Putting a price on No Man's Sky...

No Man's Sky has always kind of had me on the fence. On one hand I absolutely love the idea of free space travel. I love imaginative sci-fi worlds, looking at new creatures and biology, exploring uncharted territory, and cool sci-fi scenery and themes. Its one of those areas where if you let it, imagination is the king. However as a gamer, I tend to find myself playing the fiddle of a more mechanical space. I love working in worlds with tangible mechanics, enemies, and mastery. I'm not the best at games, but I tend to love still having some set obstacle, a story to drive forward with, and that interaction with someone else's world, and the ability to sort of bend and mess with everything in it. I need a system to play with and goof around with. No Man's sky is a weird middle ground between appearing absolutely gorgeous as a space adventure, but yet as mindless as a minecraft game when it comes to trying to find good gameplay. So I didn't know much what to think about it, and decided to keep hype out of things and wait for reviews to see if it'd be worth paying the default indie count. Looks like I have to wait longer than release though to see that, because the usual indie price count isn't in the launch window. Controversy surround No Man Sky as confirmation hits alongside a pre-order that we're looking at a $60 game like any other on our shelves.

Now first off I want to confess I'm naïve under two accounts when it comes to discussing this subject. For starters the game seems well polished, looks like a technical marvel, and has a lot of promise. I should have kept my mind open to something higher than the $20 average. However I do still feel like $60 is a bit much, but lets talk about that later. The 2nd problem is... well, simply put, I've stayed low on the hype and I'm not the most informed. I don't really know all the recent promises that may have been made, though according to a few talking heads I'm not exactly missing out on anything as they're still kind of vague on gameplay specifics. I'm not going to talk about the depth of some element like its space combat because I simply don't know about that, and its possible few others do as well. So if I'm missing something huge and crucial, feel free to laugh at my ill-informed opinionated little editorial here. That being said, I still feel I've got some points to make on both sides of the controversial subject matter.

Well for starters, lets go over one thing I hear people commonly gloating about the game and carrying it to the peak for this discussion over its price: Scope. Scope is an idea of how big the game is, and could be pushed to mean even more, but the thing is... its really just about the size here. That's kind of the problem. Its an exploration game based on scope, and very basic elements of essentially sight seeing. There's some upgrades going on in the background, but it basically seems to funnel into just making exploration easier like getting a better suit for hostile environments. That scope is gloated about because of just how huge it is though. Its an entire universe boxed up into a game. How can they do that? Well, its computer generated. Five years ago this would have been incredible and unimaginable, but honestly that's just another tick off the box for your generic indie game on steam now. Its actually not but so impressive. The size and scale is still there, but ultimately we've seen these games enough to know the seasoned gamer will easily catch the patterns quickly and want something a bit more... developed. These environments are at their best when they don't actually theme themselves around the levels. Getting a seemingly infinite land in Minecraft and Terraria actually means very little, but why people adore them is their different approaches to gameplay. Minecraft is all about creation, socializing, mods, and is essentially lego in gaming form. Terraria is the more RPG-friendly equivalent, offering players a simplified scape to paint in but one full of more enriching upgrades, enemies, worldly progression, and diverse monsters. No Man's Sky... is somewhere kind of lost in between all of that. You can't customize your ships, multiplayer interaction is supposedly as in depth as Journey, and people just aren't all too sure what lies beyond a couple common survival clichés and the scope. Its pretty much your typical $20 steam indie experience with a prettier picture and a bigger field of computer generation. Don't take just my word for it either, here's a good quote from this interesting article:

My biggest problem with the game is the lack of utilization of this game. What’s the point of having the UNIVERSE at your disposal if you have no one to enjoy it with. Players can visit all these worlds, but can’t build structures. We can have space battles for no glory. We can have the most resources only to trade to a system that only gives money and other resources so you can continue to find the center of the universe that will give you some unknown prize. The purpose of the game is exploration, however the game fails to utilize the full potential it has as when it doesn’t embrace social aspects of any kind. So essentially what you have is a BIG taco shell universe that can hold a lot, but there is only the meat of exploration. The taco will taste good to some, but it would be better if it added the lettuce of multiplayer, the cheese of customization, the sour cream of role playing, and so on. Now when you remove the massive scale of No Man’s Sky and what would be the unneeded procedural generation No Man’s Sky is just another exploration, survival game on steam with limited interaction with the world besides the sole purpose of collecting and trading.

Now to be completely fair, the entire anti-hype article as a whole is not only a bit older, but wasn't well agreed upon. It wouldn't be fair to dismiss them as fanboys riding the hype train either, since the article was mostly bashing the lack of multiplayer functionality I certainly sympathize with comments like this guy's:

In a world where multiplayer is king and single player experiences are dwindling I welcome a personal journey through the vast unknown, if devs are reading this ignore this review, stick to your guns, I believe a space centered game that anchors on emersive personal gameplay of exploration instead of a constant barrage of attacks and interruptions is more genuine to the wonder of space exploration than the many space battle games available

However the problem isn't just in the multiplayer... its that this entire lack of functionality just might persist through the entire core game. I'm not sure how long one can be entertained throughout a vast unknown universe once the loop and functionality becomes very known, predictable, and samey. Oh yeah, and remember when I said this article was kind of old? Well that means guys like this weren't hearing the $60 entry fee to this personal journey. What is yet to be seen is just why this personal journey is any different from Journey, Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, Planet Explorers, or other various indie games that are going for a 3rd of the price or less.

Is anyone, or any...thing really out there?

Some of the other retorts to the backlash in price is that this game is merely being beaten down for being "indie". Are we really just hating on its price because its indie? Who gave AAA the exclusive rights to $60!? Well... actually the people asking that may have kind of stopped paying attention to their very words. AAA comes from the idea of high budgets, high production value, and expensive top-of-the-line stuff. That doesn't hold true all the time, and there are complaints and disgust with such lazy efforts there (Not sure why that's being forgotten. People aren't necessarily defending AAA by pointing to them as $60 purchasers), however for the most part AAA does in fact mean $60 expectations. A couple of cheaper games have jumped to that price range (mostly niche Japanese stuff), and some AAA games have in fact been cheaper, but for the most part it stands that typical $60 purchases are either bulky deals, or in fact a AAA experience. Expecting that consistency isn't exactly such a horrible thing. I do have mixed feelings on the idea myself, as indie games can and have provided more value. However here's the thing, none of us exactly agree with the $60 price to begin with. With all the complaints these days in not only bad gaming practices, but the general economy itself, we're paying $60 per normal game because we logically have to (as a market, not individually. you can wait if you don't really want to pay that much). If games like Uncharted, GTAV, and others sold themselves shorter, there'd be a bit of a problem getting that to break even. At least with indies we're getting a cheaper choice. Cheaper methods of development, smaller games, and WAAAAY smaller teams, or even crowd funded bigger projects all mean we've got a cheaper alternative on our hands. No Man's Sky is doing nothing different by using computer generated worlds over lovingly hand-crafted details, and a 15 man team. They're also backed by sony, so marketing and potentially even the development process itself is kind of covered by a fairly big company that is hoping their console exclusivity makes up for the money they put into it. Unless there was some wicked wizardry here, I can't imagine the game's budget channeling into the AAA zone, and that's a large part of why I myself don't agree with it being up to stuff with AAA costs.

I'm not trying to come off as mean or angry at this game in any way. I think its still got some ambition, still has a great core concept, and is something that some people will love and should buy regardless of the price. I'll also add that this high price has at least confirmed that its getting not only a physical copy, but kind of a neat special version as well. However I still can't get myself to side with this price. Its not competitive, it doesn't look practical, and it kind of feels like a bad omen for the indie industry. Yeah I guess I should have added that into the monstrous past paragraph, but in truth those who are viewing this backlash as anti-indie are ironically ignoring the blatantly bad AAA signs present. The ripped out pre-order content, and sketchy marketing where we're still not 100% sure on the core gameplay, is all additionally a bit of a bitter pill in addition to the fact that we're paying $60 for what might really be a fancier $20 indie survival game. I do emphasize "fancier" though, as it was wrong for me to once assume this to be another $20 digital indie game to grace the PS4. I can easily see this with its great graphics, scope, and pace (beating out more ambitious space explorers set to release) being easily worth the $30-40 range. $60 though? Well maybe its just that I wasn't so interested in the first place, but I'm definitely going to wait for a drop. Of course who knows, maybe something special lies in wait, and I just can't comprehend what this has. Maybe I have stayed out of the know for too long and this game really is set to be something prized among indies. Ultimately if its worth it is determined by free market rules of supply and demand, and if it looks good to you, shoot for the stars. Maybe, somewhere, this will make somebodies dreams come true and they get the best space exploration game they have and will every play. I wish Hello Games luck, and I hope they do indeed manage to make such a game a reality. However... I wont experience it until it probably set to be about the $40 or less I want it to be.



Still potential for magic to happen.