Sure we can wait.
The question is … can you wait. 
We are the best in the … wait department.
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It’s already Sunday for nearly everyone East of me…
That was a very very bad idea.
Attacking the ‘competition’ comes across as unprofessional.
And worse of all it will alienate potential backers, the space game fans that have backed those games.
Not a very well thought through plan at all.
Sure it will draw some attention, but is this the kind of attention you need?
Attacking? I think you really need to redefine your concept of an attack.
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Nothing wrong with a bit of well-thought-out opinion. Because that’s all it is. If people are offended by it (which I suspect fans will be much more than the developers themselves) they can ignore it.
In fact, in many jobs in life, getting someone else’s feedback (good or bad) can be a good thing because it might make you look at your project from a slightly different perspective and see some things you didn’t notice before.
Or you might agree but there is nothing that can be done about it. Either way, I doubt there’s going to be a huge amount of rage because of Flavien’s views. He’s a man and has an opinion he is entitled to.
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Really, you are going to argue about semantics?
What ever you what to call it, it was uncalled for and very unprofessional and damaging for the reputation of Infinity.
He explained how those games weren’t structured quite the way he’s dreamt of his ultimate space shooting game over the last decade with added, impartial reasoning as to how I-Novae Studios strive to make their engine for Infinity in such a way.
You call him unprofessional. Is that all you got?
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Until now we had one person come up that personally felt “assaulted” by how open I-Novae presents its thoughts.
And about ten that “think” they know how other people will react to I-Novaes strategy, insisting that it’s unprofessional without bringing forth any proof but their merry judgement.
Sorry but I’m fed up. Bring me proof that this tactic wont work.
Nowadays we should be able to look at each others arguments and have a reasonable discussion. This blog post spawned a discussion on all sorts of game mechanics, and I don’t know how it’s bad.
The other discussion it spawned didn’t help at all and was just a bunch of one sided opinions without any proof.
I find it a little bit ironic that the only negative backslash this openness had until now was by people who think it would generate negative backslash … think about it.
I don’t feel there was a strategic plan for this other than to set people at ease. A chance to paint a picture of ways he intends to pursue for future game titles based within their own written software. Ways that will embrace the broader public in hopes that there is an ultimate space shooter in development on a superior, one of a kind game engine.
Whatever you want to call it, I completely disagree that it was unprofessional or damaging to the reputation of INS.
Flavien did not attack the other games, he honestly highlighted differences between them and his plan for Infinity.
All the comments that could be construed as maligning are simply analysis of the game and a statement that “that’s not how I like it as a gamer and as such that’s not how we’re doing it in Infinity”. At no point in the blog does Flavien say any of these points of criticism make any of the games inherently bad and I believe if he were to discuss the games with Braben and Roberts, they would not disagree with each other’s criticisms but simply justify them as design decisions. Flavien wrote nothing that is slanderous or misleading.
Sure he could have just gone with a polite and boring “I think they’re all interesting games, but with Infinity we are going to be bringing something new to the table.” But that gives people new to INS, who are not familiar with their plans, almost no useful information about how Infinity will be different from the others.
If people are going to consider backing Infinity: Battlescape they are going to compare it to ED, SC and NMS. They’re going to think “Why should I back this when there are already these other games doing a similar thing? How is Battlescape going to be different?” - Analysis like Flavien’s blog post gives them that information.
Finally please note that Flavien and many of the INS team, along with many of the long time fans of INS including myself, backed Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen.
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Some dude posted this on reddit:
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Sounds like a founded opinion on the points Flavien wrote about NMS.
I don’t know if I would take the time to do a 30 minute Video to express my opinions, but if that’s their medium, all to them.
Do you have a link to the Reddit post?
This is two separate issues.
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How will potential players react to the opinions and ideas expressed?
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Is expressing those opinions and ideas unprofessional?
For 1), it may very well end up upsetting potential players, and ultimately discourage some people from buying who would otherwise have been interested. It’s clearly upset a couple of people in this thread, so that potential is very real. There really wasn’t anything expressed, IMO, that should upset anybody, but it’s not uncommon for people to misinterpret a critique of ideas and concepts as an insult toward those ideas and concepts, and, more importantly, as an insult toward people who enjoy or who have embraced them.
If you tell someone you don’t like cat sweaters when they have a closet full of cat sweaters, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to feel insulted. Unless that was meant as a passive-aggressive swipe at them personally, there’s no reason for them to, but once you delve into the world of interpreting what a person is saying rather than listening to what a person is saying (“reading between the lines”), misunderstandings are imminent.
2), on the other hand… Raising a claim of unprofessionalism really does require further explanation beyond “people won’t like it”. That’s not a professional standard. Smack talk would have been unprofessional, but critiquing other players in the market isn’t smack talk. The harshest opinion Flavian presented was that he wasn’t a fan of NMS’s colour pallet. I’m guessing what’s most likely to raise some hackles are the comments on Star Citizen’s funding model, since some people have thrown some considerable amounts of money at that game now, and will have had to internalize some of the macro-scale micro-payments model they’ve been using (which, as Flavian even points out, their user base has kind of pushed them to use) in order to justify that expense to themselves. But even there, all IA said was I didn’t think it would work, I’m really surprised by how well it worked, but I don’t understand why it worked.
I’ve worked in public outreach, and I’ve worked, and continue to work, in academia as a teacher. In both fields, professionalism is stressed, and we’re watched like hawks. In both fields, I’ve discussed the “competition”. Hell, in both fields I’ve flat out had to tell people to their face that they, personally, were wrong, and you know what? That was the professional thing to do. If you’re not being insulting, and you’re not trying to agitate, then silence isn’t the “professional” option.
It’s the cowardly one.
You know who should really be insulted by this article? Josh Parnell. Limit Theory didn’t even warrant a mention. I’m assuming that’s either because LT’s still over a year away, while E:D is out, SC has released something, and NMS’s set to be launched in the second half of this year, while LT’s still a year or more away from launch, and LT’s not set to launch with multi-player support, but still. And I highly doubt (or, at least, I hope), Josh isn’t taking LT’s absence personally.
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That video is an attack while flavien’s blog post is not.
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That video is exactly the kind of response people have when they both take a neutral comment as an insult, and take a comment directed toward a third party (in this case, an aesthetic) personally. From the sound of their voice, I’m guessing the narrator is in their teens, and probably has some very inconsistent ideas involving the word “cartoon”.
I dated someone once for which “cartoon” was an insult. They were desperate to feel and to come off as mature, and just about anything that was commonly associated with immaturity or childhood was beneath her. I get the impression from the video this person feels the same way. They’re not alone, either. I mean, think of the backlash that Wind Waker felt when it was released.
People are very insecure about their maturity. Especially people who haven’t achieved it yet.
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Ha, cartoon, an insult? Have they witnessed the glory that is spongebob? I honestly also don’t know how a blog post that is not taking sides at all can be perceived in this way. I also don’t know why the video is in 30m when It could be 5m. What is cartoon, anyway? for games? cell shading? saturated colors? what? pretty much all games are cartoon, they’re all computer rendered.
Again, “cartoon” for many people is associated with childhood, and most people go through a phase of social development where they reject childhood in favour of adulthood. Things that represent their childhood suddenly become childish and immature. The rejection of things associated with childhood is mistaken as maturity.
It’s normal.
I find it quite funny listening to the girl go on a 5 minute rant (around the 10m mark) about how people who don’t like ‘exploration games’ or space games may not like this game, saying some people prefer first person shooters. I don’t think she knows who Flavien is or what he’s working on. Kind of cute, but to have such strong convictions about something you know so little about is basically the reason why the internet can be a scary place.
Well, she got the name of the studio wrong in the video’s title, so…
I’d actually be a little surprised if she actually read the blog. I only listened to a snippits of the video here and there, so I’m not really one to talk…