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In 2013, the video game No Man’s Sky was announced – a partnership between Sony and Hello Games, a small upstart of 4 people lead by Sean Murray. And this game promised the moon (well, technically, it promised infinite moons). As you can see by these two trailers:
No Man’s Sky was played up by both Sony and Hello Games to be revolutionary; groundbreaking. It was set to be the herald of a new type of gaming experience, to expand the horizons mankind could reach with the technology we had. Unfortunately, this was one circumstance where man’s reach did not exceed his imagination.
As a lover of science fiction and of video games, I preordered No Man’s Sky the moment that preorders were available. Alongside many other gamers, I was craving a truly open-world space adventure where you are able to choose your own destiny, and this is what No Man’s Sky promised to deliver, alongside:
- Fleets that appeared while traveling through space
- Combat that could transfer from space to the planet’s surface
- Infinite procedural variety (every planet was supposed to be unique, and everything on the planet new – the game promised a procedural engine with nearly infinite variety)
- Enormous creatures that could interact with the environment (the shot of a massive dinosaur and a rhino breaking down trees as the primary example)
- Massive sandworms, for some reason?
- Freighter wreckages on the planet’s surface
- Multiplayer
- And many, many more features
And then, the leak happened. Two weeks before release, Reddit user daymeeuhn dropped $1,300 USD on a leaked copy of No Man’s Sky. The reaction was tantamount to striking the NMS community that had been quickly developing during the 3 years of excitement since the announcement with a bolt of lightning. At first, everyone was super excited to hear what Hello Games had in store.
And then, we learned the truth. The game that had promised us the universe had provided us with… Inventory Management Simulator™. The game’s goal was for you to get from your crash-landed spaceship to the center of the universe.
In fact, this was only the beginning of our tale – the tale of one of the most incredible comebacks in gaming history. Because even though Hello Games was swamped right after release with scathing reviews and refund requests, they did not give up. This company believed in its game and wanted to give players what they had paid for, and more.
Beyond that, there was not much to do. You could explore, but… why? You could gain resources and sell them to upgrade your ship so that you have more storage so that you can gain more resources and sell them to upgrade your ship so that you have more storage (ad nauseum), but… why? You could name creatures, systems, and planets, and traveling from a planet’s atmosphere was ridiculously cool, but in the end, everything you strove to accomplish flooded you with a sense of purposelessness.
Because of this, the game dried up quickly – after a few hours of fiddling around with the game content, there was no reason to pursue anything greater. This gamer played for a few hours, tried to give it a fair shot, and then shelved it. This is where the game for quite some time, collecting dust on a mantle of broken dreams.
If this was the end of the story, the game would have gone down in history as one of the most colossal marketing failures ever seen, looked down on as the modern world’s E.T. But, fortunately for the NMS community, the story did not end there.
In fact, this was only the beginning of our tale – the tale of one of the most incredible comebacks in gaming history. Because even though Hello Games was swamped right after release with scathing reviews and refund requests, they did not give up. This company believed in its game and wanted to give players what they had paid for, and more.
The Turning of the Tide
After its disastrous August 6th, 2016 release, Hello Games went straight to work. On November 28th, 3 months later, they dropped the Foundation update – adding base building to the game. It took the community by surprise – the company had not promoted free content updates. But when they released Foundation, it came with an announcement that this was going to be the norm – new, fully-fledged content updates, completely free.
From here on out, the developers at Hello Games dumped their resources, hearts, and minds into creating a radical shift in the world’s perception of No Man’s Sky. Following Foundation came Path Finder, which built off Foundation by adding vehicles to traverse the ground. Then, Atlas Rises – a massive story expansion. The game was finally looking like the trailers, and had tons more content than it had at release.
Was it perfect? No. Many still rejected it due to a lack of purpose in gameplay (and the continued lack of promised multiplayer).
Then came NEXT – the biggest and most transformative No Man’s Sky update ever released. NEXT finally gave the fans something they had wanted since release – fully integrated multiplayer. It also overhauled and improved game systems, building off past updates and continuing to expand the quickly growing universe of No Man’s Sky.
At this point, I would have been satisfied. Hello Games had given us more than we ever could have hoped for, for free. All we had to do was purchase the game, and we had access to hundreds of hours of satisfying gaming content.
But Hello Games did not stop. 17 more content updates later (for a total of 20 content updates), varying from bite-sized story campaigns and quality of life updates to massive gameplay element additions and changes, No Man’s Sky is one of the best sandbox games on the market.
With everything shown in the original trailers now included in the game, alongside hundreds upon thousands of other features never mentioned by Hello Games prior to release, it is unbelievable how far this game has come, and it shows in the continued sales of the game on PlayStation, PC, Xbox, and soon, Nintendo Switch.
So what happened?
We do not know the actual reason for the PR disaster that was No Man’s Sky’s release. But a few clues have drifted up since the fiasco. The biggest and most telling hint is that the No Man’s Sky development space was destroyed during a massive flood in 2014.
This has led many to speculate that the engine for No Man’s Sky had been developed for a while, and some of the content that was featured in the trailers was in that version of the game, but the company had to recreate their game engine from scratch after this and rushed development to meet their release deadline.
Regardless of the reason for the bare-bones release, No Man’s Sky is a cautionary tale to game developers of a company that promised more than they were prepared to give, and though No Man’s Sky recovered, it would have been far more successful had the developers either waited to release a game that fulfilled their promises or had been transparent and honest about their development process.
Are the developers finished with No Man’s Sky?
The answer to this is very clearly no. On July 20th, 2022, Hello Games dropped their 20th content update for No Man’s Sky (for free, as always) – Endurance.
This update, as with many recent updates, takes content that Hello Games has already created and updates it with massive improvements and in some places a complete overhaul.
Endurance takes the freighter base system and radically changes it, allowing for more customization and optimization, and creating windows and doors onto the outside of the freighter to see the stars from the comfort of your capital ship. This update comes off the well-received Outlaws release in April, which further deepened space combat and created brand new ways to play the game.
So in its current form, who is this game for? At this point, No Man’s Sky has opened the door for a variety of play-styles. You can spend your entire time creating and building structures (especially since the game has a fully-fledged Creative mode designed to let players unleash their creative genius on the universe). Or, you could play the game the way it was originally designed – traveling with your single ship seeking the mysteries at the center of the universe. Or, you could take advantage of the massive exploration features added and find the best freighter possible, and fill it with the coolest ships you can amass.
If you have friends who play No Man’s Sky, you can explore the universe alongside them. But even if you don’t have people in your circle who have the game, the No Man’s Sky player-base is friendly and welcoming, and you can hop onto the Playsum community to find people who will join you in your adventure into the cosmos!
However, for those of us who wanted exactly what Hello Games promised – a space sim focused on exploration, collection, and discovering the mysteries of an infinite universe, there is no game that is quite as satisfying to play as No Man’s Sky.
That does not mean the game is perfect, or ubiquitously well-received. There are still many people who ask “what is the point?”
Though the Steam reviews for this title have transformed from “Overwhelmingly Negative” to “Mostly Positive”, no mean feat due to the sheer quantity of poor reviews from the get-go, many are still not satisfied with the game, saying it still feels empty and meaningless.
No Man’s Sky accepts this criticism with dignity and grace, incorporating these feelings into the campaign of the game with careful intention seemingly as a response to the reviewers that pushed this mindset. The game does not pretend to be anything outside of what it presents itself to be, and because of this, is not for everyone.
However, for those of us who wanted exactly what Hello Games promised – a space sim focused on exploration, collection, and discovering the mysteries of an infinite universe, there is no game that is quite as satisfying to play as No Man’s Sky.
No Man’s Sky is available for purchase on PlayStation (with optional VR support), PC, and Xbox (included in Xbox Game Pass), and will be releasing for Nintendo Switch on October 7th, 2022.
