Originally published October 2016

Welcome back to my lengthy 3-part essay about No Man's Sky (part 1), its similarity with the other space-fairing disappointments Spore and Destiny (part 2), and how the marketing machine for these games helped destroy a great deal of public interest and trust in the games. Today, I'll be concluding this lengthy dissertation by focusing on how the marketing story for each game brought about its demise in the public eye, in particular, No Man's Sky.

I've already mentioned how all of these games, while certainly not bad, were huge disappointments to consumers. What made these successes such failures? Each game was a victim of the hype and marketing behind them. All three are guilty of not being transparent enough with the general public about what to expect. All three thus rode the hype train to their release. This guaranteed some financial success but at the cost of some disappointed fans. Despite these similarities, each game has its own scenario in which the hype and marketing hurt its reception.

Spore suffered simply from not having enough community managers to shoot down the outlandish ideas the fans would come up with. It certainly had its flaws as a finished product and failed to deliver meaningful gameplay for the different portions of the game. Still, it had some merit and certainly some creativity behind it. Had more members of Maxis come out to the public and deflated the expectations behind Spore, there might not have been as much backlash. That is, of course excluding the DRM controversy around the game, but that's a different essay.

Destiny had a different situation in terms of how the public interest in it backfired. The reputation of Bungie was a huge harbinger for Destiny and the interest surrounding it. Even if you didn't like Halo, you were curious about what Destiny was going to be. The lack of information that Bungie was willing to share about the project only made it that much more enticing to people. When information finally came out, certain expectations were tempered while others were allowed to build to even greater heights. The developers gave details about their plans for the game that seemed a little outlandish at the time and people like myself wondered if they were even telling the truth about it. The plans may not have necessarily been lies, they could have been just enhancements that they weren't able to add to the game by the time it was released. Nonetheless, people were disappointed when those plans didn't bear any fruit at the time of release.

In fact, Destiny was released with far less content than people expected and it didn't include some of the big promises made. Still, the developers were a little more forthcoming with how their plans were still in the works for this game that was supposed to improve and expand over 10 years. I certainly got the impression that many of the promises that the developers made that didn't make it into the game were likely left out due to time constraints and deadlines. In other words, Bungie did not seem to be trying to mislead their players, they just couldn't deliver their ambitious plans in a responsible way. They had a passion project that was going to include the Moon and more, but since this was a game that was going to receive updates over time, some promises got pushed to the back burner.

No Man's Sky and its developer are probably in the worst shape of all of these for two big reasons:

• The reputation of the developer

• The poor marketing tricks came across as dishonest

No Man's Sky's developer, Hello Games, did not have much of a reputation before this game hit the public eye. Known only for the Joe Danger franchise, they were in the position to either gain a great deal of respect for No Man's Sky's success or lose any chance of doing so with its failure. Maxis and Bungie, meanwhile, had already established themselves with some big franchises and successful games. They had proven to the public that they could deliver some impressive games with unique experiences. As a result of their tenure, they were allowed a misstep, as big of missteps as Spore and Destiny were. Hello Games only had one game tied to their reputation and not nearly as many people had played Joe Danger as Sim City or Halo.

With only Joe Danger under their belt, No Man's Sky was the game that would make or break the company. It's certainly been a financial success, but with how so many people have come away feeling disappointed and deceived, what has happened to Hello Game's reputation? Will they ever be able to make another game without a huge amount of public scrutiny behind them? Even developers like Silicon Knights and Lionhead Studios, with their over-ambitious projects and eccentric public figures like Denis Dyack and Peter Molyneux, who could seemingly never deliver on their promises, still managed to at least release games that people were relatively happy with. Hello Games was only able to deliver a game that seemed to do little other than disappoint the people who were so excited to play it, with bland survival mechanics and a false sense of exploration.

The marketing didn't help in this regard, especially in the interviews with the Managing Director of Hello Games, Sean Murray. This guy desperately needed a PR specialist next to him at all times during these interviews. He may not have known as much about the progress of the game's development as the other developers, but as the person who is publicly representing the game, it would have been handy to have a person there to tell him not to say too much. As a result, Murray kind of just quietly said yes to a bunch of questions like, "Is there going to be multiplayer? Are you going to be able to explore space with your friends? Will there be anything like galactic wars to fight?" etc. Maybe those sorts of things will be in the game someday, and maybe you could stretch and spin his answers to those questions to make them true. But when No Man's Sky came out, all those affirmations he made in interviews still seemed like lies to many players because he wasn't clear and transparent enough. If you're curious about it, there are countless YouTube videos and Reddit posts about the various statements Murray made about the game that were proven to be not entirely accurate.

With so much anger and vitriol around No Man's Sky, I wonder if it's even possible for Hello Games to make another game without it being met with a monumental amount of skepticism. Any story on a video game website about the new video game from Hello Games is going to mention No Man's Sky. It will be nothing but an uphill struggle for them to be able to publish anything again without a negative stigma surrounding them. Even Sony, who helped publish the PS4 version of the game, may distance themselves from the developer after this. They did nothing to silence Murray's inflating remarks for one reason or another—they may have just viewed No Man's Sky as a cash-grab situation, who knows? I'm not entirely certain they'll ever do business with them the same way again after this.

Then again, two months later and people aren't even talking about the game anymore, so maybe there's hope for Hello Games that the world will not hold it against them. People are certainly still butthurt about it, but the world seems to be moving on as the holiday releases start coming out and occupying the minds of gamers. I'm sure plenty of people will remember their disappointment about No Man's Sky and may never buy into that level of hype again. Meanwhile, I and many others like myself, who didn't buy in to begin with, will move on and remember it as a wonderful series of blunders that was fun to analyze.

What do you think about the No Man's Sky mess? Were you interested in this game at all? Disappointed? Satisfied? Let me know!

If you enjoy reading my lengthy articles about video games, I recently wrote about stories in video games. You can read the story articles here:

• Part 1

• Part 2

• Part 3

• Part 4

• Part 5

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