Hello everyone, and welcome to the first-ever Switch News editorial.
As some of you may know, Seasons of Heaven, a Nintendo Switch exclusive by Any Arts Production (yes, without an ‘S’), received its first teaser trailer today.
You may be wondering why we haven’t run a story on it. Let me explain.
This article from Factor News perfectly demonstrates why Seasons of Heaven’s creator, Nico Augusto, is not to be trusted, and that everything about this game reeks of sketchiness.
Augusto is the game’s creative director. He originally pitched the project to Nintendo, who rejected it. He then recycled the idea and created a book based on Seasons of Heaven’s story, while supposedly still working on the project.
Although Any Arts Production started out in France, the studio moved to Los Angeles in 2014 “because that’s where [it needed] to be”, said Augusto in 2014.
At the beginning of 2016, Any Arts had no more money to pay for its offices because it couldn’t find any publishing partners for all four of its games that were in development, including Seasons of Heaven. That already somewhat gives us an idea of Seasons of Heaven’s quality, but now, let’s delve a little deeper into the “in-game trailer” released today.
First of all, the footage is not running on Nintendo Switch. It’s running on PC, on Unreal Engine 4. In its article which exclusively revealed Seasons of Heaven’s teaser trailer, GameBlog explained that Any Arts “hopes to replicate [the trailer’s] graphics on Nintendo Switch”.
So, what does this change? Well, it most likely means that Nico Augusto and his team do not have a Nintendo Switch development kit in their possession, which would also explain why Seasons of Heaven is being revealed now and that, meanwhile, a ton of other third-party developed Switch games remain under wraps. In an likelihood, Nintendo instructed its third-party partners not to reveal any information before the January 12th event, and considering Any Arts’ situation, I find it difficult to believe that they’ve even spoken to Nintendo about bringing Seasons of Heaven to Switch.
So why release the trailer now, then? Well, since no one else is talking about Switch games, Seasons of Heaven is getting quite a bit of attention, being exclusive and all. This is purely strategic. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Augusto and his team kick off a crowdfunding campaign so that they can get the game published, especially considering the fact they they’re broke as hell and were completely unable to find a company willing to work with them to get the game to market. Since crowdfunding doesn’t ensure that a game will be good (or even published), this just seems like a way for Mr. Augusto to make a quick buck.
“But Nick, the game could still be good!”
Yeah, that’s true. It could, but it’s unlikely, and I’ll explain why.
Take a look at this screenshot from Seasons of Heaven.
Well, I lied. That isn’t a Seasons of Heaven screenshot. It actually comes from this video, which is knows as the “Unreal Engine 4 Kite Demo”.
This video was released to show the capabilities of Unreal Engine 4, and it looks a lot like Seasons of Heaven. It’s very easy to create generic worlds like that one, and since Seasons of Heaven’s new trailer basically only shows grass and trees, creating it shouldn’t have taken too much work. Honestly, it may just even be a modified version of the world used for the Kite Demo, but we can’t know that for sure.
Fun fact: Nico Augusto used to work for Gameblog, and is good friends with the site’s founder. He’s using that site and the Switch’s existence to generate publicity for his game that desperately needs funding. Lest not forget that he has a terrible reputation within the industry in France, and often makes wild, unsubstantiated claims that turn out to be false.
Switch News will not be assisting him in this endeavor. Our skepticism is justifiable, and until we see concrete evidence that Any Arts, Nico Augusto and Seasons of Heaven are trustworthy, this is the last time you’ll see the words “Seasons of Heaven” mentioned on this website.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget: be wary of everything you hear about this game.
– Nicholas De Rosa, Switch News administrator
沒有留言:
張貼留言