Why Was No Man's Sky Bad? (THEORY)

[Arnoxthe1]

So No Man's Sky released on the 9th of August on the PS4 and the 12th on the PC. As you can see though...

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/no-mans-sky
http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/no-mans-sky-review/1900-6416492/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTTPlqK8AnY (106,577 likes, 3,266 dislikes, with 2,022,812 views at the time of this writing)

People are heavily disappointed. Many features that were said by developers in many interviews to be in the game were simply not or were heavily stripped, not to mention all the bugs and crashes. And this is especially curious as Hello Games has never been known in the past for any particularly egregious business practices nor were they hooked up with a crappy publisher. So why did this happen? Well...

http://www.hellogames.org/2014/01/the-flood/

That is a picture of the former Hello Games office completely flooded. All their work (around 2 years worth, AKA in video game dev terms, a fuckton of work) and previous equipment they had up to that point was completely destroyed.

"We lost all our PCs, laptops, equipment, furniture, dev-kits, work in the blink of an eye"
"I don?t want to say out loud the value of what we lost, it?s horrible. It would probably fund a small game"

I think what basically happened was that despite their lost work, they were hellbent on making this game a reality. So... They started over almost completely. Which basically means what should have been a 4-year dev cycle got smashed into a 2-year one. And for the scale and scope of what they were planning, two years is NOT enough, which resulted in having to put out a mediocre game. And as to all the runaway hype, well... I guess they just wanted to see this game succeed so badly, after all the work that they had to put in. So they lied. I don't think this is NEARLY as black and white as a lot of people are making this out to be.

Was it bad that they lied to us? Obviously, and I'm not going to support it. But nevertheless, I'm not going to judge them too harshly as I see just what they lost and what they were desperately trying to achieve.

But this is just a THEORY. I don't know. Take this how you will.

 

[RaikuFA]

One word: Hype. That's what killed this game. People praised it as the second coming and we got... Minecraft in space.

 

[mad825]

That is a picture of the former Hello Games office completely flooded. All their work (around 2 years worth, AKA in video game dev terms, a fuckton of work) and previous equipment they had up to that point was completely destroyed.

So did they build the Noah ark in response? Or did their office consist of one floor being on the ground level? I must confess, it's been a while since I've seen a 5+ story building being completely flooded.

 

[WeepingAngels]

I have been in a flood, it wasn't in the blink of an eye. Surely there was time to move some PC's or upload some backups to the cloud?

 

[shrekfan246]

As a point of note, apparently Joe Danger had console-exclusive content. It was originally released on the PS3 because Sony had a "publishing fund" thing apparently that would help out indie games in exchange for exclusivity, and Sean Murray blasted the Xbox Live Arcade (not without reason, tbh). Then it got DLC... then a year later, it came out as a "Special Edition" with extra content and gameplay features exclusive on the Xbox 360.

Then Joe Danger 2 initially came out on the Xbox 360... and came out a month later on the PS3 with extra exclusive content (at least from what I understand; can't really personally confirm).

So, Hello Games aren't exactly spotless when it comes to their track record.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

How about because it was so aggressively boring?

I like to look at terrible game's gameplay but seriously I could not finish watching this game.
Edit: Oh and lying about most of the game to fire up hype train might had to do with this too.

 

[Zhukov]

So they lied. I don't think this is NEARLY as black and white as a lot of people are making this out to be.

That's still pretty damn black and white dude.

If that's really what happened then they could simply have said that. I mean, "Our office was underwater and all our shit got wrecked" is a damn good excuse for a game not turning out how you'd planned. If they'd straight up said that then I imagine they would have garnered a lot of sympathy.

But instead they lied themselves inside out.

 

[totheendofsin]

I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as early access survival games go this one's pretty good

honestly though I feel it's issues boil down to two things, it's price tag (it should not be a 60 dollar game) and the fact that Sean Murray should never have been the guy they put in front of the cameras

 

[pookie101]

they were still being vague and dodgy in interviews even quite recently so its not all because of the flood

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Or it could you know, just have been a shit boring game. Even without the hype, it would have been boring. The hype made people expect a good game. Without the hype, it still would have been a bad game. So people's expectation would have been less, but they still wouldn't have liked what they got.

Think of NMS like Suicide Squad; with the hype its a massive disappointment, without the hype it just sucks.

 

[shrekfan246]

I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as early access survival games go this one's pretty good

honestly though I feel it's issues boil down to two things, it's price tag (it should not be a 60 dollar game) and the fact that Sean Murray should never have been the guy they put in front of the cameras

Well... also the fact that it's not being sold as an Early Access game.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

So they lied. I don't think this is NEARLY as black and white as a lot of people are making this out to be.

That's still pretty damn black and white dude.

If that's really what happened then they could simply have said that. I mean, "Our office was underwater and all our shit got wrecked" is a damn good excuse for a game not turning out how you'd planned. If they'd straight up said that then I imagine they would have garnered a lot of sympathy.

But instead they lied themselves inside out.

they were still being vague and dodgy in interviews even quite recently so its not all because of the flood

Well, they DID straight up say there was a flood. However, again, they wanted this game to succeed too badly. So they lied. Now, again, it wasn't the best choice at all or even a smart one. But I imagine that's where their thinking went.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

That is a picture of the former Hello Games office completely flooded. All their work (around 2 years worth, AKA in video game dev terms, a fuckton of work) and previous equipment they had up to that point was completely destroyed.

So did they build the Noah ark in response? Or did their office consist of one floor being on the ground level? I must confess, it's been a while since I've seen a 5+ story building being completely flooded.

Dont think the whole building is their office there considering how small their team was..

I didnt pay much attention to the hype, and Im 30+ hours deep into the game already, and I consider anything I can play for more than 8 hours good so... yeah I got my moneys worth on entertaimment. Its a bit hard to put down really.

 

[mad825]

That is a picture of the former Hello Games office completely flooded. All their work (around 2 years worth, AKA in video game dev terms, a fuckton of work) and previous equipment they had up to that point was completely destroyed.

So did they build the Noah ark in response? Or did their office consist of one floor being on the ground level? I must confess, it's been a while since I've seen a 5+ story building being completely flooded.

Dont think the whole building is their office there considering how small their team was..

Well, I admit I was being hyperbolic. Data that's stored on a HDD that's been in a flood is recoverable. Like fuck they lost all their data. No back-ups? Bullshit.

 

[totheendofsin]

I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as early access survival games go this one's pretty good

honestly though I feel it's issues boil down to two things, it's price tag (it should not be a 60 dollar game) and the fact that Sean Murray should never have been the guy they put in front of the cameras

Well... also the fact that it's not being sold as an Early Access game.

I am aware of that, I suppose sarcasm translates poorly in text form

of course one could make the argument that was it's being sold as isn't necessarily what it is, but hello games wouldn't lie to us would they? /s

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

It was never more than an Indy Steam Eary Access survival/gathering/crafting game that somehow developed an insane hype bubble around it that the devs didn't know how to handle. I don't think Sean Murray went out intentionally to deceive, I think he was just completely out of his league, and in the heat of the moment made promises that he wasn't ultimately able to keep. I suspect he probably wanted all the things he promised to be in the game, but that time, money, and technical constraints prevented many of them from being realised.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

That is a picture of the former Hello Games office completely flooded. All their work (around 2 years worth, AKA in video game dev terms, a fuckton of work) and previous equipment they had up to that point was completely destroyed.

So did they build the Noah ark in response? Or did their office consist of one floor being on the ground level? I must confess, it's been a while since I've seen a 5+ story building being completely flooded.

Dont think the whole building is their office there considering how small their team was..

Well, I admit I was being hyperbolic. Data that's stored on a HDD that's been in a flood is recoverable. Like fuck they lost all their data. No back-ups? Bullshit.

Maybe, who knows? It could destroy the data for a small business that wasnt properly prepared for it. Ive seen somewhat similar avoidable disasters happen in the building industry I work in to independant contractors and small businesses.

 

[Jandau]

I think it comes down to this: NMS is a solid $15-20 game on Steam, maybe in early access. If it had appeared as such one day, it would have been one of this year's indie darlings.

However, it came out as a full priced AAA game, with massive hype and Sony's marketing machine behind it. And as such, it is a failure. That's basically it. The flood may have contributed to the issue, but that's the problem for the devs and the publisher, not our concern.

 

[Czann]

Losing their stuff in that flood I understand. But if they lost their work because it wasn't backed up elsewhere... That would speak volumes about their preparedness and management competence.