Former game designer creates some online drama over Starfield’s start screen

Robert Collins

Starfield Screen Shot 7 Custom

There was some minor drama over the weekend between a couple high-ranking members of the gaming community. The source of the disagreement: Starfield’s main menu screen.

On Saturday the Twitter account @Grummz posted his thoughts on Starfield’s start menu (note: review and early access codes have been sent out to some). In the post Grummz remarked,

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.

Along with a capture of the start screen the post continues,

Starfield’s start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care.

As one might imagine, the post was met with a lively reception from Starfield fans and those in the gaming industry alike. Of the latter, head of Bethesda publishing Pete Hines had a response,

Starfield Screenshot 6 Custom

Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on. 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”.”

“Grummz” is the Twitter handle of former Blizzard dev Mak Kern. Kern is perhaps best known as a cofounder of Red 5 Studios, of sci-fi MMO shooter Firefall fame.