Team Meat recently sat down with Game Developer Magazine to talk about the development process behind their hit platformer Super Meat Boy. Summarized by Kotaku, the two-man team of Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes had some pretty harsh words to say about their relationship with Microsoft.
“We were told our price was too high, our visuals too rough and simply not as eye catching and flashy as the other Game Feast games Comic Jumper and Hydrophobia. Our hearts sank when we were informed that we were projected to sell as much if not less than Hydrophobia, which would be the second-highest grossing game of the Feast in their minds,” McMillen said.
McMillan would go on to complain that he felt Microsoft did not strongly support Super Meat Boy and that “the biggest mistake we made during SMB’s development was killing ourselves to get into a promotion [Game Feast] we would gain basically nothing from.” The duo also went on to say they never felt the game was given the attention it was promised. But wait…
To your left you’ll find the logo that Microsoft created for the Game Feast promotion. Super Meat Boy is not only considered the featured game (or main course, if you will) of the promotion, but the character himself is front and center in the logo.
On the price problem, someone at Team Meat must have agreed with Microsoft as the duo considered the game’s launch day discount as “A Gift to Fans.” So even if Microsoft forced them to drop the price, they were the ones that took credit for the “sale,” even going so far as to say they did as a gift to the community.
As for Microsoft thinking Super Meat Boy’s graphics were rough and weren’t as pretty as Hydrophobia… I thought that was kind of the point?
Super Meat Boy may have been one of 2010’s best games, but Team Meat is having as much luck fighting reality as I did against the boss from the game’s “Hell” chapter.
UPDATE: Team Meat has contacted me to say the summary of their postmortem by Kotaku wasn’t a fair representation of the entire article. As soon as I get a chance to read the entire article, I’ll update this post accordingly. And according to McMillen, he created the Game Feast poster of Meat Boy, not Microsoft.
