What We Learned From No Mans Sky
2/15/2018
No Man's Sky was one of the games that I got really excited for. In December 2013, the game was revealed to the public at the VGX Awards. It was then presented during the Electronic Entertainment Expo(E3) of 2014 as a centre-stage event. It was the first independant game to be presented centre-stage.
Obviously, a lot of fan-fare followed the game from that point. That fanfare continued until the game was finally released in August of 2016. At that point the fan-fare became disgruntled grunting. If you were following along, you might have pondered over why this occurred. We were following along with allt he fans, so we are well aware of why it happened.
First, it became apparent fairly quickly that what we were shown during those E3 and other promotional events, was a pre-planned and scripted environment. However, fans had been lead to believe that what they saw would be the actual gameplay. But that wasn't really what caused the degradation of their public image. At no point during the promotion of the game, was it ever made known that the game would be released in an incomplete state. The fan base was brought to believe that when they bought the game, it would be the completed game, with no features missing. The public expected a completed game, but that wasn't what they recieved. In the time since the game was released, its become obvious that No Man's Sky was just another pre-release game. What you have to remember is that during the entire time that Hello Games was promoting No Man's Sky, the world was reeling from a slew of early release games that failed. The world opinion of early release during that time was extremely low. I believe that Hello Games wanted to avoid indicating that No Man's Sky was an early release. I think they were afraid that if they did, the game wouldn't have gotten as much attention as it did. That probably would have been the case. The game woudln't have garnered as much attention if it was billed as an early release. I believe the company would have struggled to complete the game if they had been honest about the game's status. But does that justify them to misleading the public into thinking they'd be buying a completed game? We, here at CupCode Gamers, feel that the honesty of a company is far more important than improving potential revenue. Because of this, we have enacted policy 12, "Honesty Over Profit". We will strive to maintain honesty in all our dealings, even if we know that such honesty will negatively impact our ability to profit. I want to point out that what I've said here is based upon my own observations of what occurred. I'm not saying that Hello Games intentionally did anything wrong, or implying that they intentionally misrepresented their game. I am merely providing you my view of the events. Let me finish by saying that No Man's Sky is an excellent game. I've spent a great deal of time playing it and exploring the universe within it. I also continue to be impressed by the content within each and every update they send out. Don't let my comments above alter your view of the game, or the developer.