Whether or not No Man’s Sky lived up to the hype or not is a debatable matter- but the general consensus around the game is that it failed to live up to the vision that was promised by the developers in the lead up to its launch. No Man’s Sky turned out to be a highly disappointing, for most people, space sim game- and the backlash to it may have potentially poisoned the well for other games of its ilk to come, too.
Speaking to Eurogamer in an interview, Jean-Christophe Baillie, developer of the upcoming shared world space game Dual Universe, said that No Man’s Sky‘s poorer reception may end up hurting his own game.
“No Man’s Sky has hurt us, very clearly,”Baillie said. “This is a post-No Man’s Sky era. People cannot do the same thing. There’s a huge amount of distrust in the community. As you know we’re doing a Kickstarter, and half of the comments are like this is just No Man’s Sky all over again. We’re struggling. We’re not quite there yet because of that. Our statement is we totally understand what’s going on, and our policy is to be totally transparent.
“We’re not saying anything that is not true. We’re stating the facts. We have this technology, but it’s going to be released at the end of 2018. There’s all sorts of bad news, and we’re saying it! And we have these questions from the community, and we want to answer all of them. We want to be absolutely transparent.
“The game’s not yet here, so there’s a risk – there’s the risk that we can’t deliver, there are all sorts of risks – but there’s the risk that it’s this great game that is innovating and bringing something new. What we want to say to the community is don’t throw everything into the No Man’s Sky thing. You have to increase your level of demand, on which you’re be able to base your decision to back the game. If you say no all the time, we won’t be able to innovate. There’s an age of maturity that is approaching, people are realizing they have to be careful about what they support, they shouldn’t take words for granted. We’re okay with that, and we want to be transparent and open.”
This is definitely something to consider- given just how No Man’s Sky promised the world and failed to deliver, people will definitely be cautious and wary of other games that make promises of this nature- especially when the game in question resembles No Man’s Sky in its setting and mechanics so much. No Man’s Sky is currently out on PC and PS4. Dual Universe will launch on PC.
