Speaking at the Game Developers Conference this week, Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes has described the ‘no-death’ gameplay mechanic in last year’s outing as a “mistake of projecting my own attitudes” on the project.
Speaking to MTV’s Multiplayer Blog in defence of the controversial mechanic, Mattes commented, “I guess I made the mistake of projecting my own attitudes… I believed that, as a consumer base, the gaming industry had evolved to the point where they were punishing themselves for their failures… “
“The idea with the Elika mechanic was [that] if you were a really good player, a single fall — when she had to pull you up — would be devastating thing because it ruined your perfect run.”
In light of numerous complaints, however, Matte added: “We can’t continue to punish players for not being super leet haxxors but we have to do enough of that so that the guys on NeoGAF [hardcore message board gamers] won’t sell the game back.”
Prince of Persia is sort of like marmite – you either love it, or hate it. We loved it, as you can see from our review here.