With a heavy focus on online, FPS Brink released at a rather inopportune time, with the PlayStation Network down. Game Director Paul Wedgwood has spoken about how the PlayStation Network outage is affecting themselves as developers, and also talks about people venting their frustrations at Sony.
On the latest episode of GameSpot UK’s podcast, Paul Wedgwood has talked about how the PlayStation Network outage is affecting Splash Damage as developers, especially as the game is releasing in the middle of the PSN outage. He said:
Brink is one of those games where it is best enjoyed when you get to play the online experience as well…Of course for us it is frustrating to feel that half of our potential userbase won’t be able to play online together immediately. I guess it could have some impact on sales, but really what we’re saying to people at the moment is, you could be one of the first level 20 characters when PSN comes back online.
He also argued that the reason people are so angry is probably because Sony have provided such a great service with PSN:
You can certainly understand why people have been so frustrated, and it’s because Sony have been providing such a great service, so you care about the fact that it’s gone now. So in some ways, it is actually really a compliment to Sony.
Wedgwood empathized with people at Sony and continued:
I know that a lot of people are venting their frustration at Sony and are quite angry about the situation, but you have to think that there are a lot of people there who have just had a horrific few weeks, because of a bunch of hackers. These are individuals at Sony that are going through really really stressful periods, and it’s very hard to protect your network against every possible threat. There’s always going to be something new and unexpected, and I’m an ex-server network analyst, so I suppose I’m probably more empathetic than your average person.
Brink is out now for for PS3, 360 and PC. Have you picked the game up, or has the downtime affected your purchase?
