These aren't your dad's puns!
TURBO-PUNS!
To be honest, I do not see how with terms like Quasimetallic Techno-Dwarves that it is not obvious what their goal was here. That name is no where close to trying to trying to be serious hard sci-fi, which sounds like it is what a lot of people were kind of expecting. These names are too over the top to be taken too seriously.
I thought the intentional over the top trekkie techno-babble mixed with a basic core of D&D fantasy was kind of hillarious in its own way. You know in the movie Fanboys (if you don't, stop what you are doing and find it because you have not lived) how the trekkies and the Star Wars fans hate eachother and just do not mix? I kind of view fantasy and sci-fi people having that same sort of rift (Its mostly the Trekkies 
).
You have to admit, Quasimetallic Techno-Dwarves sounds like something a 12-year-old would come up with, and if you didn't know it was done on purpose by adults who knew what they were doing, you'd just think it was ridiculous. I don't think they needed to be too pedantic about it, but I think being a little more obvious about what they were up to would have helped.
For example, there's still no mention of space-fantasy in the official description of the game on Kickstarter:
Galactic Strike Force: the tactical, cooperative, space battle, deck building game from the creators of Sentinels of the Multiverse!
That makes it sound like a pretty straightforward game, no? Perhaps inserting "space-fantasy" (maybe even a "zany") into that list of descriptors would at least let people know what they should expect when they scroll farther down the page.
If I'd bought a copy of a certain "cooperative comic book card game" then later found out that it was manga-themed, I'd have had the same kind of whiplash because the game's description did not set up my expectations properly, even if the manga-themed card game was still good.
To tell the truth, the excessive techno-babble is beginning to grate on my nerves. I was expecting a space game but got a space-fantasy game, which I've come to terms with. Now I've learned it's a crazy Trekkie techno-babble space-fantasy world (zany! fun, right?), and it's a little rough having to dig through three or four nonsense adjectives to get to the noun each time. Luckily, most of that stuff should be relatively ignorable when I'm actually playing the game (which is actually kind of a shame in and of itself).
Just sounds like a case of "to each their own". As I alluded to before, it does not surprise me in the least that the people who wanted straight space sci-fi are a little unhappy about the fantasy element thrown in.
I also do not believe "zany" would be a word >G would use to describe GSF. It might be tounge-in-cheek but it is not Munchin level satire either ya know? I think the universe they are building will be as engaging as the SotM one, and while it does not seem like it wants to take itself too seriously, it does not look like a full on looney toons caricature of the genre either.
I understand and agree with that. I can deal with my own adjective-fatigue. I'd still like it to be marketed better. I'll give an example:
Smallworld. It has a definite feeling the game wants you go to get. How does it reinforce that feeling with players?
- Art/Component design? Check. The art is goofy. The dwarves are drunk.
- Gameplay? Check. The abilities of the different races are dripping with personality.
- Text? Check. The rulebook and box makes it very clear the feeling the game wants to convey.
- The game's description on BGG:
In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all.
Designed by Philippe Keyaerts as a fantasy follow-up to his award-winning Vinci, Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs, and even humans, who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth.
Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires - often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory!
Says right there it's "inhabited by a zany cast of characters". Everything works together. Now, compare that to GSF:
- Art? Nothing particularly tongue-in-cheek here. It's all relatively straight-forward pictures of the characters, as far as I can see. Everything I've seen so far would not be out of place in a game of SotM, for instance.
- Ship design? The ships are quite attractive and not tongue-in-cheek at all. Maybe that one orc ship that's a conglomeration of other ships might be leaning towards tongue-in-cheek, but if so, it's minor.
- Gameplay? We haven't seen much of the gameplay (another problem...) but nothing in the gameplay seems to indicate the game is over-the-top. The rules seem pretty straight.
- Component design? The sample cards I've seen look pretty straight-forward. Nothing over-the-top here.
- Text? Whoa, here's where it careens into tongue-in-cheek. This is the only place that is broadcasting the over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek feeling the designers apparently want players to pick up.
- The game's description? No mention of over-the-topness.
My only point is that a bad job of broadcasting the designer's intentions is being done, and can be improved by taking simple steps. It's a point I've made before and should probably stop making. :)
Look at the art and flavour text on Inspiring Presence, and tell me that Sentinels of the Multiverse is not cheesy.
Tempest talking to a fish beats that I think 
If SotM is meant to be an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek superhero game, then it's marketed poorly as well. ;)
I do have to agree that the tongue-in-cheekness of the game is not always quite as obvious... The names of the races and the wordiness of the descriptions is really the only part where this is evident, and that may have been done on purpose so that those who prefer to see the game in a more serious light can ignore it if they choose to do so (as I am sure many will), but I think it does give the game a little bit of a confused feel, like it doesn't quite know where it wants to be.
Taking cheesy/tongue-in-cheek/campy things seriously is fun. See also: Rocky Horror, Army of Darkness.
It seems like the criticisms here are that >G actually sincerely enjoys this product and isn't ironically snickering at its execution. I don't think we need to infantilize GSF by throwing around words like "zany" or "wacky". What about the fantasy-race inspired characters gives people such mental whiplash? It's an aesthetic choice. They aren't hanging out in space taverns drinking space grok, kicking down hover doors and slicing up meteor Owlbears. This isn't Spelljammer. It also, however, isn't Warhammer 40k.
If you're the kind of person that demands your science fiction be completely divorced from fantasy, then this game will disappoint you. However, if you're fond of reinterpretations of old DnD tropes in a new setting ala Dark Sun or Forgotten Realms, then this game will disappoint you, as well.
I agree with Cosmonaut Zero. I also feel that although the names sound really campy, I don't think the entire game will have those technobabblesque nomenclature.
Also, I think the universe takes itself seriously, even if the names seem dumb at first. One of my favorite Sci-Fi Series, Farscape, is pretty campy and more fantasy-like than its contemporaries, but still managed to be interesting.
That's what I think. I don't think campy inhearintly means bad, but I do agree with Spiff that they could have handled the marketing better. But hindsight is 20/20, and I'm not a Boardgame company. Heck, when I first heard of SoTM, I thought it was a fantasy thing...
They aren't hanging out in space taverns drinking space grok, kicking down hover doors and slicing up meteor Owlbears.
Playtesters surely have access to more info than me, but I'm certainly not confident there won't be other spacey-flavored D&D stuff in the game. We didn't see the spaceorcs and spacedwarves coming, and the theme seems to be sliding around between kind-of-serious (ships, gameplay) and over-the-top (races, world background).
It seems like the criticisms here are that >G actually sincerely enjoys this product and isn't ironically snickering at its execution.
No, the criticisms here are (a) some people just have a problem with an over-the-top orcs-n-elves space game, but others (b) aren't really sure what the game is all about because the theme seems to be all over the place, and want the game's message to be crisper.
I suppose I don't quite understand how it is over-the-top.
See? It's not even clear to a playtester.
You just said it was over-the-top. I'm asking you about your argument. I don't understand your argument that it is over-the-top.
It's not my argument, it's >G's. This is a copy/paste from Paul (or Christopher?) on the Kickstarter:
The flavor and lore of this game is very intentionally tongue-in-cheek science-fantasy. It was a very deliberate design decision that we made for several reasons. First, nearly every popular science fiction setting is "science fantasy" to some degree, from Star Wars (which has space wizards), to Star Trek, Babylon Five, etc, where all of the races are human, or humans with a funny nose/spots/a hat/etc. We decided to be very obvious and over-the-top with the "science fantasy" theme, ergo neo-elves and techno-dwarves, etc. Second, we find that initially constraining a setting with something very familiar (e.g. generic fantasy races, or comic book heroes) actually allows us to develop richer back stories and lore that is wholly unique. Indeed, initially, many people dismissed Sentinels as just a "knock off" of popular DC and Marvel characters. However, as people played the game and absorbed the back story and lore of that universe, many came to love those characters and stories on their own merits. We truly hope and believe that the same thing will be true for this setting.
Ah. Now I understand. Kharachar's Claw is a ship made from a hollowed out space dragon's claw. The Ranak Warbeast is four ships grafted together to make one semi-functioning ship. The War Spectres pilot giant space whales and space jelly-fish.
The races seem to be mainly an aesthetic choice as far as "over-the-top" goes.
I haven't seen big complaints about the ship design (although there were squeals at the spacedragon and spacespider Opposition minis). I think the fact that the races are presented as nearly as-is fantasy tropes is causing friction, but possibly even more than that, the overly embellished descriptions of everything in the game, which sound like they were written by a middleschooler if you didn't know they were done like that on purpose, is turning some people off. It might not have been a big deal if those people had been hooked early and then asked to come along for the Techno-Neo-Meta ride. But problems from the start and the lack of compelling stretch goals means that perhaps people aren't so much in the mood for these kinds of shenanigans.
I'm not terribly impressed by the stretch goals. I've sincerely enjoyed the backstories and setting that they have presented to us for this game, but I definitely understand if people are frustrated by a lack of information. I just don't really understand the incredible discomfort people are experiencing over the races. If someone incorporates psionics into a game of DnD, I don't immediately assume that the game is going to be some great parody of science fiction tropes. If you don't like the Techno-Neo-Meta terminology, I understand, but the tone of the character and sector descriptions haven't really led us down a path of lampoonery, farce, or nonsense. The style seems to be one of sci-fi rather than sci-fantasy. There's no mention of mythril, the Elves don't power their ship through magic, but crystals (StarCraft comes to mind), and Meta-Humans are borged out with tech rather than scouring ancient tomes. The world doesn't really seem to operate off of fantasy tropes, and neither do the characters. There are similarities, to be sure, but none that really indicate this game isn't going to be about intergalactic rogues taking down big bads of the galaxy.
It would have been nice if the character/race background was a little more fleshed out to begin with, but it isn't like they've been hiding this from the Kickstarter. It involved scrolling down the page past a few paragraphs. It has reached its goal, and close to 800 people seem to be interested, so this project may just not be for you.
Compare this game to the Rook City Kickstarter for Sentinels. This has received more than double the amound RC did, and that was with SotM core under its belt. This is an entirely new game, and it looks like >G has enough of a reputation (and the Kickstarter provided enough info) for the backers to back this project.