6 ms·

>And the features they've bolted on "for free" haven't why scare quotes around for free? they were free. >haven't addressed any of the core gameplay or emptin

>And the features they've bolted on "for free" haven't why scare quotes around for free? they were free. >haven't addressed any of the core gameplay or emptiness issues people have with it. i went from hating it to really enjoying it. i am not the only one. >based on them staggering a few nonsense releases and being good on social media ad spends. The game is still bad and not worth the money. my comment comes from my opinion and my experience, not social media. i think its a good game, and i would say it's absolutely worth the money.

glenstein 7d ago
I suppose because you still bought the game, after all, and on some level it was about catching up to expectations for what you would have paid for out of the box. That said, I don't agree with their take at all. Hello Games offered a mountain of content that's right in the bullseye center of game's core vibe and identity; and continuing to hold the original critique against them based on the "not procedural enough" argument is increasingly equivocating between two different things. You've been given a game that's more than worth the cost of admission, and you'll see dozens, hundreds, of slop space games come and go with less than one tenth the value proposition of NMS. That should be more than enough to quell 99% of the criticism. The fact that it's not procedural enough amounts to, say, feeling that The Odyssey was good, not great. For however true that is, it's not a scandal.
- spandrew 7d ago
  You pay for a game——if the game is not good, and patches are provided "for free" that doesn't mean much. Here, NMS launched with abysmal content and atrocious systems. Now at least it doesn't have abysmal content. A bad game is a bad game (yes, my opinion).
flavionm 7d ago
Content updates for a paid game aren't free. They're adding to a package that, more often than not, was incomplete to begin with. And they'll often result in more sales, which is how they pay for themselves. Not that they're bad, but wording them like they're some huge act of generosity from the studio instead of a reasonable expectation pushes the baseline away from where it should be.
- john_strinlai 7d ago
  i bought a game that contained X with no expectations of more content. the game now has Y and Z. i did not purchase the game expecting those updates. i did not pay for those updates. so it seems completely reasonable to consider those updates to be free. wording it as something i paid for when i didn't pushes the baseline towards dishonesty.
  - simoncion 7d ago
    > the game now has Y and Z. i did not purchase the game expecting those updates. Yeah. Back in the day, those would almost always be paid expansions... if not whole-ass sequels. There's a subset of video game players these days who expect years and years of substantial changes to a game. Why, back in my day you had to pay for anything more than a game-breaking bug fix... and you counted yourself lucky if you even got those!
    - spandrew 7d ago
      This isn't an arguement I'm making. There's a difference between DLC and providing "the base game content" – which No Man's Sky was doing. It wasn't an actual game on launch and it's barely one now. They could have cut their losses but it would've ended the studio. Now they're being touted as a paragon of scrappy game dev. Which is wrong.
      - simoncion 7d ago
        > It wasn't an actual game on launch and it's barely one now. I'd argue that it was barely a game at launch, and it's still barely a game today... it has always been a sandbox with very little game in it, and that's fine. [0] But that's neither here nor there. They released a "game" ten years ago. They've updated that "game" many times and never charged for updates. That makes those updates free. You can justifiably be angry about the circumstances of the launch, and justifiably be angry that anyone's saying anything good about the devs. That doesn't change the fact that this [3] And the features they've bolted on "for free"... is an asinine use of scare quotes. The updates were delivered free of charge, and the price of the base game hasn't been increased to account for them. This makes them free updates. [0] See the fourth paragraph of [1] as well as most of [2] for a little more commentary on this. [1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630148> [2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630824> [3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629510>

glenstein 7d ago

I suppose because you still bought the game, after all, and on some level it was about catching up to expectations for what you would have paid for out of the box. That said, I don't agree with their take at all. Hello Games offered a mountain of content that's right in the bullseye center of game's core vibe and identity; and continuing to hold the original critique against them based on the "not procedural enough" argument is increasingly equivocating between two different things. You've been given a game that's more than worth the cost of admission, and you'll see dozens, hundreds, of slop space games come and go with less than one tenth the value proposition of NMS. That should be more than enough to quell 99% of the criticism. The fact that it's not procedural enough amounts to, say, feeling that The Odyssey was good, not great. For however true that is, it's not a scandal.

spandrew 7d ago
You pay for a game——if the game is not good, and patches are provided "for free" that doesn't mean much. Here, NMS launched with abysmal content and atrocious systems. Now at least it doesn't have abysmal content. A bad game is a bad game (yes, my opinion).

flavionm 7d ago

Content updates for a paid game aren't free. They're adding to a package that, more often than not, was incomplete to begin with. And they'll often result in more sales, which is how they pay for themselves. Not that they're bad, but wording them like they're some huge act of generosity from the studio instead of a reasonable expectation pushes the baseline away from where it should be.

john_strinlai 7d ago
i bought a game that contained X with no expectations of more content. the game now has Y and Z. i did not purchase the game expecting those updates. i did not pay for those updates. so it seems completely reasonable to consider those updates to be free. wording it as something i paid for when i didn't pushes the baseline towards dishonesty.
- simoncion 7d ago
  > the game now has Y and Z. i did not purchase the game expecting those updates. Yeah. Back in the day, those would almost always be paid expansions... if not whole-ass sequels. There's a subset of video game players these days who expect years and years of substantial changes to a game. Why, back in my day you had to pay for anything more than a game-breaking bug fix... and you counted yourself lucky if you even got those!
  - spandrew 7d ago
    This isn't an arguement I'm making. There's a difference between DLC and providing "the base game content" – which No Man's Sky was doing. It wasn't an actual game on launch and it's barely one now. They could have cut their losses but it would've ended the studio. Now they're being touted as a paragon of scrappy game dev. Which is wrong.
    - simoncion 7d ago
      > It wasn't an actual game on launch and it's barely one now. I'd argue that it was barely a game at launch, and it's still barely a game today... it has always been a sandbox with very little game in it, and that's fine. [0] But that's neither here nor there. They released a "game" ten years ago. They've updated that "game" many times and never charged for updates. That makes those updates free. You can justifiably be angry about the circumstances of the launch, and justifiably be angry that anyone's saying anything good about the devs. That doesn't change the fact that this [3] And the features they've bolted on "for free"... is an asinine use of scare quotes. The updates were delivered free of charge, and the price of the base game hasn't been increased to account for them. This makes them free updates. [0] See the fourth paragraph of [1] as well as most of [2] for a little more commentary on this. [1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630148> [2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630824> [3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629510>