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[Uthred]

You know, lets not discount the possibility that Sean isn't a pathological liar but that a) maybe he's mental or b) maybe he's stupid e.g. he says "No DLC!" then someone has a quite word with him about how companies cost money to run so at some point they may have to charge for DLC and he says "Maybe DLC!" (of course lets not discount people interpreting "Maybe DLC!" as "Definitely DLC!" either because they've been hurt before, they're paranoid or because it suits the narrative they're building). Gonna start a Patreon so I can make a tell all documentary called One Man's Mistake: The Tale of No Man's Sky

Can someone explain to me why people are so upset by this game?

People were really looking forward to the game, it didnt live up to some its perceived marketing promises, they are genuinely upset. Then other people are "genuinely" upset. Still others are happy to be proved right because its always nice to have the world validate your opinion and thus yourself. Also maybe its about ethics in videogames development.

I dunno about the others, but 'upset' would be inaccurate in my case. It's a little closer to schadenfreude for me.

Genuinely refreshing to see someone just be honest about it

 

[Inviusx]

 

[Griss]

Imagine spending years of your life working on something, and this is what you get for your efforts... Honestly I wonder sometimes about getting back into game-dev, and then stuff like this comes along and any enthusiasm I have flies out the window.

Rationally I know I should just file it away under "typical internet sillyness", but the truth is it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels the same way.

Imagine spending years of your life on something, achieving something magnificent, and having everything overshadowed because you couldn't bring yourself to communicate the truth about your game even once before, during and after launch.

If I was working for Hello Games I'd be fucking raging at Sean Murray over this. It was all so fucking avoidable. Just one goddamned tweet saying whether multiplayer is or isn't in the game! That's all it would have taken! And then everyone would be appreciating the momentous achievement that their procedural universe is, and so on and so forth.

But you make the gamers out to be the bad guys here. That's absurd. This is entirely Murray's doing, and continues to be Murray's doing.

It's really, really hard to put the blame for No Man's Sky's astronomical (no pun intended) expectations on the audience when the developers were on record talking about the game in ludicrous terms not even six months ago.

Thank you! Let's stop pretending this stuff was all two years ago before the game was fully formed.

I feel like there's this current trend on GAF to see any complaining by gamers as a negative, any backlash as a 'tantrum'. Some kind of post-GG paranoia or hangover. But when someone misleads consumers or engages in misrepresentation of a product, shouting down criticism because it comes from a group who have been wrong in their anger before isn't the answer.

 

[Clear]

Or....Imagine spending $60 of your hard earned money on a game that is missing many of the features you were led to believe would be implemented. Honestly I wonder sometimes about preordering games, and then stuff like this comes along and my enthusiasm I have flies out the window.

Like these two things are even remotely comparable. It just shows your contempt for the work, and reinforces my point.

 

[Lemondish]

I'm actually surprised people have that much time on their hands. I barely find time to browse gaf once a day and people are compiling missing features in a video game........not to mention finding the time to play the game for so many hours before compiling this (I'm assuming he played a lot to confirm all that)

It's the Destiny effect. This feels identical to the backlash Destiny received following launch.

And just like Destiny I expect a healthy sized community that doesn't give a shit and enjoys the game immensely despite low reviews, list wars, and a nonstop deluge of discussion about how Murray is Molyneux reborn and we should all be furious about it.

I think Hello Games next game should be a simulator that lets you get furious about something on the Internet. The response when it doesn't meet expectations who be so meta.

 

[Bsigg12]

It's the Destiny effect. This feels identical to the backlash Destiny received following launch.

And just like Destiny I expect a healthy sized community that doesn't give a shit and enjoys the game immensely despite low reviews, list wars, and a nonstop deluge of discussion about how Murray is Molyneux reborn and we should all be furious about it.

Destiny at least let you play with friends so those first few months while light on content were at least enjoyable with people.

 

[Jeffrey]

i wonder how much of it being $60 impacted people's feelings?

Sure they are a small studio but, the studio size isn't something mentioned on the box.

They are selling an early access steam game for $60 retail... its almost like if they were demoing and previews of assassins creed 2 but shipped... ass creed 1.

This game will do ok, but its going to be interesting to see how future hello studio games will be scrutinized before launch.

 

[David H Wong]

This witch hunt that's going on is kind of fucking gross. People compiling lists of "oh well this is every single thing he said that isn't in the game" The realities of game development can rapidly shift the course of a product.

I don't think Shaun ever knowingly mis-represented NMS. It was all of the crazed fucking fans who blew everything about this game out of proportion. I knew this was coming from the second this game was announced. Who would have thought that the internet would have overhyped this game for themselves. I'm not even a huge fan of NMS myself but jesus people learn to have realistic expectations about things like this.

Frankly, everyone who is angry about this did it to themselves. Like seriously what did you think a studio like Hello Games was going to be able to turn out with the small team that they have?

"You should have known they were lying! It's your fault for taking his clear statements as truth!"

I honestly think the reaction from the defenders is weirder. If Ubisoft had done this it'd be treated as a crime against humanity. There's nothing about being a small developer that prevents them from telling the truth ("We had this feature early in development, but we dropped it for performance reasons...")

Being small excuses a lack of features, but not the lies.

 

[dancmc]

Fantastic!!

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Imagine spending years of your life on something, achieving something magnificent, and having everything overshadowed because you couldn't bring yourself to communicate the truth about your game even once before, during and after launch.

If I was working for Hello Games I'd be fucking raging at Sean Murray over this. It was all so fucking avoidable. Just one goddamned tweet saying whether multiplayer is or isn't in the game! That's all it would have taken! And then everyone would be appreciating the momentous achievement that their procedural universe is, and so on and so forth.

But you make the gamers out to be the bad guys here. That's absurd. This is entirely Murray's doing, and continues to be Murray's doing.

Agreed.

I said things would only get worse the more they kept silent way back when the MP thread was started and we where waiting and hoping for something before the game fully launched.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

The game's been out for a week. I still have no idea what the status of multiplayer is. Can someone break it down for me?

First I saw a reddit post about two streamers who were on the same part of the same planet at the same time and couldn't see each other. Then I heard one of them wasn't actually connected to PSN. Then I heard they tried again the next day, and met up, and saw each other no problem. I also heard that the servers were rammed at launch due to the high number of connections. I heard that the multiplayer discovery feature was disabled in order to lighten the server load.

And yet I still see multiplayer brought up as one of the contentious issues with the game. Why is there no definitive answer to the question? And if there is, what does it say about the game that so many people still don't understand what the deal is with that one part of the game?

I'm mad only because I'm trying to get an idea of what the game is, but I'm unable to, despite my attempts at it. Not saying that multiplayer would be a part of what the game is, but more using it as an example. It feels as though a lot of what was said about the game before release was left to interpretation, and we chose to look at it through the lenses with the highest expectations.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

Surely it makes his new silence suspicious? I'm interested to hear how it makes his previous openness suspicious.

Well, I guess there are two ways you might view him.

Sean is extremely naive and has no idea how to market a game and was overly transparent about the development process.

Or, Sean is extremely competent about how to market a game and was using cynically using his "openness" to hype people up and to get them to buy into his game.

I'm not really convinced either way.

 

[Lemondish]

Destiny at least let you play with friends so those first few months while light on content were at least enjoyable with people.

Irrelevant. NMS is enjoyable now, and lots of folks will continue to enjoy it regardless of how angry we're supposed to be about factions not being deep enough or whatever.

If people weren't finding it fun, we honestly wouldn't have threads like this every single day. It matters to people that it isn't a downright failure and we will see these types of discussions for the next several months.

 

[Heavy_D206]

The rage surrounding this game is hilarious to me. At some point you need to let it go and move on with your lives.

I'm having a good time with the game and look forward to them adding more in future updates.

 

[XxRampage07xX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik

Oh my god, nearly fell off my chair.

Holy shit my sides!

 

[Demoskinos]

Yeah, it was totally just the fans...

EDIT: posting this for the third time...

As I mentioned earlier, the majority of consumers simply don't know or even care about the interworking's of the gaming industry. They shouldn't have to in order to shape their expectations before they buy a game. All most of them know is what they are shown through advertising. People have every right to be upset that the product promised wasn't the product delivered.

Ohhhh yeah that video totally got me man. Damn! Nah, fuck that. Consumers should fucking do research before they buy a thing. I don't know about you but I don't have a ton of money to go just lobbing about at random shit. I'm going to research things before I buy them. That's what reviews are for. The thing here is again people get so hyped up into this frenzied I GOTTA HAVE IT DAY ONE mentality that nobody steps back and says hey this game seems way too good to be true.

Maybe I step back and see some reviews or see what my friends think first. Everyone just rushes out to get it day one without any regard for what they are buying other than drinking the marketing Kool-aid that they **have** to go buy this hot new game cause its the shit all your friends are going to be playing and you don't wanna be the only sucker not playing it right? I'm sure there are things that Shaun wishes he would have phrased differently or known ahead of time and hell there are some things he's said that sure sound really bad BUT I don't believe for a second though that Shaun ever went out there with the intentions of trying to pull a fast one on everyone.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

It's really, really hard to put the blame for No Man's Sky's astronomical (no pun intended) expectations on the audience when the developers were on record talking about the game in ludicrous terms not even six months ago.

“With us,” Murray continued, “when you're on a planet, you can see as far as the curvature of that planet. If you walked for years, you could walk all the way around it, arriving back exactly where you started. Our day to night cycle is happening because the planet is rotating on its axis as it spins around the sun. There is real physics to that. We have people that will fly down from a space station onto a planet and when they fly back up, the station isn't there anymore; the planet has rotated. People have filed that as a bug.”

I remember reading about that. Did they really remove that from the game?

 

[David H Wong]

I dunno about the others, but 'upset' would be inaccurate in my case. It's a little closer to schadenfreude for me.

Well, so many people KNEW they were lying - you can find people saying it in every trailer thread and comment section. What they were promising was ridiculous, so yeah it's nice to see a huckster get called out, it always is. False advertising should always blow up in their face, that's the only way to keep it in check. If they make huge profits off this game regardless, that's a horrible precedent to set. Why is that a mystery to people?

"Why complain if you didn't even buy it?!?" Because they don't like bullshit in the industry? Because they tried to warn others off pre-ordering based off those ridiculous promises, and now are seeing lots of those people say they got screwed? The developers absolutely drove the hype up to 11, on purpose, by making promises they had to know they couldn't keep. Had to.

 

[Bsigg12]

Irrelevant. NMS is enjoyable now, and lots of folks will continue to enjoy it regardless of how angry we're supposed to be about factions not being deep enough.

Well, kinda. It's incredibly thin in all aspects and the loop gets boring quickly. If you like looking at colorful planets, weird bear animal #53, or mining endless amounts of plutonium that fills a tiny inventory space (before upgrades) quickly and don't really care about space exploration, then sure. I find it difficult to want to go back to it because of what I was hearing leading to launch really isn't there. Had they released this as an early access title, i could easily see myself wanting to buy it in 6 or so months with a ton of work done to it but as a full retail product, it is hugely disappointing from what had been talked about over the course of its development.

 

[mentallyinept]

I don't know what to say to people that look at this list, even with its corrections, and put the blame for consumers anger at anyone but Sean Murray's feet.

He spouted off for years about this game with no clarifying statements detailing the actual limitations of his brainchild. He instead doubled down on everything whenever questioned.

It's shockingly dishonest and he owes a apology to not only the people who purchased the game but also, and probably more importantly, his team that he hung out to dry.

 

[deriks]

Does this game have a sun?

 

[The Silver]

Ohhhh yeah that video totally got me man. Damn! Nah, fuck that. Consumers should fucking do research before they buy a thing. I don't know about you but I don't have a ton of money to go just lobbing about at random shit. I'm going to research things before I buy them. That's what reviews are for. The thing here is again people get so hyped up into this frenzied I GOTTA HAVE IT DAY ONE mentality that nobody steps back and says hey this game seems way too good to be true.

Maybe I step back and see some reviews or see what my friends think first. Everyone just rushes out to get it day one without any regard for what they are buying other than drinking the marketing Kool-aid that they **have** to go buy this hot new game cause its the shit all your friends are going to be playing and you don't wanna be the only sucker not playing it right? I'm sure there are things that Shaun wishes he would have phrased differently or known ahead of time and hell there are some things he's said that sure sound really bad BUT I don't believe for a second though that Shaun ever went out there with the intentions of trying to pull a fast one on everyone.

Yes like how Molyneux never had bad intentions, that doesn't really matter, consumers do need to be smarter and stop falling for hype trains all the time but doesn't excuse devs running their mouths like idiots and no one putting a leash on them

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Folks this meta-commentary on whether it's okay to be mean or upset about a video game is downright laughable. I guarantee that each and every one of you, at some point in your lives - likely on this very forum - has said something about a video game, movie, album, or other some such work that would upset the creator if they were within earshot. We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here for ways to stifle criticism.

 

[EventHorizon]

Like these two things are even remotely comparable. It just shows your contempt for the work, and reinforces my point.

I get it. You don't care about the consumer because...reasons. Only developers matter. All a developer has to do is give a list of features that might or might not be in a game, and consumers should just shut up and take it. /s

So yea, consumers spending money and developers earning money are not only comparable, they are two sides of the exact same thing.

 

[UncleSporky]

Does this game have a sun?

It actually doesn't, they're just skyboxes. You can't even attempt to fly close to one.

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Ohhhh yeah that video totally got me man. Damn! Nah, fuck that. Consumers should fucking do research before they buy a thing. I don't know about you but I don't have a ton of money to go just lobbing about at random shit. I'm going to research things before I buy them. That's what reviews are for. The thing here is again people get so hyped up into this frenzied I GOTTA HAVE IT DAY ONE mentality that nobody steps back and says hey this game seems way too good to be true.

Maybe I step back and see some reviews or see what my friends think first. Everyone just rushes out to get it day one without any regard for what they are buying other than drinking the marketing Kool-aid that they **have** to go buy this hot new game cause its the shit all your friends are going to be playing and you don't wanna be the only sucker not playing it right? I'm sure there are things that Shaun wishes he would have phrased differently or known ahead of time and hell there are some things he's said that sure sound really bad BUT I don't believe for a second though that Shaun ever went out there with the intentions of trying to pull a fast one on everyone.

Unless someone else answers you first I will. But I am going to spend some time watching X-files with my wife while we eat first.

 

[Sakura]

i wonder how much of it being $60 impacted people's feelings?

Sure they are a small studio but, the studio size isn't something mentioned on the box.

They are selling an early access steam game for $60 retail... its almost like if they were demoing and previews of assassins creed 2 but shipped... ass creed 1.

This game will do ok, but its going to be interesting to see how future hello studio games will be scrutinized before launch.

Personally it doesn't matter to me how much the game is. If you tell me things are in the game, and I buy it looking forward to that stuff only to find it's not there, then I will be upset.

 

[Atomski]

When it was first announced I was super hyped but farther down the line things became clear to me it wasn't exactly what I'd hoped.

I still like the game though.. I hope they keep adding to what's there. It's sad they had to over hype it when really it's amazing for such a small team to pull off.

 

[spazimoose]

It's the Destiny effect. This feels identical to the backlash Destiny received following launch.

And just like Destiny I expect a healthy sized community that doesn't give a shit and enjoys the game immensely despite low reviews, list wars, and a nonstop deluge of discussion about how Murray is Molyneux reborn and we should all be furious about it.

I think Hello Games next game should be a simulator that lets you get furious about something on the Internet. The response when it doesn't meet expectations who be so meta.

Yeah, Destiny is the perfect comparison. They had crazy hype and tons of teased content cut from release. But tons of people still enjoyed it anyways, DLC and all.

Nailing developers to the cross for things they said in vidocs, teases, and promos is going to make everyone way more reserved. I like seeing behind the scenes and now studios are going to have to think twice and have a PR nazi checking every word (or gaf will.) Im not saying NMS is totally innocent, they should have said more about cuts and what isn't in the game vs expectations.

But in the end, games are more than the bullet points on the back of the box. Every game doesn't need a five page functional specification document to be released along side it so people wont accuse them of perjury. This is frankly ridiculous.

 

[Niks]

Holy shit.

The Molyneux comparisons are now completely spot on.

Im probably wayy late to this, but goddamn, nearly fell out of my chair..
lmao

 

[random25]

Just reading the entire thing. Never really get to be aware of what's happening in the game leading up to launch. And based from the videos and that long reddit post, I can say that this is a better received Aliens Colonial Marines. No wonder there's a big outrage from disappointed fans.

 

[Fractology]

As I mentioned earlier, the majority of consumers simply don't know or even care about the interworking's of the gaming industry. They shouldn't have to in order to shape their expectations before they buy a game. All most of them know is what they are shown through advertising. People have every right to be upset that the product promised wasn't the product delivered.

And those consumers who "don't know or even care about the gaming industry" would know about all of the minutiae of this list of hand-picked interview clips and video footage dating back to 2014 how? They are probably experiencing the game how Sean hoped it would be. Without all of this grandiose expectation. Sure, they may think it crashes too often or the loop is boring, but don't tell me they are going to be sitting there bitching at their TVs because the planets don't rotate in relationship to the solar systems sun, or that the NPC trade ships aren't docking with floating ships. They wouldn't even know that was ever a thing.

 

[Justified]

Folks this meta-commentary on whether it's okay to be mean or upset about a video game is downright laughable. I guarantee that each and every one of you, at some point in your lives - likely on this very forum - has said something about a video game, movie, album, or other some such work that would upset the creator if they were within earshot. We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel here for ways to stifle criticism.

Agree.

The ones saying "Why you mad tho?!" is as worst as the ones screaming "That POS!!"

[Paraphrasing quotes]

 

[XANDER CAGE]

And those consumers who "don't know or even care about the gaming industry" would know about all of the minutiae of this list of hand-picked interview clips and video footage dating back to 2014 how? They are probably experiencing the game how Sean hoped it would be. Without all of this grandiose expectation. Sure, they may think it crashes too often or the loop is boring, but don't tell me they are going to be sitting there bitching at their TVs because the planets don't rotate in relationship to the solar systems sun, or that the NPC trade ships aren't docking with floating ships. They wouldn't even know that was ever a thing.

The Atlantic and Stephen Colbert aren't exactly gamer-centric. The pie in the sky aspects of this game's marketing were not limited to niche audiences.

 

[Ape]

I wish Sean or someone would talk about it. I hate it when people can't own up to stuff. I honestly respect Dennis dyack more than Sean. At least he had the balls to face every one.

 

[Werhil]

The author sourced everything and edited portions of the list when proven wrong.

This is exactly the problem. Its not a reasonable approach to fire off a huge list of supposed missing features and false marketing and then gradually cross them off as its proven to be wrong.

Its like grading a test by marking half the answers wrong, announcing it a failure, and then making the student go through and dispute the results one by one to get the actual grade.

Perhaps it would be more responsible to research things in some depth before making all these accusations? Perhaps that may involve the game being released for more than a week?

 

[Pacotez]

Oof.

Maybe a group of 10 people shouldn't promise so much. To be fair, what did the fans expect by a team of only 10 people?

Spoiler

Correct me if I'm wrong about the team size.

The problem isn't the game not having those features per se, IMO the real issue is not telling the consumers about whats in the game and what isn't.
I don't think that was intentional deception evilwise but people are in their legal and moral rights to call on what they pulled

 

[XANDER CAGE]

This is exactly the problem. Its not a reasonable approach to fire off a huge list of supposed missing features and false marketing and then gradually cross them off as its proven to be wrong.

Its like grading a test by marking half the answers wrong, announcing it a failure, and then making the student go through and dispute the results one by one to get the actual grade.

It's nothing like that at all. Random posters on reddit don't have authority over game companies, for one.

 

[cLOUDo]

 

[Ape]

Then I remember they didn't do reviews before release. Ugh

 

[RAWRferal]

Holy shit I'm dying here.

 

[Insane Metal]

It actually doesn't, they're just skyboxes. You can't even attempt to fly close to one.

What? I don't know what's true and what's joking anymore.

 

[Bad_Boy]

i wonder when the next time sean will do an interview. i wouldnt want to show my face after this debacle

 

[orthodoxy1095]

This isn't entirely true either. The entire team went 6 months without a word between the first E3 showing and showing it off again. In fact, there were many months of press darkness from the team. People were asking about it it then. Again, damned if he doesn't.

I have no idea what two year old communication trends have to do with anything. We're not talking about what they were doing in the beginning. We're talking about how they've marketed the game and why the sudden switch from steady communication to silence is so jarring.

Then when he does talk about it people kept asking "But what do you even DO" in such droves that it became it's own meme and spawned nearly every news outlet under the suns version of a "Here's what you do in No Man's Sky" video series. Again, damned if he does.

I'm frankly completely unsympathetic to the whining NMS fans have about the "what do you do" questions. There are dozens of survival/exploration games out there, and they have almost all communicated their mechanics well enough that a "meme" around "what to do" never sprung up with them. That such a "meme" sprung up around NMS says more about NMS and the marketing of it than it does about the people asking the questions.

As far as not saying anything since the game came it, it's been one goddamn week and as everyone can attest to, there are lots to fix and work on. The PC has already had 3 patches (2 of them experimental and available in a single damn day) and Sean Murray has hired an entire QA team that is larger than the current team. They're not sitting on their asses avoiding anything and in all honesty, I would avoid this community too given what has already been going on.

Give them some time. Real time. Not internet time.

So it's too onerous to expect a simple PR release that even a basic intern could have written, to address say, oh the multiplayer issue?

Here let me do it for them since they're apparently too busy to write a few paragraphs:

An Update on No Man's Sky from Sean Murray

The launch of No Man's Sky was a moment of tremendous pride for myself and our development team, culminating four years of passionate work. For us, the launch was the culmination of years of work on new technologies, development of various innovations -- including our groundbreaking procedural universe engine -- and a total transformation of who Hello Games is. Even more importantly though, we understand and appreciate that the launch was a highly anticipated moment for many of you as well, as you looked forward to finally taking part in this grand new journey, one of the first truly next-generation space adventures.

Unfortunately, at launch, the overall excitement for the game has been marred by confusion and questions about the implementation of multiplayer in the game. Some discovered that stickers were placed on boxes of their game to cover up the multiplayer designations. We were amazed to see that on the day of launch, two enterprising players realized that they were in the same part of the universe, worked their way to the same planet and attempted to meet each other, but then found they were unable to see one another. I want to sincerely apologize on behalf of the entire No Man's Sky team, and of course on my own behalf. This confusion has taken away from your enjoyment of the game and we should have been more forthcoming about the status of multiplayer in the game.

As of right now, the multiplayer interactivity that I promised in many interviews has been stripped from the game. We are currently hard at work fixing other critical errors that players are experiencing in the game, and the patches we are releasing have managed to solve many of them. We are however still committed to reintroducing the multiplayer interactivity and will continue working on a patch for it.

To show our appreciation for your continued support, we are planning an impromptu piece of DLC called the Founder's Pack, free for everyone who joined us for the launch of No Man's Sky. This Pack will include various customization options for your ship and character model so that when you do meet other players soon, they will know that you were there for the launch of the game and the birth of this grand voyage.

In the meantime, we would appreciate all of you continuing to send us your feedback and impressions of the game. It has been both humbling and incredibly useful to read your thoughts as we continue to work hard to improve No Man's Sky. We are hopeful that with these forthcoming patches, everyone will truly be able to enjoy No Man's Sky in the way that they would like, even with their friends.

We will never stop striving to make the universe of No Man's Sky one of the most ambitious and innovative experiences in the world, and we thank you for all your love and support these past four years and going forward.

Thank you so much for taking the time to play.

Sincerely,
Sean Murray
Founder and managing director, Hello Games

 

[EventHorizon]

And those consumers who "don't know or even care about the gaming industry" would know about all of the minutiae of this list of hand-picked interview clips and video footage dating back to 2014 how? They are probably experiencing the game how Sean hoped it would be. Without all of this grandiose expectation. Sure, they may think it crashes too often or the loop is boring, but don't tell me they are going to be sitting there bitching at their TVs because the planets don't rotate in relationship to the solar systems sun, or that the NPC trade ships aren't docking with floating ships. They wouldn't even know that was ever a thing.

The fact that the game is boring is the problem. People are complaining about promised items not being in the game precisely because the lack of those items is what is making the game unappealing. Just because some people won't know the backstory about why the game is boring doesn't negate the fact that a good many of them are bored.

 

[Jimrpg]

Imagine spending years of your life on something, achieving something magnificent, and having everything overshadowed because you couldn't bring yourself to communicate the truth about your game even once before, during and after launch.

If I was working for Hello Games I'd be fucking raging at Sean Murray over this. It was all so fucking avoidable. Just one goddamned tweet saying whether multiplayer is or isn't in the game! That's all it would have taken! And then everyone would be appreciating the momentous achievement that their procedural universe is, and so on and so forth.

But you make the gamers out to be the bad guys here. That's absurd. This is entirely Murray's doing, and continues to be Murray's doing.



Thank you! Let's stop pretending this stuff was all two years ago before the game was fully formed.

I feel like there's this current trend on GAF to see any complaining by gamers as a negative, any backlash as a 'tantrum'. Some kind of post-GG paranoia or hangover. But when someone misleads consumers or engages in misrepresentation of a product, shouting down criticism because it comes from a group who have been wrong in their anger before isn't the answer.

You know how the internet works. Controversy sells, people wonder what's causing all the fuss, inevitably comment and create an avalanche of discussion.

Murrays choice - comment on multiplayer definitively ending conversation, or being cryptic and avoiding the question, guess which one dumps more fuel onto the Internet flame war? His job as a marketer is keeping the game at the top of the front page on every website and forum. Brilliant job if you ask me. Neogaf, Reddit everybody got used to make him dollars.

The best thing a community can do is to ignore it, but that's not a thing the Internet is very good at.

Murray literally turned trolling into dollars.

Now you can still enjoy the game for what it is, but doesn't change the fact that the guy is a bullshit artist of the highest order.

 

[etrain911]

I feel like there could be a class action brewing due to the false advertising surrounding this game if HG doesn't step in soon and communicate at least a little bit with the people who bought it.

 

[Realeza]

Man, I feel so sorry for all the millions of gamers playing and enjoying this game.

They must be miserable. Or they should be.. I dunno.

Millions?

 

[RAWRferal]

I have no idea what two year old communication trends have to do with anything. We're not talking about what they were doing in the beginning. We're talking about how they've marketed the game and why the sudden switch from steady communication to silence is so jarring.

I'm frankly completely unsympathetic to the whining NMS fans have about the "what do you do" questions. There are dozens of survival/exploration games out there, and they have almost all communicated their mechanics well enough that a "meme" around "what to do" never sprung up with them. That such a "meme" sprung up around NMS says more about NMS and the marketing of it than it does about the people asking the questions.

So it's too onerous to expect a simple PR release that even a basic intern could have written, to address say, oh the multiplayer issue?

Here let me do it for them since they're apparently too busy to write a few paragraphs:

I feel better already.

 

[Pestilence11]

For the record, I have the game and quite enjoy it.

Thatt being said I would have loved to have a game that had:

Faction mechanics
Rotating Planets
Different Classes of ships with different attributes.
Ability to name ships
Environment affecting the resource types
Multiplayer
Proper Trading System

Same here. I have 30 hours in the game because I enjoy what's there but I bought it with the assumption that the things shown and talked about extensively would be present.