GDC: "The Wii is a piece of sh*t," says Hecker

Chris Hecker, the founder of developer Definition 6, has launched an attack on the Wii at the Game Developers Conference, accusing Nintendo of failing to recognise games as an art form.

His comments came in a short speech during the Burning Mad: Game Publishers Rant session at GDC this morning. He began by referring to his 2006 GDC rant, where he criticised PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for the balance of focus on graphics versus gameplay.

"At the end I asked the audience, will Nintendo save us? Will they deliver a balanced machine that's fast enough? The answer to that question is the topic of today's rant," Hecker said.

He then showed a slide which featured the slogan 'Fear of the Wii Planet', and told the audience, "Everybody loves the Wii. 'Oh, God, the Wii, we love the Wii so much'... The Wii is a piece of shit.

"I have uncovered the secret to Wii manufacturing. The way you manufacture a Wii is you take two GameCubes and some duct tape," Hecker continued.

"This thing is totally underpowered... This is not about graphics, more polygons, all that kind of crap. What I want to be able to do is spend CPU to make the machine smarter, more interesting and more automatically intelligent.

"It's about interactivity - that is the key differentiator of our art form, and interactivity is about doing something interesting with that input and threading it back to the user. You can't do that with a piece of sh*t underpowered computer."

The next part of Hecker's speech questioned whether "Nintendo gives a sh*t about games as an art form", observing that a Google search reveals that the phrase "art form" is found on PlayStation.com 30 times, on Xbox.com 13 times, and zero times on Wii.com.

"If you widen it to include Nintendo.com, you get seven. Still 50 per cent less art than Xbox.com," he observed.

Adopting a more serious tone, Hecker then presented quotes from Bill Gates and Phil Harrison about games as art which he said shows they are "taking it seriously".

Next up was a word from Zelda creator Eiji Aonuma, who Hecker quoted as saying, "I don't feel that games can necessarily be considered art. There's nothing wrong with that; our goal is just to make games that are fun."

Hecker's response: "This is not good enough for people who are leading our industry... If we're going to make games the art from of the 21st century, we need people who care more than just, 'I'm going to make some fun toys.'

"We're at the beginning of something that could be an art form on a par with film and literature and music, and it's ours to f*ck up."

Hecker concluded his speech by joking that he plans to rush the stage during Shigeru Miyamoto's GDC keynote speech tomorrow, and outlining his demands for Nintendo.

"Number one: recognise and push games as a serious art form. Number two: make a console that doesn't suck ass."