They’re not out to ”discredit” Team Meat’s experience with Microsoft, but Zen are ”willing to stick up” for Xbox 360. A minor PR war erupted between studios.
Zen Studios sent out an email that was designed to entice interview requests for their two-cents on the whole ‘Microsoft is terrible to work with’ issue. However some took it as an attack on Team Meat and that it was attempting to belittle their arguments.
”They totally have the right to talk about it,” said Zen’s Mel Kirk.
”It’s terrible they had a bad experience like that. Where we’re coming from is, when is enough enough? Let it go already.”
”There are good things happening there and we’re a company willing to stand up and stick by Microsoft. They were a great partner for us. They’ve done wonderful things with helping us with Pinball FX 2. If we can just get a message out there that we’re willing to stick up for them, that’s really what I’m trying to do,” continued Kirk.
A twitter row started between Zen and Team Meat with Braid’s Jonathan Blow adding: ”trying to discredit Team Meat’s negative experience is not cool.” Zen Studios reject that that was their goal and now ended up defending their email to press.
”I’m really not trying to discredit their experience,” he said. ”The email left our press box without the ‘not for publish’ on it. It was meant to get inbound requests to do controlled interviews and control the message. Obviously this turned into something totally different.”
”I’m not trying to discredit it. I’m just trying to put it in perspective. I’m not saying they’re lying. I’m not trying to say they’re making it up.”
”There are a few companies that had a bad time, and then there are a whole bunch of us over here who are having a great time and will continue working with Microsoft.”
Ironic that Zen Studios ends up defending itself more than Microsoft from all of this.
”Game politics are notoriously messy. We’re a very negative industry at times towards each other. I don’t want to be negative to Team Meat. I don’t want to belittle their experience. I just want to simply say, Zen Studios has had a very good experience with Xbox Live Arcade, with our producers, with our team there,” continued Kirk.
”We’re grateful for that experience. We feel like we owe it to them to stand up and just say, hey, we had a good time with you.” Pinball FX2 is still a high flying performer in the Xbox Live Arcade charts as of August. Zen hopes others will speak out for Microsoft.
”I’m at liberty to speak for Twisted Pixel. They absolutely had the same type of experience as us and have a great working relationship with Microsoft. They would totally second our sentiments and echo what we have to say. There are a bunch of other studios as well. We’ve maybe broken the ice here. Hopefully there will be others.”
