Posted in: Games, Movies, Video Games | Tagged: entertainment, games, Hello Games, No Man's Sky, Sean Murray, video games

So What Do You Do In No Man's Sky? We Sort Of Have An Answer Now

The biggest, sometimes only question, surrounding the ludicrously ambitious No Man's Sky is "What do you do?" Obviously you are flying around the universe, getting new ships and exploring. The promotional material has already suggested as much.

But what do you actually 'do'? What is the core loop of the game? What will keep people coming back. That is what is really meant by the question.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Hello Games director Sean Murray, answered the question as best he could. There seems to be some apprehension to divulge too much to begin, as if under instruction, but ends up giving a lengthy answer full of hints. I've edited parts of the answer out, but I'd go ahead the full interview if this doesn't satisfy you. It's interesting stuff.

There's the answer I want to give, and then there's the one I can't really say.

So, the one I want to give is to say it's open ended, and players should be able to play a game lots of different ways. I have begun to find games quite predictable. Especially when I look at the stuff at E3, or something like that. I will be sort of… maybe not excited, but I know I will play those games and I will enjoy them.

And this makes me sound very jaded but I'm not. I do absolutely love games. But… it's very predictable. I know when I see a screenshot exactly what the game is going to play like, probably how long it's going to be, and how it's going to finish.

So, we wanted to be a bit more open ended than that. And that isn't a new thing. If you look at PC and a lot of the games that are on Early Access right now, they are more and more that type of open ended thing. And it's not niche; it's like Minecraft and DayZ and Rust. And none of them really work – or sound like they work – on paper. They don't have a classic motivation, or whatever. And I like that. I want to avoid having the game say, 'One of three space stations destroyed!', or having a trophy pop up [when you destroy all three].

That's the answer that I want to give… But then there's the answer I have to give, just because you have to talk about the game and write about it and convey it. So there is a core game mode there. There's the player's journey which, if they play it linearly and go from the outer edge of the galaxy to the centre of the galaxy, that's their start and end of the game kind of thing.

And as they go, they're upgrading their ship, they're upgrading their weapons, they're upgrading their suit. And they need to do that because they're very vulnerable, they will be attacked by AI, potentially – very rarely – other players, things like that, if they cross paths with them. There's space combat, there's combat on the ground, there's trading if you want to do that, mining resources and stuff, there's exploring if you want to do that.

There's all those things in a core loop. Most of them give you money – which we call Units – and you can use that money to upgrade your ship. And you need to do that to be able to travel further. As you get closer to the centre of the galaxy you will find it is more dangerous – just like in any game – and you will find that the best ships are only available towards the centre of the galaxy. Or are much more common at least. And the best weapons, best suit upgrades, and resources that are worth far more. And freighters that you can attack are worth far more closer to the centre because they're trading those resources.

To me, this is sounding a little bit like Elite: Dangerous, which is by no means a bad thing. A mass audience might be turned off that there is no real goal and that you have to explore this stuff on your own, but that is what endears me to space sims. As of right now, No Man's Sky appears to be the game I want it to be. I'll be interested to see if it's what other gamers want when it comes out.

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