Why people are talking about Starfield's start screen: Gaming's latest Twitter dust-up, explained
It's fair to say that Starfield is Bethesda's most important game release in years, probably the biggest thing it's done since rejuvenating the Fallout series back in 2008. And Bethesda head of publishing Pete Hines recently made it clear that the studio is taking the job of bringing that game to life seriously—and that he'll brook no suggestion that the studio is half-assing any part of it.
Over the weekend, former game developer Mark Kern, whose past credits include StarCraft, World of Warcraft, and Firefall, shared his thoughts on «the physiognomy of start screens.»
«The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the team was and how much pride they took in their work,» Kern tweeted. «Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care.
»Start screens 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 these just prior to game going live." The comment drew a reported 9.1M impressions on Twitter, including from quote tweets expressing disagreement.
The response from Hines was short and sharp. "[The development team] designed what they wanted and that's been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on," he tweeted. «Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer's 'care' because you would have done it differently is highly unprofessional coming from another 'dev'.»
Hines' reaction isn't just notable for its forceful defense of the Starfield team, which is to be expected, but also for its
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