Sean Murray: “We’ve put out a trailer [for Light No Fire], and then we haven’t said anything,” he continued, “and I think that’s probably the way people would prefer it in some ways too.”
In what twisted parallel universe does he imagine this to be true? Who are these strange “people” who don’t want to know what’s happening with LNF? We’ve never heard from one - not a single one.
I suspect the truth is rather more worrying. I suspect that the closer LNF gets to completion, the more SM worries that it won’t live up to expectations. And he’s been badly bitten by that creature in the past.
Come on, Sean. Stop kidding yourself, and set the thing free.
Thing is, I really don’t have the time to follow a speeding hype train. Didn’t really have it back in the NMS days either. I know the game’s coming. At some point. I know it’s going to be inconvenient in any case because I’ll probably have to play it, for which I will need to rearrange some priorities. So, the less I know the better. Just drop it when it’s done, and I’ll arrange something, somehow…
It’s obviously also much more comfortable for the devs. You can only really afford to do it when you are very certain that you’re going to sell well no matter what, which HG pretty much can at this point. If I could be certain that my game was going to sell a million units on release even if I don’t talk about it in advance, I wouldn’t say a word about it until I’m done
It’s not like you to express a contrarian opinion, just for the sake of it.
If what you say is true, why are you here? If you genuinely don’t want to know, why are you reading this thread? Why are you posting here?
There’s a world of difference between being content to allow the davs to do their own thing in their own time, and actually not wanting to know what’s happening.
If you’re genuinely not interested, I can suggest some nice bricklaying websites.
Generally this is an NMS forum, and there’s nice people here that give me a laugh or some interesting new knowledge every once in a while, so that’s why I’m not elsewhere. As for why I am reading this particular thread, I guess that’s a fair question, which I can only explain by a certain amount of duality on the subject. Let’s just say that most of me would prefer it if there was no information at all up until launch, while some minor parts do in fact get excited by the prospect of more information.
Difficult to explain, but I’m pretty sure you are familiar with the concept, if maybe not in this particular context.
Exactly my point. And I am, indeed familiar with the concept.
I am not consumed by a desire to see the secrets of LNF revealed. On the whole, thoughts of LNF occupy very little of my time. And I am happy for development to proceed at its own pace. But I do have an interest in what’s happening - as, I believe, do the other people who come here.
In any case, my original post was not aimed at you, or any other member here. I posted because I find Sean Murray’s statement both disingenuous and self-serving. He’s trying to say there’s been no information because that’s the way we want it - when the truth is, that’s the way he wants it.
Yes, but if they started drip-feeding information and fueling the hype train, such a desire might arise, and thoughts of the game would start occupying more time (that’s the entire purpose of advance marketing, after all). So one may indeed “prefer in some ways” that there are no news, even if one would like to hear some.
While I have no grounds to assert that this would be true for the majority as Sean seems to imply, at least as far as I am concerned, his statement is not wrong.
No news is good news as they say. Although some news is great news and I feel him opening up about LNF and the silence is exciting.
He said in another interview that they had planned to show more shortly after the reveal trailer, a more in depth one that goes into detail on things we’ll be doing in LNF. But then they got such a strong response and shot up the wishlist charts that they realised they dont need to really spend any more time promoting its existence and instead could focus on creating it.
Maybe since they had the film crew booked in advance they decided to just pivot to making the session about the Worlds Part One deep dive instead
So if we want to see more, everyone go and remove it from their wishlist asap
In essence SM said, it’s your own fault. That’s why we aren’t showing you more.
You obviously want the game without even knowing more about it so… We can save our pennies.
That’s another one of SM’s lame rationalisations. He’s already said the team are playing the game every day. What’s it going to cost them to record some footage? Nothing. The gaming press and the platforms will distribute any video they make for free. He’s not holding back information to save time or money.
Sadly, showing much in-progress footage during alpha and beta development is what sped up the No Man’s Sky hype train. Hello Games is likely still quite “gun shy” about that.
I’d rather have silence than go through that again.
I just wanted confirmation that they are still working on LNF. The silence made me worry they were just concentrating on NMS. Sean confirming that half the team is still working on LNF was enough for me for now.
That’s what I said in my first post. Sean Murray is worried LNF won’t meet people’s expectations. If that’s what’s bothering him, he should be honest about it - and not pretend he’s saving money, or somehow fulfilling our secret wishes.
If Hello Games didn’t want people to speculate about LNF, then they shouldn’t have released the first trailer. They shouldn’t have announced that they were making a new game. But they did both of those things, and then Sean Murray got cold feet, and decided to leave us in an information vacuum.
Even that I would find understandable. But when he tries to tell me he’s saying nothing because that’s what I want, he’s gone too far.
So no, Mr Murray, I don’t want you to keep current LNF developments a secret. I would very much like to see what progress you’ve made. And so, I believe, would the great majority of your current customers.
To me, concern about people wildly extrapolating every little piece of a demo or trailer differs from thinking there launched game won’t meet expectations. One way to minimize wild extrapolation is to show less demos and trailers.
His comments indicate that he’s proud of and excited about the game but being tight lipped. Kind of like banning actors from discussing an upcoming big movie release. It seems a wise policy.
I always assumed continued LNF development and am awaiting the interviews and trailers that I suspect will indicate that launch day is near.
I, personally, want more information on the game in the form of some screen shots or gameplay clips. But I dont want it to come at the cost of another runaway hype train. This next game launch is SM’s 2nd chance to release a game that actually meets player expectations so I can understand the nervousness and difficulty to talk about it.
Poor guy had it rough and im sure NMS’s launch gave him some permanent emotional trauma from it. It must have been hard to have your litteral face be spread on the internet to shame and ridicule you across the entire gaming industry for several years.
There’s also the opposite of hype out there and it has gotten much worse in recent years and that is people bashing things they see or don’t see before they ever even play the game. No one wants that either.
I’m participating in a public alpha for part 2 of some harmless Indie game. Some comments are enthusiastic, but some complain loudly it’s incomplete (obviously it is - it’s been in alpha only for a year. They are following their public roadmap.), some say, obviously it will fail “like that”, it should not have been released so broken (note that it isn’t crashing or so, just many game elements don’t have interactions yet, the oceans have no water, stuff like that).
If the devs had not published the open alpha, people would complain “Do they have no testers? Do they not care about their target group? Why didn’t they ask me?”
