I’m not sure who this person is, but I think he should read again what I wrote about No Man’s Sky with a cool head, because I certainly didn’t intend for “cartoony” to be meant as an attack of that game. I was simply speaking about the visual style and explaining that I personally prefer realistic-looking space games. That has nothing to do with NMS specifically, for example I’d say the same thing about Homeworld, which is of course a fantastic game.
I listened to the whole video. I felt I couldn’t comment on it properly if I didn’t.
The guy (who’s channel it is and who posted the video and got the studio’s name wrong) sounds like he had made up his mind that he didn’t like I-Novae and repeatedly said ‘most people think it’s vapourware’ while the girl ‘Queeny’ seemed to take a much more impartial view and acknowledged that Flavien had said he basically didn’t have a lot of information to go on and that his verdict was that he was curious to see how it turned out.
It was a bit like the guy was a Fox news presenter and the girl was a guest who had been bought on to join the hate wagon but actually started speaking sensibly.
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He has very definitely taken offence, but both commentators clearly haven’t read up on Infinity either. What’s fascinating is that about the 15 minute mark there are a load of comments they make and accusations they make of you (he should read up on the game, update himself, he should’t put so much pressure on poor struggling indie devs) that they clearly haven’t done themselves. I don’t blame them, they’re clearly reactionary, but I find it fascinating that he didn’t think to research and read up on all these things when producing the video.
They seem to have quite the love for No Man’s Sky, but as you say, he needs to re-read with a cool head.
That’s the part that I’m struggling to understand. I get forming personal attachments to inanimate objects, or to whatever you’d classify a video game as, but what is there to love about NMS? I’ve looked around, and I’ve found videos of the devs talking, and they seem personable enough, but I’ve yet to see any actual game. They’ve been rather tight lipped about the gameplay, and really haven’t shown any.
There’s nothing to love.
There’s nothing to hate, mind you, but there’s certainly nothing to love.
What we have with this video is someone who’s chosen their team to root for, and have fallen into the mistake of thinking that it’s a zero-sum game.
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Do remember that the old forums cannot be viewed. You are blaming the creator of the video for not looking into Infinity (The MMO). He can only pick some information about Infinity: Battlescape, which will be a combat oriented game and maybe find a developer comment about a potential solar system exploration mode. But hardly anything about Infinity MMO.
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The picture that came to my mind … 
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Valid point, I forget how much I know from ye olde dayes.
The idea of NMS?
To be fair, that can be, and often is, enough to get invested in a game.
How many of US are here because we liked the idea of Infinity?
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True, and there may very well be information about NMS out there that I haven’t found, but to date I haven’t seen much about what NMS is. I don’t have an idea of it, so I don’t see what’s so exciting.
Other than it’s on a console, and the genre hasn’t exactly shown the consoles a lot of love.
I have to assume that either people know something about the game that I don’t, or they’re caught in some sort of indie fever console war stuff that I, as a Nintendo guy, haven’t been involved in since… Uhh… 2000-ish? Whenever the GCN launched, and the PS2 murdered it.
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I didn’t watch the video, but I’ve read a few summaries from people here and on the reddit post. I think it’s a good idea that you pointed redditers to this thread cybercritic, and I’m of the idea that any publicity is good publicity. While the blog may have rustled some jimmies, it’s making people take notice of Inovae right before the most important time in the companies life. If even a few people come to these forums and take a look at the screenshot thread we may be looking at new members. I think that’s great for our small, but growing, community.
There will always be people who disagree purely because they are set in their ways, or disagree just to watch the world burn. We can’t convince those people. We can convince those who come and see the beautiful screenshots like the one below and say “damn, that’s a good sun I might say. I now understand what flavien said about contrasting the cartoonish graphics of NMS with his idea of Infinity.” :
I’m posting this here because that link goes directly here, and maybe redditors who come looking here will look at that sunset and see the differences.
I’m not trying to convince the unconvincible(making up words here). I’m asking those with an open mind to look around and contrast Infinity with NMS and see the differences. Personally I’m looking forward to NMS. Competition is great, and maybe I wont want to hardcore dogfight in IBS but just walk around and a pretty planet with funky dinosaurs sometimes. I can have Oreos and still enjoy skittles. There is no attack, only a difference of opinions and goals for two separate games. In other words, let the free publicity roll in.
Edit: Added second screenshot to contrast and show different points of view
Edit2: How do I embed for easier zooming?
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To get invested in anything. A presidential candidate. A planned event. An unspecified gift. Anything at all. All that’s needed is enough information to establish a pattern of hope for something grander. Hope triggers a lot of fantasies, and to dump on somebody’s fantasies is an invitation to trouble.
Note that another word for emotionally investing in someone or some thing is “cathecting”. Strong cathexis gives us fanatical support of teams (“Go Seahawks!”), brands (“Apple rules”) and everything else like that. Even an organization or nation. When you invest of yourself emotionally in something, everything directed at that thing is reflected to you at a visceral level. So when No Man’s Sky is praised, the guy who made the video will feel that praise directed at him. When it is criticised, he will feel that just as personally. His reaction will depend on his maturity level.
Note that cathexis is not about objective criticism. It is about emotional attachments. You may think that your iPad Air is great. When somebody says that your iPad Air is crap, you will only be offended if you have cathected your iPad Air.
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[quote=“JB47394, post:93, topic:679”]“cathecting”
[/quote]
Thank you! I’ve always wanted a word for that. I figured there was one out there somewhere, but damned if I knew how to find it.
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NMS for me, is like a simulator game. we play as an explorer, discover anything that unpredictable. because we, as a human, is always being curious about something. i always want to know what kind of creatures or planets out of our system. i love strange creatures. that’s why i’d love to see crypto animals, dinos, aliens because i’m curious, so i could become amazed then satisfied.
that’s why i want to play NMS, because the animals, plants, planets, anything are procedural. that’s actually enough for me, but then they added other features like dogfight and ground combat. so i don’t think NMS lack of visions. it’s actually about us, not the game. what we want to be. so the true question is not “what you should do in this game?”, but… “what you want to do in this game?”
[quote=“Ridh, post:95, topic:679, full:true”]
NMS for me, is like a simulator game.[/quote]
How so?
That sounds more like a dungeon crawler than a sim. Hell, it could be used to describe a Super Mario Bros. game.
Exozoology is great and all, and it’s pretty clear from what I’ve seen that this is one of NMS’s big hooks, but do the procedural animals actually do anything? Or are they just moving background objects?
Limit Theory will have procedural planets, systems, stars… Even procedural ships and stations. I’m not sure why NMS has all of this attention, with so little real information, when LT’s dev has pushed a ridiculous amount of game information out into the void. I mean, sure, it doesn’t have planet surfaces or animals, but it has lots of other stuff. Including neon star systems.
Procedural animals really doesn’t explain why my Titanfall playing pals are pumped for this game. And my Titanfall playing pals don’t seem to be able to explain why they themselves are pumped for this game.
Nobody said NMS lacked vision. What has been said is that we lack information.
That’s the defining question of the sandbox genre.
Seriously, what’s the hook? They’ve been more than a little elusive about their multiplayer model, except to talk down the idea that you can play the game with your buddies. The name of the exploration game really seems to be about getting your name tagged on things, but actual discovery seems to be a matter of “click this, warp there, ‘discovery’ popup pops up”, and then gawk at two-snouted woolly mammoths. That’s fine and all, but I refuse to believe that’s the hook behind what’s shaping up to be a rather big PS4 title.
The whole thing makes no sense to me, which means I’m either missing something, or something’s missing.
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on one point it’s like a park or zoo simulator, with living animals.
i follow their project and got information. the dev said they even surprised on what their found. eg: there should be a duel behavior system for animals. and for what i remember, he said this deer try to duel with a tree! i don’t know if it’s a bug or it’s actually part of the game. that’s why i said unpredictable.
they have behaviors too. like eat when hungry, drink, sleep, etc. the interesting part is some of them are eating each others.
i’m agree with this one. oh, i forget NMS have procedural ships, stations, and procedural buildings too. and some kind of portals.
i think i didn’t focus read the posts, my bad.
this is about childhood. like playing with a dino toys or car toys or plane toys only this time they become real, they got behaviors, and all of that combined with space exploration, make it so popular. that’s my opinion.
Wwell after seeing the video, I must say that the guy and the girl take this way to sensitive, there is no enough content in Flavien’s commentaries to waste a 30 minute video to rant about it. Must of whats being said is that some how the games that are about to come out dosent seem to fit well for the style of game he is actually making, its not a rant, its not talking trash… really I dont know whats all the fuzz about.
The reason NMS has more attention, and not limit theory is probably because it caught on to a larger audience, and will release earlier. The flashy teaser trailers didn’t hurt either. So the more you promote your game, The more hype and attention it will get from a wider audience.
Think of it as the World of Warcraft of space games. The palette is light, the presentation cartoony, the gameplay simple and straightforward. If they put in enough simple achievements and keep it largely skill-free, then it will be accessible and repeatable light entertainment. Blizzard made sure that there was content that continued to draw the attention of the players by repeatedly hand-building a bunch of new areas and beasts. The appeal of No Man’s Sky will fade pretty quickly if their procedural variety is too limited.
The part that I’m most curious about - and one of the most difficult parts of gameplay design - is the social side. What will players cooperate or compete over? Why will they interact with each other either in or out of the game? They’re not going to spend much time discussing the species that they’ve discovered. Will they be tweeting their finds? Putting snapshots of interesting worlds on Facebook? It should be interesting to see what they try to build a sense of community.