Hello Games’ big game, No Man’s Sky, has the trajectory that has been followed by only a very few games. Its hype was huge, its launch was a disappointment, and for over three years, its fans demanded special exceptions for refunds on Steams and later paid for a full-size thank you billboard. This is probably one of the most remarkable comebacks in videogame history.
The developer of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games, recently launched The Last Campfire. It offers a very different and smaller sort of gaming experience. However, the studio confirmed that they won’t stick to that gaming style anymore.
In fact, Sean Murray, one of the founders of Hello Games, told Polygon that they currently have another “huge, ambitious game like No Man’s Sky” brewing in their studio. Although he didn’t elaborate on the game details, he instead shared the ideas he learned from the launch of No Man’s Sky. In the end, he was proud to say he didn’t really regret the path that the game took.
Murray said that every Indie game developer will have to face a difficult choice, like how it was hard for him to actually know what’s the right path for No Man’s Sky at that time of its launch. He described his interest and excitement on building the game as being in a rocket ship, launched towards the sun while building the rocket on his way up.
He then added, “Where we’ve ended up with the game (No Man’s Sky), where we have hundreds of millions of hours played and a really happy community and all of that kind of thing, you know, I’m okay with that deal that we did, right?”
The deal he’s talking about is presumably a sort of reference to Hello Games’ marketing partnership with Sony. This partnership was what let to the game being included in Sony’s presentation at E3.
Being publicized by Sony made No Man’s Sky a source of high expectations. However, it also caused some dismay among fans when the game seemed like it’s become exclusive in PlayStation 4. Fortunately, a few days after its PS4 release, the PC version came out next.
However, despite Murray’s unregretful attitude towards No Man’s Sky’s trajectory, he also said he doesn’t wanna go down that exact same road anymore. According to him, that process was extremely hard for the staff of Hello Games and he wouldn’t want to put anyone on that same experience again.
Fans can probably hold on to this. Based on No Man’s Sky’s success, seeing as it retain its regular appearance on Steam’s Top 100 List, it seems like Hello Games already learned a lesson or two. This can be deduced as them having the stability and experience to never repeat their past downfall.
Murray, however, said he’s not exactly sure how to handle this next ‘huge and ambitious game.’ This is after Hello Games surprisingly launched its latest release, The Last Campfire, last week on the Epic Games Store.
He also said that as he looked back, he’s not so sure if every press opportunity and things of this sort that they grabbed before is truly super important to the outcome of their game. In fact, in 2016, even the Sony Worldwide Studios president, Shuhei Yoshida, was also skeptical of Hello Games’ approach. He actually said that their PR strategy is not great at all.
