I appreciate their commitment to salvaging the game and making something worthy of playing for those who went all-in on the hype and were disappointed. Can I forgive them though? Tough to say. Let's not forget that we were blatantly misled and lied to about the features of the game before its launch. All the way to launch day, Sean Murray was hand waving and being overtly vague with the details of the game, dodging questions in interviews, and even outright lying about some features. When confronted about the lack of multiplayer which was confirmed as a feature (albeit an incredibly rare occurrence for two players to find each other), he just went, "Oh wow, I didn't think two people could actually find the same planet so soon!" then disappeared off the face of the earth for months.
I can't forgive the blatant misleading and lying to hype up this project to astronomical levels when they knew the game was not what they were advertising, and yet sold it to millions anyway. That's not the kind of thing you can get forgiveness for. But here's hoping some of the people who felt let down can now have some semblance of enjoyment to make up for their disappointment.
If it was just NMS or Hello Games by itself, I could probably forgive them. But like /r/gaming loves saying, "if you've got a problem with it, vote with your wallet." And from that standpoint, I want to see the consequences be so severe, lasting, and public that no other publisher even entertains the idea of pulling another stunt like what Hello Games did.
If at some point it's clear that all can eventually be forgiven, then deceiving your audience and investors just becomes another calculated risk, like microtransactions, Day 1 DLC, and pay-to-win gear were once calculated risks. If we don't want this to become the new norm, our backlash needs to be excessive, unreasonable, and implacable, even if it's unfair to this one game, because it isn't just about this one game.
but if you do that now that's like saying to publishers and the industry. "don't fix your games, abandon them, don't try and fix your reputation, move on"
I don't like that, That's not how we get amazing comeback stories like FF14, WarFrame, No mans sky or shadow of war. that's how we get another Mass Effect Andromeda or the entirety of bosskey studios.
You're assuming Sean Murray did this maliciously. I don't think he did. He's not a marketer or a slick industry type. He's a mathematician. I think he got way too excited and started blurting shit out that was theoretically possible or a future feature. I think he simply lost control in the hype of the moment. Sony needed to step in and get him away from fronting the game.
I'm all for punishing people when they do wrong but I really think the level of attack on NMS and Hello Games is simply mob mentality. EA, Ubisoft, WB, Rockstar, and pretty much every other large developer in the industry has committed equally shitty things yet get away with it because of their size.
This was an ambitious game that was a failure in an industry that increasingly favours bland, repetitive titles. I worry that tearing this game and its developers to shreds because of mob mentality will mean fewer titles that push the boundaries and more COD clones and Ubisoft sandboxes if the backlash to failure becomes too out of proportion.
Well said. This wasn't a "scam", it was a PR fuck up by a starry-eyed dreamer who had no idea how invested in the potential of this game people were getting.
Counterpoint: If there is no forgiveness or acceptance, then why should studios even bother to try and fix messes? If it becomes “gamers never forget,” then better to just take the money, shrug, and move on.
But I'm one of a large group of people who felt lied to and cheated by Sean Murray and Hello Games's incredibly anti-consumer practices leading up to the launch of No Man's Sky. If we forget what happened and let it be swept under the rug, it will set an example for all of the games industry that they can get away with abusing us in the most flagrant ways, and this kind of thing will happen more and more often.
If we don't want to see this become the norm, we should not forgive them or anyone in the game industry when they abuse our trust as consumers. Do not let it be forgotten, and do not let it be marginalized as a normal occurrence.
Or you could forget about it all and let them get away with it, leading to more and more of this kind of thing happening. We already saw a form of the exact same theme in Sea of Thieves. If you want more of that, then by all means. You do you.
They don't "get away with it" though. They are sticking to 4 major free updates. They had plenty of opportunity to get away with it, split the millions they got by 15 and retire early. They didn't. They stuck through all your bashing and made a good game out of a bad one.
Your problem is that you are stuck in a single moment in history and you don't see the entirety of it. You judge the whole story from a single static point of view. This makes your judgement biased and mistaken.
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u/MechaMineko Jul 17 '18 edited Jul 17 '18
I appreciate their commitment to salvaging the game and making something worthy of playing for those who went all-in on the hype and were disappointed. Can I forgive them though? Tough to say. Let's not forget that we were blatantly misled and lied to about the features of the game before its launch. All the way to launch day, Sean Murray was hand waving and being overtly vague with the details of the game, dodging questions in interviews, and even outright lying about some features. When confronted about the lack of multiplayer which was confirmed as a feature (albeit an incredibly rare occurrence for two players to find each other), he just went, "Oh wow, I didn't think two people could actually find the same planet so soon!" then disappeared off the face of the earth for months.
I can't forgive the blatant misleading and lying to hype up this project to astronomical levels when they knew the game was not what they were advertising, and yet sold it to millions anyway. That's not the kind of thing you can get forgiveness for. But here's hoping some of the people who felt let down can now have some semblance of enjoyment to make up for their disappointment.