Insomniac director Bryan Intihar has addressed the Marvel’s Spider-Man PuddleGate controversy in a recent interview. The interview explored the game development process involved in creating Marvel’s Spider-Man. Inhitar spoke of the highs as well as the lows, such as the criticisms regarding a potential graphical downgrade.
Speaking with GameIndustry.biz, Inhitar gave his thoughts on the harder parts of game development and the developer’s perspective of the controversy. “It was just the normal stuff. This isn’t clicking in the game. Some people didn’t like the story at certain points. People freaking out about puddles three weeks before the game ships. Those are just normal bumps in the road.”
Inhitar seems to have come to terms with receiving a high level of criticism explaining, “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?’ … So I think it’s more that you have to be careful anytime anything comes out, because people are so scared it’s not going to live up to [expectations].”
The director stated that the studio sifted through all of the content that they released to the public but understands “you’re going to have our hardest core fans dissecting literally every single [frame].” However, Inhitar still sees it as a positive, appreciating the anticipation it builds as well as fans finding errors they didn’t know about.
Despite Marvel’s Spider-Man PuddleGate, Inhitar greatly values his time working on Spider-Man. “For me it was an absolute career highlight, being able to be the creative director on a property that’s so well known and well loved by so many fans.” Aside from working on the game itself, Inhitar also spoke of how the game was a learning experience and helped him grow as a person. The developer recounted the time he met Sony Worldwide Studio president Shuhei Yoshida at E3 2017. Inhitar claims Yoshida exclaimed “it’s real! It’s real!” when seeing footage of Marvel’s Spider-Man for the first time.
The outrage surrounded PuddleGate didn’t last for long and both the game’s fans and Insomniac had fun with the drama once it was over. A fan on Reddit added a lake around some Spidey baddies while Insomniac allowed players to add cartoony puddles to the game’s photo mode.
