Not a particularly well-researched post. Sony did not publish the game, they provided marketing budget. This means that they were not in creative control.
No Man’s Sky One Year Later
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#62> No Man’s Sky inhabits this frustrating space alongside games like the nu Deus Ex games, the original X-Com, or the Mass Effect series. It offers something you just can’t get anywhere else, but it does so in a deeply flawed and annoying way. This really resonated with me. I have a whole pile of Steam games which have fascinating, unique traits, but are 'objectively' bad in that they failed to deliver a solid story,…
It offers something you just can’t get anywhere else, but it does so in a deeply flawed and annoying way. This just described Elite Dangerous for me. Multiplayer MMO Descent:Freespace scratches a deeply satisfying itch that I've had since I was a kid, but that game's flaws are absolutely maddening. Is there a word to describe the maddening annoyance at something being so close, yet so far away, for objectively silly…
> Is there a word to describe the maddening annoyance at something being so close, yet so far away, for objectively silly reasons?
They call that the uncanny valley
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#63> No Man’s Sky inhabits this frustrating space alongside games like the nu Deus Ex games, the original X-Com, or the Mass Effect series. It offers something you just can’t get anywhere else, but it does so in a deeply flawed and annoying way. This really resonated with me. I have a whole pile of Steam games which have fascinating, unique traits, but are 'objectively' bad in that they failed to deliver a solid story,…
It offers something you just can’t get anywhere else, but it does so in a deeply flawed and annoying way. This just described Elite Dangerous for me. Multiplayer MMO Descent:Freespace scratches a deeply satisfying itch that I've had since I was a kid, but that game's flaws are absolutely maddening. Is there a word to describe the maddening annoyance at something being so close, yet so far away, for objectively silly…
Heartbreaking, in the same sense as Fantasy Heartbreaker tabletop RPGs?
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case of a small company, most of the marketing was done by lead director who was very close to the development team and obviously knew what the team was able and unable to deliver.
Yeah, but like in the case of online multiplayer, I believe they had every intention of making that a release day feature, but it just wasn't ready. I just think calling the guy a liar is a bit harsh. All marketing is lying in some form or fashion. :P
How is purposefully implying that there is multiplayer a month before release not a lie? Had it been “uhm, yeah, we are working on that but have nothing to announce at this point” would have been a lot more honest. But none of the marketing campaign was honest—it was full of half-truths, inaccuracies and insinuations of something much grander.
Also, I think the end result being as bad as it was in many’s eyes create feedback loop on the negativity. This is not the first time a game has disappointed its audience due to an overreaching marketing campaign, but this was not much of anything at the time of release.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified. Why? The guy obviously wasn't trying to make a bad game. He was just inexperienced, got in over his head, and failed to deliver the product he wanted to build on the timeline he promised. I would have assumed if any community understands that failure isn't an unusual result in the face of ambitious goals it would…
Please. He was lying up until the last weeks to release, where no practical development on the game was taking place. I’d see your point if promises were made years before release and the company was unable to deliver. But there was clear malice here.
Like the original article suggests, if he was truly malicious in intent then why would he continue to work on this game after release? Hanlon's razor suggests he just failed on the biggest stage he was ever on and he didn't know how to handle that.
To quote the article:
>When people ask you, “Will we be able to do X?” it’s easy to say “yes” because you already wanted to have X and you’ve already thought about how you’d go about making it happen. People love you, your work is valuable, and you don’t want to say no. People smile with delight when you say “yes” and when you say “no” they look disappointed and ask annoying technical questions that would – if you took the time to answer them accurately – being incredibly boring and hard to follow. In the short term, saying “yes” is always the path of least resistance.
>I know exactly how that feels and I know I’ve trapped myself in situations where I needed to crunch in order to meet my promises. Not because I wanted to work overtime, but because saying yes just feels so much better than saying no. I’m really thankful I made those mistakes in private meetings as part of a small company on not in front of international media. If Stephen Colbert had me on his show in March of 2016 and asked with delight if Good Robot was going to have different character classes, it would have been very tempting to say yes. After all, it was something I’d wanted to put in the game and maybe I’d be able to find time to squeeze it in before release. And if that interview happened to me when I was a young man and more easily dazzled by the limelight? Shit. I’m sure I’d make the exact same mistake.
I really can't imagine a developer who has lead a project of any size not relating to that on some level.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open world games are great for me. I can't stand it when a game locks me into a pattern.
Sure, but every open world game includes a gameplay loop of some kind. Virtually every open world game has the same basic loop: collect, craft/buy/sell, build. After that, it's just a question of how you motivate players to go through the loop: quests (Elder Scrolls), randomly generated threats (Minecraft, Terraria), multiplayer PC threats (WoW, EVE), etc. Sounds like this author feels NMS fails to justify itself in…
> Virtually every open world game has the same basic loop: collect, craft/buy/sell, build.
That is a massive loop though, huge, world size, not confined to a specific path. I choose my path through the world.
> After that, it's just a question of how you motivate players to go through the loop
Open World is about ... openness. The player gets to decide, specific motivation not required; the journey is the motivation.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn millennials are too harsh, expecting developers to be honest! It’s just a game after all! /s It’s because of such ridiculous attitude and low expectation that the gaming industry is at the state that it is—terrible.
Well, it is "just a game"... an innovative, highly creative game with some really interesting features. I suspect the real creative talent behind the game got used and pressured by product-manager types to ship far before it was ready because of all the money and promises involved. Throwing a fit because of "honesty" in game pre-marketing is sort of like asking for your money back because a movie didn't fulfill the e…
> Throwing a fit because of "honesty" in game pre-marketing is sort of like asking for your money back because a movie didn't fulfill the expectations set by the trailer. Yeah, good luck with that at the multiplex, but also keep in mind that many people got their money back for the game.
These aren't the same though. Trailers can be used to evoke a certain sense about a movie that is disingenuous such as masking a drama as a comedy by splicing together the funny parts. You'll still get those funny parts, but they just weren't what you expected. A director can say that they'll guarantee you'll laugh until you cry, but that's all subjective. What happened with No Man's Sky was just outright lying.
This would be akin to someone saying that some actor gave the performance of a lifetime in the movie, but the actor never had anything to do with the movie. Does that mean I can't enjoy the movie? Nope. I might still love it, but that person still lied to get me to see the movie. That's what they did with No Man's Sky - gave false information about a game's features that was still good for what it was.
For what it's worth, I heard that people who didn't follow the hype-train liked the game. Those accounts of the gameplay all praised it.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think all games should focus on one platform, the PC platform. Consoles drain developer's time and attention from making the actual game. And don't get me started on knuckle-dragging VR.
The consoles are much easier to develop for -- debugging GPU problems across hundreds of GPUs by three manufacturers is so much harder than doing so on a single (or two, if you count the two major consoles) GPU type. They also make a larger share of the revenue than PC games do. They don't drain attention, they put attention where the most revenue for the least work is. And from a user point of view, PC gaming just g…
Consoles are lock-in death to me.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified. Why? The guy obviously wasn't trying to make a bad game. He was just inexperienced, got in over his head, and failed to deliver the product he wanted to build on the timeline he promised. I would have assumed if any community understands that failure isn't an unusual result in the face of ambitious goals it would…
Professionalism entails keeping promises. If he didn't do that, people saying he isn't good at his job isn't totally absurd.
To be fair, did he have a previous track record? I honestly don't know, but if he didn't have prior experience working on projects at this level then it's not hard to give him some benefit of the doubt.
Maybe he should've been more open and honest about the development process, but otherwise I just don't know how much blame he deserves. Professionalism is much easier when you have the perspective, time, and experience.
Re: No Man’s Sky One Year Later
#70As a former amateur Twitch.tv streamer, I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of internet personalities, and some of the biggest personalities seem to be game developers that found themselves in the spotlight. Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy…
Cosmo was shunned because he went looney tunes in a very short timespan.
For those who don't really watch speedruns, what happened to him was really fucked up.
- Lost in very important tournament.
- Got depressed because of it.
- Girlfriend left him.
- More depressed.
- Suddenly, "I'm actually a girl".
I feel really really sorry for Cosmo, so much went wrong in his life in a very short timespan and he snapped.