GWJ Conference Call Episode 514

No Man's Sky, Kingdom: New Lands, Overcooked, Tricky Towers, DOTA 2 International Tourney VR, Abzu, Do We Want To Play in Simulated Worlds? , Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Julian and Amanda dive into whether or not we want to play in simulated worlds in the wake of No Man's Sky.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Wash Out - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 49:23

XXV - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 1:11:37

Comments

The audio quality dips a bit when a storm runs through Julian's neighborhood and the rain was pretty loud. Just so you know!

00:01:28 No Man's Sky
00:23:53 Kingdom: New Lands
00:26:05 Abzu
00:29:00 Overcooked
00:33:52 Tricky Towers
00:38:08 DOTA 2 International Tourney VR
00:41:30 Magic: The Gathering
00:45:29 Kentucky Route Zero
00:47:48 World of Warcraft
00:49:24 Do We Want To Play in Simulated Worlds?
01:11:38 Your Emails

Love the episode! In a pusillanimous proffer of pedantic precision, there are, in fact 18 quintillion planets to explore. I love No Man's Sky, (or as I call it Nomanski) warts and all. I agree with Shawn that it is a zen-like experience, it is calming and quiet, even meditative.

It's amazing how terrain can play into that. My favorite planet so far has been a desert world I named Khadgar VIII. Tall cacti, arid mesas, plateaus and arroyos: it's space Santa Fe. It even has some animals; the friendly Spotted Cow Puppy, playful Chameleon Fox, skittish Trifrog, and lumbering Mesa Sloth are all my little friends but beware the Flutterwolves that come out at night! I don't want to leave this planet. I love exploring each valley and cave, flying from outpost to outpost, making friends with the chirpy Gek and learning more of their language piece by piece. I love naming things here, from foliage to rock formations to points of interest. I've mined and sold backpacks full of Aluminium and am slowly building a stockpile of Iridium from my next big upgrade. These things make me feel big, a grand explorer whose imperial eye delineates the Known World and names, like Adam, all manner of living things. I am king of all I survey and there is always more to name, to own, to show the world I was here.

There are moments, however, I treasure just as much. In these moments, I am reminded how truly small I am, how I am the lord of an anthill and nothing more. My exosuit runs low on power and I can find no plants or Plutonium nearby so I wander away from what is safe as the sun slowly sets. The desert cools dangerously at night and as the cold creeps into my suit, little fingers of frost creep across my vision. I ask myself questions that don't have discrete answers. Can I make it back to my ship in time or do I have enough charges to burrow into the ground with my multitool and wait out the night? Do I have enough life support to survive the night? If I do find some power source, how aggressively can I mine before the mysterious sentinels find out and call down their synthetic wrath on me? How can I get more space; I'm always running out space? Do I want to stay here or leave? Will my ship be set upon by pirates as I leave orbit? Can I afford to mine asteroids if they call attention to these pirates? Do I have enough resources to survive an encounter with them? Do I have enough fuel/warp to reach the next planet/ system? Will I have enough to get back? This insecurity does not cast me as conqueror but as a speck in a universe so vast it is beyond my ability to comprehend. I am beholden to the environment, to the needs of survival. Every planet I leave, I know I have only discovered a fraction what is there and that only my eyes will see it (more than likely.) Am I bringing my small light to the universe to leave my mark, or am I merely whistling in the dark?

If the horizon never ends, does it matter what is beyond the horizon? What is my goalpost if not even the sky is the limit? What keeps me going, keeps me curious, keeps me moving forward? As much peace as the process of exploration brings me, the scope of it in relation to my character causes me unease; I am not in control. And yet I am driven to keep wondering, keep going further, dig deeper, fly farther, learn more. So many questions; I hope the answer is out there. There's something very existential in No Man's Sky and I am eating it up.

I listened to your discussion of No Man's Sky and my jaw just dropped... that you utterly failed to talk about Elite: Dangerous. The parallels and differences between NMS and E:D are vastly more interesting than comparing NMS to Journey.

E:D is, with limited exceptions, procedurally-generated. Planets to land on that no human has seen before. 400 billion planets. But... the game actually has things to do: conflict with meaning, human interaction... Directed storytelling, both by the game developers and by the players.

Elite does lack the ability to walk around in the universe; you're stuck in your ship. Which makes the game quite playable via Oculus. There aren't aliens... yet. You can only land on planets that have no atmosphere right now, which helps explain the lack of aliens on the planet. (But you certainly can see other players in the galaxy, even very, very far away from the highly-populated "bubble".)

You did your audience a disservice by not comparing NMS to E:D. I look forward to hearing what you think.

I thought I'd mentioned ED?

Beyond the fact that ED procedurally generates planets (that don't have vegetation or life as far as I know) and space stations I don't think the comparisons really jive. NMS is all about being on planets and running around, the space stuff is mostly filler and bad combat.

Elite Dangerous is primarily about being in space and your in-ship experience. I don't think there's a lot to compare beyond some of the technical tricks they use to create universes and galactic economies.

I don't know anything about Elite D but apparently my husband lives there and I think he might lead Patreus? I think it might be a space political drama simulator? With a light side of space commerce?

This is why I didn't bring it up

This podcast pushed me over the edge on whether or not to buy NMS. It's one thing to read impressions, but it's quite another to hear them and how giddy Shawn, Amanda, and Julian were about it, a feeling I share.

E:D was mentioned. And while (as a player of Elite and being interested in No Man's Sky) I also want to hear comparisons, it sounds like these two games have such different design concepts that they may not be worth comparing beyond basic mechanics. And if you want good space combat, it sounds like Elite remains... um... the elite.

I'm interested in the MInecraft comparison, though. Especially since the conference call folks were talking about the variety of worlds that can be created with different seeds. This seems like one of the best features of Minecraft, but it's completely missing in NMS because everyone is playing in the same world, with the same seed. I don't think I would have stuck with Minecraft if I couldn't create new worlds. But for NMS, does this matter?

Jeff 'two n's one t' Cannata was talking about No Man's Sky on DLC this week. He felt that No Man's sky was vast but without enough hooks, like cities to visit and stories to discover. He also mentioned that he has criticised Mass Effect for having the opposite problem were a planet only has a tiny area for you to visit. For me, both things are entirely understandable compromises that need to be made when generating galaxies or universes with a limited staff and budget.

It would be great though if you could combine the two so you had the more focused areas of Mass Effect with character, story, etc then, if you ventured beyond those main areas, the game procedurally generated more city or more planet for as far as you wanted to explore (Jeff may has posited that idea I'm not sure.) That would also work well with the Assassin's Creed games. In the Ezio games you could explore a city but the countryside outside the walls was just a token that quickly ran out. It'd be amazing to ride out from a main city and to have the game generate endless Italian countryside for you to explore.

I wonder if, in the future, for some games, developers won't sell engines as much as universes, worlds or random generation algorithms that will expand on the small areas you've created.

On ageing in and out of video games: I'm over 50 now and, when on a ramble, I have to consider very carefully where I sit down to have lunch because I will eventually have to struggle to my feet again from that spot.

I can understand why people are upset about NMS. The game that was marketed and the game that's being sold are pretty substantially different.

Sean Murray wrote:

"The physics of every other game—it’s faked,” the chief architect Sean Murray explained. “When you’re on a planet, you’re surrounded by a skybox—a cube that someone has painted stars or clouds onto. If there is a day to night cycle, it happens because they are slowly transitioning between a series of different boxes."
"With us,” Murray continued, “when you're on a planet, you can see as far as the curvature of that planet. If you walked for years, you could walk all the way around it, arriving back exactly where you started. Our day to night cycle is happening because the planet is rotating on its axis as it spins around the sun. There is real physics to that. We have people that will fly down from a space station onto a planet and when they fly back up, the station isn't there anymore; the planet has rotated. People have filed that as a bug.”

Source.

That's a pretty bold claim, and it's pretty clearly not how the game actually works.

The actual game looks fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it come the next Steam sale, but it seems easy to understand the outrage from people who fell for the bait and switch.

What was the name of the Magic: The Gathering app that was mentioned where it will inventory your cards by photographing them?
Edit- Nevermind, it is called Decked Builder. It's in the iOS store for $4.00 on app page. Must be an upgrade to $15.00 for certain features. Sounds interesting. Anyone use it?

Certis wrote:

I thought I'd mentioned ED?

Beyond the fact that ED procedurally generates planets (that don't have vegetation or life as far as I know) and space stations I don't think the comparisons really jive. NMS is all about being on planets and running around, the space stuff is mostly filler and bad combat.

Elite Dangerous is primarily about being in space and your in-ship experience. I don't think there's a lot to compare beyond some of the technical tricks they use to create universes and galactic economies.

I'm pretty sure that Elite was mentioned during the NMS discussion, and since the discussion was about NMS, I think it is a bit of a stretch to call it a "disservice" to not spend the whole time comparing NMS to Elite. I think you're right that the major overlap between the two is the procedural mechanism to create the galaxy, and that each game focused on different aspects of that. Both have space combat, but (from what I've heard) the combat in NMS is a bit of a side-show.

Elite's galaxy generation focused on which types of stars are created in each system (and how many), as well as the number and types of planets. Other than the "barnacles", there is no specific life on any planets with which the players can interact (yet), beyond communications with players and NPC humans from within your ship. You can explore planets, but as of yet only certain planets without atmospheres, and only from within your ship, or within a space buggy that you deploy from your ship.

I have not (yet) played NMS, but from what I have read and been told, it is directed more at exploring, surviving, and interacting with living worlds. That appeals to me, as I'm one of those people who play Elite by going off on long exploration trips, far away from the human-inhabited portion of the galaxy.

IIRC, though, at one point in the CC someone did say that it was a unique experience to stand upon a world that neither the developers nor any players have ever seen before. That is certainly something that Elite has had since the release of Horizons. In Elite you do not get to name the planets you discover, but the galaxy map will list your name as the discoverer, if you are the first to scan the body then sell your data at a station.

Another thing that was mentioned as being a new thing in NMS is the collection of bits of language as the game progresses. That mechanic was also prominent in Out There (one of the few mobile games I have played).

Amoebic wrote:

I don't know anything about Elite D but apparently my husband lives there and I think he might lead Patreus? I think it might be a space political drama simulator? With a light side of space commerce?

This is why I didn't bring it up :D

Well, if your husband is supporting Senator Patreus (who is, by any objective measure, a complete jerk), then he must be focusing on the Power Play portion of the game. You are correct that this is a bit of a space political drama simulator, where you can choose to support one of ten factions. I played that for a few weeks, but eventually got bored if it because I found it too grindy. I don't think I am alone in abandoning that part of the game.

Zudz wrote:

I can understand why people are upset about NMS. The game that was marketed and the game that's being sold are pretty substantially different.

Sean Murray wrote:

"The physics of every other game—it’s faked,” the chief architect Sean Murray explained. “When you’re on a planet, you’re surrounded by a skybox—a cube that someone has painted stars or clouds onto. If there is a day to night cycle, it happens because they are slowly transitioning between a series of different boxes."
"With us,” Murray continued, “when you're on a planet, you can see as far as the curvature of that planet. If you walked for years, you could walk all the way around it, arriving back exactly where you started. Our day to night cycle is happening because the planet is rotating on its axis as it spins around the sun. There is real physics to that. We have people that will fly down from a space station onto a planet and when they fly back up, the station isn't there anymore; the planet has rotated. People have filed that as a bug.”

Source.

That's a pretty bold claim, and it's pretty clearly not how the game actually works.

Funny quote, since at least in parts that is how Elite works. The day night cycle, as well as eclipses etc, are all driven by the movements of the celestial bodies. There are plenty of videos out there which show the movement of planets.

I've never tried to drive my space buggy all the way around a planet, though, but I'm sure it's possible if you can refuel.

I am less certain about the skybox, but I am pretty sure that it is at least partially created based upon which stars, planets, nebulae, etc. are visible from your location. If you use the nav computer to selection a destination star that is close and bright, you can see the correct start selected in your HUD.

BooBeeBooBeeBum wrote:

What was the name of the Magic: The Gathering app that was mentioned where it will inventory your cards by photographing them?
Edit- Nevermind, it is called Decked Builder. It's in the iOS store for $4.00 on app page. Must be an upgrade to $15.00 for certain features. Sounds interesting. Anyone use it?

I've been using Decked Builder for about two years now and I absolutely love it. I was stoked to hear Julian sing its praises on the show this week.

I'm pretty sure I didn't pay $15 for it, but I definitely would. I mostly use it for deck building, but the image capture is crazy good. If 13-year-old me could see me pulling out a handheld computer, scanning images from a pile of cards, and sorting it all into a nifty little collection database, my barely-pubescent brain would have exploded.

Truly, this is where science & Magic meet.

Decked Builder also has a PC/Mac version, which is $9.99 or $14.99 with the "Card Cam" option to scan cards in via webcam.

I felt so bad listening to Julian apologizing for enjoying WoW and MtG, like he's violated some sort of video game podcaster code. This is the man who burned the mantra "Love loving things" into my brain (yes, I know it's originally attributed to Jeff Cannata). The pre-events leading up to Legion have been a lot of fun, and anything you can do with your kid and share gaming, like Julien is doing with Magic, is fantastic.

Feel no shame, sir, and enjoy your game!

I found the immersion discussion interesting. I've never felt what I would consider to be immersed in a game, I'm much more in line with Shaun's idea of 'buy in.' I need to buy what a game is selling to really engage with it, but I never lose myself in a game.

I'm also more likely to buy in to a properly realised directed experience. I find it more interesting to play as what I think Geralt or Shepard would do, than as whatever empty vessel I'm supposed to be playing as in a Bethesda game. In fact without any kind of hook I'm far more likely to be purely mechanical in my decision making.

To the topic of the week: I do like the idea of playing in a simulated world, and it sounds like NMS does an interesting job with technology and limited resources to create one, but I'm not sure if it sounds like something I would want to do in my leisure time. It seems like an interesting curiosity, rather than an inherently compelling experience.

I may pick it up after some patching and price drops because it sounds like a fascinating thing to experience, and it sounds like the seed of something great. I really want to see what's next.

jredgiant wrote:

I felt so bad listening to Julian apologizing for enjoying WoW and MtG, like he's violated some sort of video game podcaster code. This is the man who burned the mantra "Love loving things" into my brain (yes, I know it's originally attributed to Jeff Cannata). The pre-events leading up to Legion have been a lot of fun, and anything you can do with your kid and share gaming, like Julien is doing with Magic, is fantastic.

Feel no shame, sir, and enjoy your game!

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm sure Julian was playing it up a bit, but as much as I've never really gelled with either of those things I say live on and own what you enjoy.

My only complain with NMS is that is not a 20$ EA game, if it was, I will be interested because that means that we still have 1-2 years ahed of the game to be improved, and that the price was about I want to pay for a game like that.

I think it was Todd Howard who said once talking about Skyrim that they droped procedural generation of the wilderness maps from Oblivion because the effort taken so the game creates the maps wasn't worthy because most of the times the result wasn't what they wanted it to be, hey hand crafted all the map in Skyrim, so like GTA everything is there because someone place it there.

I'm all in about procedural in small parts of the game, like the catacombs on Diablo, or the levels each time you play Spelunky, that adds a lot to a game, replayability, but within some design constrains, you are going to find the Butcher between level 2-3 80% of the times, or there will be always a chest and a golden key in spelunky between the 1-3 level.

But a game that has to be all procedural, I don't see the appeal of that, I've played a lot of hours of The Long Dark, and haven't even all the locations in the game, Why do I need to know that instead of 10 maps are billions if I never gonna put a foot on those?

kabutor wrote:

My only complain with NMS is that is not a 20$ EA game,

That's where I am too. For $20 it would be a no-brainier. At $60 I'd like the game to at least try to make some of the fun, rather than outsourcing it all to me.

Thanks for the reminders. Yes. I love loving stuff. But I'm also conscious of the fact that most folks don't listen in every week to hear me talk about, say, the LoL meta. We've covered games like WoW and Magic for probably literally days of time over a decade.

So, thanks for the encouragement and I'll try to keep my enthusiasm obvious and complete.

rabbit wrote:

Thanks for the reminders. Yes. I love loving stuff. But I'm also conscious of the fact that most folks don't listen in every week to hear me talk about, say, the LoL meta. We've covered games like WoW and Magic for probably literally days of time over a decade.

So, thanks for the encouragement and I'll try to keep my enthusiasm obvious and complete.

If we can put up with yet another "Nothing but boardgames" episode every few months, I'm sure the rabble can put up with a few minutes of MTG.

Of course, if the hosts wanted to dedicate a whole show every new MTG Set release (hint, there's one coming out this week) going over new mechanics and preview cards, I'd be cool with that

Zudz wrote:

I can understand why people are upset about NMS. The game that was marketed and the game that's being sold are pretty substantially different.

...

The actual game looks fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it come the next Steam sale, but it seems easy to understand the outrage from people who fell for the bait and switch.

I agree. I was very surprised to here this idea being dismissed out of hand on the podcast. It was very disappointing.

Whether there were misrepresentations here or not, the idea that it wouldn't bother you to have a developer rampantly lie about a game experience because "I'm judging the game as released" is very problematic to me.

Alz wrote:
rabbit wrote:

Thanks for the reminders. Yes. I love loving stuff. But I'm also conscious of the fact that most folks don't listen in every week to hear me talk about, say, the LoL meta. We've covered games like WoW and Magic for probably literally days of time over a decade.

So, thanks for the encouragement and I'll try to keep my enthusiasm obvious and complete.

If we can put up with yet another "Nothing but boardgames" episode every few months, I'm sure the rabble can put up with a few minutes of MTG.

Of course, if the hosts wanted to dedicate a whole show every new MTG Set release (hint, there's one coming out this week) going over new mechanics and preview cards, I'd be cool with that :D

Does the community really harbor so much ill will towards MtG? I was just curious. I'm a big Magic player myself, but I don't have a need for GWJ to cover it. There are dozens and dozens of other MtG-centric 'casts out there.

No it's not a hatred ... I think we've all,played or still play it. It's just that we tend to try and not spend too much time on either old or endless games. That's generally why we only hit wow or lol or even kerbal or EUIV, but just mention them when something cool or new is out.

killjoy00 wrote:
Zudz wrote:

I can understand why people are upset about NMS. The game that was marketed and the game that's being sold are pretty substantially different.

...

The actual game looks fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it come the next Steam sale, but it seems easy to understand the outrage from people who fell for the bait and switch.

I agree. I was very surprised to here this idea being dismissed out of hand on the podcast. It was very disappointing.

Whether there were misrepresentations here or not, the idea that it wouldn't bother you to have a developer rampantly lie about a game experience because "I'm judging the game as released" is very problematic to me.

I think "rampantly lie" is a bit of a stretch. At worst, I think we're looking at a case of Molyneaux syndrome, where the developers' enthusiasm ran away with them and, unfortunately they suffered from a large marketing push from Sony without any of the PR governor boxes that a big release usually comes associated with.

Put another way, I believe that the developers believed that all the features they were talking about a year or two ago were planned to be in the game, but they ran bang up against the real world with real budgets and real deadlines. Eros a difference between malice and inexperience.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I think "rampantly lie" is a bit of a stretch.

I was specifically saying that it didn't apply to NMS. On the podcast, they said that the developer's statements are irrelevant, and you should only judge a game that is released. My point is that IF YOU DID have a developer who rampantly lied during development, according to what was said on the podcast, you shouldn't care at all. You should only judge the game as released.

That's ridiculous. You can obviously be upset at misrepresentations and lies of developers before the release of a game and those statements can inform how you feel about the game post-release. Whether you think the statements made by the NMS developers rise to that level is another question entirely.

That wasn't intended as a blanket statement for only judging all games as released. Those of us who talked about this specific game on this particular podcast don't care about the pre-release drama and subsequent fallout, so we're only really talking about this particular game as released.

killjoy00 wrote:

I was specifically saying that it didn't apply to NMS. On the podcast, they said that the developer's statements are irrelevant, and you should only judge a game that is released. My point is that IF YOU DID have a developer who rampantly lied during development, according to what was said on the podcast, you shouldn't care at all. You should only judge the game as released.

That's ridiculous. You can obviously be upset at misrepresentations and lies of developers before the release of a game and those statements can inform how you feel about the game post-release. Whether you think the statements made by the NMS developers rise to that level is another question entirely.

I do and do not agree with this. To the extent that Gearbox completely misrepresented what Aliens: Colonial Marines was going to be on release is, to me, unethical. That Randy Pitchford refuses to accept he has done wrong and uses the fact that some people still really love the game as vindication is, to me, a sign that Gearbox is not a company I can trust with my money.

But Gearbox is a Triple-A studio with experienced veterans and a proper PR team that was also being overseen by SEGA. There is plenty of documentation available indicating that Randy Pitchford wasn't taking the project as a serious professional, that his instructions to the outsourced developers disregarded the reality and scope of the project, and failing to reveal real, actual footage of the game as it would have been released to everyone. When the final product landed on people's doorsteps, anyone that had seen a gameplay preview online (or, like me, in person at PAX) knew something was off.

I don't think Sean Murray or his team demonstrated the same irresponsibility that Pitchford and his marketing team had. I think two things were against Sean in this situation: the first was that his game was demonstrated on Sony's stage like it was a AAA level game. No one was going to go into it with the reasonable, tempered expectations that they would any other indie game that comes out of nowhere. Think about the impact Stardew Valley has made. Now consider if that game had years of hype behind it after a big E3 or similar presentation reveal. It's still impressive, but people are bound to be less forgiving because suddenly they have all of these dreams and visions in their head of what it will be.

Then consider the inexperience of the team themselves. As was stated, they have no PR staff to muzzle them, to hand them a sheet of things not to talk about. Hell, Eurogamer recently posted an interview with Peter Moore where there was a PR goon trying to remind the journalists to ask specifically about eSports. Sean Murray didn't have that, and like any other creator whose work is out there and people are begging for updates, he hasn't learned restraint.

Should he have learned from the mistakes of guys like Peter Molyneux? Yes, I do believe so. But I also think people have way too many expectations for 10 developers making a game with a literally unfathomable number of planets to explore. It's an indie game. A $60 indie game, but an indie game.

Sean Murray is not on the same unethical playing field as Randy Pitchford, and calling him a liar is honestly too much.

I also, like MrDeVil909, found the immersion portion of the podcast thought provoking. I, like many of you guys have played many games, but for me, it takes a special game to pull me all the way through to the end. I find that a lot of the times, I begin to unravel the loops and find myself dissecting a game and grabbing for what's at it's roots. Stats and associations. Most games loose their "magic" or "immersion" in a few hours.

When I do find myself lost in a game it's usually me embracing a character, Amanda's experience is pretty alien to me, allowing myself to come into a game very seldom happens. I find that I'll enjoy a role playing game far more and for far longer if I embrace the character that is given to me, molding him/her slightly but understanding that it's likeness is somewhat set and understood. The Witcher 3 is one that comes to mind. The game allowed me to express my version of Geralt while pushing the story forward in an immersive way.

Putting myself totally into a character or a hollow shell of a character is not something I typically do in these games, like MrDeVil909, I would typically play as whom I imagine my character to be, what this person might do in certain situations.

So... I find playing games like No Man's Sky, even Minecraft or any other directionless explore-fest frustrating. To me, there's little substance. Albeit I haven't played NMS, I imagine that I'd have a hard time feeling immersed, there's very little to latch onto expect the gameplay and that's fairly sparse as I understand it.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
killjoy00 wrote:
Zudz wrote:

I can understand why people are upset about NMS. The game that was marketed and the game that's being sold are pretty substantially different.

...

The actual game looks fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it come the next Steam sale, but it seems easy to understand the outrage from people who fell for the bait and switch.

I agree. I was very surprised to here this idea being dismissed out of hand on the podcast. It was very disappointing.

Whether there were misrepresentations here or not, the idea that it wouldn't bother you to have a developer rampantly lie about a game experience because "I'm judging the game as released" is very problematic to me.

I think "rampantly lie" is a bit of a stretch. At worst, I think we're looking at a case of Molyneaux syndrome, where the developers' enthusiasm ran away with them and, unfortunately they suffered from a large marketing push from Sony without any of the PR governor boxes that a big release usually comes associated with.

Put another way, I believe that the developers believed that all the features they were talking about a year or two ago were planned to be in the game, but they ran bang up against the real world with real budgets and real deadlines. Eros a difference between malice and inexperience.

Well, the source I quote is from February. He kind of goes quiet for a while after that (though I did find him surfacing on YouTube a couple times to be frustratingly unclear about multiplayer). Crunch time I expect. Whatever the reason, this seems like a pretty clear overpromise and underdeliver. It seems reasonable that people would be upset by that.

As for Molyneux, he got the benefit of the doubt way too many times. He's not really a good go-to for a sympathetic figure. If anything, the comparison seems damning to me. We'll see what Murray gets up to in the future. Hopefully the comparison is fleeting.

I think an interesting related question to 'do we want to play in simulated worlds' that are procedurally generated like NMS is 'do we want to play in simulated worlds' that are based on the real world(or other planets), aka 'virtual tourism'. I'd be more interested to play real world locations, I think a VR game like 'Everest' game is a missed opportunity in its limitations, why wouldn't I want to visit and 'play'(driving,flying,skiing,collectables,etc) virtually at so many interesting real world locations or learn about the actual flora and fauna(like ABZU) or history? The Assasin's Creed and GTA series do this to a certain extent in highlighting various real-world locations, but think would be fun just to simulate, play and learn about the real world(s) with some gamification(VR or otherwise) to spur interest.