General Gaming Sean Murray's (No Man's Sky) first interview in two years: "[The internet is] really good at knowing when somebody has messed something up."

[SaysWho?]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jul/20/no-mans-sky-next-hello-games-sean-murray-harassment-interview

 

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“The internet is really good at knowing when somebody has made a mistake,” says Murray. “It’s not necessarily the best at determining the most appropriate response, but it’s really good at knowing when somebody has messed something up. We definitely messed up a whole bunch of communication. I’ve never liked talking to the press. I didn’t enjoy it when I had to do it, and when I did it, I was naive and overly excited about my game. There are a lot of things around launch that I regret, or that I would do differently.”

 

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[The reaction to No Man's Sky's release] involved death threats, bomb threats sent to the studio and harassment of people who worked at Hello Games on a frightening scale. They were in regular contact with Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan police.

 

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Instead of giving up and disappearing off the map, Murray and the studio decided to double down on No Man’s Sky, keep working on it, and concentrate on what the people who were actually playing it wanted, rather than the people who were furious about it. 

...

Multiplayer is one of the features fans have been waiting for. “A very light multiplayer was envisioned for launch, and we fought right up until the end to add it, but it was immensely challenging and we knew it was something that only a handful of people would experience due to the size of the universe,” Murray explains. “We later added a version of it for the Atlas Rises update, and it was nice, but not hugely impactful to people’s enjoyment. What players really wanted was the kind of multiplayer we are adding now.”

 

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“We always talked about the feeling of landing on a planet that no one had been on before … It was lonely. It had nice calm ambient moments in it. But we always wanted to expand it. If you played [the original game] for 20 hours, you probably got the experience that we wanted. But you probably would have never picked up No Man’s Sky again.”

 

 

[Man_of_X]

I haven't really jumped back in for any of the previous updates, but I'll be checking it out next Tuesday for sure.

 

I put 40 some hours into the vanilla game and had some enjoyment out of it.  I'm excited to see how much it's improved.

[CitizenVectron]

"Not liking communicating with the press" and being bad at it is not an excuse for completely lying about basic functionality in your game. Yes, the game has come a long way, but he lied (objectively) about its features at launch.

[AbsolutSurgen]

When I read the reviews about No Man's Sky -- the game appeared to be pretty consistent with my (low) expectations.  At the time I was always confused about why some people thought the game would be more than it was.

[Keyser_Soze]

Multiplayer - Now do nothing together!

[Xbob42]

Brazenly lying and then ignoring your community for so long after launch are very different than just screwing up. No, no one should've sent you or your studio any death threats or bomb threats, and they're assholes for doing so, but let's not pretend you just "didn't like doing interviews." And for someone who didn't like doing interviews, you sure did them non-stop with a huge smile on your face and a pocket full of lies.

Like, actual lies, constantly, not half-truths.

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Instead of giving up and disappearing off the map, Murray and the studio decided to double down on No Man’s Sky, keep working on it

They abso-fucking-lutely disappeared off the map. They completely ignored everybody for months.

[skillzdadirecta]

I still own this cure to insomnia and was unable to sell it. I guess I'll check it out when the update hits.

[misfit410]

I'm still going to give him credit for continuing to update it until it more resembles the game that was promised..

 

[Paperclyp]

Impossible to know for sure, but I don't get the impression Sean Murray is a bad dude. He objectively handed the pre-release of the game poorly, though I do give him a little leeway because I don't think Sony was very helpful. 

 

But things being as they are at this point, I think people need to get over it. If you're not interested in the game and / or don't wanna see the dude rewarded for past transgressions, I get it. But just don't buy this and move on. I think it's cool he stuck with it and made something he can be proud of. Would have been easy to cut and run. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

12 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Impossible to know for sure, but I don't get the impression Sean Murray is a bad dude. He objectively handed the pre-release of the game poorly, though I do give him a little leeway because I don't think Sony was very helpful. 

 

But things being as they are at this point, I think people need to get over it. If you're not interested in the game and / or don't wanna see the dude rewarded for past transgressions, I get it. But just don't buy this and move on. I think it's cool he stuck with it and made something he can be proud of. Would have been easy to cut and run. 

Or like Peter Molyneux just moved on to the sequel. 

[stepee]

As I said on discord, two dicks are better tvs. one!