6 Reasons Why No Man’s Sky Might Be The Most Important Game Ever Made

Disclaimer: The opinions herein are those of the author and do not represent the opinions of We Got This Covered as a whole. Excitement for No Man’s Sky is at fever pitch as the game gears up for its worldwide launch today. The verdict from the press so far is good, and early adopters are streaming the game live, lifting the veil on a title that has been stepped in mystique. Now that we’re all getting a better look at what No Man’s Sky is about, one thing is clear: its formula for procedural generation truly works. Yes, every planet is different and there are an infinite number in total. Well, not quite infinite. The game caps it at 18 quintillion, give or take a few million. It’ll take 500 billion years to discover every single one, and at a $50 asking price, it represents pretty good value. So, there’s a surplus of stuff to see, but what’s surprising is how it plays: No Man’s Sky is as much a game of survival as it is of exploration and demands that you harvest resources for fuel and energy in your quest to reach the centre of the universe. I can’t think of another game that has generated so much buzz throughout the entertainment industry at large. Is it the biggest launch ever? Perhaps, and for an indie title, that’s pretty cool. More importantly, it represents a herculean leap forward in what's possible in our medium. And so, with that in mind, here are 6 reasons that I think No Man's Sky will be a watershed moment in the history of video gaming. 1) The Procedural Generation Works Let’s be clear: No Man’s Sky is a feat of technical engineering the likes of which I’ve never seen. The fact that its mechanism for procedural generation works at all - and works so well - is cause for celebration. They say it takes 30 year for an industry to mature: well, games have been around 45 years and this is the evolution we need. The way Hello Games procedurally generates planets on-the- fly (and masks loading times, too) is remarkable. None of the 18 quintillion planets are stored on the disc or in the cloud. Instead, they’re made up by the game as it goes along. Every speck of fauna and flora has hundreds of possible variants, and within those variants, mutations naturally evolve. As Sean Murray said in a 2014 interview, “if you build a cat, you also get a lion and a tiger and a panther and things that you’ve never seen - kind of mutations beyond that.” Want a better idea of how it works? Keep reading.... 2) No Man’s Sky Marries A Distinctive Art Style With Complex Math Minecraft has done procedural generation in the past, but No Man’s Sky takes it to an entirely new level, balancing delicate mathematics with a distinctive art style. Where Minecraft is a series of rather colourless blocks, No Man’s Sky makes an entire universe look vibrant. Creating something this beautiful and stretching it to such an expanse is a tall order, and yet somehow the art and the algorithm work together. 3) It Redefines Impossible Beyond its aesthetic merits, the algorithm also works hand in hand with the way the game plays. Most procedurally generated games separate gameplay into different components. The rules are different for each component. There might be one for monsters, another for harvesting and so forth. The rules are different for each, and thus, form a web of interconnecting - but separate - threads. In No Man’s Sky, everything works like a pyramid: one system determines another set of rules, which determines another, and another, and so forth. The gameplay builds upon itself naturally, ensuring greater variation. If that sounds complicated, it is - but the net result is a richer level of variety. 4) Nothing Happens At Random Bear with me, because I'm heading into Hawkins territory here. No Man’s Sky relies on a deterministic system. In layman’s terms, that means that nothing happens at random. According to Wikipedia, “a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system. A deterministic model will thus always produce the same output from a given starting condition or initial state.” That means you can visit a planet, explore it to death, and return hours later to find the same fauna and flora in place. It’s all there, as if it’s always been there. But how is it possible to have 18 quintillion planets, with none of it saved anywhere, and yet have it in place when you return to it hours later? It’s the math at work. To paraphrase the tech website MakeUseOf.com, the system ensures that at a particular point in space/time, the game will produce the same result irrespective of the person making the request, or when it’s made. Mind. Blown. 5) It’s The Work Of A Tiny Studio No Man’s Sky is a labour of love for Hello Games, a small dev house based in Guildford, England. The studio is comprised of roughly 20 staff and they’ve pulled off the biggest game ever: no small feat when you consider that the Assassin’s Creed franchise pulls in 400+ staff members. What No Man’s Sky really proves is that insurmountable odds produce remarkable engineering solutions. Hello Games waned to build a space epic but couldn’t employ the manpower to build every blade of grass. So they devised a formula that would do it for them. The upshot is that there’s a surprise waiting around every corner - for the developers included. In an industry that has aped films and books by presenting carefully crafted locations and narratives, No Man’s Sky uses technology to deliver an experience no film and no book could ever match. Added to that, it looks fantastic, too - a world rich with colour and personality that could only exist in this medium. It’s made Hollywood sit up and notice, arresting the attention of the world. Why? Because it’s a monumental feat of engineering. If you’re not impressed watching No Man’s Sky in action, you don’t have a pulse. This game sets a new market for the medium going forward. 6) It’s Being Supported As All Games Should When No Man’s Sky went gold, Twitter assumed the team were on holiday. Quite the opposite - Hello Games immediately set about putting together an extensive patch that would correct balancing issues in time for its 10 August release. This is a labour of love, and Hello Games is supporting it every step of the way. Going forward the team will continue to release with free updates well into its life-cycle. You can expect large-scale additions like a new base building mechanic, a la Fallout 4, adding another dimension to an already richly involved game. Patches and add-ons of this nature are practically unheard of and few AAA teams would dream of going to this extra effort, but Hello Games is approaching the release as any studio should: with care, passion and a real appreciation for the support of their fan-base. While No Man’s Sky might not be perfect - and never will - that’s fine. The quest for perfection never produces true art, and it’s a staggering achievement as it stands. I'm hugely excited to be able to write about a game that breaks so much ground, and might conceivably have changed the industry for good.