No Man’s Sky first premiered during Geoff Keighley’s 2013 VGX game awards, and now the host is feeling some regret for the hand he played in its reveal. In the latest episode of LIVE With YouTube Gaming, he proposed an Early Access release plan for Hello Games’ space exploration epic.
The segment is a few minutes long, and it begins at about the 107-minute mark in the video above. At the start, he describes a connection to a game that left him feeling “internally conflicted” for years. Studio programmer Sean Murray, apparently didn’t have much of a stomach for Keighley’s friendly criticism. “The last time I saw Sean Murray, he told me he didn’t really want to be around me much anymore because he thought I was being a little too negative about the game and my assessment of where the team was at. They were under an incredible amount of pressure,” he added.
That sensation had consumed No Man’s Sky’s development as soon as the hype train started rolling. Even after its 2013 reveal, Keighley said the tiny team appeared to have “the weight of the world on their shoulders.” Ultimately, expectations ran wild and gamers were disappointed because, in Keighley’’s mind, “we were sold on a dream.” Murray “was never able to build up the gumption to rip off that band-aid and reveal what was and wasn’t in the game...Sean wanted to preserve the promise and mystery of the game so much that he started to disrespect his audience.”
Could something have been done to stifle those negative emotions before they became a reality? To Keighley, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. “I disagreed with them charging $60 and putting it in a box. I think what they should have done was put it out as an Early Access game and let people play it and build over time with the team and the community.” By letting the mystery bubble deflate through testing, expectations could have possibly been kept in check.
Instead, promised features were never delivered, and legal action has been taken against some of those false claims. In fact, the game’s distributors at Sony even shared a few harsh words. With No Man’s Sky’s community still in a state of unrest, there’s a hunger for answers. Keighley used the moment to announce that he has planned an interview with Murray for the end of October. He stopped short of confirming a date to say he hopes it will happen.
No Man’s Sky is available now on PS4 and PC.
Do you think No Man’s Sky was best suited for Early Access? Did its developers dream too big? Tell us in the comments section!
