Re-engineering the Cosmos; the Excitement of No Man's Sky

 

From technophiles, developers and engineers to artists, role-players or your general escapists, No Man's Sky is quite possibly one of the most exciting upcoming releases within the community. With its staples being the procedurally generated landscape, playful and unique graphics, a mysteriously withheld narrative and a completely new approach to gaming, Hello Games are setting a higher standard for enthusiasts and creators everywhere.

A rising trend in videogame development is making its biggest mark this summer in the highly anticipated title of No Man's Sky: a seemingly endless playground for the aspiring space explorers in all of us that hides a whispered narrative at its core. This new title boasts the next steps in procedural generation. Writer Joel Lee explains: “procedural generation is the creation of content according to the parameters of an algorithm rather than through manual creation by hand. In even simpler terms, it’s the process of creating content using nothing but code.” Now what this could imply really depends on who you ask, but it might fall under the spectrum of man playing god. With reference to Prometheus, PG (or PCG) is the proverbial gift of fire to man; in the context of No Man's Sky, its developers have created a game that continues to create itself. Perhaps the closest we've ever come to creating sentient technology. Will the Gods punish this perversion of nature, or can we safely celebrate this profound leap in man-made advancement and welcome the opportunities that this could present?

Procedural generation or Procedural content generation is nothing new. Developers have been utilising it for decades with prime examples being Minecraft, Elite and Dwarf Fortress, especially indie game developers due to its cost effective nature. but it would seem that PG/PCG is now dancing on the tongues of gamers everywhere, perhaps in dizzying anticipation of No Man's Sky. This could be a simple matter of the popularity of this new title creating intrigue for the layman toward PCG. Or it could be that according to Joel Lee, NMS “is set to pioneer a new standard in procedural generation”. That even in the development community, the implementation of PCG in the context of No Man's Sky is one small step for games, one giant leap for all gamer kind.

I mentioned sentient technology before, while this new title may not actually have sentience built into it (whether that's even possible is another debate) yet from what we can see so far, it certainly mimics this. Just like our world runs off of evolution and subsequent cause and effect; everything is physically tied to something else and is specifically engineered through millions of years of evolution to work in tandem with the world. Due to No Man's Sky's creation of dependent systems, we can see the PCG working in almost the same way. This is abundantly exciting for both developers and gamers alike, layman or not.

Yet it's not just the technologically inclined that may be foaming at the mouth. Joel Lee also points out how NMS uses deterministic qualities; the planets disappear when you leave, only to be regenerated to be exactly as they were before upon return. This also seems to mimic our own reality (bear with me here), reality can only be determined as far as we can individually perceive and experience it. If we cannot physically perceive or experience something, does it even exist? This provides a plethora of opportunities for the storytellers or the philosophers out there. From role-playing, narrative inspiration to experimentation or perhaps even soul-searching. The philosophical questions that arise could work to create whole epilogues shared by the players. It could also help us reach different levels of understanding for the way our world works; If we can place our existential questions and theories into a more objective, external arena, then we can benefit from new perspectives and discover answers to queries that we may have been too close to before.

It's said that No Man's Sky proposes but one linear purpose, should the player desire to pursue it; the only real goal in the game is to discover the secret narrative hidden at the centre of the universe. With no characters or definitive quests, and no more than an utterance of plot, the story and the journey is entirely up to the player. Yet in hinting toward a singular driving narrative, the developers have laid the foundation for the creativity in gamers to spring to life and thrive across the boundless cosmos; players could roleplay their own fictitious religions, civilisations, cultures, and maybe even philosophical endeavours. Imagine becoming enraptured in an almost sentient, digital world in which you can create your own societies or Gods. No Man's Sky brilliantly encourages artistic freedom and cerebral development, by leaving so much to the individual's imagination. D&D savvy players will be all too familiar with this style of gaming. It would seem as though Hello Games have taken inspiration from the classics (such as Asimov, Elite, Dungeons and Dragons, even Tolkien) to redesign the way we see gaming, whilst retaining the familiarity of our past experiences.

The hard work and intensive detail that has been applied to No Man's Sky sets up a new standard in both gameplay and game development. A checkpoint in the digital age for artistic and immersive entertainment, if you will; the videogame community has levelled up. Due to this new standard, it's easy to imagine how developers everywhere, especially those of the indie genre, can use this as an example.