The Man Behind Fluidity And Stealth Inc Discusses Leaving Curve Digital And Future Plans

White Space looks interesting, but it's been my observation on here that Nintendo fans largely hate anything "shootery" and many here consider all such games to be "dudebro Call of Duty games."

So whatever he brings to the Wii U should probably not be White Space. I suspect his "love the thing" comment was more in the vein of not burning bridges with Nintendo fans and that realistically, his focus will be elsewhere.

@Quorthon whilst i agree certain nintendo fans don't like shooters but they do like star fox and this is close enough to warrant interest

I wish him the best, as I love both of those projects he was involved in.

I don't mind him leaving Curve, I would mind if he stopped working altogether. And nice to see he plans to put the eShop logo in his future project's posters

I've been following White Space for awhile. I love the flying plus separate aiming mechanic. And it has a type of flight mechanic like some of the older style Descent-like games. Done well it could be very fun.

White Space looks to have some really great ideas to help it stand out from other similar shooters. I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

@Quorthon - I think White Space would do well on eShop because it is more of a Rogue Squadron then it is a Call of Duty.

GL HF

Good luck. Love all the Curve staff. Looking forward to whatever he puts forth. For starters, White Space could be an excellent fit for the Wii U... The unique interface has a lot of potential. Whatever game is released first, I'll be there day one.

Nintendo fans don't like bland shooters.

I'd kill for DOOM on Wii U and 3DS.

@sillygostly

That's funny, because the dominant comments I usually see here are just "shooters" where they're all considered the same "dudebro game." And repeated assumptions that literally every game on any other platform is an identical Call of Duty clone.

@Gerbwmu

Eh, perhaps we'll see. The StarFox franchise languished after StarFox64, and each following title fared and sold worse than the one before. This has not been one of Nintendo's strongest franchises or biggest sellers. Probably why we didn't even see much pertaining to it--outside of the DS Command--during the last generation.

I really loved the Fluidity and Stealth Bastard series, shame that such an influential figure in their development won't be able to work on them any further.

@Quorthon - Star Fox lost me after N64......I wanted it to stick with flying and they switched it up trying to make it more of a Shadows of the Empire and less of a Rogue Squadron. Just wasn't what I wanted from it.

I'm interested to see what the Wii U version becomes. I really hope it is closer to 64 then it is Adventures.

White Space looks like that type though....so if it makes it to Wii U I'd probably buy it.

This game reminds me a bit of "Forsaken 64" and Starfox .... Loved those games and I would really like to see this coming to WiiU.
While I can see how some might consider this "just another shooter" I also see that this games has many things making it stand out among this shooter filled industry, which could lead to success.

All in all I wish him all the luck he can get with this game and his new Studio and I'm looking forward to seeing this game (or whatever he is doing instead) on the WiiU ^^

I like the fact he is leaving in a professional manner. As someone who runs his own shop, I always prefer when people leave that they leave in a professionally. Sounds like he enjoyed his time and is ready to move on, so best of luck, and if things don't work out, you may have a home to go back to. Nothing in gaming excites me, so I have no real thoughts on the game he was making.

In regards to the "Nintendo Fans dont like shooters" discussion:

I dont think that this is completely true. Nintendo fans have grown up with colorful (and not just in terms of color pallets), creative and fun games.
What most people detest are the obligatory grey/brown military shooters.
They are not bad per se, but there are far too many of them and far too less really creative ones.

You see, Splatoon, also a shooter, gets hyped to no end because it is something completely different.
What do i call a "creative shooter" ? Well, take a look at the old Turok series. Its arsenal alone made it enjoyanble.
In modern shooters, the difference between your weapons is rather slim.
To quote a friend of mine: "The difference is the amound of ratatatat they make, when i push a button".
In Turok, to stay with the example, pretty much every weapon was vastly different, creative and outright fun to use.

Another example would be Perfect Dark. Many very unique tools to play around with and the mission structure didnt just consist of "killing everything in sight" And it was also very well recieved by Nintendo Fans.

So yeah, its not the "shooter" in general that isnt liked, its the dull kind of shooter that hands you 40 kinds of assault rifle rather than one auo locking, skull drilling multi missle launcher and a bow shooting explosive arrows going "ayyyyy"

Stealth Inc is also known as Stealth Bastard.

@Einherjar

I'd like to point out that the Turok/shooter fans of the N64 are no different than the Call of Duty/Killzone/Gears of War fans now. What happened was that the bulk of these people abandoned Nintendo when Nintendo seemed intent on taking the GameCube in a strictly no-shooter direction (until they tried and almost deliberately failed with Geist), while games like Halo, Medal of Honor, and Timesplitters were busy evolving it and taking it to new heights.

I was one of those Turok fans on the N64, and was disappointed to see shooters largely disappear on my GameCube. I ended up with a higher-than-expected learning curve when I bought my X360 and shooters had evolved for a generation without me moving with them.

My point is that Nintendo fans--particularly from what I've seen on this site--assume that every single shooter is the same dull gray palette, the exact same World War II military shooter, with the exact same dudebro-only fanbase. This could not be further from the truth and it serves to make the entire fanbase look ignorant of reality.

Call of Duty and Battlefield maintain military shooter concept, along with a few others.

But then you have Gears of War and Resistance, which coupled human-like enemies with gargantuan monster battles and often Lovecraftian alien beasts.

Then there's the Far Cry games and those like them, that are brilliantly colorful and alive, featuring enormous worlds to explore and confront in any number of ways.

Then there are the science fiction-heavy titles like those from id: Doom, Rage, and Wolfenstein.

And then there are the RPGs--Fallout, Skyrim (first-person being optional there). And the platformers like Mirrors Edge. And then you get games that drop every FPS trope in favor of creating insane set-pieces like Bulletstorm.

The way far too many here talk, these are all exactly the same, gray-and-brown colored dudebro shooter--and yes I have seen this exact comment from multiple users on multiple occasions, until it's reached a point where I can't tell the sarcasm from the bitter fanboys anymore as nobody who calls themselves a "Nintendo fan" seems to have any understanding at all of this genre, except that they hate it for reasons they've largely invented.

But Perfect Dark was awesome because, you know, N64.

If this guy is making anything remotely shootery, if you will, he'd be best advised to skip the Nintendo platforms. It's a fanbase that has seemingly trained itself to hate anything remotely like this for imaginary reasons.

@Gerbwmu

I also didn't play any StarFox after SF64 on the N64--and it was, I think, the last game I fully completed 100%--medals on every level in both difficulties. In that regard, I may have simply felt "burned out" on the franchise, and wasn't interested in Adventures at all. By the time that game rolled around, I was more interested in Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, Viewtiful Joe, Pikmin, and--oh right--those Metroid Prime games.

Every time I've thought about buying a StarFox game lately, I get this reminder of all the time and effort I spent with SF64, and as much as I loved that game, I feel like I've done everything there is for the franchise.

From what I'm seeing from Miyamoto, the Wii U StarFox will be another damn remake of SF64, which itself was already remade once for the 3DS, and itself is little more than a remake of the original SNES StarFox. Miyamoto wants to remake a game that's already been made three times. If that's what it is, I'll be skipping this one as well.

Pity, flight shooters are in short supply these days. Maybe we'll get another Ace Combat like Assault Horizon on the new-gen consoles.

@Quorthon
I don't think, that you can throuw games like COD/FC/GoW into the same bad as this, because all those other games are shooters which make the playing character a person, with gears of war being a TPS which is something entirely different than this.
This game seams to be a space shooter or something like Forasaken 64, Starfox or even Ace Combat. You'r controlling a ship as far as I could see it.

This dose not mean, that your point dosn't stand about FPS/TPS games and the "Hardcore" Nintendo Fanbase which seams to be mainly ignorant about these 2 genres.
All I wanted to say is, that this game dosn't compare to COD/etc and that it could be a hit on the WiiU if it got a spot in an Nintendo Direct, which seems possible if the game is coming to the WiiU and looks good. They seem to include many indiegames if they are promising.

On another note, I myself am not a fan of FPS games and I really don't like the COD/GF games, but I would never judge a game and say that it is not worth my time before I actually tried it and that includes FPS/TPS games.
That's how I found my absolute favorite FPS game to date "Tribes Ascend" ^^"

@Josaku

I wondered if there would be an issue with me including Gears of War instead of, say, Halo. The camera is different, but it follows some typical shooter rules--and there's an awful lot of shooting.

True, this game is different in that it's more Ace Combat than Battlefield (or wait, doesn't Battlefield have airplanes now? I haven't played one of those yet), but merely using the "shooter" term is more than enough to turn off the rather large grouping I mentioned.

And I should really facepalm here, I was trying to think of a shooter as colorful as Splatoon, and while Bulletstorm is certainly colorful, I completely overlooked that screaming rainbow that defines the Borderlands games. Had those titles found their way to Nintendo machines, I have little doubt Nintendo fans would be singing a different tune about shooters.

Well, maybe. If they shoehorned Link into it somewhere so it would have a chance for some sales.

I haven't played Tribes: Ascend. I don't do much gaming on my PC.

@Quorthon The main problem is, that said "Dudebro" games dominate the market and thus, everyone knows them.
So its rather easy to fall back to them when it comes to comparisons.
Be it Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor or on the PC, Arma.
The most well known FPS on the current market are Military Shooters.

And im pretty sure, that if people talk about FPS, they dont mean FPS-RPGs (Borderlands, Fallout 3) but the pure FPS genre.
And there has been rather little variaty as of late.

I, for my part, welcome games like Splatoon with open arms. Its offensively colofull, cute and most of all, its different, its fresh and its more than just "shooting dudes" with mashine and shot guns.

And to say that fans of shooters like Turok just got out of touch with the genre isnt quite right.
This type of shooter has simply died out. 2 Weapons, tunnel levels, get from point A to point B objectives are all too common these days, which replaced a ridiculous amount of even more ridiculous weapons, gigantic levels and objectives other than to kill and survive.

@Einherjar

This shows the problem, there has actually been a lot of variety among the shooters out there. That you aren't aware of it doesn't mean it isn't there, it means only that you don't know. The "dudebro" stuff does not dominate. Call of Duty is consistently a best-seller, but it is outnumbered by a wide margin by games that aren't dudebro games. For instance, the biggest games of last fall included Dragon Age: Inquisition, Sunset Overdrive, Far Cry 4, Borderlands, WoW: Warlords of Draenor, Assassin's Creed, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Costume Quest 2, GTAV, and Smash Bros 4.

You guys need to face facts: This "dudebro shooter" thing is a minority in gaming, it does not define all first or third person games, and it doesn't even describe all shooters, First-Person or otherwise.

That you go with just "shooting dudes with machine and shotguns" further highlights how very little you know of the world outside Nintendo or of shooters or First Person games in general. You are deliberately trying to marginalize a genre that is as robust and packed with variety as any other, and the only reasons to do that are either ignorance of what is actually there or that you are desperately trying to find a way to demonize something just because you don't like it. And part of why you don't like it is because you don't even know anything about but assumed stereotypes.

I never said fans of Turok got out of touch with the genre, I said they abandoned Nintendo when Nintendo got out of touch with the genre. And my personal anecdote was that sticking with the GameCube put me behind the curve when it came to FPS gaming when the X360 rolled around.

The "shooters that all look alike" is a stereotype among a small cross-section of a single genre. It's been mocked for a long time, but just like any other stereotype, it ignores reality to work. For every three shooters slapped together that all look alike, there are twice as many, if not more, games--including other shooters--that are drastically, noticeably different to any objective viewer.

This comment: "This type of shooter has simply died out. 2 Weapons, tunnel levels, get from point A to point B objectives are all too common these days, which replaced a ridiculous amount of even more ridiculous weapons, gigantic levels and objectives other than to kill and survive." Perfectly illustrates that you don't know what you're talking about. Most games have dropped the "carry ridiculous number of weapons" as it isn't just unrealistic (if the game is going for that) but unnecessary in most games when players will stick with what works best for them. The only time I would care about that arsenal in Turok was for bosses, and even then, they weren't all needed. I stuck to the same few reliable weapons the whole time. It also encourages strategic thinking for players and involves the gamer in some decision making about how they're going to move through the game.

But then, I do carry a ridiculous number of weapons with me in Far Cry 4 (nobody really needs 15 grenades and 15 molotovs at once), and I can replace them whenever I want. I carried a ridiculous number of weapons in Wolfenstein: New Order, too. So clearly, games where you're a walking gun store still exist.

The point A to point B objectives criticism could literally be labeled against almost any game in almost any franchise or genre. Hell, that's traditionally been every Super Mario game, except Point A was where you started and Point B was the exit.

This perfectly backs up my point--far too many Nintendo fans do not actually know what's out there, and assume everything is the same kind of shooter. You've essentially proven my point that Nintendo fans are quick to stereotype this wide variety of games either out of ignorance or to be deliberately dismissive for whatever reason--but that they don't like "shooters" just because "shooters."

"Dudebro shooters" don't dominate the market.
Shooters aren't all the same.
There are objective-based, mission-based, and checkpoint-based shooters, not just checkpoint shooters.
There are modern military, historical military, science fiction, and borderline fantasy shooters out there in a variety of settings and styles.
Some are individual-centric (like Rage), some have you in squads or teams (Gears), some have combinations of these.
Some limit the weapons you can carry, some allow you to be a walking gun store.
There is color and variety among shooters in the market, those that look the same are a small minority. And I doubt you can even name them without some kind of painful Google Search.

You keep trying to claim these are all the same.

@Quorthon
I really loved the Borderlands games!
I think the main problem is, that the entire "Shooter"genre is extremely diverse, because even games like Skyrim can be counted into it when played in First Person. So if someone dosn't like COD/BF he is emidiatly turned off by most of the genres inside the "shooter" genre just because COD/BF are the most known (everybody knows them and either loves of hates them)

I personally really don't like the grey-brown military shooter games, but liked FC4 and Borderlands the presequal. I personally don't know the "shooter"genre in and out because there wern't any games that I saw which interested me for a long time. But since I began following gaming news I found more and more games that look appealing which technically are "shooters".

The Problem with the Nintendo community is essentially Nintendo's stance on rated M games during the GC and Wii era. They took the Kiddy image from the SNES/N64 era and just went with it .... as if it completly described them ... This is hurting them good now.

Nintendo has to step up and promote good "shooters" coming to their consoles so the community sees how diverse this genre can be so they won't be so out of touch with it and the industry.
But first, they need to change the way they look at youtube and howthey do their advertisment, because "Word of mouth" can only go so far and will not be enough for the N3DS/WiiU or any future console they make. They need to take advantage of old and new media in a way every consumer can inform himself/herself about what's going on in the world Nintendo without being a hassle to deal with.

@Quorthon I think you forgetting this game is closest thing we'll have to having a 3rd party StarFox, aka, the thing that almost every Nintendo fan like. Not like Nintendo fans hate FPS, those are just the ones in the Youtube comment section. I actually enjoy a lot of FPS, even the generic ones, but I mostly consider those to be a guilty pleasure

@Quorthon Sorry, im not reading another wall of text from the guy that misses the point in the first freaking column -.-
Its nice that you made a list of games probably more popular then, say, Call of Duty but im not entirely sure where you got the idea that this is relevant to the fact, that CoD is still among, if not the most well known FPS out there.

We were talking about FPS, werent we ? So why bring out the entire hitlist of games ?

I also just love well informed you are about my gaming habits
Youre a wizard Harry !
Where did you learn to look into other peoples minds ?

But seriously, stop the preaching, or at least try to be on point.
No one is "villifying" anything, no one is talking about Shooter hybrids or any other games incorporating shooter elements. Were talking about straight to the point First Person Shooters. No Borderlands, no Far Cry.
Wofenstein, yes, thats one major contender you brought up, and im rather thankfull that this game endet up the way it is.

Also "They dropped the arsenal because it was unrealistic"...who said games needed to be realistic ? If gaming would drop everything that is unrealistic...well, i hope you like Simulator games.

But seriously, im out. The "you know nothing, i know all, so youve proven my point" thingy kinda rubs me the wrong way buddy. I kinda dont like people pretending to know how "well versed" others are. You have no clue about my gaming track record. Heck, you dont even know what exactly im talking about !

So yeah, have a great day, im dropping out.

@Quorthon Yeah... Splatoon

@Einherjar

What are you commenting to if you couldn't even be bothered to read my point in the first place?

@Chaoz

No, I addressed that. As noted, merely having the word "shooter" as a descriptor, in any capacity, immediately sets many here off on a "it's all dudebro Call of Duty, all the time" tangents.

Nintendo fans seem to have grown a problem with the word "shooter" all by itself--and it's prominent on this site. Unless this site is somehow specifically anti-shooter (which I doubt), this would seem to be indicative of the larger Nintendo fan audience--and is backed up by poor sales of anything remotely shooter-like. You can see it constantly on this site, like @Einherjar's posts, which perfectly support my point--that Nintendo fans as a whole seem to have no idea how diverse the various shooter genres actually are and think they're all the same thing and when talking to me, in his last post indicated he didn't even read the post and then went off on tangents that he seems to have invented in order to support his argument.

It's a pity, really, and I can't help but wonder if it'll hurt Splatoon's chances. After all, that game was made by a team that plays and is inspired by the very shooters many here claim are just the same "dudebro nonsense" they hate.

@Josaku

Couldn't agree more with your post. Except for the Borderlands Pre-Sequel, which I felt was weaker than the other games. My girlfriend and I played it on the X360, and the framerate is frequently atrocious, particularly during a boss battle that felt so broken that we couldn't do it. I'm sure we'll get back to it at some point.

@Quorthon
Don't get me wrong, I hate Dude-Bro shooters like COD/BF ...
I just don't go out of my way to declare something as an dude-bro shooter if it really isn't.

Nintendo's stance on this (and other genres too) can and will influence the way the fanbase will react to games of said genre and only Nintendo can change the minds of those "hardcore Nintendo fans" in changing their stance about a specific genre.

So the simplest thing would be for Nintendo to show their audience what kind of "Shooters" are out ther and how they are different from each other ...

But saying that the Nintendo fanbase altogether seems to just push all different genres inside the "shooter" genre under the rug is a bit too much if you ask me.
The 3DS saw the release of multiple FPS games like Moonchrionicles or Iron Fall or even Tom Clancy's Ghost Reacon - Shadow Wars.
And all of them were well recieved by critics and Fans alike.
The WiiU is kind of a different beast, it had some ports of successfull shooters in the beginning, but new ones wern't coming to the system ... you could argue, that they skipped WiiU because of the sales of the games, but I think it was more because of the abysmall first 1,5 years of console sales which made big 3rd partys somewhat afraid to release their games on the system ... during these first 1,5 years nothing sold exceptionally and even the games that sold good were later seen as failures (Zombie U).
I think, that Splatoon could be the first step towards changing this, because I think Nintendo has seen how big and diverse the "Shooter" genre can be and that they themselfs have a spot to fill within this divers genre. So if they are able to make a comercial success out of splatoon and another more realistic shooter an the WiiU even some third partys could be bothered giving the WiiU another shot and the fans themselfs would see what the word "shooter" can mean.

So I think, that everything regarding the Nintendo fanbase and "shooters" is up to Nintendo ... The hardcore fans will not go against Nintendo because to them Nintendo can't do wrong ... The more lenient fanbase who actually are more open minded than they seem just don't know what "shooters" can be and the casual crowd is mostly on PS4 anyways these days ....

Wii U has the TOP3 'Best Shooters of 2015' in their pipeline:
1. Splatoon
2. Starfox U
3. Devil's Third
And RIVE!
(Didn't count Metroid Prime Trilogy which was already released this year).

There are Nintendo fans that like shooters, but they need to have pure gameplay, like the ones above. Wii U fans don't really want those scripted hellzones that feel like 50% movie and 50% game.

@SKTTR
I know that these games will be glorious, but a "pure" shooter ... what's that? ... a pure shooter would be something like Doom or Wolfenstein 3D which defined the genre.
Splatoon is an TPS areal shooter, Rive is a 2D isometric shooter, Starfox will hopefulle be a full 3D rail shooter and Devil's Third is a mix of a Firstperson and a Third Person Shootere ... none of them are "pure" shooters if you follow the direct meaning of "pure".

I think it's the same thing most people think, that the WiiU is a "platformerbox" which is putting all different platformer genres and subgenres in one bag ... It's just wrong ..
I can understand if someone dosn't like some games and is cautious when it comes to the genre these games belong to, but just putting every game inside an entire genre aside because some games inside a subgenre are not to your liking is ... not good.

You are right though, that the Nintendo-crowd is apeald by a different kind of shooters than the Xbone/PS4/PC crowds and I hope, that Nintendo is seeing the potential of this genre and is showing how to apeal to the Nintendocrowd and how to make these games commercial successes.

@Josaku

I'm of the mindset that the mindsets of Nintendo fans cannot be changed, even by Nintendo. What the general audience seems to want--and this is my perception after years of talking to them online and on here--is the following from Nintendo: Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon--once, twice, or several times a year. They want remakes of several older games repeatedly--Super Metroid, Ocarina of Time, etc. They will grudgingly buy anything else with the Nintendo logo on the front, but in some cases, very grudgingly. For instance, they didn't support Sin & Punishment. And they certainly don't want 3rd party games on the systems, which is why 3rd parties walk away. And then they get angry at the 3rd parties for doing the smart thing for their company and employees. Poor sales drove them away, and little else.

This puts Nintendo into a corner from which they may be unable to escape. They're stuck making the same few franchises over and over, stuck making remakes, because those are the only guaranteed sellers. Nintendo fans, as a whole, seem to want to live in the past forever. It makes me wonder if maybe they're aware that the company is well past their prime in this industry, and that's why whey so want Nintendo continue languishing in the past. As, like the rest of the gaming industry, they feel Nintendo may be unable to actually evolve to compete.

In this, they've grown a bizarre adversarial relationship with 3rd parties--they hate them. They hear the word "shooter," and no matter what, they picture the same Call of Duty from 2006, and they instantly hate them.

Sales back up this generalization, as does the rigid, strangely spiteful attitude of so many Nintendo fans.

All of this is why I finally crossed the fence, and have come to believe that maybe Nintendo would be better off as a third party. Their fans don't want them to grow or change, they don't know how to appeal to the rest of the industry, and they've lost the confidence of average consumers, gamers, developers, and publishers. Go third party now, while they have the money to weather the change.

Also, Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is a strategy game. A quite enjoyable one.

@Quorthon
First of all ... didn't know that about Ghost Recon .... thought it was an TPS of what I saw ^^" my bad

I think, that Nintendo can very well change the mindset if their "hardcore" fanbase and I think, that they are starting to do this with splatoon ... if they make this in a bianual or bigenerational franchise (which I hope) this could seriously be a gamechanger in terms of Nintendo/Nintendofans/"shooters" imho.

Was there ever a company, that converted from a hardware/software company to a software-only company without massively downsizing or even going under? I can't think of a single one ... so Nintendo going 3rd party is only a good thing if you want them to ... go under ....

I hope, that Nintendo is willing to take risks and creat new IPs like splatoon ... but we will see at E3 this year if splatoon was just a one time only thing or if they feel that they need to creat new things ... not just new ways of playing mario/Zelda/Metroid/Starfox/etc ....