That Dragon, Cancer developer defends Ouya from recent backlash

The developer of That Dragon, Cancer recently posted a blog entry defending Ouya from what he believes to be unfair criticism that has cast the company in an inaccurate light.

The Dragon, Cancer is an adventure game that Ryan Green and his independent development team made about his four-year old son, who has terminal cancer. The game was funded in a direct deal with Ouya as an exclusive for the console. According to Green, Ouya has been "a popular target dummy" in recent months due to a poorly-worded tweet the @PlayOuya Twitter account sent out, which read: "The Powerfully Moving That Dragon, Cancer Is Now A Ouya Exclusive ... GET SOME."

"What started as an exciting day for us, quickly devolved into mudslinging at our fine faceless corporate sponsors," Green said. "A person innocently tweeted GET SOME to promote us, in good faith. The Internet smelled blood, and pounced.

"It didn't matter what we thought about it, or that the community manager didn't mean it that way. It didn't matter that the head of developer relations, who brought us to Ouya, immediately proved to us that our best interest was her first priority. It didn't matter that a founder fought for our deal even when Ouya's profitability wasn't guaranteed, or that the head of Ouya thinks about charity and the value of developers before profit.

"None of that mattered. What mattered is that we, the nameless mob GOT SOME."

Green wrote that Ouya as a company has admittedly had some missteps, but the 30 or so people who make up the company have good intentions and want to help the game industry and see game developers succeed. He urged readers to ask questions and talk to Ouya and its developers before "sling[ing] another arrow over the Twitter wall..."

"The game industry is a community that needs each other," he said. "We have families, we have bills, we have dreams and skills that don't yet match our taste. We're trying and we're doing. All of us — you and me — we're making games and writing about games and playing games and pouring everything we have into it because it's a language we understand, it's one that speaks to our heart.

"We [we] pause and talk to each other, we'll find beauty in each one of us ... and a soul that's worth treasuring."