6 ms·

"Space exploration" games have strange tendency for hyper-hype and scams, for example recently released No Man's Sky.

by ungzd 9y ago

jontro 9y ago
I have friends who enjoy No Man's Sky very much. Don't buy into the "mass rage" that spreads from some small number of people crying out loud.
- chc 9y ago
  I personally love the movie Spice World. I've known people who enjoyed literally getting punched. The fact that you know someone who enjoys something doesn't mean that thing is generally well-loved. I accept that Spice World was not a very popular movie. That doesn't take away from my enjoyment of it, but my enjoyment also doesn't negate its lack of popularity.
- TillE 9y ago
  http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky/critic-reviews http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky/critic-reviews
- coralreef 9y ago
  Mostly negative across 73k reviews. I'll grant there is a lot of bandwagon hating, and that art is subjective. But this is the best data we have to use as a proxy for quality. http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_reviews_hash http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_re...
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Steam reviews? Yeah, there's never any good reviews for a backlashed Steam game. Steam as a platform is great, but as a community it's a bigger dumpster fire than 4chan.
    - chc 9y ago
      You're not wrong that it could reflect an angry minority, but it's far more reliable than "I know a couple of people who liked that," which is the competing metric in this case.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        Not really. That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices. Quite frankly I find Steam reviews to be one of the worst possible metrics and would trust the octopus that picked world cup winners more than Steam reviews.
        chc 9y ago
        > That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices. How so? Whether or not I trust someone has no obvious bearing on whether their opinion closely matches the general consensus. For example, I know someone who likes the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead better than the original. I absolutely believe her on this point. But it would be ludicrous for me to say, based on her preferences, that the 1990 version is widely considered the definitive Night of the Living Dead.
        jontro 9y ago
        Feels like the conversation got pretty off topic. If a game is entertaining is a matter of personal preference of course. It's another thing entirely to call a game a scam. Looking at the subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/ it looks like there is a healthy community playing a lot and game updates are released regularly. My initial point was to give a different view and to try to stop the negative feedback loop this game always gets.
        chc 9y ago
        It's sometimes called a scam because the lead designer was making false claims about the game all the way up to its release, not because it's bad. That's a totally different question. Anyway, it sounded to me like your initial point was that the game is generally well liked and the people who are disappointed should be dismissed as "a small number of people crying," which is both rude to those people and seems to be the opposite of reality. That's why I was like, "Whoa there."
theandrewbailey 9y ago
Any other examples? On the contrary, Elite Dangerous was received quite well. There is hype and scams all around in crowdfunded games, not just space ones, like Yogscast and Godus.
- Yuioup 9y ago
  Battlecruiser 3000AD?
- Ralfp 9y ago
  Before Star Citizen, Chris Roberts was working on Space Exploration/Trade/Combat game for Digital Anvil and Microsoft Game Studios - the Freelancer. He was ambitious, the features planned for game involved: - dynamic economy based by station/planetary production of goods, demand and supply (influenced by distances and space piracy) - known actors lending their voices to characters - hundreds of items and ships - massive universe filled with mysteries and lore What happened instead was Microsoft stepping into the project and forcing changes to make ship plausible within a year due to continuous delays. Chris left the project. Universe was cut to 50 systems, bulk of characters gets killed off quickly after appearing in the plot, or have few spoken lines. There are omissions in items, like only only single top-class shield, whereas in every lower class there were three types of shields. Some commodities are sold on planet or few, but not bought anywhere in the universe, being useless for trade. Engine supports ship animations and plenty of ship models implement those, but they were eventually disabled. Etc. ect. But game shipped, and besides cut content, it actually delivered quality experience, and even if it lacked replaybility, content or sandbox features of X-Universe games, it contained stateful multiplayer that resulted in game having long live in multiplayer thanks to Role-Playing mods and communities build around those.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    Imagine what CR could do with ample time and money... Aaaand that's Star Citizen! It's been very exciting watching CR work, and playing the stuff he's built and released already for Star Citizen. Absolutely incredible opportunity to be a part of. I'm very happy.
  - 9y ago
GVIrish 9y ago
I don't think No Man's Sky was scam so much as it was a game where the hype far outran what was realistically possible. I mean, there's only so much a small indie studio can get done in a year or two, so people expecting the moon were just being unreasonable. In the case of Star Citizen we're deep into gold-plating territory, wouldn't be surprised if it became a Duke Nukem Forever. But even then, Chris Roberts is genuinely trying to deliver a game, even if his ambitions may have gotten too large to deliver.
- canada_dry 9y ago
  Exactly. I call this the "Segway effect". It is when the hype far exceeds any possible realistic product.
- dkns 9y ago
  The owner/lead developer (I don't know what position exactly Sean Murray holds) straight up lied about features in NMS (e.g. multiplayer) that weren't there nor will be ever added so I'd say it was a scam.
  - AnOscelot 9y ago
    If it's a scam, he's not scamming very well. A scammer would have taken the big payday and done little else. Whereas Hello Games has released a couple of large updates, and quite a few smaller updates / bugfixes, with more planned. The evidence largely points to a developer who is good at his core job, but inexperienced at managing hype. And who was overly optimistic about what he and his team can accomplish in X amount of time. Based on how Hello Games is acting & communicating now, I think they've learned their lesson. And I sympathise a little with them because I was once the overly optimistic team lead in my younger days, and had to get burnt a few times before I learned my lesson.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      If he's smart he's making a documentary/movie about it.
  - 9y ago
013a 9y ago
Star Citizen is a lot of hype. But its not a scam. Even in the case that it fails and a product is never produced, that doesn't mean its a scam. A scam requires up-front intent. They went big. They could have stopped at the few million they raised on Kickstarter, but they knew they'd need more to accomplish their vision.
Nomentatus 9y ago
I adore No Man's Sky, which accomplished something magical, and keeps expanding. I'd put games and DLC that are cheap imitations of what came before in the scam category; and there's probably less of that in SF games.
al_chemist 9y ago
That's why they should never release Star Citizen. If they do, everybody will be disappointed. If they continue to release alpha previews, they can live on donations forever and all the fans will be still happy.

"Space exploration" games have strange tendency for hyper-hype and scams, for example recently released No Man's Sky.

by ungzd 9y ago

"Space exploration" games have strange tendency for hyper-hype and scams, for example recently released No Man's Sky.

I have friends who enjoy No Man's Sky very much. Don't buy into the "mass rage" that spreads from some small number of people crying out loud.

chc 9y ago
I personally love the movie Spice World. I've known people who enjoyed literally getting punched. The fact that you know someone who enjoys something doesn't mean that thing is generally well-loved. I accept that Spice World was not a very popular movie. That doesn't take away from my enjoyment of it, but my enjoyment also doesn't negate its lack of popularity.
TillE 9y ago
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky/critic-reviews http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky/critic-reviews
coralreef 9y ago
Mostly negative across 73k reviews. I'll grant there is a lot of bandwagon hating, and that art is subjective. But this is the best data we have to use as a proxy for quality. http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_reviews_hash http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/#app_re...
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Steam reviews? Yeah, there's never any good reviews for a backlashed Steam game. Steam as a platform is great, but as a community it's a bigger dumpster fire than 4chan.
  - chc 9y ago
    You're not wrong that it could reflect an angry minority, but it's far more reliable than "I know a couple of people who liked that," which is the competing metric in this case.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Not really. That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices. Quite frankly I find Steam reviews to be one of the worst possible metrics and would trust the octopus that picked world cup winners more than Steam reviews.
      - chc 9y ago
        > That's actually a better metric in most cases if you a) trust the person saying it and b) trust their ability to review friends choices. How so? Whether or not I trust someone has no obvious bearing on whether their opinion closely matches the general consensus. For example, I know someone who likes the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead better than the original. I absolutely believe her on this point. But it would be ludicrous for me to say, based on her preferences, that the 1990 version is widely considered the definitive Night of the Living Dead.
        jontro 9y ago
        Feels like the conversation got pretty off topic. If a game is entertaining is a matter of personal preference of course. It's another thing entirely to call a game a scam. Looking at the subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/ it looks like there is a healthy community playing a lot and game updates are released regularly. My initial point was to give a different view and to try to stop the negative feedback loop this game always gets.
        chc 9y ago
        It's sometimes called a scam because the lead designer was making false claims about the game all the way up to its release, not because it's bad. That's a totally different question. Anyway, it sounded to me like your initial point was that the game is generally well liked and the people who are disappointed should be dismissed as "a small number of people crying," which is both rude to those people and seems to be the opposite of reality. That's why I was like, "Whoa there."

theandrewbailey 9y ago

Any other examples? On the contrary, Elite Dangerous was received quite well. There is hype and scams all around in crowdfunded games, not just space ones, like Yogscast and Godus.

Yuioup 9y ago
Battlecruiser 3000AD?
Ralfp 9y ago
Before Star Citizen, Chris Roberts was working on Space Exploration/Trade/Combat game for Digital Anvil and Microsoft Game Studios - the Freelancer. He was ambitious, the features planned for game involved: - dynamic economy based by station/planetary production of goods, demand and supply (influenced by distances and space piracy) - known actors lending their voices to characters - hundreds of items and ships - massive universe filled with mysteries and lore What happened instead was Microsoft stepping into the project and forcing changes to make ship plausible within a year due to continuous delays. Chris left the project. Universe was cut to 50 systems, bulk of characters gets killed off quickly after appearing in the plot, or have few spoken lines. There are omissions in items, like only only single top-class shield, whereas in every lower class there were three types of shields. Some commodities are sold on planet or few, but not bought anywhere in the universe, being useless for trade. Engine supports ship animations and plenty of ship models implement those, but they were eventually disabled. Etc. ect. But game shipped, and besides cut content, it actually delivered quality experience, and even if it lacked replaybility, content or sandbox features of X-Universe games, it contained stateful multiplayer that resulted in game having long live in multiplayer thanks to Role-Playing mods and communities build around those.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  Imagine what CR could do with ample time and money... Aaaand that's Star Citizen! It's been very exciting watching CR work, and playing the stuff he's built and released already for Star Citizen. Absolutely incredible opportunity to be a part of. I'm very happy.
- 9y ago

GVIrish 9y ago

I don't think No Man's Sky was scam so much as it was a game where the hype far outran what was realistically possible. I mean, there's only so much a small indie studio can get done in a year or two, so people expecting the moon were just being unreasonable. In the case of Star Citizen we're deep into gold-plating territory, wouldn't be surprised if it became a Duke Nukem Forever. But even then, Chris Roberts is genuinely trying to deliver a game, even if his ambitions may have gotten too large to deliver.

canada_dry 9y ago
Exactly. I call this the "Segway effect". It is when the hype far exceeds any possible realistic product.
dkns 9y ago
The owner/lead developer (I don't know what position exactly Sean Murray holds) straight up lied about features in NMS (e.g. multiplayer) that weren't there nor will be ever added so I'd say it was a scam.
- AnOscelot 9y ago
  If it's a scam, he's not scamming very well. A scammer would have taken the big payday and done little else. Whereas Hello Games has released a couple of large updates, and quite a few smaller updates / bugfixes, with more planned. The evidence largely points to a developer who is good at his core job, but inexperienced at managing hype. And who was overly optimistic about what he and his team can accomplish in X amount of time. Based on how Hello Games is acting & communicating now, I think they've learned their lesson. And I sympathise a little with them because I was once the overly optimistic team lead in my younger days, and had to get burnt a few times before I learned my lesson.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    If he's smart he's making a documentary/movie about it.
- 9y ago

013a 9y ago

Star Citizen is a lot of hype. But its not a scam. Even in the case that it fails and a product is never produced, that doesn't mean its a scam. A scam requires up-front intent. They went big. They could have stopped at the few million they raised on Kickstarter, but they knew they'd need more to accomplish their vision.

Nomentatus 9y ago

I adore No Man's Sky, which accomplished something magical, and keeps expanding. I'd put games and DLC that are cheap imitations of what came before in the scam category; and there's probably less of that in SF games.

al_chemist 9y ago

That's why they should never release Star Citizen. If they do, everybody will be disappointed. If they continue to release alpha previews, they can live on donations forever and all the fans will be still happy.