Rose and Time, back on OUYA!

So a while back I pulled Rose and Time from the OUYA store, not because I had problems with the console, but with the OUYA company at the time. long story short; those problems don’t exist any more, and I’m happy to have the game back on the OUYA marketplace.

The longer version of the story is this; when I first pulled the game and wrote some very harsh things, there was the impression of a lack of humility from the company; hard to reach, only mentioning the good, and glossing over problems. I didn’t want to support such a company.

Something I said then was ” you’ve lost me. There’s a tiny chance you could get me back, but honestly I don’t think you have it in you at this point.” – I was totally wrong.

At the time a lot of developers besides myself were upset at how the free the games fund was going and said so. Then, within a week of chatting with developers (including myself) about how the fund could be improved and what the best outcome for all concerned would be; The free the games fund was changed, none of the scam games received a single cent of the fund, the company admitted it’s mistakes, and was asking for yet more feedback to further improve things.

Listening to developers, responding quickly, showing humility, and of course showing passion. All the reasons I pulled the game for, were non-existent after just that week. I didn’t put the game back on immediately – I’m pretty suspicious so I wanted to keep an eye on things for a while longer – “If this keeps up for a while I’ll put it back for sure” I thought.

Well, I’ve seen OUYA listening to developers, I’ve seen the humility multiple times, I’ve even chatted to Julie a couple of times in email and on skype so I am confident at this point that I can no longer justify keeping the game off the console.

Will the company screw up again? probably. Will they do something that pisses me off? almost certainly! But I believe when it happens the company will be receptive to criticism and will not be afraid to say “my bad” if they realise they took a wrong step.

…

So, now I’m going to talk about something else; I am not walking out of this without regrets myself. I do not regret pulling my game from the store (I feel that was the right thing for me to do at the time and I’d probably do it again). What I regret is making a blog post about it; it was honest and true and what was written was me. However, because of that what I did became a “story”, one that fit into a narrative that many gamers and journalists like to buy into; “OUYA is shit”.

I don’t like that narrative at all, it’s simply not true and despite doing what I felt was right at the time, I gave ammunition to this narrative and I damaged the reputation of a console I dearly love. I even say how much I love the console in the post, but that was irrelevant, I had provided some drama that could be framed just right and people framed it as they pleased.

Somehow I suspect the news that the game is back on the store, that all my worst worries about the company have been addressed, that I continue to love the console and will continue to target it for every game that suits it… will be ignored. It won’t be covered by even a small fraction of the blogs and news sites that covered the game’s pulling. I think that is telling, but sadly it tells very few.