It seems to me that the developers totally embraced the unrealistic-super-hype, and have successfully become millionaires by deceiving their audience. They don't even have to worry about their reputation, since they are now wealthy. If they had wanted to make a great game without being deceptive, I think they would have handled things differently, and kept people's expectations lower.

It was a game with potential, but there never seems to be enough of it and it gets old pretty quickly.

I will not touch it with 10 foot pole.

One reason: they used a scripted video for the steam page. And from what I heard, most of what happened in the video does not happen in the game.

I like it for what it is. After having to solve everybody's problems at work all day it is nice to uncompress with a Colorado cigarette and just wander around for an hour or so just to see what I can see as I try and get to the center of the galaxy. Game has been getting some pretty decent mods to overcome some of the blandness.

I don't understand all of this hype, videos, streams and MANY reviwes in steam for this game when a lot of indie games coming out every day. Just think. There are many good indie games and only this game has fired. Why??

I don't understand all of this hype, videos, streams and MANY reviwes in steam for this game when a lot of indie games coming out every day. Just think. There are many good indie games and only this game has fired. Why??

Some of the video posted in this thread shows what game magazine / portal said about this game. I guess that is one of the issue. When someone said this game wins E3 FOREVER that is ... interesting ...

I don't understand all of this hype, videos, streams and MANY reviwes in steam for this game when a lot of indie games coming out every day. Just think. There are many good indie games and only this game has fired. Why??

I guess they were at the right time at the right place with the right keyword and a nicely done scripted trailer and managed to make the crowd belief they could really pull off the impossible.

They managed to show off some impressive procedural generation on a scale unknown till then when procedural generation was starting to seep into the language of the game development illiterate - check.

They managed to achieve the exactly right balance of an artistic art style without straying to far from realistic so the graphics would appeal to most people without costing an arm and a leg - check.

They managed to give people the "AAA Indie" Vibe at a time when the "Small Indie" is loosing its shine due to overuse of the term and the crushing amount of mediocre Indies swamping the store with shovelware, and AAA shops seeming to struggle to keep up with ever rising quality bars and scope, while getting shorter and shorter dev cycles to pull it off and more and more corporate BS seeping into the game dev world - check.

They managed to convince people to believe in them enough to trust their words that what was in the trailer would make it to the final game even though most people have never heard before from Hello games - check.

They played well by the big boys rules... for example, winning a crapton of the bazillion seemingly worthless awards handed out at E3 that still seem to catch some peoples attention (when they should know that is actually the whole point of a trade show handing out awards like candies TO UNFINISHED GAMES!!!) with scripted trailers and very good hype speeches - check.

They managed to also catch Sonys attention - check.

They just spent 80% of budjet for promotion and 20% for developing

Real indie spend 99% of budjet for develop...

They just spent 80% of budjet for promotion and 20% for developing
Real indie spend 99% of budjet for develop...

Sony stepped in and did marketing for them...

They just spent 80% of budjet for promotion and 20% for developing

Real indie spend 99% of budjet for develop...

While I agree that their marketing stunts were quite shady at times, and I am not sure if Sean did a great job hyping the game or a poor job managing expectations (most probably both), that is simply not true.

Their marketing efforts were actually quite slim by AAA standarts. They just happened to achieve what every Indie dreams off, going viral.

Most probably they spent a way higher percentage of the total budget on development than the average AAA shop does nowadays. Its just that obviously, that budget was way to small for the scope they made people belive their game would have.