No Man’s Sky has gotten the most incredibly positive reception for a game that’s still in development since… well, probably since Destiny, but that was a big deal too. No Man’s Sky has a lot of excitement surrounding it, from repeated appearances in The New Yorker to a dedicated segment on the new Colbert show, not to mention fawning praise from the games media—myself included; I don’t mean to throw stones. The game looks incredible, even though some are justly wary of the hype. And thus I ask: Will No Man’s Sky fulfill its promise and become the next Minecraft and the next EvE rolled into one? Or will it disappoint and become the next Spore?

No Man’s Sky Hype: In Giant’s Footsteps

No Man’s Sky promises us everything. An entire universe to explore and do… something or other with. Name animals, planets, solar systems. See a whole world blossom under algorithmic overlordship. It is an incredible dream. Other games have promised the moon and the stars before, and one in particular failed to deliver—Spore, a game from the SimCity creator, which was supposed to model the evolution of species from single-celled organisms all the way up to their emergence of a galactic civilization descended from that same species. It did not lack in ambition, or promise. It failed to deliver, hugely—although it may well have been a fun game, it just didn’t live up to its outsize expectations, and despite selling millions of copies is now largely forgotten.

That’s the same fate that No Man’s Sky could face, if the gameplay and excitement isn’t the way we imagine it. If the world feels lifeless or sterile, if there isn’t enough to do, if it doesn’t have emergent gameplay and systems rising out of the world. It could very well happen, and we’ll all be sad and disappointed and move on.

Or No Man’s Sky could become Minecraft meets EvE Online. That is my dream. If it’s a game of exploration and construction on a galactic scale, I think we may well be in the clear. If there is support for player organizations, and especially if you can actually build all those fighters and larger starships we see in videos, then we may have a hit on our hands.

It’s like this: The algorithm of No Man’s Sky is definitely going to impress us. But it’s how we interact with that that will determine the game’s success. If we are largely mere observers of these existing systems, the game will grow tired. But if we can truly interact with planets… if we can build bases and starports and eventually construct starships… if we can use those starships to forge our own little star empires… exert force across the galaxy… then we’ve got an unprecedented hit on our hands.

And much of it can be emergent gameplay, like in EvE, where the major organizations and systems are of player origin. I want to see the same in No Man’s Sky: I want to see ambitious guilds claim control of major systems by force, and enforce peace on those who come there. I want space pirates who raid them, and other empires that expand by conquest, all player-driven, harnessing the power of dozens or hundreds or thousands of worlds as they go.

In short, I want it all. Is that so much to ask?