VIDEOGAMES | No Man’s Sky
NO MAN’S SKY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE GAME OF THE SUMMER. The rabidly anticipated outer-space sandbox from British indie Hello Games promised ambitions so sky-high that the sci-fi survival game would soar past the corporate competition and into instant icon status.
That was early August. By month’s end, the internet had turned on what turned out to be mostly a Myst- like exploration game. Angry players even began demanding their money back because they felt ripped off by the hype and dropped features. So what happened?
Admittedly, it is not as good as people hoped, but it’s also not as bad as people claim. I enjoy its aesthetic and uniqueness, though I’ve been treating it as more of a Zen koan than a traditional game. But the selling point all along has been its size, which is, for all intents and purposes, infinite.
There are 18.4 quintillion planets in the game’s simulation of the universe, at least theoretically. These planets don’t really exist until you discover them — kind of a Schrödinger’s Cat thing — because to replicate the universe, the game relies on procedural generation. That is, the game is designed while you play it, with creation rules determined by mathematical equations and randomized rule sets.
No Man’s Sky had no choice but to use this randomly generated method to craft its star systems, planetary flora and fauna, alien species and even the score by 65daysofstatic. And they weren’t the first. Procedural generation began in the 1980s with games like Rogue, because there was little space to store big worlds.
The most famous example is Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, which came out in 1996 and attempted to be almost as big as the British Isles. But Bethesda downsized for sequels, dropping from 16,000 sq km and 750,000 non-player characters to 24 sq km and 2700 NPCs on Morrowind, while Oblivion and Skyrim were 57 sq km and 27 sq km respectively, with about 1000 NPC each.
More recently, Borderlands used procedural generation for its loot, while Compulsion Games is employing the technique for We Happy Few, an England-set survival game that mashes up V for Vendetta and Brave New World.
The 1960s alternate-history setting initially seems utopian until you realize everyone is super high, wearing creepy masks and pissed you aren’t on the drug Joy, too. The hook is that the game’s environments are procedurally generated, so each time you die, you wake up in what amounts to a new small town with new townsfolk.
However, the game is still in alpha stage and while you can download it, it doesn’t yet feature cut scenes, persistent characters and other narrative content that will presumably be in the final version.
Which brings us back to No Man’s Sky and its own limited story and gameplay. There is some combat, against aliens and robots, as well as resource mining and management and a vague plotline about following mysterious directions toward the centre of the galaxy. But the game’s big problem is also its big feature — its size.
The reason why humans have never gone beyond the moon is it takes too long to get anywhere. That real-world problem is replicated here, with long stretches of not much happening, whether you’re exploring a planet on foot or trying to discover a new one on the other side of that distant star over there.
What exists now is undeniably beautiful and can be enjoyably meditative if you let it. “This maybe isn’t the game you imagined from those trailers,” creator Sean Murray blogged as the backlash built. “It’s a weird game, it’s a niche game and it’s a very, very chill game.”
It’s also a very, very repetitive game. But it is a game, which means it can be upgraded with DLC just like Destiny could in the wake of consumer complaints. Hello Games has said “No matter what feedback you gave us, you have been heard and we are listening carefully.” They’ve promised free updates that will include freighters and building bases among other enhancements. “This is a labour of love for us,” they wrote, “and it’s just the beginning.”
In other words, a randomly generated universe can only take you so far, but the makers of No Man’s Sky have realized it can be saved with some intelligent design.