Bethesda Executive has refuted the suggestion that Starfield’s simple title screen shows the team “didn’t care”.
Starfield Leaked Title Screen Criticized by Former WoW Director
Recently, former World of Warcraft Director Mark Kern posted a screenshot on his Twitter account. He claimed that it was the Starfield title screen and suggested that not enough time had been spent on it.
“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 wrote. “Starfield’s start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care.”
He continued: “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.”
Pete Hines Responds
This post by Kern then attracted criticism from many players and game community members including from Bethesda’s Head of Publishing Pete Hines. He refuted Kern’s suggestion that the title screen meant that the developers did not care or they rushed the game to complete it.
“Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on,” Hines replied. “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’.”
There was also a post by Microsoft Studio InXile that got deleted just recently that made a sarcastic reference to the debate. It joked that all resources of the game were moved off the main game to focus on the start screen instead.
“The campaign will be 45 minutes long but the start screen will be 20+ hours,” the deleted post said.
Starfield launches on Xbox Series X/S and PC on September 6, 2023.