Ken Lobb talks about initial fan resistance in making Metroid Prime first-person
Ken Lobb, now the creative director at Microsoft Studios, once played a prominent role at Nintendo and worked on several games. This includes Metroid Prime – a title that, at the time, stirred up some controversy for turning the franchise into a first-person adventure.
Lobb spoke about the initial fan resistance surrounding Metroid Prime as part of an interview with EDGE this month. He said:
The fight, in the pre-internet world, was that we were getting a lot of pressure from fans. Nowadays, you’d be buried under Twitter, NeoGAF — both of which I love, by the way — but those voices are even louder today than they were back then. It comes back to a lesson I learned a long time ago: always listen to your customer, but also understand that if you do focus testing what you’re going to hear is, “I want that thing you did last time, because that was awesome.” Every once in a while, you have to learn to not listen to that and go, “Actually, Metroid in firstperson we think could make more sense.” Great creatives are going to disrupt their earlier designs and make things that are new, or build completely new games or new genres.
Lobb also spoke about his affection for Metroid in general:
Super Metroid is one of the games I’m most proud of, but I didn’t have that much to do with it, other than playing it and making suggestions. And bingo: I ended up in the credits. That was super-awesome. I’m a huge Metroid fan.
And lastly, below are some words from Lobb about his involvement with Killer Instinct:
I was deeply involved in Killer Instinct 1 and 2 working at Nintendo with Rare. I designed the combo system and work closely with them on basically every character on the game and all the animations. It’s an IP that I love dearly, both from the memories of working with those guys and also because it’s kind of fun to go to the arcade and win a lot. I was able to bring some of that back.
