Which isn’t to say that a project like this, with so many variables involved, hasn’t thrown up its fair share of strange bugs and glitches. “If you introduce a new AI behaviour for creatures, then suddenly that affects fish, birds and crazy squid creatures,” Murray explains. “It affects the ways fireflies work, and you find it also affects the way ships fly in space. It has this massive knock-on [effect]. If a lot of systems are sharing the same simple components, then the work that you do is kind of magnified as well. You can get yourself into horrible situations and horrible problems, but what we’re trying to do is to actually simplify the process in as many ways as possible.”
These problems might range from birds being found underground to the discovery of “some sort of cow animal trapped in a hole”, and yet scenarios naturally occur during testing that invite the three coders to attempt to reverse engineer them – to dig into the code and to create systems “that result in those scenarios happening in an emergent way”. Murray explains how he accidentally dropped a fish onto the shore of one planet and watched as birds began to flock around it. Unfortunately, the birds happened to pass over a large group of carnivorous plants, and a feathery bloodbath promptly ensued. As much as Hello Games is training its game to behave in certain ways, No Man’s Sky’s procedural universe also teaches its coders something new every day.
It is, Murray explains, all about creating individual stories for players; stories they can share with others. In that respect, he likens it to Dean Hall’s celebrated Arma II mod, DayZ. “I don’t think we’re similar to it, but it’s a good example of a game that delivers experiences that are unique, but when you experience them, they’re [also] very representative of what you might see in a zombie comic book or movie or TV show. The experience you have when you describe it out loud sounds like that kind of scenario. But it is emergent. And that’s the key to what we’re trying to do for science-fiction stories.”
Stories won’t be the only thing you’ll share with other players: while No Man’s Sky is predominantly a singleplayer game, it’s a universe you won’t be charting alone. You and all other players will start at its very edges, using planets as stepping stones as you steadily work your way inwards. There’s a reason for heading towards the centre of the universe, although Murray isn’t yet prepared to say what that might be. Again, he insists this isn’t about being wilfully secretive, but about deliberately keeping players asking and wondering.
Despite an element of interaction, No Man’s Sky is in no way a traditional multiplayer experience. “It would really hurt the [game] to have my most hated thing in the world: lobbies. And, ‘Oh, come and join me on my planet – it’s only 7,000 light years away,’ or whatever. We didn’t want to have that. But we still want people to really feel that they are playing together and that they are part of a community.”
To this end, certain significant things you do in that world will be persistent across everyone’s game. The first player to bring up his or her galactic map will see all the planets and the stars within No Man’s Sky’s universe, but they will all be tagged ’unknown’ or ’unexplored’. “And as you, or I, or anyone plays the game, we will discover certain things,” Murray says. “[Such as] space stations, resources, creatures, or whatever those planets hold, and we can choose whether or not to upload that information. So one person on their own will not be able to make a dent in terms of exploring that universe, but hopefully millions of people playing together will be able to start mapping this [space] out in such a way as to help each other along and make new discoveries, and that’s part of the excitement and the thrill of the game.”
We press Murray for examples of these shared significant events, and he sighs deeply before asking himself a rhetorical question: “What am I allowed to say?” He pauses, picking his words carefully. “In every solar system there is one core thing that you can do which is of great significance to that solar system. And that is shared among everyone, and fundamentally changes that solar system, and people can choose whether or not to do that. And there are a number of mechanisms like that, which create emergent gameplay.”
If No Man’s Sky’s planets are stepping stones, then what of the leaps between them? In a universe so vast, how will Hello Games keep the journeys interesting? Murray insists that space in the game is much busier than you might think, with space stations, pirates, NPCs and more to distract you, while your ship will be powerful enough from the outset to make interstellar travel more of a short hop than a trek. “If you’re on a planet and you see another on the horizon, it’s not a chore to get there,” Murray says, before wryly nodding to Wind Waker’s “hours of boat travel”. Realism is a secondary concern: “I don’t want a game where we are restricted by the speed of light and it takes days to travel between planets. It’s a process that should be very empowering for exploration.”
And yet at the same time you’re vulnerable: “We want [players] to be a speck, to be infinitesimal.” This is not, it seems, the time nor the place for thrilling heroics, although you will be able to assist others. How the game balances a feeling of empowerment with a sense of fragility will go a long way towards determining whether or not No Man’s Sky succeeds.
Empowered yet vulnerable: it’s a description that seems to fit Hello Games rather comfortably at the moment. Now the world knows of its plans, is the pressure beginning to tell? After all, three coders and an artist working in a modest Guildford studio have suddenly found themselves creating one of the most talked-about games in the entire industry. “I don’t think we believe it,” Ream says. “It’s a weird thing to say, because you can look and you can see all this evidence, but there’s not thousands of people just stood outside the office. That would definitely make you feel like, ‘Oh my God.’”
And yet the moment he left the VGX set, leaving behind Geoff Keighley and a faintly incredulous Joel McHale (“You’re just four people making this game?” may have been the Community star’s most honest contribution of the night), Sean Murray found himself in a room with several other developers, including Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, all congratulating him. “They were shaking my hand and patting me on the back, and then we came down and all had a hug, and it was like this big Mighty Ducks moment. Somebody shouted, ’You’re trending on Twitter!’ and we all said ’Yeah!’, and I really don’t remember much of the rest of the night.” It was then that the pressure really took hold.
“I’m ten times more nervous now,” Murray admits. “I feel much more comfortable being the underdog that no one expects to deliver.” So if he had his time over, would he show the trailer again, or would he redouble his efforts to get it pulled from the show? “The positivity has been amazing, but all I want to do right now is to go into a very tiny room or hide under my desk with my laptop and just get back to development and really deliver.”
Besides, it’s the scepticism the trailer provoked that inspires Hello Games more. Although Murray dislikes the word ‘ambition’ (“It always sounds driven by a commercial undertone. But a drive to create is something we absolutely have”), being told theirs is too large is having a galvanising effect on the team. “Every tenth comment is, ’I don’t think they can deliver on that,’ or ’It’s too ambitious.’ And I love that,” he admits. “All of us [do].”
“We’ve created a monster!” Ream cries in mock terror, laughing heartily. And it’s clear that while Hello Games may be feeling the weight of expectation, it’s also confident it can deliver on its brave, spectacular vision. The advent of a new generation of hardware has given this team the perfect opportunity to do so. “There is a feeling of elation at being this small team and having those constraints lifted from us of everything having to be hand built,” Murray explains. “Now we have the power to create something huge in size and really expansive.”
Clearly, there is plenty we still don’t know – how No Man’s Sky will be priced, for instance, Hello Games’ release plans, how the game really plays on a moment-to-moment basis, and, perhaps more crucially still, how it feels to spend time in this universe. But leaving it vague is part of the plan for now.
“We said we were going to make a game about exploration,” Murray says. “And I mean true exploration, real discovery, not just some breadcrumbs that a designer has laid down previously for you to discover. Something where even we don’t know the outcomes. And no one does until they begin playing the game.”
Isaac Asimov, an acknowledged influence on Murray and especially on No Man’s Sky, would approve. After all, as the sci-fi author once concluded, “The true delight is in the finding out, rather than in the knowing.”
http://www.edge-online.com/features/no-mans-sky-how-a-four-person-team-from-guildford-strode-forth-to-create-an-entire-universe/
