Mark Kern, former team lead for World of Warcraft, has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to complain about Starfield’s start screen, suggesting that its simplistic nature hints at a “rushed” game. Pete Hines, Bethesda’s head of publishing, has defended his company’s work, explaining that’s what the start menu has looked like for years, while InXile Entertainment has poked fun at the situation in a now-deleted tweet, sarcastically saying that “We are moving all dev resources off the game and onto the start screen. The campaign will be 45 minutes long but the start screen will be 20+ hours.”
The physiognomy of start screens.
— Grummz (@Grummz) August 19, 2023
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.
Starfield's start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn't care. pic.twitter.com/Ok4gzQ3DVo
Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on.
— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) August 20, 2023
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”