publishers is as lively as ever, albeit in a different form. The newest generation of gamers wants to act like a clientele. They want to be seduced by trailers and eventually wait for the game to arrive in stores. They want to scrutinize the details of the new Fable and see the demo of the next Elder Scrolls. It is all about the “buy” or “no buy” decision. And the recent Twitter exchange between No Man’s Sky and Xbox has perfectly illustrated the whole picture. So, let’s see what actually happened.
It all started when the No Man’s Sky account made an enigmatic post that implied there had been a discussion on the reboot of Fable but the company was unaware about it. According to the rumor, the developers of the game had to chat about it more. To some, this post seemed like a straightforward signal that they wanted more communication with the users. Their words were interpreted as asking for people at the company to talk less and interact more. A screenshot was shared along with this post which showed a casual message sent to the Xbox social media account that read: “You guys should talk more”. This generated a lot of noise and bold replies from the gaming crowd. This scenario highlights the difficulty players still face due to the lack of transparency from the developers which is not only from the side of Xbox but the whole industry as well. Gamers are still asking for more information about the titles that take a long time to be released.
What is the case then? Almost out of nowhere the social media account of the video game company Hello Games/No Man’s Sky which is mainly under the guidance of Sean Murray, the guy who has already been dubbed as controlling it, just spills this amazing news. It must be a picture, right? One showing the Xbox count with a tiny tick next to the name Fable, and the only thing that can be said is: “You should folks talking more.” No further explanation, no hashtags, just pure and raw attitude. And the internet, as usual, went absolutely bonkers and lost its virtual mind.
To begin with, the irony is so thick that one could almost cut it with a multi-tool. THIS IS SEAN MURRAY. The man whose long silence after the supposedly rocky launch of No Man’s Sky made him synonymous with the term “radio silence”. So the gaming community was right in reading the start from his tirade demanding for more communication from another studio to come. A deluge of replies flooded in responding with stuff like “You should lie less #neverforget” from Deon Cupcake accompanied with a meme of a gloomy Keanu Reeves. Another user, NullWisp, did not mince words: “We all know how the new Fable is gonna fair. And it ain’t a Fairy Tale, it’s a Fable on how not to do game design.” Ouch. The heat of burnt fingers is real.
Nonetheless, there’s more to come. A large portion of the replies was not about Fable or Xbox at all. They were not at all. Rather, the topic was Hello Games’ other project, the fantasy game Light No Fire they announced a long time ago. It was like they were echoing in unison: “Sean where’s Light no Fire my man?” henrique_dutt wanted to know. “You should talk more about light no fire,” was the comment from JeffbeOJ. Lucas Bussinger simply stated: “Fair enough. Let’s talk about Light no Fire…” What a comical situation: the pot calls the kettle black and then the kettle claims it is not the only one that needs to be talked about.
The whole hullabaloo turned into a surreal meta-conversation about communication in game development. There were gamers such as MoonTiger who supported the silence and even responded to a “wen light no fire” question, “Arriving when it’s done, or would you prefer another No Man’s Sky 1.0 situation?” Touché. Others just saw it as an opportunity to plead for No Man’s Sky updates, asking for new base parts or swords for sentinel fights, etc. And then there were the wild takes, like AvielIgnis ranting about “LGBT ugly games” and “blue-haired, nose-ring queers,” which… yikes. Just an absolute mess of a thread, but a very fascinating one nonetheless.
So what is the truth in this matter? Is this a light-hearted joke between the developers? A cleverly calculated bit of trolling? Or maybe, just maybe, a sign that Sean Murray and Hello Games feel that they have gained enough goodwill to joke about the issue that they were once crucified for. They have spent years transforming No Man’s Sky into a beloved game, so this might be a peculiar flex. Like, “we learned our lesson the hard way, perhaps you should too.”
