'Spider-Man' PS4 Director Reflects on Puddlegate, Pressure From Hardcore Fans

Marvel's Spider-Man was one of the most successful games of 2018, both critically and commercially. But it did have its bumps in the road.

In the weeks building up to release, one of the biggest talking points of the game was that it had been downgraded from earlier builds. The evidence? Less puddles. It may sound trivial, but it was a narrative that quickly caught on and spread, until it was dominating the narrative around the game.

Eventually, the talk around it started to die down after Insomniac Games revealed it wasn't due to a downgrade that there were less puddles, but an artistic decision. And for those that didn't buy that, the tech-wizards over at Digital Foundry eventually released a video showing the game had actually been upgraded since E3, not downgraded. And as you would expect, the combination of these two brought the boiling issue to a much more quiet simmer.

That said, recently Creative Director on the project Bryan Intihar sat down with GamesIndustry, where he reflected on the Puddlegate drama and what it was liking working under a microscope of hardcore fans.

"Some people didn't like the story at certain points," said Intihar. "People freaking out about puddles three weeks before the game ships. Those are just normal bumps in the road.

"When you work on something as high profile with such a well-known character, there's always the question of, 'Is it really going to live up to the hype? Is it going to live up to expectations?' And there's that fear that 'oh my God, maybe it's not going to be as good.' If we release a minute of footage, you're going to have our hardest core fans dissecting literally every single frame. Which is great because they're so stoked and talking about it, getting the word out and building buzz. But they're also looking for problems. And I get it, I would maybe be the same way."

Intihar continued:

"When anything, a video game, a movie, a TV show, is that anticipated, they just want to see more of it. They want to talk about it. They want to tell their friends about it. They want to post about it. Those things are just going to happen. There's the negative side of people focusing on things they want to see, problems or issues. At the same time, sometimes they bring light to things we can improve, and that was a good example. I worry sometimes when things start to pick up and that becomes the story, rather than the cool new thing, when the criticism dominates the story."

Thankfully, while the Puddlegate drama got loud, it was only for a little bit. And once the game released, nobody was talking about puddles, just how good the game was.

Marvel's Spider-Man is available for PlayStation 4. At the moment of publishing, there's been no word of a sequel, but the aforementioned Intihar has teased that its development is already underway.

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