No Man's Sky: culture or cult?

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I preordered it the day before the first rumor came out that it was delayed. I was speaking to a coworker who also preordered. We both lamented that it would be 3 weeks until we could play it and now its even longer. Sure, I was disappointed, but Iā€™d also rather have a complete game than be playing a broken game and waiting for an essential patch. You canā€™t win with some gamers. Release too early and you should have waited. Delay too much and they still go ape.

I think this particular game (and a few like it) suffers from the Spore syndrome. Like Spore, it was announced and teased years in advance of being released and it boasted of a revolutionary new type of game design. The art style is also quite memorable.

The only people who have a right to legitimately complain about the delay however is anyone who preordered the game but is dying of cancer before August. Find another game to play until then.

Maybe we need to start talking about ethics in game fandom.

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This is the first game I have actively been looking forward to buying for like the first time ever. I guess I am not a hardcore gamer. I have never gotten something on the day it came out (well, the South Park RPG, but that was just a happy accident.)

It looks and sound amazing. I had an idea for something similar in Middle School. A game where you could be in an airplane like Top Gun, or land/eject, and fight on land like Commando, or get in a Jeep like Jackal. This of course is 1000x more complex and I am eager to try it. I will have to either buy a new computer or maybe a PS4. But looking forward to it.

Not like ā€œdeath threats because you REPORTED on a game delayā€ levels, but still.

I can only hope this shit is mostly by young adults still struggling on learning how to express emotions with out being a dick, and not 40 year olds who never learned.

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Looking deeper into this would be quite interesting.

For me, mostly, because I have (a perhaps wrong) expectation that the fans of this game are not the usual ā€˜gamer brosā€™ that play call of duty and scream obscenities at each other that tend to get portrayed in anything gaming related. So,finding out what kind of gamer demographic they are would be interesting.

Just to move us all a bit beyond the boys-will-be-boys write-off that tends to happen in anything gaming related (double-gee [avoiding triggering of any auto-alerts to bring the swarm back here] and others) because people still seem to think itā€™s just 14-year old boys doing this stuff. Even if it turns out that yeah, it is just bored suburban 14 year old boys doing this, it would be good to actually have some proper data on it.

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(post canā€™t be emptyā€¦)

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Utterly baffling.

I enjoy games, immensely, but how do you go from ā€œI enjoy this gameā€ to ā€œthere is nothing else in life but this gameā€?

And from there, to ā€œif anything about this game is not exactly how I want it to be it is someoneā€™s fault and they will feel my wrathā€?

This; a million times this.

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And a recent Something Positive feels appropriate here.

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Thatā€™s the pull-quote I was thinking about too. Video games are a hell of a drug, and one of the lines between addiction and healthy recreational use is whether or not you continue to value reality for itā€™s own sake. For a lot of people, Iā€™m sure, these other worlds are so far superior to their own, empowering, interesting, expansive, that they really need those spaces in order to get up the serotonin levels to make it through the day. A game like this, that literally says, ā€œthis is a never-ending world that is beautiful, exciting, and all at your fingertipsā€ has to be doubly tempting to disappear into. It must feel a little like being a miserable 15th century serf, waiting to enter the kingdom of heavenā€¦

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Because theyā€™re into the idea of this game more than the game itself. The point of armageddon is waiting for it.

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I have been likening the hype to this game to Spore since I saw the first bits of gameplay. I was super excited when Spore was announced because they promised so much. It made me cynical about this game and wary of pre-orders in general.

That beings said, I hope this game lives up to most of itā€™s hype. I would like to see it do well as I think itā€™s an amazing concept (same way I felt about Spore really).

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No Manā€™s Sky looks okay, I guess, but itā€™s no Star Citizen, is it?

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Gamers: Periodic jackasses or total assholes?

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Iā€™m waiting to see if it is a good game. Iā€™ll wait exactly the same amount of time, pay the same amount, and get as much fun out of the final productā€¦ or I will avoid a whole bunch of heartbreak.

Sure, it sounds neat, but so did Watch Dogs, Spore and a thousand others. Iā€™m trying to think of a game that had procedural generation that I actually liked, and the only thing I can come up with is Minecraft, and that had little to do with the procedural generation and more with the crafting/building. Without that? Wandering a procedurally generated world killing creepers without any sort of design or a strong plot? Yeesh. I didnā€™t get far in Dark Cloud because the main selling point: ā€œprocedural dungeons!ā€ meant that all the dungeons sucked.

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Yes, I think the rabid escapism is such a wonderful intoxicant. I think there will be a large backlash at release since the actual game cannot live up to what is in peoples imaginationā€¦

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The undeserved hype for this game is off-putting. I love open world concepts. I rarely play games that donā€™t have that format now. I love exploration, builders, survival, and space sims. No Manā€™s Sky seemed like it could be a perfect fit for a lot the things I love in games. The early footage proved it would even look good! The one thing it didnā€™t show was any depth of gameplay. Thatā€™s a huge red flag with any game concept. If there isnā€™t some idea of what the gameplay is going to be from the start, itā€™s probably doomed. And yet, hype exploded just the same. Any detraction from the hype means angry fans jumping at you, calling you names for suggesting that maybe we should ā€˜wait and seeā€™ what the game will be before declaring undying love for it. Iā€™m pretty well sick of the hype now. The game might be good or might just be ā€˜flying around pretty worlds to see same plants and robotic animals with remixed partsā€™. Nothing released so far has hinted at any deep compelling gameplay. Iā€™ll reserve judgment and wait a week or two after release before I decide to buy in or not. As far as I can tell right now, itā€™s like pretty Minecraft in space, without the mining or crafting. Walking Simulator in space? It does look pretty though! Pretty isnā€™t exactly rare in todayā€™s gaming world though.

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Neither. Thatā€™s like judging all Americans based on Donald Trump. All Canadians based on Rob Ford. All religious people based on the 9/11 hijackers or Pat Robertson. All musicians based on Ted Nugent. All people on internet forums based on the WorldNetDaily forum.

The internet and modern media simply publicizes and promotes louder and more controversial figures, and makes them seem to represent the rest.

The bit that make be vomit is when the press calls the abusive gamers ā€œnerds.ā€ NO. Theyā€™re the ones who used to beat up nerds in school.

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So, one vote for periodic jackasses then.

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Maybe we need to start talking about the ethics of pre-ordering.

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Spore is exactly what I am afraid of in relation to this title.

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Iā€¦ donā€™t think it is hype, exactly. I think itā€™s ambition. This is one very ambitious title. I wish them the best trying to make this thing right. Itā€™s best if they take their time doing it.