No Man’s Sky Remains a Sad & Lonely Universe

Can A Star Shine Without Darkness?

It’s been a month since the release of No Man’s Sky on PS4 and PC. Developer Hello Games and Director Sean Murray have done an excellent job of creating a universe in which it would be nearly impossible for two players to run into each other. But not because the universe is so big, it’s because no one seems to be playing this game anymore. Rarely do games arrive with such hype and have such a quite and sudden drop off. At launch the game had nearly a quarter million players logged in. A month later it has a little bit more than 2,000 players. This would be considered a biblical decrease in the gaming industry that usually takes many years to occur, not just three weeks. What went wrong? Well the true question is what didn’t go wrong.

Hype Rocket Comes Crashing Down With Broken Promises

Many have accused Sean Murray for constantly lying in conferences and twitter. It would appear there were multiple inconvenient misunderstandings. A lot of times he spoke of cool features he would eventually like to add to the game. This led to many people assuming these were features the game would have at launch. A big driving point of the game was that the universe was so huge that it would be nearly impossible for any two players to come across each other. Within hours of launch, two live streamers found each other. To make matters worst, due to a bug in the game, they were not able to see each other. The developers have gone silent on twitter, refusing to address what the root cause was for this issue and avoiding the topic of what would happen in the future when people see each other. At the E3 conference, game play video showed beautiful planets with cool scenery and unique animals. During launch many players noticed that a lot of planets shared very similar surroundings and the creatures kept getting repeated. Not to mention the graphics were far from the E3 videos. Players were not inspired by this space traveling survival game.

Better To Explore Options To Refund Than See Other Galaxies

After a few days, Amazon, Steam, and Sony began to offer refunds to users. From 212,680 players logged in at it’s peak to 1,757 at the moment, one has to wonder why developers choose to over hype games. A good amount of gamers stopped playing the game because it was simply too boring and repetitive. Sean Murray has promised new content thru downloadable features later on in the game’s history, but its too little too late. These promises are falling on deaf ears as everyone has moved on. The concept for the game seemed really cool, it’s a shame that the execution was so poor. Hopefully other developers take notes and stop trying to bank on pre-order hype and launch week sales. A well rounded game that keeps gamers engaged for months or years to come is the most important feature everyone is looking for.