Once upon a time in a land not far away, there was god-like figure called Will Wright. Will Wright was a video game designer and the co-founder of Maxis. Yes my children, he created the Sims. In 2005, Will Wright announced a new game called Spore. It was not only fun but scientific as well. It was, in fact, so scientific that universities were planning to use Spore for their classes. Even our beloved Robin Williams showed it off as well. Long story short, it was a BIG deal (I did pre-order it if you were wondering). Unfortunately, upon release, it was nothing like the videos and demos shown. It was goofy, cartoonish, and the hardcore fighting scenes were completely scrapped. Levels were removed for a more basic design and the creature creator caused an uproar in the scientific community. It was crazy. The severe backlash caused Will Wright to leave the gaming industry for good and this was before the media became tremendously powerful. It wasn't until years later people started to actually enjoy Spore because it was still a great game, it just wasn't the game everyone expected. If you want to know more, check out Lazy Game Reviews video here:
I sincerely hope you guys know where I'm going with this introduction. I'm going to talk about the hype that surrounded not only No Man's Sky but several other games over the years.
The ill effects of the internet:
The rise of the Internet and social media brought about unforeseen good to the world. People used it for business purposes, communication, promotions, publishing, crowd funding campaigns, and much much more. As usual, where there is good, there is also the bad. Now, we're going to bypass the trolling and connect this to overhype. Hype in itself can be a good thing. We all have gotten hyped up about something at least once in our lives whether it be a movie, a TV show or a book. Something made us excited to look forward to it. Overhype is hype but ten times more and ten times worse. It's practically worship. People will go after your life if you don't agree with them. They refuse to see the negative and worrying factors within their cause. It can be funny but sometimes it's dangerous. For example, a Kotaku writer, Jason Schreler, was threatened simply because he reported that No Man's Sky was delayed. He didn't even bash the game, he was doing his job as a reporter. Link to article is here. It was later confirmed by the developers and the hate then flipped towards the developers themselves. Over a two month delay, guys. Threats and hissy fits over a 2 month delay.
When it comes to overhype, the community itself can become toxic leaving a sour taste in people's mouth. It actually does more harm than good. An example of this is League of Legends, a great MMO with a large gaming community. There's even a college class based around it. Because it's a popular MMO, it should be known for all the positive aspects this game provides but, unfortunately, the one thing it's well-known for is its toxic community. Insults and threats are slung at players even if they are new to the game. People have even gone as far as getting another player's number and consistently harass them. Players who want to attempt to try it for themselves are wary of it and plenty of people who've played it discourage newbies from testing it out. Riot Games themselves tried to tame it through punishment and rewards, but it ultimately failed.
The year overhype:
Overhype stems from two things: the community (as we saw in the last 2 paragraphs) and the gaming company. Sometimes one side is more at fault than the other and sometimes it's not the gaming community's fault at all. 2014 is still known as the year of overhyped games and was possibly the worst year of modern day gaming. When you think of 2014, what is the first overhyped game you think of? The first game that comes to mind is Watch Dogs. Ubisoft showed this game with NextGen graphics. They spoke so highly of the game as if it was the second coming of Jesus. When it was released, the one thing that stood out the most was the poor graphics. So, what happened? Turns out Ubisoft was playing the game on an advanced gaming PC and not a NextGen console. We also can't forget about the bugs, the 2-dimensional "complicated" protagonist, and the plot that made no sense. Another title by Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed: Unity, was the first in the series to feature multiplayer. The hype was real but what they forgot to mention was that multiplayer didn't include the main story line. There were side quests exclusively for multiplayer that had nothing to do with anything. It seemed as if they were thrown in to appease the masses like it was going to fool players into thinking Unity was the greatest Assassin's Creed game ever. Spoiler alert, it didn't and these two games among other things led to Ubisoft being labeled as an untrustworthy gaming company prompting them to take a year off from the Assassin's Creed series. These 2 games don't even make up half the list. There was Call of Duty, Destiny, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Titanfall, and much more.
First off, before I go into the next section, let me explain to people who haven't worked in retail how retail works. Employees are always on the bottom rung, making them the last ones to find out anything whether it be news or changes. Keeping this in mind, the fact that Gamestop employees were telling people No Man's Sky was not delayed when it really was shouldn't be surprising. The company most likely kept this information from the employees until Hello Games officially announced the delay. This is why Gamestop should never be considered a reliable source.
Possibilities:
There are two possibilities of what might have happened. The first one is the fault lies with Hello Games.
Even though I don't fully blame Sean Murray, there was a clear disconnect with him and his team. This was an ambitious game and for this idea to have blossomed into its' full potential, there had to be good communication going on between the team and the leader. If there was a good level of communication going on, Sean Murray should have known his team's limitations, what they could and couldn't implement in the game. What seems to have happened was that he spoke too soon and made too many promises without checking with his team to see if all of these things were a possibility. When it finally came down, he realized too late that a lot of the promises he made couldn't be implemented and instead of owning up to his business decisions, he went silent. When questions were raised, conflicting and vague responses were given. Hello Games was probably waiting for things to blow over. This might have worked in the 1900's, but this is 2016. The unsatisfying statements released to the public and the lack of explanations made fans go from this:
To this:
Some people will call this an amateur mistake but we have seen other gaming companies pull the same stunt as well. Remember Aliens: Colonial Marines? This tactic is what we call The “Peter Molyneux Effect," over-promising without fact checking. Jim Sterling's video explains it really well:
Sony:
Many people believe that the fault lies with Sony. Hello Games was fine until Sony started backing them. It would explain the lack of features within the game and it would also explain another possible limitation: time. Like most AAA companies, their main focus is what can they produce to make them money in a short amount of time which leads to super buggy games, glitches and lack of features. If rumors are true, the different divisions of Sony aren't faring as well as their gaming division. No Man's Sky was their next big title. It could've been it's savior. So, maybe Hello Games did know they wouldn't have been able to put together all the features by the time Sony requested and Sony just shrugged it off. It's not hard to picture this giant company looming over little Hello Games constantly saying, "are you done yet?" Not only were they being pressed for time from Sony, they were also being pressed by their own gaming community. Now imagine both Sony and an entire community looming over little Hello Games asking, "are you done yet?" That's a lot to handle.
Final Thoughts:
Now that's out of the way, onto my thoughts. I can't entirely blame Sean Murray. This man essentially became Will Wright 2.0 overnight. Many people seem to forget Hello Games is still an indie company even though they were backed by Sony. This means they didn't have the man power to start off with to implement all these ideas Sean Murray was tossing out. I'm not saying these ideas were impossible. Those videos and gameplay showing full out space battles could have very well been in the game at the start but when Sony decided to back them, they felt pressured to complete No Man's Sky as soon as possible and unfortunately had to make a lot of sacrifices. I believe that Sean Murray didn't want to disappoint his fans, so instead of coming clean, he kept the same facade. What escalated everything was fans taking bits and pieces of Sean Murray's vague statements on certain aspects of the game and jumping to conclusions yet Hello Games did nothing to de-escalate the situation. They even encourage it, adding to the hype. In rare cases, overhype stems from both communities. No Man's Sky is an example of such occurrence.
Not all of your ideas are going to make it to the final cut, I learned this from game writing. Limitations prevent these ideas from blooming. These limitations can include money, story, time and man-power. In the gaming industry, something always has got to give to make the game work. In an indie company, most likely you'll be working with the lack of man-power which effects other aspects like time. Depending on how small the team is, you may not have a set release date for years. In larger gaming companies, mostly time is short and money is tight but there's a lot of man-power which could negatively effect story. Knowing and understanding these limitations is key to making a game succeed.
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