Let’s have a little more tact.
- There’s nothing wrong with expressing wishes and desires
- Those complaining obviously still love the game, and aren’t hating on it as a whole
- We can communicate more graciously.
HG definitely reads this sub. We know that. NMS came out 6.5 years ago. We paid $60 brand new. I bet a lot of people got it on sale, but let’s just say we paid full price. How many other games, ever, release major content updates for free, no subscriptions, no egregious micro-transactions, and as regularly (despite never committing to a schedule (also note how they’re never late to this non schedule))? Pretty much 0. None that I can think of.
Quick analogy of how I view our current situation:
Let’s say I give a customer a quote on building them a house. It’ll be $600,000 and have all these cool features. When I finish building it’s very obvious it went poorly. There was even a flood halfway through and the foundation had to be re poured. The customer is unhappy, but in good faith I show up a few months later and say “I’m going to redo some rooms and add a couple of things. No charge.”
A few months later I come back again, “New appliances, new windows and a garage! No charge”
And again…. and again…
A few years go by, and now I’ve far exceed the time and effort originally billed. The $600,000 budget for the home build has been more than spent. Yes, a lot of that was scrapped, but even the finished product is now worth more than $600,000.
A few months later, though, “I created a virtual reality experience of your home so you can enjoy it however you want. No charge”.
And a few months later, I come back again “I made some additions to your neighbors house, same as here. No charge”
Fast forward to this last year…. I come back a couple times and say “Some of the stuff I added isn’t quite up to my expectations. I know you’ve gotten used to me adding new cool gadgets when I show up, but before I add more I need to add some supports to the floor, add a wheelchair ramp out front, fresh coat of paint on some of those rooms I worked in a lot as I might have dinged up the walls a little in the overhaul process. No charge”.
Now I want you to put yourself in the homeowner’s shoes and imagine yourself saying “You should have brought me that entertainment system! The 8k projector with 15.1 surround sound and haptic butt-cheek feedback to embed in all my couch cushions!”
It’s kinda crazy… Let’s be honest. We’ve paid for the product, we have more than what we paid for, there is no agreement or statement of intent other than “I’ll be back with more”. At this point we have no right to have **expectations**. (elephant in the room here is there are still some things not in today’s product that were originally promised. I think that ship has sailed, and we’ve received a lot more of something different. The game took a different path, so let’s just leave it at that)
But don’t confuse that with **desires** or **wishes**.
We could say “Next time he comes back to add to the house it would be cool if we got that new entertainment system!”
We shouldn’t say “Next time he comes back to add to the house he should bring that new entertainment system!”
TL;DR
This post may seem superfluous but I think we forget to have perspective on things. Simple phrasing can change a person’s entire mood for a day, or a week. Imagine HG coming to read this sub and all they see are “WTF, why aren’t we getting ACTUAL content?” after they’ve worked so hard? That doesn’t make them feel good or motivated to continue when they could justifiably say “This is the last update. Later doods”. What would make them feel good is us being thankful while also daydreaming about future content. Seeing your playerbase riff off your game with new ideas is very motivating for creators. 🙂
So let’s continue to share what we hope to see, but let’s do it with tact and be gracious for what we’re continuing to get for free.
