They released a game that still needed 8 years of development…
Is that worse than being in early access for the same amount of time?
Yes. An early access is meant not to be a release version so everyone can wait for a 1.0 release if they want. NMS released as a 1.0 release, except that it was more of an overpromised 0.1 release. Sean Murray straight up lied to people about the game.
Games like Project Zomboid, which I play & follow for almost 14 years now, have never claimed to be finished during all their time, or promised features that weren’t there.
Guess which title I still regret buying? I hope they really learned their lesson with this one and don’t make the same mistake with their other title. Otherwise Murray will become the next Molyneux. Or worse, I hope they don’t learned that they can release a purposefully incomplete game by withholding features and content, adding simple easy to fix bugs, just to add & fix all that over the following months & years to be seen as game dev heroes. That’d be a terrifying new business model.
Same thing.
Yes obviously. One is completely transparent about being incomplete, often discounted. The other is deceitful and lying about incomplete and charging you full price.
ITT:
People throwing shade at the devs who could easily be maxing&relaxing in IT but chose to make art instead, rather than the perverse financial incentives baked into the industry which encourage them to overpromise to secure funding and then underdeliver to abide by publisher demands.
But maybe I’m in the unreasonable one.
NMS was not art when they initially made it, and they were not “encouraged” to lie to their customers like some victims. They spun bullshit, delivered a bad product, and are trying to reclaim their reputation.
They wouldn’t need to rebuild this trust if they sold what they advertised.
Sean is like a perfected Molydeux 😍
The best time to fix your game is before you fucking release it
The second best time is right now.
They may have ignored the first half, but when they screwed up they tucked tail and got to work.
Nobody in their right mind would say they’ve been given a pass for NMS because they have been improving it, especially when you consider the straight up LIES Sean told during interviews. Whether it’s because his expectations were too high for the engine and dev team, incompetence and inflated self-image, or he was trying to build hype for the game knowing they could never fulfill all their promises, it doesn’t matter.
They improved what they made, but they still haven’t delivered what they promised for months leading up to release.
It’s a mixed bag. You take the bag with the good.
NMS is worth playing for the 0 dollars I spent on it, and I could see myself tossing upto $20 for it, but at no point was it worth a full price game IMO.
The Internet Historian has a more nuanced take, which I thought was interesting and believable.
https://youtu.be/O5BJVO3PDeQ?si=64I-h5HQPvUZscvt
Spoiler:
spoiler
This is a simplification that doesn’t do the video justice. It was basically massive pressure from Sony as a publisher and Sean being inexperienced.
Being a first time, or even just smaller developer is a nightmare when you compare it against large companies.
You basically don’t have a chance if you try to carry your dream yourself, because you lack funding. But getting in bed with larger companies for funding and marketing puts an insane amount of pressure to perform well or go under.
I can totally understand why so many things were over-promised. I can’t excuse what we got on release, but I do understand why he lied, even in the weeks leading up to release where everyone who plays immediately knows what’s bullshit.
And to be honest, I would likely do the same in some situations.
Like the multi-player aspect where supposedly you would be able to see each other in-game. They really thought with the size of the procedural generation it would take a lot longer for people to meet, even if they were trying to meet up. Unfortunately they forgot to take statistics and probability into account. With the large amounts of people playing, two were bound to end up close enough to meet in the finest few days.
I think they really thought they’d have time to fix it before anyone met.
You’ll say anything when it’s your future, and the futures of all the people you work with, on the line.
Sean Murray’s curse is finally broken.
Turns you PC into spacewarmer for just 70 bucks!
This needs to be a statement that fixing up your mistakes rather than abandoning is what earns respect. Well done Hello Games. A great game, getting better by the day.
“Fixing your mistakes” aka making your lies about what’s in the game actually come true
🪵
It isn’t a lie then. A mere delay.
Remember, this isn’t a AAA with bottomless pockets and a track record of delivery.
A mere delay.
8 years though?!
Star citizen says hi
That’s not how lying works. If you make a claim and it’s not true, it’s a lie, even if it is true later
Maybe 50% of the respect that they lost from the botched release & pre-release lies. This should not be an example of how to do things, because that’d lead to it becoming an actual business model.
It already is. Unfortunately. The fixing after isn’t though.
I’m not saying we forgot what they said they would do. At least they made the intention to deliver eventually. This isn’t a AAA company with bottomless pockets. They overcommitted and at least tried to fix it. They didn’t take folks money and run though, they delivered.
Still the most respectful way to release a game is when it’s baked. Not some abomination that takes 5 years after release to hit it’s target.
I admire the perseverance but still they knew their game was lightyears away from being finished and they released it anyway.
If we accept studios releasing unfinished games as long as they fix it later on… That’s all we are gonna get in the future.
No Man’s Sky is an odd case, when the game was delayed for a few months, the studio’s office was broken into and the developers were given many credible death threats. They almost had to release the game in such a state.
That is what we already get. They just abandon it after. Delivering it eventually is a novel response. They ain’t a AAA company. The resources and delivery track record isn’t there.
If only there was some sort of early access system to allow devs to get some monetization while they finish developing their ambitious game.
Its only novel that they got away with claiming a full release of their early access game.
And Hello Games deserves it.
“Game released as trash finally has most of the features promised” is hard for me to applaud.
It’s long but if you ever have the time to I’d really watch this video. It’s funny and informative. Definitely made me realize hello games were the good guys. Plus their talks at GDC. The just an indie studio making games, unlock the release of cyberpunk, Star Field, and that one game I don’t even remember the name from ea cause it was so bad at launch
The Internet Historian is a plagiarizing hack, fyi.
And don’t skip the ad nine minutes in, it’s hilarious.
The TLDR is that the founder is a nervous introverted nerd, so even though it looks like it, he wasn’t intentionally lying when he mentioned things that were going to be in the game. Even taking the interviews into account, what really drove the hype train was the price tag and collector’s edition.
Yes we all now know that they are “the good guys” because they went back and added a bunch of free stuff to the game. But unfortunately this type of integrity should never be expected in the future, especially from a publicly traded studio who is legally obligated to do what is profitable (which probably means taking the money and running, or adding micro transactions or other things).
A great comeback story, for sure. And I hope their integrity continues. But keep in mind that Blizzard, Rockstar, and even CDProjektRed have all “fallen”.
Thanks, I’ll give it a watch.
Too bad the basic gameplay loop of the game has never been fun. I’ve installed the game multiple times over the years, after seeing it showered with praise, and it’s always the same; some minor corner of the game is improved, but the basic actions of exploring, resource gathering, combat, and most importantly flying your spaceship all feel like ass. I’ve legitimately played multiple Roblox games that have a better grasp on how to design ship controls, and Minecraft was making significantly more interesting procedural environments before it even fully released.
100% agree. I’ve been in the same cycle of wanting to like the game but the progression is just awful. A lot of cool ideas that only work if you max out the game. Problem is early progression feels so boring and id rather build a shitty house in minecraft than spend an hour flying to different planets looking for a random map that will unlock something or go to a random temple that unlocks a word to partially understand a merchant to unlock the next item.
Yeah it still not what I want. I wish there was more danger, civilizations, hostile creatures. But nah. Still fun if you just sit back with a beer and explore tho.
That all changes if you upgrade your ship and focus on automation, if your still running around shooting rocks you’re doing it wrong you set up either auto miners or deep surface mines I would argue the entire point of the game is to rise above the mundanity, and combat has that Fallout problem where it almost deliberately sucks until you upgrade everything don’t get me wrong it’s no COD and fighting sentinels feels tedious and boring but I don’t think they actually want you fighting them I think it’s supposed to be like real life in you avoid fighting law enforcement if at all possible, fighting pirates can be really fun but sentimental’s just infinitely respawn.
This sounds the same as “Starfield becomes fun after 500 hours” to me, doesn’t really sell it. I spend enough of my day trying to rise above mundanity.
I agree, it’s still not fun
i will never get over them fighting with the community about whether the game had multi player when it clearly provably didn’t.
when this game was announced i literally laughed at how badly overpromised it was. that generation of console would never have never been capable of what they wanted. i told all my friends not to buy it because it obviously couldn’t possibly deliver on even half of its claims. they literally just promised everything you could ever want in a space exploration game. the other games that had tried to do that with more resources, more time, and that required better hardware couldn’t even come close to a quarter of what they promised.
they had to know they were over promising. i simply can’t ever trust them after all of that. also, i don’t often like randomly procedurally generated environments in an exploration game. they just get boring fast without someone crafting an exploration experience with goals and points of interest.
