No Man’s Sky was the protagonist of an extraordinary story of redemption which is still producing results today, a good eight years after the launch of the first version of Hello Games’ ambitious title: just think that the latest update marked a peak in concurrent players on Steam, the highest in a long time.
Nevertheless At first the situation seemed dramatic: presented as a sort of technical miracle thanks to an innovative procedural engine capable of creating infinite different worlds, No Man’s Sky actually turned out to be the unripe fruit of a promotional campaign that Sean Murray and his colleagues had not been able to manage, under the enormous weight of the expectations they themselves had generated.
Probably any other development team would have given up in the face of the evidence of a product that was not even minimally capable of holding up to what was its original vision; and the press silence that Hello Games maintained for too long has backfired on the studio, accused of deceiving users presenting them with a very different experience than the one that eventually landed on PS4 in 2016.
The Long Road to Redemption
Rather than despair, the developers of No Man’s Sky have rolled up their sleeves: buoyed by the sales that the game had already recorded, Murray and his colleagues didn’t waste time talking and immediately began working on a series of improvements, already thinking about a long roadmap of additional content.
The journey began at the end of 2016 with the Foundation Updatewhich introduced the ability to build a base, improved the looting mechanics, and added two new modes to the package; then in March 2017 it was the turn of the Path Finder Update, which experimented with the concept of permanent death while also working on sharing features with other users.
In the summer of 2017, Hello Games finally managed to enrich the campaign with the Atlas Rises update, capable of add something like thirty hours of contentextra procedural missions, portals for fast travel, and a new co-op mode for sixteen players. From there on, the studio really started to enjoy it and spread its wings, literally transforming the No Man’s Sky experience.
Coinciding with the launch on Xbox One, in July 2018, the game arrived No Man’s Sky Next: A Key Update for the Gamewhich finally saw the introduction of those mechanics and features that the authors had originally imagined for their project, including a greater focus on multiplayer. At the same time, the graphics engine was improved and with it the entire visual sector.
After that, No Man’s Sky post-launch support turned into a kind of experiment, a way to test the limits of the project and its user base, making the game take on characteristics similar to those of a live service but without adopting the same kind of structure or its clear limitations.
Version by version, we arrived today with the Worlds Part I update, which introduces another batch of news and even draws on the solutions and technologies that Hello Games is developing for its next title, Light no Fire: this too is a new approach, the result of the studio’s desire to try new things.
What does the experience of No Man’s Sky tell us? On the one hand, the lesson regarding the promotional phase is very clear, not to create false expectations and to maintain communication that is as honest and sincere as possible towards users. At the same time, however, this long journey shows that with the desire, determination and necessary resources it is possible turn a disappointment into a jewel shining among the stars of an infinite universe. Procedural, of course.
How did you experience the No Man’s Sky epic? Let’s talk about it.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial staff and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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