Inhuman sky: the tragic success of people who created No Man's Sky

The Old English proverb says, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you, cry — and you cry alone." Most often the failures in the games industry are accompanied by lackluster sales of the new title or internal problems of a huge Studio. But No Man’s Sky was very good sale. A small indie development has become the second largest release for PlayStation 4 of all time. Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold on PS4 and PC. A small team of developers Hello Games — and there were a little more than ten employees instantly became millionaires. But in this ointment was a fair amount of tar. Moreover, the events unfolded so that the honey had to collect the crumbs.

The game Itself is in the genre of space action adventure with elements of survival, war and survival in a bottle, was released on 9 August 2016 on the PS4 platform, and after three days on personal computers. On the first day of sales far exceeded the expectations of developers — instead of 14 000 players, expected by the Studio Hello Games, there were hundreds of thousands. And almost immediately broke out not a drama, the dreaded tornado, which mixed in a bunch of horses, people, zillions of planets, the silence of developers and hundreds of thousands of negative reviews on all possible sites of distribution.

The Story of the "Deserted sky", which means No Man’s Sky — a history of UPS and downs, sleepless nights and a Grand deceptions, dreams of millions and tragedy for one. Today the game sold almost a million copies, and tomorrow at the Twitter developers, the phrase "No Man’s Sky was a mistake." Between the first event and the second is the story of Irishman Sean Murray a lifetime.

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higher, higher and higher

Sean Murray was born in Ireland and later moved to Australia, in Brisbane. Since childhood it like a star from molecular clouds, began to crystallize the dream of space. His childhood had 70-80 years, the "Golden age" of science fiction. Then the world avidly read Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein, the great science fiction three, and on the wall was hung the posters with the image of the other planets in pastel colours. Later, this style will be embodied in the game.

Life in the sand of Australia was akin to life recently mastered the planet. Frequent expeditions with his father turned into the study of the starry sky, and a ranch in Queensland reminded Sean of an alien Outpost. During the first game, the future developer has written at the age of six years — it was a text adventure, "expected terrible," he said later. Like all kid Sean played Mario Kart, Super Monkey Ball and other arcade. Like everybody else, were interested in computers to back pain and eyes. But a special place in his heart took great Elite, many well-known "space Rangers" from the game world. Many hours spent in the founder of the genre, will affect the further ascent of Sean.

In 2000, receiving a bachelor's degree in computer science from the National University of Ireland in Cork, Sean Murray went to work at Criterion Games, which was later bought by Electronic Arts. In this Studio he worked on the Burnout series and other projects for six years. Watching as major corporations like the same EA to squeeze out of the games sequel for a sequel, Sean was eager to throw off the yoke and to engage in their own projects. He in 2006 he headed the independent Studio Kuju Entertainment, and a few years collected a few former developers from EA and Criterion Games Kuju under the wing of Hello Games. For eight years, starting in August 2008, Sean Murray, Grant Duncan, Ryan Doyle and David Rome was a long way up to the stars. As you might expect, this path is impossible to pass without casualties.

For the first game, Hello Games — Joe Danger, which was published in 2010, Sean had to sell his own house. But the success of the game allowed the Studio to become financially stable and release some more parts over the next four years. In parallel with this Hello Games have problems with the American publisher, and Shawn comes an Epiphany: he has the opportunity to break the cycle of sequels and stamping to create a completely new title, a concept which he nurtured from an early age, reading science fiction and imagining travel to other planets. From that moment began the development of No Man’s Sky.

The Success of Joe Danger has allowed Murray throughout the year to take a few days weekly the development of No Man’s Sky behind a closed door. Writing the engine, he put to work several people. What team is Shaun of the four main developers, no one knew at Hello Games. In the latter stages of Joe Danger 2 was developed without his direct involvement — as it should be inspired by the child, he went to work.

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the Sky behind the closed door

works of Genius known for his supposed simplicity. Something similar can be said about No Man’s Sky. The final code of the game after the release was only 300 MB in a dry form. On the final drive most part is occupied by audio and video. This small code appeared vast universe of the game world.

New game was created in the office, whose walls were hung with science-fiction posters to create the right atmosphere. Of course, the secret work gave rise to some tension within the office. But Murray did not want to talk about the game, because I feared that accidental leakage will lead to misunderstanding and misconceptions about the nature and purpose of the game. Only in 2013, Geoff Keighley talked Murray show between VGX 2013, however, just a few days before the premiere, he decided to introduce the rest of his company on a secret project. After that, the development of space simulator began to connect and other, until they finally formed the final crew of thirteen men.

After presentation at the VGX attention to the game from the press and other developers has grown considerably. As told by Grant Duncan, the Studio turned a lot of developers, claiming that "always dreamed of working on such a plan," or have already started working.

On Christmas eve 2013 Guildford's office is flooded by the spill of the Thames. Arriving at the office, Murray has found the laptops with the groundwork, literally floating in the water. Fortunately, most managed to save, and soon the work was continued. Coming back to the case, Murray recalled that he had a burning desire to quit, but the flood re-build a team of Hello Games. Before Christmas she was hopelessly divided into two camps: working on Joe Danger and working on No Man’s Sky. After all, the company has engaged in the restoration of the great office and reconciled among themselves.

Shortly before the launch of VGX, Murray found strong support in the person of the representative of Sony's Shahid Ahmad, chief on the development of independent games in Europe. Ahmad did everything to No Man’s Sky, was released on the PlayStation 4. In addition to financial support, provided by Sony, Hello Games managed to garner the advertising support of the company on the main event, Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 (E3). Hello Games became the first at the time the company that has demonstrated an indie game on the main stage. Sony introduced the game as if she developed it, attracting the best developers and putting all the strength in her progress.

Obviously, the presentation was waiting for a big success. Interest in the game began to grow. On this and the following presentations, the developers went through the possible ideas to implement, for example, the addition of ground transportation to study the planets or the construction of buildings by the players. Murray also promised that the game will be released on both PC and PS4, and it will not affect the quality, although have a long way to go.

Simultaneously, the developers started to have problems with the statements. At a presentation Murray said he wants to make the game feel "real console". It turned out, he did not quite understand correctly:

"actually, I had even a small problem after I said we want the game felt really console. We have always considered PC, but my understanding is [the console] is rather a stable framerate and responsive controls. I think the game on the PC can be "console", so it's meant as a compliment, but because these words I began to have problems."

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Procedural generation and zillions of planets

As a small team with a limited budget to create a universe that is large enough to make it impossible to explore the whole? Create 18 quintillion (18 x 10¹⁸) unique worlds individually would be impossible, even if everyone on Earth began to work at Hello Games.

The Answer was a surprising set of algorithms that work together on creating a play space. In the gaming industry this is called procedural generation, it is based on a procedure that uses randomness and equations to generate images and game objects.

A Primitive version of this process Ken Perlin used to create a graphic filter in the "Throne" in 1983. At that time it was a quick trick that adds texture raw computer graphics, and it worked. Thirty years later a similar technique was used for random Assembly of infinite brick Minecraft worlds. Sort of No Man’s Sky use the same drawings.

"Our engineers told me that they take random elements and inserted in a "mathematical" box", — told the art Director of the game Grant Duncan at GDC 2015. Born as a result of the sunrises of different colors, plants of different shapes and colors, animals of different sizes and types. Yeah, he's...