Every year at the GDC, one of the biggest highlights is the Playa Haters Panel. This event features game industry personalities whining and complaining about various aspects of the gaming industry. At this years event, sandwiched between Uwe Boll's "I'm a Misunderstood Genius" speech and the comedic stylings of Keiji "I'll tell you when there's too many Mega Man games" Inafune, little-known game designer Chris Hecker made waves with his "Fear of a Wii Planet" rant.

The Wii bore the brunt of Hecker's fury. He bashed the Big N's new console as being unworthy of it's "next-gen" tag, claiming that the Wii's CPU and graphics processors aren't powerful enough to make the kind of games that he wants to see made. He also likened the Wii to "two GameCubes duct taped together", clearly ignoring the graphics-boosting power of duct tape.

The other object of Hecker's ire was Nintendo's supposedly indifferent attitude about the "artistic quality" of games. He took Nintendo to task for comments by a top company executive stating that they were focused on making games that are "fun" and appeal to casual and non-gamers. Mr. Hecker praised Sony and Microsoft for their commitment to gaming as an art form, citing references to artistic gaming on their websites (Hecker's arguments are based on the famous Hawkins-Bushnell Internet Art Theory, which states that a company's real-life performance is based solely on statements taken from their website.) He closed his speech by saying Nintendo should "make a console that doesn't suck ass."

Why is Chris Hecker so mad at Nintendo? Did his high school sweetheart leave him for an Italian plumber? Was he a partisan Sega backer during the 16-bit console wars? Is he jealous of Reggie Fils-Aime's movie star good looks? Nobody knows the answer to these questions, but what we do know that Mr. Hecker is completely wrong in his assertions.

According to Hecker, games are only good and should only be considered art if they are made with the newest and most powerful technology available. Since the Wii clearly doesn't live up to his standards, one must also assume that every single game for every console released before the Wii is also inferior and not worthy of being called good or "art". Any true connoisseur of retro games should take exception to the idea that a game isn't any good just because it can't render billions of polygons at a certain rate or the AI isn't smarter than every Civil War General combined. Apparently Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Radiant Silvergun, Shadow of the Colossus, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Shaq-Fu just don't cut it in the world of Chris Hecker because they were made in ancient times with prehistoric technology. Fans of the newest, most powerful consoles might want to watch out as well. In a few years, when the Playstation 4, XBox 720 and Atari Jaguar 2 come out, current titles that meet Hecker's standards of "art" might all of the sudden be considered garbage to him.

Hecker's other contention, that Nintendo doesn't really care about video games as an art form, is also flawed. Just because Nintendo's business plan, concentrating on making "fun" games for casual gamers, is different from Microsoft and Sony's doesn't mean that they don't take video games seriously. Also, the idea that they have to plaster their website with references to "games as an art form" is just silly.

Perhaps in the future, when Nintendo releases its next console (which will be two Wiis duct taped together), Chris Hecker will find it in his heart to forgive them for their crimes. For now, however, they will have to console themselves with the piles of money they have made thanks to their "underpowered" console.