I just quoted and re-posted my interest in this in my last post. Blindly buying things damages all of gaming. It shifts resources from actually making games good into marketing them. Because it works. Because people are willing to reward broken promises, rushed releases, and all around poor quality. If we didn’t rush into these things, developers and publishers would care more about releasing a quality product because going for the “embargo reviews, count on preorders and day 1 sales” tactics wouldn’t work to make a bad game profitable.
And so I have an interest in this being the greatest lesson it can be. The greater the failure, the more likely it is to serve as a cautionary tale in the future and change gaming for the better.
It’s also just interesting. I’ve never seen a game crash a quarter as hard as this before and it’s interesting to me to observe it.
As for “drowning out” other discussion, how did I do that? My posts every few days keep people from discussing the game because a dozen posts over a month make it impossible to reach other posts?
Okay…I admit I haven’t read all the posts. I don’t want to loose interest in a game I preordered and spent $80 for and still haven’t had a chance to play much.
But I do have one big beef with it. I had really hoped it would be a 2 player game.
I have such a hard time finding games my dad wants to play and he wanted this one and now only one of us can play at a time while the other watches…kinda boring.
Then you’re misguided. NMS is “bad” because the Internet says it is?
The only one who can determine whether or not a game really is bad is yourself, by actually playing the game. Except in extreme cases such as that obviously broken truck racing game.
The game is bad because the vast majority of people are hugely disappointed in it and think it’s bad, yes. At least that’s extremely strong evidence. It doesn’t set out to be what it was meant to be. The gameplay loop is boring. Countless promises were broken. The company that made it basically was in denial mode for a few days, continued to lie about it, then went silent for a month. Can you think of a game made in the last decade that has been more thoroughly rejected by its community?
This is what I mean about how weird it is that you feel compelled to personally defend this game. You don’t even play it anymore. At best you thought it was okay. And yet you defend it like it was your life’s work, or someone close to you made it and is upset at the criticism or something. A game you haven’t wanted to play since about a week after it came out, a game with almost universally bad reviews, where even the few people that like it are lukewarm about it. It’s bizarre that we’re even contesting that this was a failure.
And you continually attack a game that you’ve never even tried. Your entire reason for being in this thread is argumentum ad populum. That’s not weird?
You grow more desperate. And with more personal attacks. Neutral observers can see the sort of behavior I’m describing, wherein you feel a compulsion to lash out and aggressively defend this game even when the criticisms have nothing to do with you.
Your position on what can qualify as a bad game is… let’s say unique. If “the vast majority of people who were interested in this game, who wanted to like this game, do not like this game” isn’t something that suggests a game is bad, what could? Do you want objective criteria? How about one of the extensive lists of flaws and broken promises about what’s actually in the game?
“This game has been rejected by the vast majority of its community to a possibly unprecedented degree” “That relies on what people think! Argumentum ad populum!” Really? Did that come from the “Latin wins arguments” school?
Again with the atempts to discredit me because I haven’t played it. What am I going to learn by playing it that I don’t already know? It’s not a game where the subtleties can’t be described and you have to play it for yourself. The videos pretty much cover the entire gameplay experience. And the vast majority of people who have bought it pretty much feel the same way I’d feel about it if I played. Unless you can make a case as to why playing it will change my evaluation to no longer line up with the vast majority of its players, you’re just trying to silence me by putting that requirement to my criticism.
I have to agree with SenorBeef in this regard. Although of course for any individual person a game is good or bad is entirely subjective to them. But in trying to determine whether a game is good or not it is helpful to look at it in aggregate. Certainly you wouldn’t argue that a game where all but one player thinks it is bad is good because one player thinks so? And the inverse is true, if all but one player thinks a game is good, then is it bad because on player thinks so? Both of these are silly. So since, really it is just about where is the cut off point. With a “most negative” rating on Steam, and “Overwhelmingly negative” for recent reviews, I think it is pretty safe to say that the game, if we want to evaluate it as a whole, is not very good.
Or let me put it another way, in trying to communicate it isn’t very useful to say it is bad to those people who find it bad, but good to those people who find it good. This is meaningless.
The supposedly finished $60 NMS and the alpha version of the $20 Empyrion had the same number of players early this morning. Sure my taste in gaming is beatiful and unique, but i wouldn’t rate it as 700 out 212000 unique.
The aggregate is helpful in determining whether one should bother trying any given game. In the end, it’s still up to that one to determine whether any given game is worth playing (i.e.: “good”) or not. This is what demos and Steam refunds are for.
Where do people who say it’s bad without bothering to see for themselves fit there?
I think one must first have evidence that what is being said is untrue before broadly labeling it a “smear campaign”…but I’m open to other points of view about it, and am willing to listen to outside news sources provided me before plowing a wad of money on a game. Forewarned is forearmed, or something like that.
Looks like there’s an investigation being opened into the (Steam, specifically) advertising for the game, although some of the complaints are–as usual–about things (like huge creatures and ships flying overhead on planets) that are actually in the game, so we’ll see how it turns out. Advertising Standards launches investigation into No Man's Sky | Eurogamer.net
As I said a few posts up, reviews are helpful in determining whether one should bother giving any given game a try. Some companies are so consistently bad that it’s a wonder they’re still in business, others put out one obviously broken game followed by a half-assed attempt at fixing said game.
No Man’s Sky is none of that but the Internet says it’s bad, so we have Beef continually harping on the game. Without giving it a try and having no intention of ever doing so. That’s too much like groupthink and has no business being on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
As I said earlier, it’s not like he’s a lone voice in the wilderness, there’s nothing he’s said that isn’t true.
I really dislike the way No Man’s Sky has been hyped, sold and advertised, both before and after launch. It’s the sort of game I should really like, but I’m not going to touch it with a bargepole. If you’ve bought it and enjoyed it, power to you, but you can’t dismiss the evidence of player dissatisfaction as a “smear campaign”
