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What it is like to be a man who publishes terrible games? MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totilo sat down and had a surprisingly cordial and revealing talk with Paul Rinde, president of Destineer and publisher of many of the terrible, terrible games about to hit the Wii in January. By terrible I mean stuff like Indianapolis 500 Legends.

This said, remember that Destineer isn't the sole culprit in the upcoming glut of crap. Ubisoft, Majesco, and many small publishers are dumping some dubious software in the next month to take advantage of an assumed Wii software feeding frenzy in Q1. Destineer is just the main company with the cajones to talk about what they're doing and why, and you've got to respect that. So, hop behind the cut to see some tasty quotes from the article if you like.

Regarding Destineer (and probably a lot of other companies) and their approach to putting Wii games onto shelves:

We were looking for more casual games, trying to get into the pick-up and play features of the Wii, more family-fun, family friendly and that type of thing, Rinde said. Destineer had set in motion plans for four Wii games in development, the first of which was the Indianapolis game. The next three, including Februarys Arcade Moon-developed co-op flight sim World War II Aces, would be released in 2008. And then Rinde went to Europe last year and found out about a group just outside of Birmingham, England called Data Design Interactive. DDI had made Wii games for release in Europe and were looking for an American publishing partner.

It surprised me, too, Rinde told me. We said, Great. Anything thats Wii wed love to take a look at. Most people would& We talked to a few of our retail partners and they were very upbeat about the lineup that we were showing them so we concluded the deal very quickly. (For those whove heard of the Wii game, Ninja Breadman, DDI made that.)

Regarding the, uh, cheapness of some of Destineer's upcoming offerings:

I wanted to know if Rinde considered Destineers Wii games, which retail for $20, as budget games, and I wanted to know if he thought that was a pejorative term. To me budget games are under-$20 games and thats not what we are. I dont know if youd call them mid-priced games or casually priced games, but the strategy for us is to not go head to head from a price-point with the larger publishers that are able to spend significantly more marketing dollars to get the word out. Our hope is to hit some niches they dont.

There's other good stuff in the article, but this is what really struck me: that "family fun" and "casual" were basically being equated to "crap mom will buy and the kids will play and nobody minds that it's bad too much because it's $20". This is a fine short-term strategy but seems a dangerous long-term one. (It's also pretty insulting to casual gamers, but this wouldn't be the first time a casual developer took a dim view of their customers.)

It's true casual players don't demand the ridiculous production values hardcore gamers do, but the average person is still perfectly capable of telling when a game is crap or not. If you have any casual friends who've just adopted a Wii, try to advise them to be careful with their money in the next month or so and not impulse-buy games. Even a bad $20 game is $20 that could've bought about half of a better game at a higher price point, and a good game is going to be more worth the price of admission than cheap shovelware.

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