Space, the final frontier of humanity and certainly the biggest challenge for the British developer Hello Games. Their game No Man’s Sky has shot directly from the deepest abysses into the hearts of the players who hated it at first. But how did lead developer Sean Murray and his team manage this?
This is the backstory of No Man’s Sky: No Man’s Sky was first announced at VGX 2013. Here, developer Hello Games showcased a first trailer (via YouTube.com) that seemed unbelievable. The audience was ecstatic: A sandbox made of 18 trillion planets, created by a novel algorithm and of such quality — stunning.
However, from the first announcement, the developer did not play with open cards: Sean Murray, lead developer and founder of Hello Games, had embellished his description of No Man’s Sky significantly. First with the trailer, whose beautiful planets and creatures were handcrafted. Players found this out as they discovered the showcase planets in the game files some time after release.
Murray often emphasized in interviews how big his game is and how many possibilities the player has to leave his footprint. He did not shy away from promising content that did not even exist at release.
Blinded by hype, no one doubted back then that it could be too much for a six-person development team to keep all the promises:
- Multiplayer
- Base building
- Landing and harvesting comets
- Animals interacting with each other and being part of a food chain
- Space battles
- Desert planets and worms like in Dune
- a lot more
Spoiler: None of these features made it into the “finished” game at release in August 2016.
The question is justified: How did Sean Murray and Hello Games manage to fix this mess so that it currently stands at “Mostly Positive” on Steam?
No Man’s Sky became a disaster – What was the reason?
No Man’s Sky was actually supposed to be released in June 2016. However, the Hello Games team decided to postpone the release by two months to August. For a better polished version of the game, it was said back then. But then came the shock…
A PlayStation 4 copy of No Man’s Sky ended up on eBay and was auctioned off for an insane €1100. The buyer, under the alias “Daymeeuhm,” posted video footage of the leaked version online. What the user showed in his videos looked far from finished. Daymeeuhm expressed hope that a Day-One patch would surely follow (via YouTube.com).
No Man’s Sky was this bad at release: After a long wait, No Man’s Sky was released in 2016 and did not disappoint in disappointing fans. The open-world space adventure that looked so promising turned out to be a flop. Other than mining resources, traveling to other planets, and expanding personal tools, all features were cut.
The user score on Metacritic at release was 3.5 out of 10, and the press ratings were 61 out of 100. These ratings came about because players uncovered some blatant lies from the developer. Especially the broken promise of a multiplayer feature upset players and critics alike.
Shortly before, Murray announced via Twitter that No Man’s Sky was not for fans of multiplayer. The chance of finding each other was very unlikely due to the vast distances between players, he said. However, the complete absence of multiplayer was discovered by two players who landed on the same planet on the very first day, walked to the same location, and did not see each other.
Aside from missing features, No Man’s Sky suffered from countless bugs and glitches that remained unrefined for a long time. These problems ultimately caused the player count on Steam to drop from an initial 212,000 concurrent players to a mere 3,000 within a few weeks.
Hello Games turns on the update machine: Players love it
Users sent death threats to lead developer Sean Murray, hacked the Hello Games Twitter account, and even drove to the developer’s office. It looked suspiciously empty, and so many thought Hello Games had run off with the money.
This suspicion was reinforced by the fact that the team around Murray withdrew. For months, there was no tweet, no video, no statement.
In reality, Hello Games was working under the radar on the first improvements to No Man’s Sky. Three months after release, in November 2016, Sean Murray broke the silence for the first time and presented the free Foundation Update.
Foundation brought base building, new game modes like Permadeath, food cultivation, and freighter ships. In the same package, the developers also included numerous improvements and bug fixes.
However, for many, that was not enough, and the criticisms still remained in the negative range. In March 2017, the Pathfinder Update followed. This gifted players with new spaceship types, a photo mode, mod support, and ground vehicles.
Again, some months passed, and the Atlas Rising Update arrived, bringing countless new features and bug fixes. To date, 18 major updates for No Man’s Sky have been released, each received better by the community.
Latest Update Frontiers causes a flood of positive reviews
A few days ago, the free Frontiers update was released, fulfilling players’ long-held wish: City-building is now one of the late-game tasks in No Man’s Sky. The tasks of a mayor are diverse: You must resolve disputes between residents, continuously expand the city, provide it with resources, and defend it against enemies. Once you have expanded your city to a certain point, it generates resources for you.
Additional content from the Frontier Update
- 250 new base building parts
- Base building system revised
- Monstrous pets
- Space fog
- New visual effects
Steam reviews jump to “Very Positive”: How difficult was that
This is what the reviews look like today: The overall rating of No Man’s Sky is “mostly positive.” The latest ratings are even “very positive.” Players celebrate in their reviews on Steam (via Steam.Store) especially the large number of updates and the many new content.
I bought it on launch day and had too high expectations… 5 years later, the developers brought so many updates that my expectations were exceeded.
Arcionas (325 hrs) – Written on September 2, 2021
A great example of what developers who love their job looks like!
DIAMOND (31.7 hrs) – Written on September 2, 2021
Two aspects for which No Man’s Sky will always be remembered: 1. How overhyped the game was and how bad it was at launch. 2. The developers did everything they could to save the game despite a bad start.
Blitz (24 hrs) – Written on August 31, 2021
Every time I say: “Okay, No Man’s Sky has all its content, I don’t need to play it anymore,” I start again and discover something new and get lost in the infinite world.
SmackDaFrog (1,048 hrs) – Written on September 5, 2021
This is what the developers say about the ratings: Pushing Steam reviews from extremely negative to mostly positive is harder than many think, explains Head of Publishing Tim Woodley. To rise from 20% to 21% positive reviews requires hundreds of reviews. To rise from 69% to 70%, however, requires more than 10,000 reviews. Accordingly, it is not surprising that some games never manage to make the leap.
Conclusion – No Man’s Sky had to fail in order to become this good
Sean Murray and Hello Games took on too much with No Man’s Sky. Surely it wasn’t planned for the hastily put together trailer for VGX 2013 to trigger such a wave of hype. The team was only able to disappoint the waiting fans — which is not their fault.
However, if this wave had not occurred, and the players had not pre-ordered it a hundred thousand times, it would have been financially impossible to deliver the experience of No Man’s Sky that players love today.
No Man’s Sky had a very bad start. But what started as a prime example of excessive promises and too much hype became one of the greatest and most enjoyable adventures in modern gaming due to the hard work of the developers.
