No Man’s Skydive
What can be said about this example of business fireworks except it is just about time to get the marshmallows out because if this will be good for anything it will be to make a good s’more. Hype was the first poison in this little cocktail, and what a dose it was.
This game if it had come through on more of what they were aiming for would most likely one of the top ten selling PC games this year. Standing right now people who bought it are mad enough to just wipe the entire experience from their mind except a warning to be more careful next time. It had gone through a process of building itself up over multiple times before it was launched that took people a couple weeks to actually figure out what they got. Next ingredient in for this little cocktail was the action of the company behind it.
Hello Games should not have been going for so much. This was a project clearly outside of their normal set of games which was the entirety of the Joe Danger series, and they promised everything in this new project. Putting it simply they wanted their game to sell. If their game sells then obviously it is a sign of success, but you do not say things are in it that are then not in it at launch. Being looked at for misleading advertising by the Advertising Standards Authority does not help matters.
Some of the die hard super fans before this game came out added their own brand of vermouth and suffering. When you have death threats, poor attitude, rampant stupidity, coming from a fan base before something released then you either are going to get a lot more people in that group, or you are about to have a lot less fans. After the things some of these super fans did it reflected poorly on the project to some degree and to all gamers to another. That let down intensified any misgivings the game would have making it even harder for them to bear.
Taking all these things we already can see a situation that will have a polarizing result. It will fly or it will dive and the price point of the game just made sure of it. Value is something that more people are looking at and to have something like this going for retail at sixty dollars only ramped up the possibility. Sony backed that price point despite not a lot of evidence saying this would be a success to the degree it was pushed. They helped make this toxic cocktail turning one of the biggest deliveries of gaming this year in to one of the biggest disappointments and personally they should take a drink of that as well to sober them up.
BigTAnderson in Portland 