No Man's Lie

Is the hype for video games superseding the actual content of the game, or are developers lying to your face. No Man's Sky is the newest game to offer promises it did not keep.

An Infinite Universe

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No Man’s Sky is an exploration and survival game that allows it’s users to transverse a universe that GamesRant.com estimated would take about 5 billion years to explore in full. A game with seemingly endless boundaries would make any gamer shiver. Like Minecraft, users get to harvest resources and collect data on species of plants and animals that exist on all of these algorithm planets. That means endless opportunities to explore a universe where no man has gone before. Users are also able to share this data with the entire community, like a shared pokedex, pooling information from all across the universe.

Where'd They Go?

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IGN reports the Streamspy statistics that there has been a 90 percent drop off of gamers who were playing at the same time on No Man’s Sky. A drop off is expected amongst new games with a big hype, but it’s not as expected within such a short amount of time. The Division had an eighty-one percent drop off after two months. That means the number of players playing at one time dropped from 212,000 to about 20,000 players in two weeks. That is an extreme that was unexpected. But why have so many players left the game behind so soon?

Misconception vs Reality?

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At E3 2015, a demo of the game is shown where Sean Murray states that you could join into space battles between two factions at war. In the actual game, every faction is there for you to receive bonuses from, but none of them are at war, let alone forcing you to choose sides. This was a big disappointment to gamers who felt the game would allow you the option to choose between these factions and help to mold the universe you were playing within. Instead, you might fight against space pirates who are attacking a faction. Sean Murray might have misspoken during the presentation, or was he manipulating gamers. Murray also talked of fleets of large ships doing battle, and warping into space right in front of you. It seems that they embellished this fact, as that is only been seen in trailers and stage demos.

Tedious Gameplay

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So far players have complained about the tedious nature of No Man’s Sky. A majority of the game plays like that of Minecraft, with the player going from planet to planet looking for resources and documenting the species that live there. You will find traders, or in some cases the same trader on four different ships. You will spend a lot of time refueling your ship and your life support. Species of animals also seem to have no bearing on the ecosystem around them. In a test level played by Sean Murray, you can see a giant monster approach and interact with the physics around it. The trees sway and other animals run. The game’s graphics looked unreal. During actual gameplay, most animals are seen just aimlessly walking in a direction unless the user interacts with them. The game’s physics do not look anywhere near what they did in the lead up to release. It even seems as if the idea of uninhabitable wasteland planets has since been another lie that was promised. It seems as if the demo presentations of No Man’s Sky have left a lot to be desired.

No Multiplayer

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There has also been a conspiracy going around stating that No Man’s Sky was supposed to feature a multiplayer system that just is not there. Murray has been quoted in multiple interviews as stating that there will be ways to play No Man’s Sky with friends. He has talked about sharing your discoveries but has vaguely mentioned that users might run into friends along the way, with the possibility being very small. This can be heard clearly in his interview with Jeff Cork of Game Informer.

Trend Repeating

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In recent years, there have been other examples of game developers lying to their audience. Bioshock Infinite was considered a great game, but it went through many incarnations before the final product was released. Gamers were less than thrilled to see that the game they had been shown for two years leading up to the release, had changed drastically from what they expected. Another big release, Destiny (made by the same company that released the Halo series) failed to live up to the hype it had received. Gamers ultimately felt that Destiny was repetitive and had not offered them the things that developers had promised. Bungie differs from Hello Games in that they are a triple-A game designer with plenty of experience building large content games.

Who's to Blame?

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With Gamer’s referring to Sean Murray as a liar, claiming that Hello Games charged them 60 dollars for an unfinished game, Murray has since stated that future updates will allow for more to do, and it will come at no extra cost. Youtube has been circulating videos of Sean Murray promising game features that are not there. Could it be that impatience has gotten the best of the gaming community. With free updates coming for the game, could it be that Murray was telling a modified version of the truth in hopes of keeping the interest of those who had waited so long for the game’s release. Who do we blame for the actual failure of these games to live up to the hype that’s created?