No Man's Sky returns after 700 days of silence and disappearance - retrospective - Aiwan Net 07-29 report

Heaven knows how much Sean Murray resists interviews. In everyday life, he is definitely a glib and funny guy, but the moment he faces a reporter, he immediately seems far less at ease.

As the head of Hello Games, he once had to deal frequently with the media to drum up support for No Man's Sky; to meet others' expectations, he even exaggerated and made promises he knew could not be kept. Now, his resistance to the media is more a kind of lingering fear.

If he could, he would really like to hire a PR person to face those troublesome microphones, voice recorders, cameras and video camera lenses on his behalf - keyboards and monitor screens are the hardware that make him feel at ease. In essence, he feels he is just a programmer who is fairly skilled.

Sean Murray in a plaid shirt and jeans, dressed in the standard programmer's outfit

However, for an independent studio like Hello Games, hiring a dedicated PR person seems too extravagant and unnecessary. In this tiny team whose headcount can be counted on one hand, everyone may wear several hats: artists sometimes need to write game copy, and game testers also act as customer service to handle feedback. When miscellaneous tasks pile up beyond what they can handle, the company has only one principle: everything related to game development takes priority. This also explains why, after the release of No Man's Sky NEXT until now, Hello Games' official website has not been updated in time, and the latest entry is still last year's news about "Atlas Rises" - releasing this even more significant update has already mobilized all the company's energy.

The neglected Hello Games official website

Stuck in the mire

Not long after No Man's Sky launched in 2016, Murray and his team fell into the center of a public opinion vortex. Various gaming media gave up their continued praise of the game and mostly gave scores around the passing line; on Steam, voices demanding refunds were endless, and the number of active users on the platform was less than one hundred; social networks were full of criticism, and players flocked to Sean Murray's account to curse him, calling him a liar, a thief, a fool, and cursing him to be forever nailed to the pillar of shame in gaming history. Some busybodies even went near the company to take secret photos and spread rumors that Hello Games had "run off with the money" - such negative news was like pouring oil on the fire, and angry players chose to believe unconditionally that Hello Games was just an unscrupulous fraud gang that took their hard-earned money and walked away.

The lingering warmth of celebration when the final version of the game went to press still remained, yet not long after, the whole team fell into an ice cave

The "No Man's Sky" section of the famous American social site Reddit was once the world's largest online community themed around No Man's Sky, with 146,000 players. After the game's reputation hit rock bottom, the moderator directly shut down the section, because "keeping it open was meaningless. The board was filled all day with all kinds of disgusted emotions and complaining voices. People cursing Sean Murray, people cursing the game's production team, people cursing Sony - all of them."

Only the employees who spent every day with Murray knew what kind of person the boss really was. One software tester at the company evaluated the company and his own boss this way: "An awesome company, Sean is a good boss, and the team is great to work with." The company's only shortcoming was that "the shop is too far from us, and buying milk is not very convenient." As for Sony, he had quite a few complaints: "I'm putting it on record here: Sony ruined this game, and I hope the ASA can investigate this clearly."

In the eyes of employees, Murray was a very approachable boss

The ASA mentioned by the employee refers to the UK Advertising Standards Authority. Because the matter became so big that it even alarmed a government agency, the UK Advertising Standards Authority began investigating No Man's Sky on suspicion of false advertising. Although the final result determined that the game's advertising did not violate relevant regulations, no one cared - "having a reputation so bad that the government took notice" was the result players remembered.

Beneath great fame

In those extraordinary times, it was not without reason that employees vented their anger on Sony - if Sony had not vigorously hyped the game in its promotion at the time, pushing people's unrealistic expectations higher, and if Sony had not repeatedly rushed the game during development, making it go into battle hastily, No Man's Sky would not have fallen to the point of being reviled by everyone. Although Sony brought the game enormous fame, when facing the ensuing undeserved disasters, every member of Hello Games would rather not have had that original glory.

The malicious words online were not the worst of it. Some extreme players even sent death threat letters to the studio, threatening to plant bombs around the company. This forced the studio to frequently stay in contact with the police, and for a time everyone was on edge.

Many employees could not accept the huge fall from grace and the outside skepticism, and left one after another, including the game's lead designer Gareth Bourn. For a team whose morale was already at freezing point, this was yet another fatal blow.

Time goes back to E3 2014. No Man's Sky transformed from an unknown indie game into a major highlight of Sony's presentation, standing on equal footing with many AAA titles and even surpassing them - the game's avant-garde concept firmly captured the attention of the media and players, and the revealed promotional videos made people imagine endlessly and admire it greatly.

18 quintillion procedurally generated planets, every planet unique, a game that could not be finished in a lifetime... Based on romance and idealism, the idea fully struck a chord with the public. Beneath the intoxicating beautiful dream, the voices of doubt from calm observers were never mainstream.

When he first started making the game, Murray was not thinking about pleasing the market, only about fulfilling a dream of his own. "Actually, this idea had been lingering in my mind for a very, very long time."

"When I was little, I grew up on a ranch in the Australian outback. Australia is vast and sparsely populated, and in the outback it is even more desolate with no one around. If something happened to you and you needed help from the outside world, you would be told to stay where you were and light a campfire at an exact time each day, hoping someone would follow the smoke and find you."

This experience left an unforgettable deep impression on Murray. When the boy looked up at the starry sky and saw the heavens packed with stars, the romantic imagination of space exploration combined with the loneliness he truly felt, forming the original source of inspiration for No Man's Sky.

Little Murray as a child

In 2011, No Man's Sky began life as a few lines of code on Murray's computer. Murray fought alone for a year and made a tech demo that could use procedural generation to randomly create planets and star systems. Later, three core members joined him and expanded it into a game. It was precisely this unique and unusual idea that attracted Sony's attention. Sony decided to fund the project and provide it with a broad stage for exposure. Before this, not only Hello Games, but any independent game studio would not have dared imagine that an indie game could receive such high treatment.

The four founding members of Hello Games

However, Murray underestimated the difficulty of realizing the dream. In fact, before No Man's Sky, Hello Games had only made one little-known small game. An independent studio did not have sufficient manpower like large game publishers, nor did it have a rigorously planned project timetable, and development progress was always unsatisfactory. Yet the stage provided by Sony suddenly made this project famous. Players, media, including Sony... it seemed like someone came every day to ask about the game's release date, and Murray felt like he was riding a tiger and could not get off.

From 2011 to 2016, the average size of the game development team was 6 people, while developing a game of this scale usually requires at least 60 people. Add to that insufficient game development experience, and the development process was often in a chaotic stage of groping in the dark. As for when the game could be "completely done," Murray truly had no idea, but no outside party was willing to see the game delayed again and again, and the employees had been tense for too long and needed some explanation. Murray had to get the game out as soon as possible, even if the game was still quite far from what he had originally promised.

Manpower became a constraint in game development

Silence is not golden

Players hate being deceived most. Former promises turned into beautiful lies, wounding not only their wallets, but also hearts that had once leaped with anticipation. Besides players who could not hold back their anger and lashed out heavily, more people hoped the official side would step forward and give an explanation.

However, there was no explanation, no apology, and no statement. Sean Murray, surrounded so tightly by bad reviews that not even a drop of water could pass through, chose to remain silent. He did not understand marketing, and even less understood PR. His life had never experienced such a situation. Overnight, he went from the creator of a game awaited by millions to public enemy number one, and this left him at a loss.

The official silence was seen by players as a kind of neglect and contempt. "I've already got your money anyway, so do whatever you want next." Players were further enraged by imaginings like this, and the raging fire burned hotter and hotter, not subsiding even after three months.

Some also said that during those crazy and noisy days, Sean Murray did not remain completely silent. Two months after the game's release, Hello Games' official Twitter once posted a very brief sentence: "No Man's Sky was a mistake." Although this tweet was quickly deleted and the official side also said that someone had stolen the password and impersonated the official account, quite a few people suspected that this was done by Sean Murray. Of course, unless Murray one day chooses to open his heart, we will never know the truth of the matter.

Time is a good medicine. As long as it is long enough, it can certainly extinguish even a sky-high raging fire that once burned to a thousand zhang. The gaming world continued to bustle along, new games emerged endlessly, players were quickly drawn to other interesting games, and No Man's Sky was thus tossed aside. Murray disappeared from the public eye just like that. Everyone firmly believed: No Man's Sky was finished, and Hello Games was done for.

Too painful to look back on

Only when the noise finally dispersed did Murray feel a little sense of reality. The nightmare he had once experienced was so unreal, and time seemed to lose meaning: since when had he become the focus under the spotlight, and since when had he been shot to pieces?

In the two years after that, Murray did not accept any media interviews again. On the one hand, before producing tangible results, he truly did not know how to face the media; on the other hand, he had suffered at the hands of the media - to be precise, he had suffered because of his own lying in front of the media. Some media had seriously collected every promise he had publicly made and compared them one by one with the actual content in the game: multiplayer online system, not there; large space fleets and space battles between factions, also not there; complex crafting workshops, still not there... Whether it was to keep the promotional line consistent or to speak carelessly to satisfy the eager eyes of interviewers, lying is an unforgivable thing, and no reason can absolve oneself. If he had known this earlier, he would rather have faced every interview with "no comment."

Murray paid the price for his mistakes

This storm also taught Murray how formidable the internet is: "The internet is really good at exposing a person's weaknesses. If someone does something wrong, the whole internet can know immediately."

The past is too painful to look back on, and Murray is unwilling to recall that darkest period in 2016 again: "Those days were truly awful. I don't want to make any more comments. Online mobs really can destroy a person's life."

"I remember someone sent me a threat letter because in the promotional video at the time, when a person passed by, butterflies clearly fluttered past, but in the actual game there were none. I thought then: although you are chasing beautiful butterflies, when you wrote this letter to me, you had already become a villain."

Mending the fold after the sheep is lost

For the dream of his youth, for the game career he loved, and also out of responsibility, Murray and the studio did not choose to give up. Instead, they decided to withstand the pressure, redouble their efforts, continue improving No Man's Sky, prioritize meeting the needs of the players who had not yet given up, and repay them in this way.

"Looking back at my earlier life, I find that what I do now is the same as before. When I was a child, I had to move frequently and change schools; after I graduated and became an employee, I ran into terrible bosses... Whenever these things happened, I would bury myself in study or work and escape in that way. Now, I use burying myself in continuing to make games to find an outlet for myself. I ask my team to be undistracted and put all their energy into creating cool and creative things."

The development work afterward was even more intense than before the first version of the game came out. "I would even think: God, if I could be given a little more time, I would even be willing to trade away one of my arms!"

The updates were all free, and the game's additional revenue could only rely on new users joining. The studio fell into situations of funding shortages several times, but they still gritted their teeth and persisted.

One year after the game's release, the studio quietly launched a major free update, "Atlas Rises." With the arrival of this version, the game fixed a large number of bugs and added a space combat system and improved trading and economic systems.

This update was a turning point. The game's reputation began to shift, and the overall player rating on Steam changed from "Mostly Negative" to "Mostly Positive," with the positive rating even reaching over 70%. Data showed that one million players had played this updated version, with an average playtime of 45 hours.

This was a very good start. Now, two years after the game's release, No Man's Sky NEXT has arrived and simultaneously launched on the Xbox One platform. Although many elements have been added, the game's original spirit and temperament have not changed - it is still related to meditation and calm, full of Eastern Zen. The threats are still those harsh external survival conditions, not some alien enemies or other players. There is no shooting, and no conquest. In the vast universe, you are still a tiny point, but the new game allows you to travel together with companions. Although the four of you combined are still no more than a speck of dust in the universe, at least your heart is no longer so cold and unsupported.

No Man's Sky NEXT is still cold, yet it is also healing

When the No Man's Sky NEXT trailer came out, it received enthusiastic responses from quite a few players, which made Murray very happy. "This is why you make games. Although a group of angry mobs is blocking your way, don't forget that behind you there is also a large group of people silently supporting you. I want to communicate with them and make something for them."

Looking back on these two years, Murray admits that life was not exactly good: "It was too bitter and too hard. Our lives now have a better balance, and I hope the future will be better too." All of this was worth it. When he recalls again the child under the Australian starry sky, and thinks of those players who never left and always supported him, he can finally let go and smile.

The new cover foretells the four-player team multiplayer gameplay, and also seems to commemorate the team members walking together side by side.