By the estimates of its creators at Hello Games, “No Man’s Sky” has more than 18 quintillion planets that players can fly their starships to, land on, and hang out at. That is kind of a theoretical prospect, as it’s far more planets than the couple million people who bought the game could possibly ever visit.
For perspective, here’s what 18 quintillion looks like written numerically: 18,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s the number 18 followed by 18 zeros, a number that, by the way, is so big that the standard Windows 10 calculator won’t display it because it refuses to go past 16 digits. If 5 million people buy the game, they’d each have to visit 3.6 trillion planets in order to cover all of them.
I’ve played “No Man’s Sky” for something approaching 50 hours — which is more time than most players will ever spend with it. And I’ve hit about 70 planets.
The Hello Games team didn’t craft all these planets by hand. The universe of “No Man’s Sky” is procedurally generated. What that means is its creators built a computer algorithm that did the work for them — they set some broad parameters and drew a bunch of visual assets, like plant components and animal bodies, legs and heads, and the game spit out a whole bunch of random combinations.
OK, so we have this cool universe you can fly around in at will. Now what?
Uh oh.
The games industry often sells its products on the promise of “player choice” — like, “look at all the cool things you can do in this game!” For open games like “No Man’s Sky,” where you can go where you want at will within the game world, there’s typically a story being told at the heart of it to give you a reason for being there and guide you through all those cool things you can do. The plot of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” for example, will make you travel all the way around its world so you will have an idea of how big it is and what’s around so once the story ends you know where the other stuff to do is.
“No Man’s Sky” doesn’t have anything like that. It opens with you sitting on one of those randomly generated planets next to a crashed ship. You have to repair it, by collecting minerals and stuff with a handheld mining laser, so you can fly away and see other randomly generated planets and meet some aliens and otherwise do whatever you want.
There is a very sparse attempt at a story-based skeleton, but it’s pretty calcium-deprived. Some entity called Atlas — which may or may not be an ancient god who created the galaxy you’re sauntering through — says that “your destiny lies in the Beyond.” A couple aliens named Nada and Polo use you to collect data on the galaxy and its inhabitants. And you’re also, ostensibly, supposed to travel to the center of the universe.
But there’s no point to these things either. Because “No Man’s Sky” is really just a game about hanging out, mining stuff, upgrading your equipment, trying to find a better spaceship than the one you have. There’s no actual hook, just things you can do. But not that many things you can do, and there’s certainly no sense of adventure. This isn’t “Grand Theft Auto,” where crazy stuff can happen just by making your in-game avatar walk down a street.
Nothing ever really happens in “No Man’s Sky.” Once you’ve seen three or four planets, you’ve probably seen just about everything the rest 18 quintillion planets have to offer.
The more you play from there, the emptier and more pointless it all feels. I’m tempted to suggest there never was any point to “No Man’s Sky” — but I can’t possibly know that for sure. But what I do know is that the game we’ve been sold is not actually a game, but rather a $60 technical demonstration. You’re supposed to feel some kind of awe at the technical achievement.
But with art, that only matters insofar as it facilitates something else. What Hello Games did in constructing the universe of “No Man’s Sky” doesn’t facilitate anything. Which is weird, because in most of the realm of creative entertainment behind every big technical achievement you’ll find a specific problem that needed solving. Weta Digital’s and Andy Serkis‘ work bringing Gollum to life in Peter Jackson‘s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, for example, solved the problem of how to depict that character in a live-action film.
I don’t know what exactly inspired the procedural generation of 18 quintillion planets in a video game — but based on what it’s like to actually play “No Man’s Sky,” it’s difficult to imagine there was any kind of creative vision beyond “wouldn’t it be cool if we made this?”
The technical achievement is the point, as it so often is in an industry that prides itself on putting the cart before the horse. It’s how Microsoft ends up pushing its Kinect motion control camera hard for five years despite nobody having any idea how to make a game that uses it effectively. They figured the novelty of the thing would be enough to tide everyone over until some enterprising company figured it out.
“No Man’s Sky,” likewise, banks on the assumption that the novelty of an endless universe to fly a spaceship around in is good enough to keep you around while Hello Games figures out how to actually build a game on it.
Right now, though, “No Man’s Sky” feels like a cart invented by people who live in a world without horses.
20 Most Disappointing Video Games of All Time (Photos)
One of the games industry's most enduring traditions is promising much and delivering much less. But some releases miss the mark more than others, and this is the list of games that missed hardest.
While "No Man's Sky" is certainly a contender for this list, by the way, it's too fresh to include right now.
20. "Mass Effect 3" (2012)
The culmination of a trilogy in which players were constantly told that every choice they made mattered, but in the end it turned out very few actually did. Adding insult to injury, the ending ran counter, thematically, to everything we understood about the series to that point. It was a soul-crushing experience.
19. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" (2010)
After "Modern Warfare 2" in 2009, developer Infinity Ward lost a ton of longtime staff when the studio's heads became embroiled in a legal battle with publisher Activision over unpaid royalties on the game. "Modern Warfare 3," perhaps understandably, came out really lackluster, ruining the conclusion of what had been a great series within the "Call of Duty" franchise.
18. "SimCity" (2013)
It was so exciting to get another SimCity game -- until it was revealed that for some inexplicable reason you'd have to be connected online to play. And then the game came out and nobody could connect.
17. "Aliens: Colonial Marines" (2013)
Finally, like, a legit Aliens game, we thought and were promised. Except actually it was just a totally unremarkable shooter made without a modicum of creativity.
16. "Fallout 4" (2015)
A classic example of the games industry's inability to focus and insistence on constant late-stage reshuffling. It's a totally confused mess, with none of the charisma of previous "Fallout" games.
15. "Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One" (2011)
The main games in the series weren't selling well, so Sony and Insomniac Games decided to shake up the formula by putting together a totally bland, new and not-fun "Ratchet & Clank" built around playing with friends. It turned out the shift in philosophy robbed the property of most of its appeal.
14. "Too Human" (2006)
One of those games that took forever to make but promised a transcendent gaming experience at the end of the tunnel. As usual, the final experience wasn't transcendent so much as it was just bad.
13. "Duke Nukem Forever" (2011)
"DNF" was in production for what felt like centuries, and saw the light of day only when Gearbox Software purchased the "Duke Nukem" property and funded it to completion. And, as usual, a game in development for a decade turned out to be pretty bad, and fans who'd been waiting half their lives for it were pretty sad.
12. "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" (2006)
Bethesda is known for producing games that are open and allow players to go whatever they want and do whatever they want. A decade ago this was an enticing prospect, and "Oblivion" really kicked off the current wave of that kind of game. Unfortunately, all the stuff that there is to do in "Oblivion" is pretty boring and everywhere you can go looks the same as everywhere else.
11. "Hellgate: London" (2007)
A great example of a video game going with a really interesting and appealing Hollywood-esque marketing campaign that bore very little resemblance to the final product.
10. "Far Cry 3" (2012)
"Far Cry 2" was about how everything is bad, calling out racism and imperialism in particular with a big ole "Heart of Darkness" reference at the end. "Far Cry 3" was about how much fun racism and imperialism are.
9. "Doom 3" (2004)
The definition of a game that has no identity. Thought it could be a run-and-gun shooter and a horror game at the same time, but the result is just an incredibly aggravating experience and a badly told story. What was supposed to bring "Doom" into the modern age was instead just a total pain.
8. "Superman 64" (1999)
The Nintendo 64 offered what felt like a golden era there for a minute, with "Superman 64" to be a crowning achievement a few years into the console's life cycle. But it was only an achievement in jankiness.
7. "E.T." (1982)
One of the earliest examples of a cheap, movie license money grab, the E.T. game was a total disaster -- but it would set the standard for movie tie-in games to come.
6. "Half-Life: Opposing Force" (1999?)
This "'Half-Life' from a different perspective" game made a lot of standard video game sequel mistakes. There's always this pressure to add more stuff -- enemies, weapons, story, etc. But "Opposing Force," despite occurring at the same time and place as "Half-Life," had so much new stuff that it felt completely removed from it.
5. "Dragon Age: Inquisition" (2014)
After the rushed "Dragon Age 2," which included a lot of great ideas for how to tell a story in a game, BioWare course corrected with "Inquisition" by abandoning every single one of those good ideas in favor of building a game that's all about monotonous busywork and not at all about telling a story.
4. "Shenmue" (2000)
Yu Suzuki spent more than half a decade bringing this cult role-playing game to the Sega Dreamcast, building up hype every step of the way. Unfortunately, it's one of the most boring games I've ever played.
3. "Rise of Nightmares" (2011)
We'll probably eventually look back on motion-controlled gaming as a really dark and wasted period (we're already getting there now). "Rise of Nightmares," a zombie horror game that you'd play by waving your arms and kicking the air in front of Xbox 360's Kinect camera, should be the poster child for the industry's complete inability to figure out what to do with motion controls.
2. "Assassin's Creed 2" (2009)
This game marked the moment when publisher Ubisoft decided it would turn the only major historical action franchise in gaming into a generic boring activities simulator. It didn't fix the problems players had with the first game -- instead just adding new, more irritating ones. And, ultimately, setting the standard for what just about every other Ubisoft game has turned into at this point.
1. "Spore" (2008)
This EA sim promised to chart the evolution of a species that players would create, from a single-celled organism to space travel -- but in a really awkward and fundamentally uninteresting way. "Spore" was, from a certain point of view, exactly what its creators promised, but it turned out that what was promised was way less cool than it sounded.
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A lot of fans found ”No Man’s Sky“ lackluster, but that’s just the latest in a long line of letdowns
One of the games industry's most enduring traditions is promising much and delivering much less. But some releases miss the mark more than others, and this is the list of games that missed hardest.
While "No Man's Sky" is certainly a contender for this list, by the way, it's too fresh to include right now.
