 "LOOK AT ME OOOOH OOOH! I AM ME! I AM SUPER COOL! I NEED TO BE LOOKED AT. I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Hey there readers, what you see above is some game developer off in the distance crying out for attention. It happens from time to time really, and it’s god forsakenly annoying. Really, it’s not cool, and honestly I don’t understand why some developers go the route of the attention whore.
You might have at one point been wowed by a game called Eternity’s Child. It had promise, it really, truly did. It’s developer seemed to be a charismatic developer who you might know as Luc Bernard. He seemed cool, and he was more than willing to tell his development story on Destructoid, and from a hype generating standpoint, he did an awesome job getting people excited for his game. The thing though is that you have to deliver on the hype, and apparently he didn’t do a good job finding a competent programmer for the job. Perhaps he should have hired Chainclaw on the side, because those people who have played the game as it was released on Steam found the game to be absolutely atrocious. One site decided that they would be brutally honest in their review, and this is where this story gets fun. See, Luc and Destructoid were buddy buddy prior to the release, and it was a shock to see a 1 rating for Eternity’s Child. We’re not going to go into the reasoning for the score, but you can read all about it on Dtoid.
What is important is what happened after the review. Luc appeared to become a child, criticizing Destructoid for giving his game such a low review when there were going to be many more revisions to come to the game. The thing though is that reviews are generally of the game as it is released, and in his case, his game apparently was straight from the seventh circle of Hell. Honestly, I don’t know anything about the quality of the game, but, if it truly plays like a low budget flash game then that’s rather sad. If a game is bad, be prepared to accept the cold hard truth. People are brutally honest, sometimes, and you got to be prepared for that. In Luc’s case, he wasn’t and he sort of went down in flames.
Destructoid commenters are a cruel bunch, and they absolutely destroyed him in not so nice ways. In reality, Dtoid could have done a better job moderating that comment string, but that’s not of my concern. After the harsh words and not so friendly banter, Mr. Bernard swore off developing games, and insisted that he’d only work on his art. Well, let’s fast forward to this week and what do I hear? Oh that’s right, Luc is working on Eternity’s Child 2.
It came to me as an epiphany. Luc was either a marketing genius, or someone with the emotional equivalent of a 12 year old. See, his game would never have gotten the hype it got if it wasn’t for his Destructoid relationship, which then got caught on with other gaming sites. Truly, for an independent developer, he is a marketing genius. Unfortunately, his game sucked, and in the process we learned that Mr. Bernard couldn’t take the heat of bad press, or maybe he could… It certainly generated a lot of attention, and in the process a lot of us now know about Eternity’s Child 2 because he essentially leveraged attention he got upon himself upon his next project. How very shrewd.
Mr Bernard, you used the bad review to your advantage. You never were going to quit developing games, were you? Sticking to your art would not have given you the limelight you so sorely have wanted. Aren’t you an attention whore, Luc? Isn’t that why Mr. Destructoid was originally in the game? It got you press, didn’t it? When they slammed you, it was gone. Clearly then it wasn’t crucial to the game, now was it? Why else would you have placed it in the game? Maybe you genuinely wanted to do something nice for the site that gave you your attention, but I imagine it was so that Dtoid would keep you in the limelight.
Regardless, congrats Luc! You’ve got everyone to report on the development of Eternity’s Child 2, including now the niche gaming site known as RF Generation! Here’s to you!
Game developers – don’t follow the Luc Bernard route. Here’s a very important marketing / customer satisfaction mantra that you should follow: Underpromise, Overdeliver. The best games don’t need to show itself off like a prostitute from O-Town. For indie developers, it’s a fine line, trying to get mainstream recognition while at the same time underpromising. Well, why not just shoot for the mainstream recognition while not whoring yourself / your game out? Be careful, or your experience could end up blowing up in your face.
God, this really wasn’t about attention whoring, or was it? Might have just been me bitching about Luc Bernard. Oh well. It was supposed to be about attention whoring, but in my eyes Luc is an attention whore.
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