SuperKMx

Hi, I'm Ken. I'm a freelance web/software dev from the south west of the UK who used to be a full-time games journalist and now just review stuff on a freelance basis whenever I get a chance or am not feeling utterly burnt out. Big fan of GB for a number of years.

Spent about a year setting up my lounge using a complex system of levers and pulleys (AKA a metric fuckton of cables and splitters) so that I could play and stream any of the current/retro consoles I have without having to move any of them from their living place or mess about with unplugging/replugging things...then haven't bothered to stream anything. I should probably get on that at some point but...y'know...30 Rock isn't going to rewatch itself.

Indeed, I had considered that they wouldn't have raised as much without the billboard. It kinda sucks that "give money for billboard to say thanks to Hello Games" would be more appealing to most than "give money so we can get a plaque and print to say thanks to Hello Games and make a donation to sick kids in their honour."

I don't feel that I'm missing the point of the stunt. I'm sure the organizer will feel it was a job well done that one time that someone says to him "Oh, you were the guy that organized the billboard, right? Good job!" in a year or so.

I've got to be honest and say that I think we're going to have to just agree to disagree, here. I take no offence from anything that's said on a forum (we're all adults here) and I respect your standpoint.

Maybe I am too cynical about the billboard thing. I know I'm a cynical person most of the time! :D But I've stated how I feel about it (especially seeing how the originator is carrying on over on Reddit by making hundreds of posts and replies about it and trying to drive everyone to his latest new thread on the subject and essentially milking it for every karma point he can) and there's not much that will change that. I have no problem with people wanting to celebrate Hello Games or Sean himself or whoever. I've said in this thread, more power to them if they want to do that. It's just the NATURE of the celebration that isn't sitting well with me, I think.

Get them a nice plaque and a copy of the game cover in a lovely frame that says "Thank you from r/NoMansSky" that they can hang in their office for all time. Job done. $1,300 extra for the unspecified sick kids they're giving the excess to. Then again, it isn't my place to tell people how to celebrate stuff. I'll go with the old man "Doesn't stop me from stating my opinion on the matter!" follow-up, though. :D

I do take a point with the "sense of gamer entitlement" comment because you have honestly and clearly misunderstood what I was trying to say. That's probably my fault, to be fair. But I don't think arguing it is going to get anybody anywhere so I'll leave it at that. Have a good day!

I've got a copy of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels sitting on my coffee table after reading it a couple weeks ago, as it happens :) Great book.

In my defence, I'm not making out that game development is easy. It isn't. It obviously isn't. Game development is not where the errors were made with NMS, though. They put out a functional game that was - in many ways - pretty decent. PR is where the errors were made.

As a software developer, I know how features can get canned or introduced at the last minute, but I just can't believe that the owner of the company and lead developer on the project had any hope of backing up some of the things he was saying just weeks before launch. Especially when some of the missing things were MASSIVE and have taken three years to be put into the game. Some of the features are still AWOL, by all accounts.

And I LIKE that the community wants to say thank you to the team. Really, I do. More power to them for that. I'm not even that bothered about NMS (rather, the conversation turned to the development/launch struggles - maybe that was my fault, and I apologise if it was.) It's just that this billboard idea feels like a PR stunt by the originator rather than a genuine and heartfelt thank you. It also feels like a massive, MASSIVE waste of money.

They could have sent a thank you card, then bought six PS4s (each with a copy of No Man's Sky) and given them to a children's ward. But instead, for the same money, here's a billboard and can we all give the original poster some Reddit points, please?

Well, that's quite the assumption. I didn't buy NMS as I had no interest in it anyway. Still haven't bought it. I've just listened to friends and people who bought it and felt like they'd been duped.

And while it may be a little hyperbolic, I do think that, to an extent. I can tell you that the friends I just mentioned who preordered NMS now use the phrase "Yeah, not after that No Man's Sky nonsense..." when you ask them if they're preordering an upcoming game, or even if you ask if they're buying on day one. I can't believe that they aren't the only ones who don't preorder or purchase on day one after getting burned by No Man's Sky, so the job has become tougher for developers to be taken seriously in the pre-launch phase. As you've pointed out, there are benefits to that.

@devise22 said:

I'm not questioning that the lead guy cares about the game a lot, but the key word in your first point is "they." I would also like to take the time to say that the abuse he received at launch is absolutely unforgivable and should never have happened.

THEY set the expectations. THEY told everybody that this feature and that feature would be in place. All the while, THEY were looking at their close-to-gold dev builds that didn't contain half of the things they were promising and THEY still carried on with the same narrative.

You say "maybe humanize developers more people?" but you aren't looking at the reverse. Maybe they should have humanized their potential audience and told them the truth about the state of the game (or even released the game as an "Early Access" project) rather than thinking of their fanbase as faceless money-carrying units that were bringing them $60 each, while saying whatever they could to ensure that preorders didn't get cancelled.

I think it's FANTASTIC that they've worked to try to make good on the game. I just think that nearly every move they made up until about a month after launch was poorly-judged at best, and to waste $1500 on a billboard to say "thank you" to them while some people in the town where the billboard is placed are so close to the poverty line that they're using volunteer-provided food banks to get through the week is absolute insanity. Sure, you can't go through life looking at everything in that way. If we did, nobody would buy anything!

But throwing away $1500 to rent a billboard for two weeks to say thank you for fixing a mess that they created themselves? Come on.

1. Yes, I addressed it myself in my initial post. In fact, the entire crux of my point was "why make the gesture of giving the extra money to charity when you're only doing that after wasting $1500 on a billboard that will be covered in graffiti in a day and then be removed entirely two weeks later?"

I hope the originator of the plan is reaping as many Reddit points as he was hoping for.

2. You're right. It *is* a super cynical way of viewing game development. It's not the way I usually view things, for sure.

But with this company, it's only as cynical as making multiple hype-building on-stage appearances where you promise things that you know you can't deliver, putting out screenshots and feature lists that you know won't be representative come launch day, then disappearing off the face of the planet for a month as soon as the game drops and people excitedly put down their hard-earned money.

Many of the people who dropped their cash on launch day to get a game that was maybe 35% of what was promised were probably thinking somewhat cynically about the game development process as well, in all fairness.

With one launch, Hello Games made it tougher for every other game maker with a project in development to be taken seriously.

Absolutely agree. Again, I'm happy that people are (seemingly) happy with NMS now, but the folks acting as if the company are "doing it for the community" or correcting the initial problems out of the goodness of their hearts are incredibly blinkered. The NMS 1.0 release was an "Early Access" program in all but name, and now the company are being celebrated for - in my eyes - deliberately misleading consumers.

I just think it's a horrendous waste of money.

I REALLY like the sentiment. I do. Saying thank you is always nice. But that billboard costs $1500, will be there for two weeks, and will probably be covered over in graffiti within a couple of days, especially given that two-thirds of it is just a blank canvas.

It's nice that they're using any excess raised cash to "give games to sick kids" but doing that whilst throwing away $1500 on essentially nothing seems strange.

It feels like Reddit karma-whoring of the highest order. Buy them a thank you card from the community for $10 and give the other $1490 to charity, I say.

That's strange. I didn't have a choice to skip the driver creation part. It just appeared after the intro event and forced me to select my driver model and audio commentary name.