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”
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →That's such utter trash. Tell me again HOW great WOW's start screen is.
Heh, I hadn't thought about Kern/Grummz in awhile. Either way, it isn't a big deal, a basic start screen. It quite possibly goes with the game theme, space, 2001 space odyssey. Who knows. I can't think of the last time I played a game that had a bad or lazy start screen that telegraphed a bad game.
Wow's start screens were ok, meant something for the first few expansions but I can't remember any of them after maybe the first or second ones despite playing for years and years.
Now, forced game launchers inside of game stores/launchers is quite often very annoying. That and forced logo screens are the worst.
I'm sure Starfield will survive a mediocre start screen... I still think WoW was the absolute worst thing to happen to modern gaming so Mark Kern can shove his worthless opinion straight up is arse. While I'm at it good ol' Petey can shut his crap talking pie hole as well. He's just as much of an arsehole as Kern. :D
WoW has a lot of problems but their startup screen is always amazing