No Man's Sky: The Baffling
When No Man's Sky was released, the haterade was overwhelming.Not for me. I was happy with what I was playing, even though it was much less than had been promised. What was there, though, was incredible.
It was stunning, really. Vitriol is not even a strong enough word to describe what was going on.
In a situation like this, there is only one correct response, and it's not rocket science: communicate.
Tell people about your ongoing development plan. Have phases with deadlines. Share, in as much detail as possible, where you see the end state of the game, and how long it will take to get there.
When people see you hitting delivery dates, and adding content to the game, disappointment would subside. As a developer, you'd be giving people something to look forward to that they could discuss, instead of just discussing the state of the game when it was released.
Again, this isn't rocket science.
For Hello Games, though, it is, apparently. I didn't have a problem with the state the game was in when it was released, but their ongoing communication has been absolutely awful.
As far as I can tell, there's been communication for almost two months now. The 1.09 patch for PC was released on September 21.
Since then: nothing.
Usually, developer stop communicating when they're run out of money to continue working on a game, and they just can't quite take the step of breaking the news to everyone.
That can't be the case here. Hello Games should be absolutely drowning in money. They certainly have enough money to complete a version that is much closer to what they originally promised.
Without telling people what's going on, though, they're just alienating their customer base even further.
Of course, I'm writing this on Tuesday at 11 a.m., set to auto-post on Wednesday, so they'll probably make a big announcement Tuesday night to blow up this entire post. Okay by me, if they just say something!
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