Taking the Long-term View

One year ago the much-anticipated video game ‘No Man’s Sky’ was released but it did not deliver on many of the features it had promised and subsequently faced a big backlash from many disappointed buyers.

My brother was not one of the disappointed buyers and rather than take the short-sighted, reactionary view, decided to give it a chance.

This week Wired’s Julie Muncy writes to let us know the game is still here and worth exploring:

“Atlas Rises” is the third update since the game’s release, and it feels fundamentally different. It adds a few things players have griped about for ages, like the ability to fly close to the ground or summon your ship from anywhere, but it is ambitious enough be more than a sop to the few faithful fans. By adding 30 hours of story to the game, the update fleshes out a more complex narrative. By allowing players to communicate with others in their vicinity, it lays a foundation for cooperative play in the future. The patch notes drone on and on—new quest system, improved trade, more robust visual interfaces—but taken together they take on a new shape. Hello Games makes an overture to everyone who wrote off the game a week after launch. No Man’s Sky is still here, the update says, and it is a growing thing. Hello Games would prefer you not abandon it so quickly.

I’m happy to hear the game is still evolving and getting better, but I still contend under-promising and over-delivering would still have been a better route to take.

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Games