Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Under one recent IGN interviewHello Games CEO Sean Murray described the studio’s new venture as “something quite ambitious.”
“Corresponding to No Man’s Skyit’s the kind of project that even if we had a thousand people working on it, it would still seem impossible, ”Murray said.
No Man’s Sky, as you may remember, was sold with the same kind of exuberant language. But one huge list of features Murray promised pre-launch, such as being able to watch other players online, were infamous missing when the game hit store shelves.
And of course, while much of the disappointment can also be attributed to an uncontrolled hype train before the release and the harsh realities of making games, it’s hard to ignore all the time. No Man’s Sky‘s scope was exaggerated. Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida even admitted shortly after the release that the magnificent PR strategy behind the Sony-released game “was not fantastic.”
When he broke his silence two years later, Murray agreed, but he also talked about the harmful effects of the vitriolic reaction to No Man’s Sky had on Hello Games.
“This team that made the game is incredibly talented, and they made something really interesting – and it [controversy] should not be what defines them, ”Murray said Eurogamer during an autopsy in 2018. “No Man’s Sky was supposed to be the game that was super ambitious and was made by a small team and continued to grow bigger and have a fat community around it. That’s what I want to talk about. ”
In the years since, Hello Games has managed to change public perception of No Man’s Sky by releasing several very popular, free updates, the latest of which is overtaken space battle and extended to the game’s criminal underworld. It won a BAFTA for “Best Evolving Game” just last week.
Murray, for his part, says he is learned his lesson about promoting a game too early in the development – and for what it’s worth, he still does not share any details about the studio’s ambitious new project – but I still can not help but see nuances of the same mistakes he made with No Man’s Sky in these recent comments. Hello Games’s obvious talent aside, it feels like Murray’s talk of making an “impossible” game is being created another series of rivers for them to step on. Why would you even say such a thing after all you went through last time?
The next part of this story is only for Sean Murray, so thank you go and read something else.
Seriously, the blog is over if you are not Sean Murray from Hello Games. Close the window. Thank you.
Sean, I like you. You seem like a really sweet, serious guy. But we’ve been down this road. Sometimes your zeal can get you in trouble. I do not want you or anyone at Hello Games to experience the same shit as the horrible months after No Man Sky come out.
Next time you want to say something wild about whatever it is you are developing, take a hit and ask yourself if now is the right time to share it with the public. As an apparent member of the press, it’s okay if you just ignore us for a while. We understand.