No, it wasn't all directed at you.
After a certain point I was just rambling on.
Sorry.
Very tired.

Not just Spore, but Aliens: Colonial Marines, EA Battlefront, and Watch Dogs were all high-profile AAA games that took advantage of pre-order culture and hype among gamers. Like Spore and NMS, they demonstrated that when it comes to genuine consumer outrage and consumer action, 9 times out of 10 gamers will immediately forgive and forget your past sins if you dangle a New and Shiny Thing in front of their faces.

A while ago, I wondered how far games publishers and the industry could push consumers until we'd see a breaking point. But after the religious mania surrounding NMS I think we're way past "Peak Outrage". Sony and Hello Games/Sean Murray could announce NMS 2 tomorrow, with a press release saying, "We believe No Man's Sky was a strong product, but we're bringing you No Man's Sky 2 with even more of the features and content that our fans want..." and I'd bet the pre-orders would sell like gangbusters, while the mainstream gaming press hails the title as gaming's Second Coming of Christ. Again.

yes but it can still serve as an example
this is what can happen when you preorder kids even with a highly regarded series !
so dont !


( i actually have it on pc and ps4 the pc version chugs along sluggishly even with patches unofficial patches mods and tweaks while the ps4 version is smooth as butter )
sadly this is quite the case
just look at the fuckery wb interactive pulled with arkham knight origins and lego hobbit
but nope wb all is forgiven now you released a remaster of asylum and city !
come on in take our money !

or gearbox's questionable at best practises

No worries, I'm also tired and a bit feverish with the flu :)

flu is doing the rounds
ive spend the past 5 days getting my ass whupped by the flu

On paper, NMS looks like a great game. What was described sounds like a lot of fun for those who like to explore and futz with a variety of combat. Wonder if it could be fleshed-out into the game everyone hoped it would be? That would be the ideal situation but it seems like the damage has been done and it would take a miracle for that to happen. And a second miracle for consumers to be willing to give it another whirl.

Too bad, really.

And now that this is hopefully winding down, can we get back to bashing Star Citizen? You know those guys are saying, "Thank the gods for No Man's Sky!"

i dunno about that really
gamers seem to be all too willing to forgive and forget past transgressions when a new shiny is dangled in front of their face

see gearbox softwarre's dubious practises
or the disasters with lego hobbit
pc arkham knight
or the glitch in arkham origins
or how everybody "forgot" microsoft's 2013 E3 presentation of the xbox one
or how piss poor ass creed unity was
or how underwhelming watch dogs was
or diablo 3's online only drm and rah
or simcity 2013 and its drm and limited game world and options
or sims 4 being empty and a frame work for dlc

and most of that is forgotten the moment something new comes out
the xbox one isnt on the same level as the ps4 but its doing better then the wii U

I was going to mention at least Colonial Marines, but seems you got to it while I was still sleeping...

But yeah, lots of bad pre-order culture games.

I'd really like to see what one of these companies could do if they backtracked, and went much smaller. Say go for PS2 level of specs of hardware requirements and limitations for making a game, and SD graphics, made a game, and then any extra money they improve after they had the game done, which would mostly be graphical updates.

Minor updates:

SM asking HG "are you still hacked and stuff?"

HG replying [url=https://twitter.com/hellogames/status/792024895525949440]"100% not hacked anymore... obviously those mails and that tweet were fake. Back to work

Probably right. Though if they do forgive and forget, I hope it's because NMS gets turned into the game it was supposed to be all along.

While that would be great say, for a small indie team trying to do an "old-skool" DOOM/Quake-esque FPS for Steam (like Devil Daggers, perhaps) that simply wouldn't fly for a big AAA company developing a major IP for the PS4.5 or the XBox Scorpio.

"Starting Small" could have worked for Hello Games, at least in terms of marketing. Sadly, it likely was likely Sony that probably forced them to talk up how huge and immense the game's world would be.

A "hack" is when they get damages - direct or hidden.

Thats was not "hack", it is a PR move.

I think you misunderstand what I mean.

When I say lower requirements I don't mean it has to be real basic. You could start with a really long complex game like the Armored core series, Bloodrayne, Castlevania Symphony of the night, long sprawling RPG's like Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Metroid Prime, etc etc, and you make the game with lower graphical expectations. THEN when the game is done, you can take all the time you want making larger more complex textures and meshes and the like and adding in other filters (if they need to be there).

Replacing meshes/textures should be simple, but the graphical look is the only thing they seem to push or worry about, and while important it doesn't have to be that way to make a game that sells. I still prefer pixel art games more often than not, they look better usually.

Oh I understand that (though I'd actually think that replacing meshes/textures would be a lot more time and labor-intensive than most people think). The problem is that graphics and graphical fidelity have been consistently pushed for this gen and the last. Witness how we get games like Ryse or The Order 1886 which are gorgeous visually, but critically bereft in terms of gameplay...or how "4K" is fast becoming the new "HD".

I'm sure there are a lot devs out there who would love to do what you say; it'd certain make game deveopment and actually delivering on the developers' artistic vision much easier. But MS and Sony (not to mention exec heads at the major publishers) only want to go up and up in terms of graphics (at the apparent expense of everything else), and not going up would only be seen as a sign of stagnation.

From my understanding the external visible meshes and textures are literally just that, easily replaceable. Bounds checking meshes are very crude and very simple and won't get replaced so they won't get in the way. The intensive part is simply doing the work and making them, not replacing them.

Alas it can't keep going up. As beautiful as some of the games come out and are (like FF13) I'd have been quite happy with half the graphical output if the game didn't take the 8 years to come out.

I've never had the best hardware for running stuff, so I've always accepted taking hits in graphics in exchange for performance. It seems the only time they are willing to compromise is when moving to a smaller/weaker hardware system. DS/3DS for example, where there's low resolution and no AA and the games look like N64 titles or so.

But I don't think I'll ever be able to convince them. I'm usually quite happy with 720p resolutions and don't really see the point in something higher.