[dcolgan]

As a former amateur Twitch.tv streamer, I've always been fascinated by the rise and fall of internet personalities, and some of the biggest personalities seem to be game developers that found themselves in the spotlight.

Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w It seems to me that the combo of high pressure and a guy with a combative personality combined with internet anonymity to create a really messy situation that drove him out of the business.

I've also followed Narscissa (formerly Cosmo) Wright's fallout in the speedrun community after coming out as transgender. Once one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, I'd imagine transitioning is hard enough, but transitioning in front of a studio audience of anonymous gamers would be next level.

And so the same seems to be with Sean Murray and No Man's Sky. Inexperience plus overpromising and really high expectations created the current situation.

I don't think any of these people are malicious and I don't really know how I would have advised them to do things differently. Edmund McMillen, the creator of Super Meat Boy and other indie games once said in a podcast interview that he hates showing people what he's making before it is done for this very reason.

Edit: I know the circumstances of these people are not identical, I'm just calling for more understanding and empathy instead of assuming the worst in everyone.

[LeoNatan25]

Wait, let’s not conflate the cases you describe, where the trolling may have been and probably was malicious, with the case of No Man’s Land, where lead director flat out lied about the content of the game, and people who couldn’t control their hype fell for it and late raged. In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.

[slg]

>In the latter case, any professional shaming—which is the only shaming of Murray I’ve seen—is justified.

Why? The guy obviously wasn't trying to make a bad game. He was just inexperienced, got in over his head, and failed to deliver the product he wanted to build on the timeline he promised. I would have assumed if any community understands that failure isn't an unusual result in the face of ambitious goals it would be the HN crowd. Meanwhile since the game's release he has continued to work on that product to get it closer to everyone's initial expectations. I understand being disappointed by the whole thing, but the vitriol directed his way was somewhat disturbing.

[LeoNatan25]

Please. He was lying up until the last weeks to release, where no practical development on the game was taking place. I’d see your point if promises were made years before release and the company was unable to deliver. But there was clear malice here.

[slg]

Like the original article suggests, if he was truly malicious in intent then why would he continue to work on this game after release? Hanlon's razor suggests he just failed on the biggest stage he was ever on and he didn't know how to handle that.

To quote the article:

>When people ask you, “Will we be able to do X?” it’s easy to say “yes” because you already wanted to have X and you’ve already thought about how you’d go about making it happen. People love you, your work is valuable, and you don’t want to say no. People smile with delight when you say “yes” and when you say “no” they look disappointed and ask annoying technical questions that would – if you took the time to answer them accurately – being incredibly boring and hard to follow. In the short term, saying “yes” is always the path of least resistance.

>I know exactly how that feels and I know I’ve trapped myself in situations where I needed to crunch in order to meet my promises. Not because I wanted to work overtime, but because saying yes just feels so much better than saying no. I’m really thankful I made those mistakes in private meetings as part of a small company on not in front of international media. If Stephen Colbert had me on his show in March of 2016 and asked with delight if Good Robot was going to have different character classes, it would have been very tempting to say yes. After all, it was something I’d wanted to put in the game and maybe I’d be able to find time to squeeze it in before release. And if that interview happened to me when I was a young man and more easily dazzled by the limelight? Shit. I’m sure I’d make the exact same mistake.

I really can't imagine a developer who has lead a project of any size not relating to that on some level.

[sushid]

Why wouldn't he work on the game? It's not like after ONE over-promise he's never going to ever in the game dev business. His life a repeated game theory interaction.

Whether he intended to deceive or not, it makes sense to do some damage control for the future.

[ghurtado]

> But there was clear malice here.

Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[LeoNatan25]

I don't believe this was the case here. Maybe the stupidity was underestimating the reaction of people who would be disappointed, but that's different.

[hawkice]

Professionalism entails keeping promises. If he didn't do that, people saying he isn't good at his job isn't totally absurd.

[spike021]

To be fair, did he have a previous track record? I honestly don't know, but if he didn't have prior experience working on projects at this level then it's not hard to give him some benefit of the doubt.

Maybe he should've been more open and honest about the development process, but otherwise I just don't know how much blame he deserves. Professionalism is much easier when you have the perspective, time, and experience.

[sixothree]

There should have been huge amounts of skepticism related to his claims. Every report I remember seeing reflected a great deal of skepticism.

I'm sorry, but if anyone fell for this, they need to take a look at their relationship with media.

I should also add that the reviews for games come out rather quickly. If you're not buying within the first day or two, the amount of detail available is quite high.

[wox]

No Man's Land? I'd assume that's a typo, but you speak of it as a separate case.

[tcdent]

Gaming personalities are particularly susceptible because of their audience: gamers.

It's one of the most politically polarizing cultures, where witch hunts and public opinion spread extremely quickly, and since nobody really has anything tangible to lose– except participation, are quick to choose sides. This is not a community where 50/50 splits of opinion happen often; unless you want to be a challenger, joining the majority and me-too-ing is a lot more rewarding.

Spend any amount of time on Twitch and it's obvious this community has serious problems with presenting maturity, too. Racism, sexism and homophobia are rampant for the same reasons.

Don't get too caught up in taking it personally; there's really no substance there. Thoughts are perpetuated through chat, YouTube and memes, and disappear as soon as everyone gets bored enough to invest in the next loudest thing.

[exodust]

Speaking of coming out as transgender, lead programmer on No Mans Sky, Innes Mckendrick has been there done that. He's done some great talks about programming in the game including a GDC talk that's on youtube, and earlier a talk on procedural world tech.

This is what most impresses me about No Mans Sky, the engine. I've only played it a bit on friend's playstation. They're onto something really cool with the new way of generating noise and using voxels to create detailed realistic landscapes.

Sean Murray did a talk on the noise generation, but it was a strange talk I must say. He spends too long on how many people played No Mans Sky, and how it 'really was actually' successful. He shouldn't worry so much and just get on with making games with this awesome engine. The story-telling and game elements will sort itself out in this game or the next.

Game devs can be amusingly self-conscious and troubled... just today I watched a talk by Davey Wreden the writer of The Stanley Parable. Wow, talk about 'in therapy'. Honest guy, nice guy, insists his life is okay now and he's no longer deeply depressed and addicted to self-validation. Brave talk... but dude it's a gaming conference, not a mental health conference!

[forgottenpass]

Someone made this very in-depth video about the fall from grace of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w

This video bugs me. I don't disagree with it. In fact, the first time I watched it, I found it quite similar to my own take on Fish. Maybe just a few degrees off of how I feel.

Watching it for the first time in ~three years made me realize why it bugged me. The differences between the video and my opinions are the set of changes I'd make if I wanted to publish the strong argument for my perspective on the topic and be taken seriously. Fish is an interesting case study of internet-rando-turned-celebrity that doesn't adapt well to the fact people now care what he's saying.

The rough edges sanded and convenient omissions made by this video are the exact same tweaks I'd make to my perspective to hold onto my own credibility in the games echo chamber.

[JKCalhoun]

> Inexperience plus overpromising and really high expectations created the current situation.

And yet I'm surprised how, again and again, gamers fall for it. You should always reserve your top-shelf skepticism for not-yet-shipped-games.

[anon_dev_123456]

Cosmo was shunned because he went looney tunes in a very short timespan.

For those who don't really watch speedruns, what happened to him was really fucked up.

- Lost in very important tournament.

- Got depressed because of it.

- Girlfriend left him.

- More depressed.

- Suddenly, "I'm actually a girl".

I feel really really sorry for Cosmo, so much went wrong in his life in a very short timespan and he snapped.

[sctb]

This account has been violating the guidelines a lot in its short life. Please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[anon_dev_123456]

Can you give me examples where I'm breaking the guidelines? I've been extra careful to leave comments that contribute to the discussion and share a unique point of view.

[dcolgan]

While that is a possible sequence of events, it may have been a different cause/effect relationship. From what I saw losing the Nintendo World Championship wasn't something she was unhappy about and was glad to just be a part of it. Maybe girlfriend left because she couldn't handle the flack they were both receiving. Maybe transitioning is something Narcissa has been trying to suppress for a long time and finally couldn't anymore, and everything together happened.

I guess my point is, you really don't know all of that and you seem to be painting her in the worst possible light, which sort of is what I was talking about in my above comment. I can't say any of us would have been able to handle the same situation any better, same with No Man's Sky.

[yttrium]

It's not "He's actually a girl." She's a woman. Use the right pronouns.