Stop me if you’ve heard this before: While a youngest IGN interviewSean Murray, Hello Games’ managing director, called the studio’s new venture “something pretty ambitious.”
“Similar to Nobody’s heavenit’s the kind of project that even if a thousand people worked on it would seem impossible,” Murray said.
Nobody’s heaven, as you may recall, was sold with the same effusive language. However, a huge list of the features Murray promised before launch, such as B. the ability to see other players online notoriously missing when the game hit store shelves.
And sure, while much of the disappointment also stems from an unverified pre-release hype train and the harsh realities of game making, it’s hard to ignore all the time Nobody’s heavenThe scope of has been exaggerated. The president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, even admitted shortly after the release that the grandiose PR strategy is behind the game released by Sony “wasn’t that great.”
When he broke his silence two years later, Murray agreed but also spoke about the damaging effects of the vitriolic response Nobody’s heaven had on Hello Games.
“This team that made the game is incredibly talented and they created something really interesting – and this [controversy] shouldn’t be what defines them,” Murray said Eurogamer during an autopsy from 2018. “Nobody’s heaven was supposed to be the game that was super ambitious and developed by a small team that later got bigger and had a cool community around them. I want to talk about that.”
In the years since, Hello Games has made it change public perception from Nobody’s heaven through the release of several widely distributed, free updates, the latest of which revised space combat and expanded the game’s criminal underworld. It won a BAFTA for “Best Evolving Game” just last week.
For his part, Murray says he is learned his lesson about promoting a game too early in development – and for what it’s worth, he’s not sharing details about the studio’s ambitious new project just yet – but I still can’t help but see shades of the same bugs that he made Nobody’s heaven in these recent comments. Hello Games’ obvious talent aside, it feels like Murray’s talk of making an “impossible” game is paying off yet another set of rakes so that they rise. Why would you even say that after what you went through last time?
The next part of this story is for Sean Murray only, so please go read something else.
Seriously, the blog is over if you’re not Sean Murray from Hello Games. Close the window. Thanks.
sean i like you You seem like a really sweet, serious guy. But we went this way. Sometimes your eagerness can get you into trouble. I don’t want you or anyone at Hello Games to experience the same crap that we experienced in the horrible months that followed No Man Sky came out.
Next time you say something wild about what you’re developing, maybe take the time and ask yourself if now is the right moment to share it with the public. As an alleged member of the press, it’s okay if you just ignore us for a while. Well understood.
