Starfield: understand the controversy surrounding the game’s home screen

Starfield been making waves since it was announced. O “Skyrim in space” by Bethesda is one of the most anticipated titles of the year, being the subject of constant discussions on the internet. the buzz revolves around something almost trivial: the game’s start screen.

The kickoff of the controversy was a publication by Mark Kern, a former director of World of Warcraftwho took to X (formerly Twitter) to share a screenshot of home screen Starfield last Saturday (19). In the text accompanying the image, Kern suggested that the “simplicity” of the screen was a sign that the production team did not have time to focus on this aspect do game.

“A game’s splash screen can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they take in their work.“, Kern wrote on the social network. For him, the simple screen is a sign that the game delivery deadline was tight or the developers simply “didn’t care”.

Start screen are often done at the very end of development.

Teams are too busy making the core game.

It’s quite common for the start screen to completely change once the game is shipping or on patch 0.

Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo…

— Grummz (@Grummz) August 19, 2023

In a second publication, the former director of WoW went into more detail on the topic. He explained that often the splash screen is one of the last things created by the devs, who are mostly busy with the production of the game itself. He also argued that it is common for the splash screen to change completely once the game receives its first patchsince “teams that are proud of what they do” want to make the product look nice and “often redo [a tela de início]”.

Kern’s comments arrived at Pete Hines, Head of Publishing at Bethesdawho not only explained the choice for a simpler screen but also took the opportunity to take a jab at the former director of World of Warcraft. Also in X, after a fan sarcastically suggested to a Bethesda executive to focus on the launch screenand not on “various systems, factions, choices and ways to play” so as not to seem rushed or not to care, Hines was categorical.

Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on.

Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s “care” because you would have done it different is highly unprofessional coming from another “dev”

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 20, 2023

Responding to the fan, Hines said that, just imagine, who knows”[os desenvolvedores] did what they wanted and this has been on our menu for years and was one of the first decisions made” by the group. The head of Bethesda completed saying that “having an opinion is one thing. Questioning how much a developer ‘cares’ because you would have done something differently is extremely unprofessional coming from another ‘developer’“. Yes, he used quotes when calling Kern a dev, giving that sting without losing class.

Even the humorous profile of the production company inXile (from Clockwork Revolution e Wateland 3) on the social network joined the discussion. In a now-deleted publication (but which reverberated on Reddit, where a user appears to have copied the text before its removal), the company made fun of the situation. “We’re moving all of our game development resources to the launchpad. The campaign will only be 45 minutes long, but the launch screen will be over 20 hours“, joked inXile.

Starfield It is scheduled to be released on September 6th. for PC and Xbox Series X|S. The game can already be pre-downloaded on Xbox and will be pre-loaded on Steam on August 30th of this year.

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