No Man's Sky turned Scammed Man's Buy

[Elaxter]

There's already a thread talking about how successful the marketing of the game is (and it really is), but the thread is targeting the wrong people. The thread SHOULD have been targeting Hello Games for their shady framing of what the game was supposed to be.

I have not purchased the game. I was not hyped for the game. I'm merely an observer making some heavy allegations.

I'd like to point you guys towards Hello Game's official YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/HelloGamesTube/videos . Here you will find, among Joe Danger videos, the first trailers showing No Man's Sky. I would also like to point out that there is nothing necessarily wrong with what they are showing in any of their older trailers or newer trailers. I am not here to say whether everything shown in the trailer is legitimate, seeing as there's no complaints such as "there is no trading" or "there are no large scale space battles," and me not having played the game gives me a very poor leg to stand on seeing that the game is so vast.

What I am calling issue to is how they are showing the things in the trailers, both old and new. I'm sorry, but if you're not a crusty game vet, you are seeing the huge potential of the game if you're not simply awestruck by what you're seeing. And that's the problem. Let me explain with a simple analogy.

Everyone's seen food advertisements, both for stuff you buy at the store and for restaurants. It's no surprise that the people in charge of the shots "dress" up the specimen using a wide variety of artificial techniques to make the food look as appetizing as possible. Games definitely do set up scenes to make the game look its best, but like how movie trailers do it. You have a bunch of footage, you take out from that to make your game/movie look good, and you present that to the public. No sense showing your (relatively) worst scenes or (relatively) boring moments.

Cue No Man's Sky, the food advertisement of gaming. You've no doubt heard the 18 quintillion quote, and how there's unlimited discovery and all that. You've also probably heard that the planets, flora, and fauna aren't as unique as pictured in the trailers. That's of course because of the procedually generated content. However, the trailers of the game show a wide variety of areas, with a wide variety of animals and plants. If you watch them closely, you don't see repeats of the same animal types, plant types, or terrain types. Not saying that the scenes weren't procedurally generated, instead that there's a good chance that the footage was picked because it made for a more appetizing trailer. A FAR more appetizing trailer, actually. Even knowing what I know about the game now, the old/new trailers still make my mouth water. Almost like that Big Mac, with its thick dark lettuce, juicy patties, and neat buns. But just like that same Big Mac, you might get sparse floppy lettuce, dry patties, and messy buns.

Was it a scam? Yes, most definitely. Not worse than Ubisoft, but definitely on par.The developers purposely kept the game vague with lines like "18 quintillion planets," "epic space battles," and "limitless variety," while at the same time showing the most appetizing dishes the computer chef could cook up, and topping it off with a nice, $60 bun.

 

[dopezilla]

Which is why I never pre-order and wait a while after release before I make any purchases.

By now we should understand that there is always a possibility that we're being scammed. It's what the industry does, nowadays.

 

[Risewild]

They don't even have the "feature" they promised for allowing players to meet eachother on the same planet at the same time. IIRC that feature was advertised while the game was in early stages.
Now they are making excuses about it:
"Too many players at once!" and "We want players to meet eachother... But at the first day???" I call it bullshit.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-at-the-same-location-but-cant-see-each-other

 

[Shardik]

Which is why I never pre-order and wait a while after release before I make any purchases.

By now we should understand that there is always a possibility that we're being scammed. It's what the industry does, nowadays.

I didn't even hear about this game until a couple of days ago, when it was being discussed here. I did some reading and looked at a few videos, and my first thought was "People are actually paying 60 bucks for this? It's maybe halfway finished!" It might be okay in a year or so, but only if the developer makes an effort to fix the performance problems on the PC version, puts in some palettes and textures that don't look dated even by the standards of a 2005 release, makes the UI halfway bearable and gives you something to do besides mindlessly hoovering up resources.

But yeah, marketing for games these days is geared toward nothing more than making the huge release day score by encouraging lots of pre-orders with hype and overpromising on features. And that's why we end up with games like No Man's Sky and Fallout 4 - buggy, broken unfinished messes that might get fixed some day, or maybe not. And it's only going to get worse as long as there are people lining up to pre-buy these games, practically sight unseen, on the basis of nothing more than a slick marketing campaign and social media buzz.

 

[Elaxter]

It really makes me upset, because the amount of variation on a handful of planets is surely impressive; however, going passed that handful makes it dull! If they instead put all that variation on a single planet it would be a much, much, MUCH better game. Imagine an Earth sized world to run around, with the amount of terrain, animal, and plant variation that you see on 20 No Man's Sky planets. It would surely be praised for that alone.

The variation presented fits better on a single world than 18 quintillion planets. It easier to explain why an animal would be a different colored version of another on one planet, than why that same phenomenon exists 10 thousand light years a part.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

"There are 18 quintillion planets" is the new "You can climb that mountain over there"

No Man's Lies.

Seriously though, this game is definitive proof that you can make millions charging $60 for a game that doesn't even exist. Gamers are so willing to throw away their money now that you don't even need to have a game, just some fancy concept arts and screensavers and perhaps a color filter.

People can just announce their new post-apocalyptic space simulator RPG strategy 4X game set in a high-fantasy universe that will have 20-infinity-tillion planets and infinite playability with co-op multiplayer VR support and whatever other buzzword the gullible gamers want to hear, and that you can pre-order for the low price of $60! The game doesn't exist of course, but have some pre-rendered videos of some stupid looking animals with color filter slapped on instead! And there will be an army of fanboys defending the game to no end, claiming "the real game is coming in the next update...seriously guys we mean it this time!"

 

[Elaxter]

"There are 18 quintillion planets" is the new "You can climb that mountain over there"

I wouldn't go as far as to say the game doesn't exist. There's nothing that was presented in the trailers that doesn't appear in the full game (aside from multiplayer.) It's more of a case of shady marketing and public hype. Shady marketing as in presenting the game to REALLY be unique every planet, despite the footage being taken from the best areas generated.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I wouldn't go as far as to say the game doesn't exist. There's nothing that was presented in the trailers that doesn't appear in the full game (aside from multiplayer.) It's more of a case of shady marketing and public hype. Shady marketing as in presenting the game to REALLY be unique every planet, despite the footage being taken from the best areas generated.

"Doesn't exist" in the sense that no one even knew what playing this game involved even at release and it still became best selling game on Steam.

 

[Hassknecht]

People were expecting a game that anyone with half a functioning brain would have known to not be possible. It should have been clear right from the start that the game wouldn't be like the trailers. Anyone who's disappointed and pissed off now has only himself to blame.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

anyone with half a functioning brain would have known to not be possible.

You've just ruled out like 90% of game consumers. These people would pre-order Aliens: Colonial Marines 2 if the E3 trailer looked cool.

 

[Hassknecht]

You've just ruled out like 90% of game consumers. These people would pre-order Aliens: Colonial Marines 2 if the E3 trailer looked cool.

And that's why I hate 90% of gamers. Actually, scratch that, I probably hate 99.9% of all people actively calling themselves "gamers".

 

[Crni Vuk]

People were expecting a game that anyone with half a functioning brain would have known to not be possible. It should have been clear right from the start that the game wouldn't be like the trailers. Anyone who's disappointed and pissed off now has only himself to blame.

This, in our age you really have only one to blame, and that is your self. If you buy every shit based solely on hype and advertising, then you're a marketeers dream. That simple. Obviously they would never say it like that, when you ask them about it, what they sell to you is a tonality, the emotion of the product. There are a lot of genuine marketeers and they do good advertising. But often enough, it just ends up in hype that simply is never 100% true. I understand when people back up a project like No Mans Sky based on the promises of the developers, and those have definetly a right to complain. But if you bought the game based on hype alone, without waiting for reviews, gameplay videos and the like ... well, then I think the people behind No Mans Sky did everything right. They havn't directly lied and their marketing was solid, selling a mediocre turd as the biggest and most badass shit you can buy! That's what the job of marketing and advertising is, in a nutshell.

But I am also surprised that some still buy in to E3 trailers ... I mean even if there are honest trailers out there, even they never ever show the finall product. And at least half of those trailers are not even made with ingame assets. How often has the E3 shown some game, that has never seen the light? Or completely changed during production?

Seriously though, this game is definitive proof that you can make millions charging $60 for a game that doesn't even exist. Gamers are so willing to throw away their money now that you don't even need to have a game, just some fancy concept arts and screensavers and perhaps a color filter.

Mhmm, well yes and no. I don't think it's just that simple. In some cases maybe, but those are the exception. The advertising you do, has to be top-notch quality. It has to at least give you the feeling like there is a huge quality and credibility behind it. Big companies like EA or Ubisoft have the money to pull this off all the time. And on top of it, you have to repeat it, at least a couple of times. There are a lot of marketing rules/laws out there that deal with this, some say that the same advertisement has to be seen at leat 4 times by the same person, some sources say 12 times. But one thing is clear, to see an ad just once, is usually not doing the trick.

Money spend on great marketing, is money spend well, just look at Bethesda. The problem is, you only really know when it works.

 

[Elaxter]

I wouldn't say the scale of No Man's sky is impossible, just hard to do. Games near the scale of No Man's Sky have existed since the 80s with the Elite series seeing its inception in 1984. Elite didn't have 18 quintillion planets that you could land on, but it had 8 galaxies with 250 or so planets with a space station in orbit. Future Elite games featured improved visuals and the ability to land on planets, as well as the ability to fucking slingshot yourself around large planets and stars. Hell, I'm pretty sure you could travel between solar systems in real time without hyperdrive in the Frontier games.

There's a free space sim called Pioneer which is still being updated (last update a couple days ago) that follows in the footsteps of the classic Elite games. Space trading, combat, and open-ended gameplay. It might not be for everyone, but it definitely has more going for it in terms of depth and content than Star Citizen. Fuck I landed on this one planet and sped up the game and watched the space stations and nearby moons spin around in the sky in real time. I'm pretty sure you can physically see planet rotations as well. The game also has an orbit simulator built in for each solar system, which is pretty cool.