I'll give an example - thee biggest example of gaming related misleading and conjecture in my view was Sean Murray's original hype and mis-representation of No mans Sky.
In my view, NMS has nothing on SC.
What did HelloGames do?
Deliver a product, a month or so late, that lacked 4 things promised by the PR run:
- The ability to see (but not interact with) other players (with the odds of that happening being incredibly rare)
- Sandworms. (Because of course
)
- Elegant, diplodocus-style, dinosaurs
- Tall trees in forest formations
But ultimately they delivered the core game that they advertised, minus those things.
What have CIG done to date?
Missed certain delivery dates
by over half a decade. (That doesn't strike you as slightly worse on the misleading front, just off the bat?)
Looking at the feature list of missing aspects at this point, the potential for incredibly late delivery (and that's being as kind as I can be
), is absurd. And this is often for specifically monetised macro-sales (running up to $3k), not just generic PR spiel for a base game purchase.
Just off the top of my head, they don't yet have:
- A landable version of planet Earth.
- The other missing 99 solar systems (and the exploration gameplay to go with the exploration ships).
- Command and Control oversight of fleets.
- Capital ships with complex multicrew roles & NPC-stuffed interiors.
- Alien races.
- Alien fauna.
- A 'Nemesis system' that's better than the original SoM 'Nemesis system'.
- 100s of players playing in the same 10k player shard. (2016 additional pledge)
- A dynamic 'quanta' economy.
- Dynamic missions.
- 'Subsumption' NPCs following daily life patterns capable of complex player interactions.
- A giant ship that can build bases.
- A giant ship that can overclock your components with its particle accelerator, grow food for farming gameplay, and explore multiple systems with its cunning telescope array.
- Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
The list is sooooooo long it's absurd.
Regardless of what happens next, CIG have already under-delivered in a way that HG could only dream of
ECity can you in fact log in and play A game? Complete, released or not.
Semantics. What was pledged was a game delivery. Just because you can enjoy aspects of an alpha, despite fundamental gameplay aspects failing (like the ability to save your location on log off, walk up some stairs without dying, network with friends and enemies, or remain the same gender for an entire play session...) doesn't mean it's a delivered game.
Nor does it make pledged features like the above disappear...
