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2016 video game
No Man's Sky
The cover art for No Man's Sky, showcasing the Atlas at the top center
Developer(s)Hello Games
Publisher(s)Hello Games
Director(s)
  • Sean Murray
  • David Ream
Producer(s)Suzy Wallace
Designer(s)Sean Murray
Programmer(s)
  • Harry Denholm
  • Ryan Doyle
  • Innes McKendrick
  • Sean Murray
  • David Ream
Artist(s)
  • Grant Duncan
  • Jacob Golding
Composer(s)
Platform(s)
ReleaseXbox One
  • NA: 9 August 2016 (2016-08-09)
  • EU: 10 August 2016
Microsoft Windows
  • WW: 12 August 2016
Genre(s)Action-adventure, survival
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival video game developed and published by the indie studio Hello Games for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. The game was released worldwide in August 2016.

No Man's Sky's gameplay is built on four pillars—exploration, survival, combat and trading—in which players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion (1.8×10) planets, many with their own set of flora and fauna. By exploring, players gain information about the planets that they can submit to the Atlas, a universal database that can be shared with other players of the game. Players get compensated in in-game currency every time new information is uploaded to The Atlas. Players also gain materials and blueprints to upgrade their character's equipment and purchase a variety of starships, allowing them to travel deeper into the center of the galaxy, survive on planets with hostile environments, interact in friendly or hostile manners to computer-controlled space-faring factions, or trade with other ships. Some activities, such as killing too many lifeforms or draining too many resources from planets, will draw the attention of patrolling robotic Sentinels that will attempt to kill the player-character.

Players participate in a shared universe, with the ability to exchange planet coordinates with friends, though the game is also fully playable offline; this is enabled by the procedural generation system that assures players find the same planet with the same features, lifeforms, and other aspects once given the planet coordinates, requiring no further data to be stored or retrieved from game servers. Nearly all elements of the game are procedurally generated, including star systems, planets and their ecosystems, flora, fauna and their behavioral patterns, artificial structures, and alien factions and their spacecraft. The game's engine employs several deterministic algorithms such as parameterised mathematical equations that can mimic a wide range of geometry and structure found in nature. Art elements created by human artists are used and altered as well within these generation systems. The game's audio, including ambient sounds and its underlying soundtrack, also use procedural generation methods from base samples created by Paul Weir and the musical group 65daysofstatic.

No Man's Sky represents Hello Games' vision of a broad, attention-getting game that they wanted to pursue while they secured their financial well being through the Joe Danger series of games. The game's original prototype was worked on by Hello Games' Sean Murray, and then expanded into a small four-person team prior to its first teaser in December 2013. About a dozen developers worked on the game leading up to its release, with Sony Interactive Entertainment providing promotional and marketing support. Sony formally announced the title during their press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, the first independently-developed game to be presented at the Expo's centrepiece events.

Gameplay

No Man's Sky is a first-person, open world survival game. Players take the role of a planetary explorer in an uncharted universe. They are equipped with a survival spacesuit with a jetpack; a "multitool" that can be used to scan, mine and collect resources as well as to attack or defend oneself from creatures and other entities while on a planet; and a spacecraft that allows them to land and take-off from planets and travel between them and engage in combat with other space-faring vessels. With this equipment, the player is then free to engage in any of the four principal activities offered by the game: exploration, survival, combat, and trading.

The player-character can collect information on the planets and the lifeforms and other features of these planets to upload to The Atlas, a galactic database as depicted in the game's cover artwork, which they are paid for with units, the in-game currency. Units are used to purchase new survival gear, tools, and spacecraft with more powerful abilities and defenses, allowing the player to explore more of the universe and survive in more hostile environments. Such upgrades can work in synergistic effects; the scanning feature of the multitool initially starts as a short-ranged directed beam, but can be upgraded to have much longer range, spanning all directions, and locating minerals and other resources buried in the ground.

The player's ability to explore planets is only limited by the range of the hyperspace jump engines of their current spacecraft and how much fuel that the craft presently carries. The player is able to view a galactic map to plot courses between systems, which is updated as other players upload their findings to the Atlas. Numerous features in the space between planets exist, including ships and fleets belonging to various factions which may be hostile to the player or which the player may wish to engage in space combat. The player's actions influence how the faction treats them in future encounters; for example by helping a faction win a space battle against a rival one earlier, they may in turn help protect the players from a different faction later. The player can attempt communication with non-player characters (NPC) from these factions using a dialog tree interface, but this requires them to learn the aliens' language, for which a simple word-for-word translation exists, leaving the player to wildly guess at the start. By frequent communications with that faction, as well as finding monoliths scattered on planets that act as Rosetta stones, the player can better understand these languages, and can gain favour from the NPC and its faction for trading and combat. There are also various space bases where the player can engage in trading of resources and goods in a free market system, with one such base existing in every planetary system so that players always have the ability to buy fuel to make hyperspace jumps to other systems. The player is able to use resources they have collected to craft new goods, though they are required to determine the recipes for these on their own or to purchase from vendors. This can enable players to collect rare elements found in a remote part of the universe and craft them to make highly desirable goods that they can sell. Such stations also sell new equipment to the player with rotating stock.

Taking resources from a planet or harming the lifeforms on it causes the player to gain a "wanted level" similar to that of the Grand Theft Auto series, attracting the attention of self-replicating robot-like Sentinels that patrol the planets. Low wanted levels may cause small drones to appear which may be easily fought off, while giant walking machines can assault the player at higher wanted levels. Similarly, hostile actions towards the alien factions cause aggressive responses based on a comparable scale, ranging from being intercepted by one or two scout ships, to becoming the target of entire armadas. The player-character can die in a number of fashions, such as by sustained damage from a toxic or oxygen-less planetary environment or extreme temperatures, attacks from dangerous lifeforms or Sentinels, or being destroyed in space combat with the space-faring factions. If the player-character dies, they will respawn near their spacecraft if they died on the planet surface, or will respawn at a nearby spaceport if they died in space combat; in either situation, they lose all information that they have not yet uploaded to the Atlas and other resources collected since, but retain all of the gear they have already acquired.

Procedurally-generated universe

A typical planet in No Man's Sky includes procedurally-generated flora and fauna for the player to discover and observe.

Core to No Man's Sky is that its virtual universe, including the stars, planets, lifeforms, ecosystems, and the behaviour of the space-bound factions are all created through procedural generation using deterministic algorithms and random number generators. A single seed number is used to create these features via mathematical computation thus eliminating the need to create each of these features by hand. This enables the game to have a massively open nature: Hello Games has estimated that with their 64-bit seed number, their virtual universe includes over 18 quintillion planets.

Any player is able to visit a specific planet once they know its galactic coordinates, given their spacecraft has the capability to do so, and find the same features as any other player, as these coordinates serve as the seed for the planet's topography, environment, and flora and fauna. This also enables the game to be played locally offline in addition to online, as there is no server-side storage of the universe, with all details being generated on-the-fly as the user plays the game. However, players need to be online to register their finds to the Atlas. Though the player may temporarily alter aspects of a planet, such as by mining resources, most of these changes are only tracked while the player is on the planet; once they leave, or when visited by others, the changes will disappear. Some changes that the player can make that Hello Games considered "significant" are tracked on the game servers; Murray explained that actions like destroying space stations will be tracked, but things like an individual creating holes in a planet are insignificant compared to the size of the planet, and are not stored on the servers. Internal game time also plays a factor, as creatures on planets are able to evolve.

This generation system can create a variety of planet ecosystems, including differing rotational periods, the end-effects of natural erosion, and behavioural cycles for the creatures. The amount of life on planets are factored based on their distance from their local sun, with planets far outside the habitable zone typically being barren of life. Not all stars have habitable planets, but still offer potential opportunities for resources to the player if they can survive its inhospitable atmosphere. The developers aimed for a 90–10 rule, with around 90% of the planets being uninhabitable, and of the 10% that do support life, 90% of those only include mundane lifeforms, making the planets that thrive with a vivid ecosystem rare.

When the player first starts No Man's Sky, they are placed on a random planet at the edge of a galaxy at the edge of the universe, from which point they are free to do whatever they want. The game does not have an explicit goal but does encourage players to attempt to reach the center of the universe through its lore: planets located closer to the galactic center have more exotic and hostile environments, with more valuable resources and means to improve one's gear, urging exploration of these inner galactic regions. Hello Games' Sean Murray stated that one might spend about forty hours of gametime to reach the center of the galaxy if they did not perform any side activities, but he also fully anticipated that players would play the game in a manner that suits them, such as having those that might try to catalog all the flora and fauna in the universe, while others may attempt to set up trade routes between planets. Because of the size of the game's universe, Hello Games estimated that more than 99.9% of the planets would never be explored by players, and that the likelihood of meeting another player through chance encounters is nearly zero. No Man's Sky does include a matchmaking system that is similar to that used for Journey when such encounters do occur; as described by Murray, each online player has an "open lobby" that any players in their in-universe proximity will enter and leave. Players are able to track friends on the galactic map, and the system maps; to ensure they are able to meet up and explore together. Because No Man's Sky is primarily a single-player game and the chance of meeting other players is very low, Sony does not require PlayStation 4 users to have PlayStation Plus to play the game online. There is no cross-platform play as the PlayStation 4 and Windows versions of the game use different servers.

Through the Atlas, players are credited by name for being the first to discover a planet and other types of information. Players must seek out beacons on planets to access the Atlas and upload their discoveries to be credited for them. The player can name their discoveries, within limits set by a profanity filter, and include notes about their discoveries, such as noting a planet having a toxic or radioactive environment. Players are able to visit other planets that have been discovered and uploaded to the Atlas, presuming their spacecraft has sufficient fuel and range to reach those planets. On these already-explored planets, players are still credited with in-game currency for documenting the planet and its features to the Atlas, but they are not able to rename the details that the discovering player had been able to do.

Development

Hello Games' founders Sean Murray (left) and Grant Duncan

The onset of development for No Man's Sky arose from Hello Games' co-founder Sean Murray sometime during the development of Joe Danger 2, which he compared to a mid-life crisis for himself. Murray, a former developer at Criterion Games for the Burnout series, worried the studio would be falling into a rut of producing sequel after sequel as was the case at Criterion. When Hello Games had problems with an American publisher, Murray realized they had an opportunity to create a completely new title based on a concept he had since he was a child, when he had aspirations of being an astronaut, envisioning oneself as being the first human to step onto an alien planet. Murray was also inspired by science fiction including works by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein, as well as the covers of these works published during the 1970s and 1980s, which typically were done by freelance artists and bore little connection to the story within but made for visually alluring scenes. Another avenue of influence was the state of current science fiction media, which Murray compared to similar commentary from Neal Stephenson on how most mainstream works focus on a dystopian story; for Murray, he wanted No Man's Sky to be much more optimistic and uplifting. Murray considered his own experience playing Elite, a similar open-world space exploration game, as part of No Man's Sky's inspiration.

The game was an attention-getting concept that the studio had since inception. Murray described that in bringing on board Dave Ream, the team's creative director, that Murray described how there are skyscrapers in the world that are well visible but built on standard designs, and then there are smaller, minimalistic architectural designs, which is the direction that Murray wanted to take the studio. Ream agreed, but insisted that the studio at some point would make the game equivalent of a skyscraper, a game they could develop without any limitations. This proverbial game, "Project Skyscraper" was kept in mind as the studio began to expand and acquire the necessary finances to pursue other titles besides Joe Danger.

With the success of Joe Danger and its sequels, Murray was able to spend a few days each week for about a year to develop the core engine of No Man's Sky in secret from the rest of the team. Once the engine was completed, Murray brought in a small four-person team to work on the game directly, while Joe Danger 2 was being developed by the rest of the company. They worked in a spare room, lining the walls with science fiction imagery to help inspire them. Their work was kept in secrecy from the rest of the development team, leading to some tension within the offices, though Murray had done this specifically after seeing how small exploratory groups did not work well at Criterion Games. Further, Murray was concerned about describing the game too much, and fears that even teasing about the title would lead to misconceptions about the scope and nature of the game. Ultimately, Murray was encouraged by Geoff Keighley to premiere the title at the 2013 VGX awards, and in preparation, created the short teaser which they shared with the rest of studio days before the awards show. As development continued, more of the team was brought on board to help complete the game, with the fbase binal team being composed of thirteen members. This VGX teaser brought much attention to the title from the gaming press. A flood wiped out most of their Guildford office and equipment on Christmas Eve 2013 but they were able to recover work they had done already and resumed development shortly thereafter. Murray later acknowledged that he had been tempted to cancel No Man's Sky at this point, but the flooding helped re-solidify the Hello Games' team, as prior to the flood, the team was still split between those working on No Man's Sky and those continuing the Joe Danger series. Everyone in the company came together to help rebuild their office and computer equipment, giving new vigor to the project.

Just prior to the VGX showing, Murray had shown the title around to various publishers, and Sony expressed strong interest in having the title for the PlayStation 4. Murray stated that although Sony offered to provide financial support, he and Hello Games only wanted Sony's commitment to help market the game, including having the game formally introduced at Sony's main media event during the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 (E3); until that point, no independently-developed game has been demonstrated during these center-stage events. Sony's UK marketing director Fergal Gara has stated that Sony is fully committed to supporting the title, treating the game as if it were from one of their first-party developers and considering a potential retail release of the game.

Hello Games prepared a six-planet demonstration that would be used for the E3 event and subsequently used to showcase the game for the media while the full version – nearly always in a constant state of flux due to the procedural generation approach – was being developed. The game was announced at E3 2014 with plans for a timed exclusive release on the PlayStation 4, and would have later been brought to Microsoft Windows. However, speaking to the media at the E3 2015, Murray stated that they now plan to release the title simultaneously for both platforms, though did not specify a release date. Murray stated that unlike more traditional games, where completion of the fixed number of levels and other assets can be treated as an assembly line and schedules projected from that, the interconnectivity of all the various systems within No Man's Sky requires them all to be working together to make the game successful, and would only feel comfortable on assigning a release date once that is completed.

Since its reveal, Hello Games have showcased the game to numerous members of the press and video game journalists. Many of these demonstrations have provided possible ideas for gameplay additions as feedback, such as adding land vehicles to explore planets or allowing players to construct buildings on planets. However, Hello Games have opted to avoid such feature creep, with Murray stating that they wanted to be able to deliver on the large, grand vision they had, and to add more features would have required a larger team and more funding, something they did not want to do. Murray specifically wanted to avoid base building initially as this would discourage players from exploring the rest of the universe. Following release, Hello Games does plan to add base building and the ability to buy and customize larger freighters in future updates.

The developers have stated they are looking at supporting virtual reality (VR) hardware, but as of June 2015 have not announced any plans. Murray stated in an April 2016 interview with IGN that VR "would be a really good fit" for No Man's Sky, as the immersive experience could create "really intense moments within a game". Murray has offered the potential to extend the game through downloadable content, though because of the procedural generation systems used, would likely be in the form of added features rather than new content.

Game engine

Most of the universe in No Man's Sky is procedurally-generated, including solar systems, planets, weather systems, flora and fauna on these planets, the behavior of these creatures, and artificial structures like buildings and spacecraft. The generation system is based primarily on providing a single seed number to their deterministic engine which would create all the features of the universe exactly the same way every time this process is run with the same seed using the repeatability of pseudorandom number generators. One generator is used to create the universe, plotting the position of the stars and their stellar classification, using the phone number of one of the Hello Games' developers as the founding seed. Pseudorandom numbers generated from the position of each star are used to define the planetary system the star has, the planet's position is used as a seed to define the planetary features, and so on. This approach, used in early days of computer games to avoid high memory or disk use, avoided the need to craft every planet and store this information on a server; this also assured that players can always revisit the same planets, and share that planet with other players who would find the same features. The planet terrain generation code, for example, is only 1,400 lines of code; as described by Murray, the code was tweaked as to make sure that planets generated visually interesting but navigable terrain, as some early builds would produce wildly stunning planets that were impossible to traverse, while other fixes made planets look flat and dull. Hello Games had originally planned to use a 32-bit seed number, which would have generated around 4.3 billion planets, but decided to use the 64-bit number to demonstrate the scalability of their game, and partially in response to online forum comments that doubted that Hello Games could deliver a game of that size.

The deterministic approach also allows Hello Games to optimize the rendering of the game, as what is visible to the player can be determined directly through these generation algorithms. This did create some difficulty with features like rivers, which in most virtual environments are built by using a physics engine to track the flow of water down a slope. Murray and his team developed a brute force solution to include rivers and similar features without having to render out a large-enough section of landscape to perform the same calculation. The total code size for the entire game, as of February 2016, was around 600,000 lines of code. The entire game takes up only 6 gigabytes on a blu-ray disc, the bulk being audio files.

No Man's Sky uses parametric generation equations that mimic natural forms in nature, such as L-systems that can create a variety of types of trees.

The development team built the planetary feature generation system atop this where they would first hand-create core structures and the art associated with those – such as a basic skeleton and skin for a creature – and then allow the algorithm to make randomized changes to that, as to make a wide variety of creatures, mimicking the diversity of species resulting from evolution on Earth. They made sure the elements of this generation process reflected the setting – creatures and plants inhabiting a planet that contained blue-colored minerals would be tinted blue as well. To assure that the procedural generation worked well, the development team created the in-game equivalent of automated probes to visit the various planets and take images to review; this allowed for some tweaks to be made by human developers. No Man's Sky' engine uses a number of deterministic parameterised equations and algorithms developed by biologists and physicists that can mimic a vast array of natural forms and shapes. For example, the engine uses L-systems, fractal equations developed by Aristid Lindenmayer in 1968 that can create structures that resemble many algae and plant lifeforms. To create behavior for the creatures generated by the procedural generation system, the system tags objects that it creates, and then assigns creatures various affinity levels based on these tags; creatures are then driven to find objects they like and avoid those they dislike, and allows the artificial intelligence aspects of creatures to communicate directly to coordinate their respective movements. Duncan describes this as generating complex patterns on relatively simple rules that create surprising results; he describes being surprised when, after hunting avian creatures over a body of water to have one of the kills eaten by the sudden appearance of a shark-like creature.

Some facets of realism have been conceded in favor of promoting better gameplay. The planetary generator system does not generate any gas giants, as Murray wants every planet in the game to be explorable. Unlike most planets containing an atmosphere where the atmosphere is visibly more dense closest to the surface, planetary atmospheres in No Man's Sky are reversed as to provide a more dramatic transition when a player is taking off or landing on a planet. Other elements of their procedural generation system were made to break the realism that was previously built into the engine as to have more alien-looking planets and features be potential outcomes of the system, such as by introducing chemical elements that would enable green-tinted atmospheres and allowing moons to orbit much closer than the laws of gravity would allow to create impressive backdrops on planets.

Music

The band 65daysofstatic contributed music for the procedurally generated soundtrack.

No Man's Sky features a soundtrack by British post-rock band 65daysofstatic (65DOS), as well as procedurally generated ambient music composed by Paul Weir. The game uses a generative music system called Pulse developed by Weir, using a large library of loops, textures and melodies created by 65DOS to randomly create music to accompany the gameplay, reacting to the changeable terrain and becoming more or less menacing depending on whether a character is in danger. 65DOS became involved in the project when Hello Games, preparing their debut trailer, contacted 65DOS about using their song "Debutante" for it, sending along some of the concept art so the band could consider the offer. The band, impressed by what they saw, gave Hello Games their permission and offered to help create the rest of the game's soundtrack. 65DOS had been interested in doing a video game soundtrack following their album Wild Light and subsequent live tours, having used software tools to help craft more interactive shows, and felt the same concepts could be applied to video games which are traditionally non-linear experiences. Initially, Hello Games asked 65DOS to create numerous songs in their band's style, with very little additional direction; the band described their instruction from Hello Games as "write the next 65daysofstatic album". After spending time to craft a number of songs, 65DOS brought their music to Weir who started to bring in parts of it into the procedural soundtrack. Knowing what parts were used as focus by Weir, 65DOS went and rerecorded some sections and variations on these sections to provide Weir with more song segments to incorporate into the system. The band also composed new tracks based on knowledge of this process, as to make songs that sound complete but still could be broken up to be incorporated into Weir's work.

Weir also developed a similar generative audio system for the ambient sounds within the game. Weir developed an audio procedural generation system called VocAlien that allowed him to create a system of animal calls that can be readily altered by adjusting a number of parameters.

Ten original works and six soundscapes composed by 65DOS for the game will be released on its soundtrack, No Man's Sky: Music for an Infinite Universe, set to be released as digital and retail formats alongside the game on 10 August 2016; a streaming version of the soundtrack was released about a week prior to these. iam8bit is planning on releasing the soundtrack on a 2 LP-disc vinyl record set alongside the game's release. One set of songs in this soundtrack are 65DOS's compositions worked into a typical six-minute song, while the soundscapes are longer pieces that are comparable to 65DOS's original pieces without strict adherence to any length or format, representing their musical concepts they had considered in producing the songs for No Man's Sky. 65DOS also plans to tour Europe and potentially other locations with the No Man's Sky soundtrack later in 2016.

Promotion and marketing

Rumors circulated in the lead-up to the 2015 Paris Games Week in October 2015 that No Man's Sky would be released alongside Sony's press conference, but Murray and Sony denied these rumors. Instead, Sony used their press conference to announce the game's expected release in June 2016 for the PlayStation 4.

The game's scheduled release during the week of 21 June 2016 was announced in March 2016, along with the onset of pre-orders for both PlayStation 4 and Windows versions. Hello Games also announced that the PlayStation 4 version would also be available in both a standard and "Limited Edition" retail release, published by Sony, alongside the digital version. About a month before this planned release, Sony and Hello Games announced that the game would be delayed until August 2016, with Murray opting to use the few extra weeks as "some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards". Hello Games opted not to present at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 in June 2016 as to devote more time to polishing the game, with Murray noting that due to the structure of the game, "we get one shot to make this game and we can't mess it up." The game had gone gold on 7 July 2016, and was officially released on 9 August 2016.

The release date in the United Kingdom, slated for 12 August and two days after the rest of Europe, was later pushed up to 10 August in part to a new deal Sony arranged with retailers to allow for simultaneous release in both regions. Two weeks before release, the worldwide Windows version release was pushed out a few days, to 12 August 2016. Murray stated through Twitter that they felt the best experience for players would be a simultaneous worldwide release on the Windows platform, something they could not control with the retail aspects that were associated with the regional PlayStation 4 market, and thus opted to hold back the Windows release to make this possible. They also used the few extra days to finish additional technical features that they wanted to include at the PC launch, such as extended widescreen across multiple monitor support.

The Limited Edition retail version includes an art book and a comic written by Dave Gibbons, James Swallow and Angus McKie; Sony previously expressed interest in companion fiction for the game's release, and Murray had engaged with Gibbons on developing such a work. Swallow also helped with some of the in-game narrative. A limited-run "Explorer's Edition" for the Windows version, to be published by iam8bit, will include a miniature replica of one of the game's spacecraft alongside other materials. Sony will be releasing a limited edition bundle with No Man's Sky and a custom face plate for the PlayStation 4 in Europe.

The New Yorker featured No Man's Sky in their 2015 New Yorker Festival as part of their inaugural Tech@Fest event, highlighting topics on the intersection of culture and technology. On 2 October 2015, Murray made an appearance and gave a demonstration of the game on the American television late-night talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In the weeks leading to the game's release, Sony released a set of four videos, each focused on the principle activities of the game: exploring, fighting, trading, and surviving.

Intellectual property issues

Hello Games had been in legal negotiations with Sky plc over the trademark on the word "Sky" used for No Man's Sky, a trademark Sky had previously defended against Microsoft's choice of "Skydrive". The issue was ultimately settled in June 2016, allowing Hello Games to continue to use the name.

A few weeks before the game's launch, No Man's Sky was claimed to be using the superformula based on work done by Dr. Johan Gielis in 2003, and subsequently patented by Gielis under the Dutch company Genicap which Gielis founded and serves as Chief Research Officer. Murray had mentioned the superformula while describing the procedural generation aspects of the game in an interview with The New Yorker during development. Genicap anticipates developing a software tool using the superformula for their own product that they can see being used in video game development, which Hello Games would be infringing on if they had used the superformula in the game. The company states they have attempted to reach out to Hello Games to ask them about its use for No Man's Sky but have not received anything back. Genicap said they did not want to stop the launch of No Man's Sky, considered the game to be "very impressive", and that they would like to talk more with Hello Games to exchange knowledge with them, but "if the formula is used we'll need to have a talk". Murray replied that No Man's Sky does not use the superformula, and is working to arrange a meeting with Genicap to discuss the situation and their respective mathematics.

Pre-release issues

About two weeks before the official release, one Reddit user had been able to purchase a leaked copy of the game for the PlayStation 4 off eBay for about $1,250, and started posting various videos of their experiences in the game. Other users have also claimed to have leaked copies and sharing their gameplay videos. Some of these reports included negative elements about the game, including frequent crashes and a much-shorter time to "complete" the game by reaching the center of the virtual galaxy than Hello Games had claimed, leading many fans to express concern and frustration that the game might not be as good as they anticipated. Murray asked fans waiting for the game to avoid these spoilers, stating "We've spent years filling No Man's Sky with surprises. You've spent years waiting. Please don't spoil it for yourself."

Some vendors broke the street date, as several players, including journalists at Kotaku and Polygon, streamed their starting playthroughs of the game starting from 5 August 2016. Hello Games reset the servers for the game just prior to 9 August 2016 so as to give all players a clean slate. Prior to official release, Sony requested sites to take down videos from early copies, citing that due to the nature of the game, they considered that Hello Games' vision of the game would only be met once a day-one patch was made available at release. Some of these video takedowns had accidentally included users discussing the game but without using these pre-release footage videos, a situation that Murray and Sony worked to resolve.

The day-one patch, which Hello Games had been at work since the game went gold, altered several aspects of how the procedural generated universe is created, such that existing saves from these previous copies would no longer work. This patch also removed an exploit that was observed by the above Reddit user that allowed players to complete the game much faster than anticipated. Commentators noted that the patch would substantially change the aspects of the game previously critiqued by forementioned early players, and believed some of the changes were made specifically to address these concerns.

Concern was raised by the fan community when OpenCritic, a review aggregator site, stated that there were going to be no review copies of the game prior to the public release and a review embargo that would end on the date of release, a general sign within the industry that there are concerns by the developers or publishers that a game may not live up to expectations and thus want to minimize any impact reviews may have prior to release. However, both OpenCritic and Sony later affirmed there would be pre-release review copies and that they were waiting on a pre-release patch before sending these out to journalists. Eurogamer noted that they had expected to have review copies by 5 August, but these were pushed until 8 August as to get the day-one patch in place, a situation they attributed to the certification process required by Sony for any games on their service.

Reception

Pre-release

The first introduction of No Man's Sky at the 2013 VGX awards was considered to be the best aspect of the awards presentation. Its expanded coverage at E3 2014 was also met with similar praise, with several critics considering it to have "stole the show". The title won the show's "Best Original Game" and "Best Independent Game" by a panel of game critics, as well as receiving the "Special Commendation for Innovation" title.

No Man's Sky is seen as a potential industry-changing title, challenging the current status quo of triple-A game development, which according to Peckham has become "rich and complacent". No Man's Sky has been compared to space flight simulator games, particularly Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, which traditionally have been notoriously difficult games to learn due to large numbers of controls and often limited to personal computers using keyboard and mouse input that are required for complex controls. No Man's Sky, in contrast, has been developed for a mainstream audience, having been made "simple to learn and fascinating to plumb" while still offering sufficiently-complex game mechanics, according to IGN's Nathan Lawrence.

The concepts behind No Man's Sky, allowing for a "grail-like feedback loop" around the exploration of near-infinite space according to Time's Matt Peckham, have created a great amount of anticipation for the game from gamers, as such lofty goals are often seen as a dare to themselves. Many commentators compared No Man's Sky to 2008's Spore by Maxis which had promised similar ambitions to use procedural generation to construct new creatures and worlds. However, by release, the extent of the use of procedural generation was scaled back during the course of production, and the resulting game was not as well-received as anticipated. Murray stated that he is aware that some critics are applying caution to their view of No Man's Sky due to how Spore promised similarly lofty goals and failed to provide that experience to players. Murray has also cautioned players that No Man's Sky may not be "the game you imagined from those trailers" and that the game would lack elements like player-versus-player multiplayer or civilization construction, but instead that the title is meant as a "very very chill game", giving players a universe-sized sandbox that that makes you feel as if you "stepped into a sci-fi book cover"; Murray believes the game will have a "divisive" response from players due to some of these expectations.

Sam Zucchi writing for Kill Screen proposed that the players anxiously awaiting No Man's Sky were a kind of religion, putting faith in Hello Games to be able deliver an experience that has otherwise never been offered by video games before, the ability to explore a near-infinite universe. Following the news of the game's delay from June to August 2016, Murray along with Kotaku writer Jason Schreier who first reported on the rumor of this delay, received a number of death threats in response to this delay, which Murray publicly responded to in good humor. The situation was seen by other journalists as a growing issue between the pre-release hype created by marketing for video games, and the excited nature of the fans of these games even before their release. New Statesman's Phil Hartup considered that when marketing for a game drives a need for any type of news by those anxious to play the game, disappointing news such as delays can readily lead to online fans reacting in a paranoid manner against marketing expectations. Phil Owen writing for The Wrap blames such issues on the video game marketers, as this field has become less about selling a game and more about creating a cult-like following for the game and "weaponizing fandom".


Soundtrack

Andrew Webster of The Verge described the soundtrack as an extension of past 65daysofstatic albums, particularly from Wild Light, but with a greater science-fiction vibe to it, considering its opening track "Asimov" to be like "taking flight into a Chris Foss painting".

Notes

  1. Specifically, the number of planets is 2 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, based on the 64-bit seeding processed used in the game.

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