

Can't wait to see Another Zelda 2 Remake get cancelled and then Link Returns shows up for the 3DS.

Good for him! I don't blame Nintendo for taking AM2R down but I'm still happy for him! Guess his hard work paid off, huh?

Oh...on Facebook you made it sound like it was a mystery...bleh. So much for my joke. lol

Good for him! Hope to see him do great things in the future

I've always suspected as much, but I do believe that these fan projects based off major IPs serve an alternative purpose of being a portfolio buffer for these devs/creators.

Even if your fan project is C&D'd, someone is going to acknowledge your skills and hire you.

However one wants to look at that, congrats to him and his new job.

Nice to see him in a good place working on a follow-up to a great game.

I'm not sure this is good news. He essentially copied Nintendo's level design from Metroid II and exploited their IP ultimately for personal gain.

If he beat out another person for this job out of notoriety of using an IP he didn't own as a leaping point into the industry. Could you really say AM2R is a passion project? Seems more like self-promotion.

@Dr_Lugae I feel the same way you do. Its like if there was an artist who became famous because he "reimagined" the masterpieces of other established artists and recreated their works. Instead of displaying his own brand of imagination and creativity, and his own original work as an artist, he advanced his career by "reimagining" the work of a true master (Nintendo). Don't get me wrong, it takes a certain level of skill to produce the work that he did with AM2R. But to put the guy on a pedestal and give him all of these accolades when he is essentially guilty of plagiarizing his life's work strikes me as odd. You don't usually get rewarded for plagiarizing, but he certainly did. He made a cool fan game, but it was well within Nintendo's right exert control over the franchise as they see fit.

@FragRed
Sure, but they could also keep a team devoted to a franchise they don't usually care about and give us several Metroid games once in a few years instead of announcing new Metroid titles only under the pressure of the fans.
Take Sega for example: would Sega get Sonic Team to develop an actual throwback to the Genesis/Mega Drive titles? Not a chance. So they hired rom hackers, and lo and behold, one of the most promising Sonic games in recent memory is being made. It's a good example and Nintendo should follow it. Heck, hiring either Shin'En or the RedOut dev team would result in more F-Zero games, instead of settling with the mashup that is Mario Kart 8.

@NinNin
Which is, again, a pity. Nintendo being so open to Indie developers is a good starting point, but once they give fans creative control to their long-dormant franchise things will get even better.
Until then, we'll have to settle with Hey! Pikmin and use a Captain Falcon Mii in Mario Kart 8.

@AlexSora89 I don't think Nintendo wants any other first party racers on their systems, I am getting the impression their aim is to have one big selling franchise per genre. Mario Kart is the big selling racer, Splatoon is the new big shooting franchise, ARMS looks like it could be their fighting franchise. So I don't personally see F-Zero or Wave Race etc making a return.

As for Metroid, it's not generally speaking a massive selling franchise despite the critical acclaim it receives. So it really is just the die hard fans who get excited by any such announcement in the franchise. It won't shift units like their other games. So I can understand their reluctance to make Metroid games.

Moving onto Hey! Pikman, that is noting more than a spin off game, it isn't even produced by Nintendo. The actual Pikman 4 is being produced by Miyamoto and his team so I'm not too sure what your problem is there.

@FragRed
Of course, I was just picking examples. But I think Mario Kart would be better off as a Mario spinoff than as Nintendo's proper, true "racer". The dedicated driving game among the two is F-Zero.

Nintendo has thinned a lot of their IP herd and that's a pity, as each series has its own identity. And Mario is being given everyone else's job these days.

@AlexSora89 Nintendo has been forced to thin it's IP in active development through the result of increasing development costs and less than stellar returns on many franchises such as F-Zero. That game had multiple games yet never garnered the sales that would be needed to keep it justified for future instalments once costs became too much. It's likely as simple as that.

Most publishers are taking a similar approach too, with perhaps Sony being somewhat more willing to give their studios time and money try new things.

@AlexSora89 I don't see how things will get better. I think things will get worse. Nintendo or any company that owns an IP should be the one that controls its creative direction, not the fans. Allowing a fan to freely distribute a fan game containing copyright content is a slippery slope.

@NinNin
Well, if you mean AM2R being out in the wild, I see no harm in that. If anything, it should have been a wake-up call for Nintendo. If instead you mean my suggestion for Nintendo to go the Sonic Mania route, I don't see any harm in that either.

@FragRed
Thing is, I can't help but keep thinking of Mario's extra income. Good ol' Falcon, Samus and Fox can get new games by leeching off Mario.

@AlexSora89 Nintendo knew the existence of the AM2R project. They have Internet connections. They let the project release anyway.

Anyway, if Nintendo did nothing after it's released, it will encourage more people to develop and distribute more fan games. If people like fan games more than the official games, it can affect the sales. If there are a lot of bad fan games distributed, it can tarnish the reputations of the products.

@NinNin
The popularity of fan games should be an incentive for companies to make their games better and better. Shutting off fan project is a cheap and lazy solution.
And, again, Sonic Mania went the "if you can't beat them, join 'em" route and for that the game has been met with nothing but praise so far.

@AlexSora89 Companies don't need such an incentive. Most companies want to make their products better. I don't think any company wants to make their products worse and worse. Whether they can do that is another matter, though. Improving a product isn't easy. As for the AM2R project, Nintendo didn't shut it off. As I said, they allowed it to release. What they did was stop the free distribution of the work containing their copyright content. People can still distribute it the same way they illegally distribute other software products. If Nintendo had wanted to shut it off, they could have done that before it was released.

@NinNin
Of course most companies do. And of course they don't, or shouldn't, need such an incentive. But said incentive being there isn't a bad thing either. I still stand by my point - the Ori team saw talent in people who crafted an acclaimed fan-remake of a beloved Metroidvania game and hired them on the spot to help develop their own Metroidvania game. Nintendo should have done so faster. Thank goodness, from Nintendo's point of view at least, for Metroid: Samus Returns, as it is helping people - especially Metroid fans - sweep the whole thing under the rug.

@AlexSora89 Just because someone made a fan game doesn't mean that a company should hire him because of that fact alone. It's most likely that the AM2R developer applied for many jobs, then Moon Studios gave him the best offer, and he accepted it. The fact that he made AM2R may or may not be the decisive factor.

By the way, is Ori and the Will of the Wisps a Metroidvania game?

@NinNin
It definitely is. Plays out like a more straightforward platformer, but exploration-wise it's definitely a Metroidvania title. If you have the occasion to do so, play the first Ori on Xbox One, it's definitely worth it.