IT’S A WILD WORLD This wasn’t the only problem the Outer Wilds had, however. The game fell foul of a truly unfortunate coincidence – releasing around the same time as another space-faring title, Obsidian’s painfully similarly named, The Outer Worlds. “It was pretty upsetting.” notes Ver Hoef. “I remember it was the VGAs, we had a trailer announcing that we were coming to Xbox. And then there was another trailer announcing the The Outer Worlds. And I was just despondent for a few days. “But in the end, it’s only been good for us. Because they’re so much larger, it means people will see an article about Outer Wilds and be like, ‘oh, that’s the new Obsidian game’ and click on it. And we get people learning about our game that wouldn’t have learned about it otherwise. So at the end of the day, it was probably a-ok.” And of course the game’s big impact salves any such wounds. As we’ve said, it has seen such an incredible level of success that I’ve run out of space puns. It might have been a long road to get here, but the team is delighted with where they’ve ended up. “I mean, literally the day before release, I was just thinking ‘oh, god, I hope people don’t hate it’” says Ver Hoef. “Because our opinion was always that this is going to be a very niche thing. Just because the game is self-directing [with no waypoints or missions], there’s gonna be a solid player group for whom this is exactly
what they wanted – but we didn’t think it would have tremendously broad appeal. When the review embargo lifted, we started getting reviews – and people don’t hate our game! and that was just…” “You expected people to hate it?!” interrupts Beachum. “Well, yeah…” replies Ver Hoef. “I’m a pessimist. But from there, it’s just been so entirely out of scale with my expectations. I mean, we’re up for a number of BAFTAs! Yeah okay, sure! It’s bewildering and I don’t know if I’ll ever work on a project like this again. “As someone who’s made something, you only look at it and see the problems and things you want to fix. But I think what’s really thrilling is seeing our communities playing through it, and how much they love to make things based on it, and how much care they put into not spoiling it for anybody. Everyone in that community is just like, ‘okay, we’re gonna ask you a lot of questions to understand exactly what tidbit of information to give you, in order to give you the exact experience that we had.’” “Our player base is super lovely” agrees Beachum. “It’s incredible. It’s like, ‘oh, my god, everyone’s being so nice – and it’s the internet!’ It’s really cool anytime you hear a story, where it’s like, ‘oh, my kid played this, and now they want to be an astronaut.’ It’s just like, I don’t know how you respond to that! It’s really, really, really cool.” “It’s somehow made those nine months that stretched into four years feel like it was worth it for me” says Ver Hoef. “Which I think for any project, that’s a reasonable amount to ask.”
Above: The game as it appeared after the Fig campaign
Above: Logan Ver Hoef, Mobius Digital
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