‘No Man’s Sky’ – The AA Postmortem | Analog Addiction

Analog Addiction. "No Man’s Sky’s has been met with quite divisive opinions, both critically and publicly. But what does Analog Addiction’s finest think of the final product?"

[rainslacker]

Note to analog addiction. Post Mortems are done by the developer or publisher. What you think about it is just an opinion piece on the final product or it's prior/subsequent marketing, which offers up no real insight into the development of the game which can be used to create better games in the future, or ways to explore what went wrong or right within a production. A post mortem is meant to analyze what went wrong or right internally, and analyze how different factors played a part in the failure or success for the game. Since you, as an outsider, can not possibly know all the mitigating circumstances involving the games production, it is impossible for you to write an informative and useful post mortem.

Most importantly, a post mortem is used for the creators to take the time to think about what they feel went wrong or right. Not be told by others what they did wrong or right. In the case of NMS, the PM should be from the frame of view of how the production, marketing, and final product, eventually ended up getting to the point of such hostility within the community, and what to do in the future to try and avoid such things. Being told that doesn't allow the developer to really take accountability for their own actions, and I feel you stating you are writing a useful post mortem is rather insulting and belittling to the developers abilities to perform a standard practice within game development to help themselves grow.

All you're doing is offering an extended critique on the final product. Nothing more nothing less.

[Jamiex66]

I do apologise for infuriating you with the title of the article. Other sites as well as ours have use the term for similar pieces, but I've certainly taken your critiques on board and I'll ensure we use a different name going forward. As I said, I do apologise and we never intended to piss anyone off with our terminology.

[rainslacker]

I wasn't pissed off about it.

What you're doing is an analysis of what went wrong, and what went right, to come to a conclusion on how things could be made better going forward.

It's similar to a post mortem, but can't be done with the same kind of insight that the term implies for the context of it's purpose, because it is done by an outside observer, and not introspective within the development house itself.

If my tone came across as pissed off, or hostile, then that wasn't really my intent, but this was one of my last comments of the night, and often by that time, I can get frustrated on the site, and tend to be much harsher on everything, even if it's not really warranted.

Good developers who want to improve could read articles like yours and take into consideration what you said to form their own post mortem, or just use it in some way to become better....but those type of developers tend to look at critique in general. Article itself wasn't bad overall.

[Jamiex66]

All good mate, I've altered the name to The AA Analysis. Happy you at least found the article to he a good read.

Thanks for the advice :)