No Man’s Sky: “It Wasn’t Deep,” Says Sean Murray

[dar0ck]

No Man’s Sky is back in the spotlight but the beginning was hard. In fact, many things went wrong including the game not being deep enough. Developers showed and promised features that were never going to make it to the game at launch. As a result, the game was empty, Sean Murray said.

Speaking with IGN, creator Sean Murray stated that the only thing they got right was the sense of emptiness, a sci-fi emptiness that puts emphasis on the vastness of the universe. However, lack of gameplay mechanics and repetitive quests in No Man’s Sky dented everything Sean Murray and Hello Games wanted to accomplish.

When we launched, Hello Games was 15 people. The average team size was six people. It was this huge, broad game. And it delivered on a thing that I always wanted, which was this feeling of loneliness, which sounds strange I know, but a kind of a science fiction loneliness. You, out in the world, amongst the vastness of the universe.

And along the development, lots of things changed about the game, but that was one thing that stayed the same – when I first sat down to write the first lines of code, that was the emotion that I was going for. I’m super proud of that, but because it was such a small team, and because it was so weirdly innovative and ambitious, you know, it wasn’t as deep in a whole bunch of areas.

No Man’s Sky was a marketing disaster; it was initially accused of false marketing but Sean Murray explained what happened. The development team talked about the game too early, features that are not ready, and the unscripted interviews caused them to lose a lot of followers post-release.

However, the community came back after major changes were made to the game. There are so many aspects that still need improvements but overall, it is safe to say No Man’s Sky is on the right path.

The future of the game remains uncertain and who’s to say Sean Murray team won’t make the same mistakes again? But some notable additions are planned for No Man’s Sky, hopefully, those will boost the audience even future to save the future of NMS and Hello Games.