My Ten Years in No Man’s Sky
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of Hello Games’ space exploration survival game, No Man’s Sky. On August 9th, 2016 the game landed on the Playstation 4 (with the PC version arriving a few days later). I remember getting home from work that evening, firing up the PS4, and making the online purchase and download of the game I had been anxiously awaiting, but had no idea I would still be playing ten years later. But, here we are, over 5,000 hours in.
And what a ride it’s been!
I became aware of No Man’s Sky early in the summer of 2016, not very long before its release on the PS4. What I saw in previews looked quite compelling: an infinite universe to discover, with planets that could be approached from space, landed upon, explored, and left behind—all seamlessly. It sounded too good to be true…but that’s what the game delivered for me. I was instantly hooked and I became utterly immersed in the No Man’s Sky universe. I quickly began to consider it the best game I had ever played. (* I was not one of the many who were disappointed with the state of the game at launch; I loved the solitude as delivered and still truly miss some aspects of the very early versions.)
As I wrote a few weeks after jumping into the game,
All my life I have dreamed of exactly this in gaming — an interesting, alternate universe, massive in scale, in which I can freely wander and explore at my own pace. That is what No Man’s Sky is to me, and it’s my observation that many others are similarly moved by the game. The fact that the universe is procedurally generated and that even the game’s creators can’t describe everything that’s out there to be encountered adds to the incredible sense of the unexplored, the alien. There is a lovely feeling of solitude to the whole experience of discovering a world, leaving your mark on it, and moving on to the next.
In fact, I was so fond of the game from the start that I soon created what I believe is the only No Man’s Sky blog on the internet: NMSspot: A No Man’s Sky Travellers bLog. (You’re reading it now…) Detailing some of my exploration and discoveries and sharing game news, tips, and techniques along the way has been a lot of fun over the years, and remains so today.
