Sean Murray recently sat down with IGN for an interview about the present, past and future of No Man’s Sky. I was eager to find out what he had to say after so much hullabaloo about what happened when the game first launched and the immediate backlash which followed.
As I read the interview, I could tell that Murray wasn’t trying to backpedal or even make excuses for anything. On the contrary, I believe the man explained that as a developer, as a creative, it’s hard to dull the blade of your excitement when speaking about all that something can be. Because the potential of anything is bolstered by the dreams of those involved, and in speaking about what they wanted to create, they overpromised.
This happens often with creatives because we can see so many things that others would not since the vision is our own. That’s fine, for sure, but to overpromise then underdeliver, is a hallmark mistake amongst business owners. This is why great business owners aren’t always creatives, and they usually work with the creatives in fostering the vision, in scope and meaning. Unlike Kanye West, we all can’t perform the role of our own publicist.
No Man’s Sky NEXT is as close to the real vision that Hello Games intended as could be, in my estimation. And as close as it is, I think it's more than good enough. Something switched in my head as I ran across this alien planet looking for resources, watching the skies glow and building things to help me get off-world. Something I couldn't really articulate until now: I began to believe in the power of my own imagination once again.
Not that I had really let go of my thoughts, but I really saw this vast universe that Hello Games unveiled as a metaphor for my own existence...for all existence. For the dream of humanity and the fight against real death. It was telling me that I'm so small and so fragile and that the world is unforgiving, but even in all of this, I am at the center of my own story. I'm building my own world just as I'm excavating on this very fake one. I knew that I am, within this very act of questioning how all of life works, becoming greater. And I wanted to explore that.
I think I have always been exploring. No Man's Sky just illuminated something that had been flowering on the surface and forced me to look at it and watch it bloom. It's still germinating, and I don't know what it will turn into. I don't think it really matters in the end, because whatever it is it will exist because of what I do now.