Why Is No Man's Sky Getting SO MUCH HATE?

They should have a planet in NMS like that one in Interstellar.

 

Zero Punctuation review of NMS is online:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vid...source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=videos


Interesting comparison between two games, especially since I find Elite Dangerous too devoid of gameplay, diversity, emergence and purpose already. Sounds like I'd really hate NMS based on the ZP review.

 

It happens all the time with games that promise a certain scale and depth and fail to deliver on it (Fable, Spore, etc). It sucks to get burned on a game you don't like (who hasn't been there at some point?), but to me it feels like the consumer should accept responsibility for rushing to buy something before impressions/reviews are out.

 

What little screenshots we have seen do look nice though. They must have some good artists.

I really wish we had time & money to do all the marketing but we hope in the end people want a good game. I have to say the trend seems to be screenshots / cut scene prerendered video and then the game itself is nothing like it because most of the money is spent on marketing. One of our large competitors announced a game this week and didn't even have to give a launch date. We have never had a game reviewed by any of the big Android websites. They routinely ignore us because we won't pay for a review.

We operate a rolling release cycle so the game is getting constant improvements and grows over time. Its playable at a very early stage and users contribute to our data about the games performance.

The best publicity we ever got was when Hiroshi Lockheimer retweeted our Android thanks last week. A stroke of luck, it made supporting Android Nougat & VR worth it. Perhaps there is someone looking out for the little guys after all ;-)

 

Or, and here's a wild idea, maybe marketing shouldn't outright lie to people

 

Oh.. one other thing. At 15 employees I think they are a little beyond Indie. I think the revenue threshold for Unity charging for Pro was 60k or something so I bet they have gone over that now.

 

Lately we have been dealing with some really rude reviewers (or people desperate to keep their paid review money).
As per my post the trailers are the tip of the iceberg leading all the way down to some very dirty tactics indeed.

 

One thing is that I think most of the "lie" where wishes that didn't live up to contact with reality. Given the number of crash they have and tacked on gameplay system with dangling bit (shield stuff that isn't use to build shield), I guess a lot of that has to do with integrating all the systems together seamlessly. It make sense that the e3 demo was "scripted" But I think those stuff where less scripted than hacked together on top of an unfinished build.

@Anjin_nz
You could have name drop your game here too

 

Sure, and by the same token, maybe you shouldn't buy things entirely based on marketing.

 

Hi Neoshaman.

Thanks, you can find our game on the Made with Unity part of this website if you are interested but I would rather not bring that into the discussion if you can forgive me. I mentioned our process because it's counter to what marketing hype tends to feed on. That sort of marketing requires months of anticipation and build up.

I think the general theme here is not delivering on your promises combined with hype of galactic proportions. Perhaps it's because the press tend to pack hunt on some meme because it's safe when everyone says its cool.

Personally I think they are lazy because they don't go out and seek good games, find out what people are playing etc.

Good to see such an active discussion. We have been thinking a lot about this lately.

 

Does that EVER happen? Because when you preorder or buy a game you definitely do not sign this kind of contract.

Preorder entitles you to copy of the game when it is released.
If you dislike the game after the purchase, stores have refund policies (both steam and gog, IIRC).
When someone had 20..30 hours of gameplay, refund policies no longer apply, though - you get the money's worth of playtime.

 

Maybe not a contract but false advertising is certainly a possibility. Internet purchases have a 14 day cooling off period with right of return for a full refund if I remember correctly.

 

Pontificating nonsense such as this from the G - 'No Man's Sky's cultural influences, from Dune to post-rock'
Whaaaaatttt...
It's not a game, It's a religious experience...

 

sorry for the postgasm but one more G headline
' The month in games: No Man’s Sky goes where every gamer has gone before- Planet U-bend '

[errr.... my edit at the end]

 

No Man's Sky was not made with Unity. NMS was created using a custom engine.

 

The specifics of what were said are utterly irrelevant. What matters is whether or not he believed it to be true when he said it, and considering what happened with the box printing I'm inclined to believe he did.

(You wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of boxes printed knowing that you'd have to then get hundreds of thousands of stickers printed and hundreds of thousands of stickers applied to boxes. That stuff costs money. If you know in advance then you don't misprint your boxes.)

I think that feeling is quite justified. That said, there's a big difference between a "feeling" and an "accusation", and calling someone a liar in public is the latter.



To be honest, I wonder if a part of the issue here is (management of) the natural shift in game design over time. The major project I'm working on now has shifted pretty significantly since I started work on the concept about a year ago. The concept as of now is quite different to what it was 9 months ago - one of the major features I wanted has been dropped, and it's one that would have been pretty exciting to players. If I'd been pitching my game on a stage at an expo 9 months ago then I absolutely would have talked about that feature and how awesome it would be. That in turn would have made it incredibly hard for me to drop it later when I decided that a) the tech wasn't where I wanted it and/or b) the game is actually better without it anyway (both of which are true). As it is, public playtesting a few weeks ago resulted in players telling us how cool the game was, giving useful feedback about improvements, and asking when more would be available. If those same people had been expecting a major feature which was absent then I expect that the feedback would have been more along the lines of "hey, where's this awesome thing you were telling us about?"



To be honest, all of this discussion is making me want to play the game more. I wasn't really interested before, because "explore computer generated places" doesn't doesn't pique my interest in and of itself. But all this fuss makes me want to see what all this fuss is about.

(That, and Hello Games is actually a pretty good model for exactly the kind of place I'd like to work, so seeing what they actually managed to make is attractive to me.)

 

On one hand, consumers should be able to believe that vendors are not outright lying to them. On the other hand, there are plenty of game reviewers, so consumers should be able to wait for some reviews prior to purchasing a game. Either way, the game pre-order culture definitely needs to end. Game pre-ordering does not benefit the consumer.

 

Except he vaguely implied things just before the release. He didn't lie, but he didn't give a firm, unequivocal no. At the very least, he hid information that might hurt sales of the game.

 

This is where I think the ire comes from. At some point before the game released multiplayer got officially cut. That means the information released just before the game came out shouldn't have included vague multi player promises.

Pre ordering is great when a product delivers on its promises. It actually does work out for the consumers too, there is a significant perceived value in getting access to a game on day zero, and playing it through before the net is covered in spoilers.

It just has the potential to back fire dramatically from time to time.

 

Cliff notes version? I generally refuse to subject myself to that mans language and attitudes.

 

While I agree it wasn't enough I was under the impression that there was a significant change in tune right near the end, from "your friends can see you" to "this is not a multiplayer experience".

If I were hanging out for the game then I'd certainly have preferred some kind of press release specifically stating the change, of course.

I've never understood this. I've pre-ordered a few times myself, but always to get stuff like those statues that come with some games. It's never been to play on "day 0", since as far as I'm concerned the game will be just as good in a few weeks as it will today. (Heck, after a few patches it might even be better.)

I guess a noteworthy exception is online games where community size is important, but even there a day or two isn't going to make a difference, and sometimes the first sale or price drop is a great opportunity to get on board with a bunch of friends all at once.

 

I don't do it either. But I have plenty of my friends and colleges who do it. I have one relative who takes time off work every time an Assasian's Creed game is released in order to play it as soon as possible.

 

He did tell it multiple time before release, I'm glad I'm following teh actual news and not the echo chamber.

 

Except he said literally the opposite in multiple news interviews. A single tweet the day before the game came out does not undo all that. You're not following the actual news, you're ignoring the vast majority of it.

 

The vast majority of people buying a game aren't following the developer on Twitter.

 

This true for any games, but I'm sure there was a time (after the death threats for delay) where they realize they wouldn't make it. They made a statement, it is clear (why it wasn't relayed by "journo" is another question, interview and subsequent article also happen because of "journo"). Thus saying they lied and didn't give an unequivocal no, this fact is not true.

Anyway I won't engaged in a loki's wager any longer, I have laid some facts that was missing, interpretation of where to cut the slack is to anyone to decide.

 

Not all of us sit at our desk or with our phone waiting for a Twitter. If he did say that, he probably knew it would not reach everyone. I really suspect that he was trying to keep sales high and he would not be the first business man to do that. I also agree with the person who said people should be more careful before they purchase something. Wait and read the reviews. Isn't that what most of us do with anything other than a game?

 

Does it really matter in the end? Some people somewhere made a game. A lot of people bought it. A lot of people aren't happy with it. It's not like it's my game. Your game (anyone here as far as I know).

I suppose it might be getting so much attention because people are concerned it could tarnish trust in Indies. Which may or may not be the case. Probably some folks it will have that result. For most, it will probably blow over and they'll be chasing the next bright & shiny game several months from now.

Guess I just don't see why so much interest still about did he lie. If he lied... he lied. People do it often. If he exaggerated he exaggerated. Again hardly a rare thing. Especially in marketing.

I do think it's probably worth looking at the marketing campaign for the game because they obviously did something very right as far as generating interest. Personally, I don't see what got people so excited about it to begin with. Seems no different to me than countless other games on Steam and elsewhere over the years.

 

Good point I had forgotten that I had read that a HL2 logo was found.

 

Because arm-chair quarterbacking is a fine, long-standing forum tradition!

No, I think it's an interesting question. In the US, at least, if you make hundreds of thousands of sales as a result of marketing based on actual outright lies, you're going to be spending some quality time talking to the Federal Trade Commission.

They're Australian, I think? But I bet similar rules apply.

Not that we're likely to resolve the question here, of course. Or even agree.

 

British. They're in Guildford, England.

 

Ok. Australia's cranky old grandparents.

 

Well, its mostly because expectations were different for the game. And while a good portion of that is down to hype by players, Hello Games did everything they could, if intended or not, to fuel the hype.

Trailers showing gameplay that is not in the final game, even talking about that non existent (or cut) gameplay during live events and interviews, being vague and secretive on purpose without stopping people from going into the wrong direction with their assumptions.
And then not really coming clean BEFORE the game was sold to the first customers.

That is what people are upset about. And they are right about it. It was either some dick moves by the developer, or complete incompetence/inexpierience.
The Sticker on the boxes hiding the multiplayer label is pointing out that it was most probably rather the latter, complete overscoping and bad time/project management. So PROBABLY Sean is not such a dick as some people make him look like. Just the developer releasing a completly unfinished game.

Which again, its understandable that people complain when they get that for 60 bucks.


To be fair, its about the same sh*t you kinda expect nowadays from Ubisoft. I cannot think of any Ubisoft game that came out in a finished state as of lately.
Its just that many players now expect a rough release for Ubisoft games, so the ones most sensitive to that probably wait for 6 months before buying a Ubisoft game.

People had no such prior expierience with Hello games. I guess now they know.

 

To be frank, the hype come from the press first, they didn't run actual ads until sony come into the picture. They were encourage by press friend to whom the presented the game to show the teaser to the VGX. Then it spread to other press as the next big things and they all wanted piece of the story. When sony entered the picture, they were sometimes on presentation where they were visibly annoyed by the pression some executives where putting on them, they were complaining they were doing something new, it was too early to show anything, and they didn't know when it will be ready because nobody has made a game like this at this scale, it wasn't about typical content.

Also you can find quote as early as 2013 that it's not a multiplayer, and interaction are describe as leaving message to other player. So you don't have to follow twitter .

I do think they start drinking their own kool aid at the end. Going back to the timeline it seems they gave up trying to contain the hype and roll with it. But I believe people hyped themselves up first there is a lot of little details people leave out to prep themselves to deception.

 

Agreed. It is foolish to pre-order anything, unless you absolutely don't care about what you are getting. But to blame the fools rather than the deceiver... this is an ethical issue, rather than a technical issue.

 

Yeah, the marketing was deceptive and people are unhappy about that. Today they found out that early discoveries get overwritten by new discoveries, so if you go back to your starting planet it only remembers planets & solar systems but not flora/fauna (I've not played the game, just repeating what I've read). It sucks for people who bought the game thinking it would be better and/or different. But why do people feel the need to pre-order things in the first place?

I was reading a post elsewhere this morning that made the point that if you wait for reviews you are letting other people form your purchasing habits for you. Something I hadn't thought of, and makes sense. But buying something ahead of release comes with the risk of getting a bad game. If you don't want to waste $60, then don't take that risk.

I'm also surprised that people believe marketing for anything in the first place. I thought everyone was more cynical these days.

I guess it's pre-order culture that I don't understand.

So much time and effort wasted trying to figure out how dishonest the marketing was with four decimal accuracy. It's like: you bought a bad game and that sucks...take the L, get over it and don't buy the next one?

 

Life is never certain and morality is relative.

For uncertainty in videogames, there's a refund policy.

 

That would be my view of it. Buy. Get burned. Nobody made me buy. Suck it up and never buy from them again if I felt they really lied to me.

I consider myself a pretty avid gamer and still can't understand how so many people could get so excited over some random game from random people. I pre-ordered Diablo 3 and the expansion. Was awesome to have it in my mailbox on release day. My cousin and i both did so we could start playing the game we had waited so long for.

But that is the only game I have ever done that with. As much as I love playing games... simple fact is I can always find lots of different games to play. Often even for free. So unless it is something I am a huge fan of (which means Diablo series and the old Warcrafts before they went online MMO) I never preorder it. Never even pay full price for them.

Heck I have the new DOOM sitting in box still unopened. I bought it on sale for $30 at Amazon a while ago. One of these days I'll play it. Probably this winter.

I guess one thing NMS does a great job on is showing just how powerful marketing really is on the average person.

 

I'm scrolling through the steam review page and after five minutes of scrolling I finally found a positive review:

"The refund button works."

 

There was a massive thread on the PC Master Race reddit the day No Man's Sky launched that was attempting to nail in the this point. If a game is from a company you don't know, if it doesn't have some amazing feature you cannot live without, etc then you shouldn't pre-order. In the case of No Man's Sky there was no meaningful benefit to doing so.

 

http://www.geek.com/games/no-mans-sky-wipes-your-discoveries-after-two-weeks-1668222/

To add to the neverending mess that is this game, apparently discoveries aren't even permanent.

 

Love that first comment.

That said I wonder if it's actually wiping them or if it's simply hiding them from the list it shows you. There is a limit after all of how much data you're able to store within the Steam cloud. I'm up to 6.42MB (14.56MB available) after one hundred and five hours of play.

 

This should help explain it.

Most people who think they're game developers are actually just bored gamers in-between big games. Kind of like how football fans cry when their sports team loses. Same thing.

It's an indecipherable mess. A pit of snakes. Build someone/something up and then destroy it. Hype a game and then eviscerate it upon release. Public opinion shifts quickly, and often for no reason. But in the end the goal is always negativity.

 

At least we know Skyrim Special Edition won't be missing much of its promised functionality and it's free too.

 

Here's a template:

It's a consumer designation that people have turned into a lifestyle identifier. What can go wrong?

 

Ah that opening sentence helps me to understand the strong interest in this game. I guess I had read that before but just glanced over it.

they could name solar systems, planets, animals, plants, and regions within planets to whatever they wanted

That is powerful. I've always believed that interaction was the heart of games. The essence of what they are. No, not all games I suppose but it is what separates computer games (console games, etc) from the rest. The power to really impact the world. This is the thing I believe made Minecraft so popular... being able to literally change the world and basically sculpt the world as they wanted.

For the average gamer (non-dev I mean) having that kind of control over a game is a strong elixir. It's just so darn rare and yet is one of the things computer games should be doing regularly to some degree that makes sense within the context of the game.

 

Best line of the trailer: "Experience this feature-rich screensaver"

 

I think in this day and age, it bears remembering that there's no value in pre-ordering anymore, but a ton of risks. Outside of the little (often rather shallow) goodies people get for pre-ordering (gone are the days of most pre-ordered games and special editions having interesting feelies or other unique trinkets), there is no reason in it. A digital download isn't limited in quantity, and you don't have to go to a store to reserve one piece of a limited amount. You can buy it whenever and download it whenever. You can wait for the reviews and see whether the actual product holds up or not before you dip in your toes.

A big part of the reason why studios, publishers and press all alike join in the hype circus is because they need to convince folks that pre-ordering and expensive special editions are still worth it. The companies want folks' money fast, and lots of it, and nothing makes that simpler than getting them hooked before the product is even out, before negative word of mouth might spread and people are discouraged from purchasing. I don't believe Mister Murray from Hello Games is a calculated liar, but he clearly got swept up in this hype machine and wasn't prepared for the big stage him and his game were suddenly put on. He promised too much, said too much in general and bought into the hype wholesale. Now he got burned, the customers got burned, and No Man's Sky will be remembered as a generally average game that underperformed and suffered from its disappointing marketing.

It really is like most Molyneux productions, and just like with most Molyneux productions, the cycle will continue as long as studios, publishers, media and customers all play their part.