How is No Man's Sky in 2023?

Jumping the comet

Is there ever a game that had a rough go of things quite as badly as No Man's Sky did? Essentially an indie-level project of unimaginable ambition and scope compared to what Hello Games were working with before, by anyone's reckoning as a game developer the minds behind NMS were insane, if driven by a fire rare within the industry. But alas it was that very fire which ended up heating the very waters they were placed within, because by drawing the attention of Sony, catching the eyes and hearts of the public and placing their happy-faced game director in front of interviews; they opened up their own can of worms. No Man's Sky was a game that wanted to mystify the art of ceaseless adventure for adventure's sake, but in making that they also wanted to be a survival game, with base building and online multiplayer and derelict ships and combat, you've got to have combat, and all these systems that weighed down the final product.

The No Man's Sky which released on it's chosen day was not an awful product by any stretch of the imagination, it was still ambitious and incredible beyond natural belief; but it wasn't what it sold itself as and couldn't nail the many other talents it tried it's hand at. Kind of like with Cyberpunk 2077. The Survival elements felt tedious, (Although I'd argue that Survival elements in games always do and I defy you to name a well balanced survival system in a game built to primarily offer such an experience.) the universal simulation felt hollow and bare bones, the world lacked the variety and lushness promised, online multiplayer was a bit of a bold faced lie and the combat was largely terrible. The ship-to-ship dogfighting was serviceable, but on the ground action? Just lay me down and kill me, god forbid.

In the many years since No Man's Sky become the sole devotion of Hello Games to try and create the product they always wanted to game to be, and in the eyes of the public it has completed a rehabilitation tour and come out clean on the other side. But such is the opinion of those that don't really play the game, but stop in during significant content release windows to dip their toes in the water, taste the temperature, then leave to talk about it. I, on the otherhand, have something of a thing for boundless and pointless Space Sim games. For a year or so Elite Dangerous deep space trucking was my daily night-time routine. (I may bring that back; that was so relaxing.) I played No Man's Sky; with a capital P. Not as religiously as it's devoted fanbase who never leave the game behind for more than a week, but enough to know what I'm talking about when I critique it's improvements with the base product. 

I can see the changes and improvements, but also the expansions and reconfigurations; as I observe a game slowly edging its way of modern Minecraft; with systems piled atop systems of varying complex degrees that start to grate on the intuitive beauty of the base product. Yes, I think there's a sense of beauty to base No Man's Sky. It's simplicity, it's doggedness, that singular philosophical stance the game will beat you over the head with using so many unendingly abstract microcosms laced with faux intellectualism that you'll actually start doubting the rather obvious narrative deductions you'll have reached within the first five minutes. For clarities sake let me tell you what the game pains to not to: Yes, the game's universe is a simulation- no sense interpreting five years of spoon-fed sci-fi techno-jargon just to reach that limp summation.

Let me start by saying that after all this time, with all it's updates, some of which is specifically geared to address this singular aspect: No Man's Sky's combat still blow chunks. It's awful. A sad game of recoil-free attacks lacking weight on impact on the same small group of enemies that don't know how to do anything other than charge and fire/slash. The first person camera is just fiddly enough to make enemy tracking a pain, any hint of damage types or weakpoints is so minimal it might as well not even exist, and at this point I'm seriously wandering if the game would be better served without combat altogether. All it exists to do is to give threat to the annoying guardian's who relentlessly dogpile on anyone who picks up the wrong valuable resource.  Enemies come again and again, kill them and more enemies spawn in response to you causing trouble, run from them and hope you have a spare half an hour because that's how long it'll take aggro to wear off, go to space and the bloody space guardians take over- it's just a sucky experience.

The base building has come a long way though, with guests that you can build facilities for and a whole power generator balance system they threw in a few years back to totally break every existing base in the same moment. (I've literally never returned back to my first base. The work it would take to get it running would be horrendous.) But as with everything that NMS covets, there's this aura of enigmatic distant navel gazing that prohibits any genuine connection these snippets of comradery might provide. You get a crew, but their personality is so muted and wrapped in layers of obtuse half-answers to half-questions; and the rewards for actually engaging with them isn't really all that worth it either. I much prefer the Flagship system.

The giant Flagships have been fleshed out here and there and how they exist today is probably the best iteration we're likely to receive. Space fortresses carrying our fleet of personal star ships, with enough room to house all the crafting stations you could want, and a little space for building if you want to go decorating crazy too. Unfortunately it's really the resource collecting heart of the game which befouls even this for me. Having to keep the ship refuelled and ensuring the fleet are fuelled and keeping them repaired and managing the missions you send them on- it's all a micromanagement hell in a game that runs best as a experience piece adventure title you turn your brain off for. When I have to keep collecting just so I can keep exploring, it starts to feel a little like a chore to engage with. I fear that update after update as No Man's Sky broadens it's activities without refining it's scope, the basic heart of what the artists wanted to initially evoke is going to fade more and more into nothingness.

People will tell you have No Man's Sky is currently the finished product the game should have release as, I think it's more rough than it ever was for sheer lack of artistic cohesion the game seems to afflict itself with. Every few months the game offers 'expeditions' which essentially serves as 'Seasons' would for a Diablo game. A fresh start with a unique narrative experience and some goodies you can take back to the rest of your saves. Honestly this is really the way to play the game and preserve it's original heart, because when you retreat back to the full free game that NMS is ostensibly built around, the weight of the piling systems crush all the fun of consequence free journeying from your heart. Perhaps that's just the inevitable end result of all games that make it big, simplicity spurned in favour of ceaseless stuff lacking that passion which made the original shine to start with. I wish I could love No Man's Sky, how it started and where it is; but I don't even recognise the game I sit down to play anymore, aside from in it's lingering flaws. Guess my relaxing space game is going to have to continue to be Elite Dangerous until September rolls around.

Starfield versus No Man's Sky

 Is there going to be room for both?

What's that they're going around calling it? No Man's Starfield or something equally as unimaginative? Meme as they might, the people of the Internet do have something of a point, the game that Bethesda purposes to be capable of making bares some very striking similarities to the Hello Games opus that struggled to get where it is today. It's no passing resemblance either, gameplay systems, design interfaces, even a rough resemblance in the framing device of the story. (although 'trying to solve an intergalactic mystery by diving into abandoned relics' isn't exactly all that creative on it's own. And something tells me that Starfield has no interest fawning itself over 'Simulation Theory' in the same way that NMS lionizes.) So I guess the question I'm coming to ask is whether or not this game has any chance of cutting into NMS' market share and if there might be a space for both of them when it is all said and done. So this might not necessarily be a comparison per se; especially given that one of the games I'm talking about isn't even nearly released yet, but more a supposition identifying potential to-be-stepped-on toes.

First off; wow, Bethesda pretty much stole NMS' basic premise word for word. Jumping around the stars to track down planets which you can mine for resources to help you keep moving. Starfield even utilises a similar scan interface and mining laser, the only real difference I can see off the bat is that there won't be any terrain deformation at all in comparison to the little that Starfield offers. Tablescraps of world deformation as it were. And Todd himself even mentioned how some planets in the game are going to just be resources dumps without anything interesting or useful on them, similar to 99.9% of the landspace in No Man's Sky. At least I can say that Starfield doesn't appear to be billing itself up as a survival style game the way that NMS does (that CO2/O2 gauge appears to just be a stamina bar) which means that resource hoarding might not become a key stable of the gameplay loop as it does with NMS. However we do know that our spaceships actually run on fuel, so maybe there will be a bit of never ending resource hunting...

The sizes of the playspaces are similarly mind boggling, if not actually similar in scale. The 1000 worlds of Starfield does sound more enticing than the 18 quintillion of No Man's Sky; simply because we know Bethesda and their history with procedural generation technology has a better chance of making that 1000 feel at least a little interesting to explore. Maybe I'll visit ten before the loop makes me bored instead of the two I experienced in No Man's Sky. Although we don't currently know how well those systems will be implemented until we get ourselves a trailer detailing all of that, which Bethesda assures is very much on the way at some point in the near future. Still, the implication is that procedural generation is the backbone of these worlds and where No Man's Sky lacked in this department thanks to the sheer scale they were simulating over, Bethesda's much smaller chunk of space could, theoretically, support their dreams.

One manner in which No Man Sky is largely superior to Starfield is when it comes to the freedom of ship travel, in that ships in NMS can fly from the surface of a planet and into space through a completely seamless transition; which is absolutely not the case with Starfield. We will pick our landing locations from a free picking menu screen in orbit and consequently struggle to find the same place twice without slapping down an outpost or map marker. There's definitely a sense of instant gratification which NMS offers that Starfield is willingly missing out on for the sake of their ailing tech, and I just know that my decision to land on certain planets that have nothing of actual interest to be is going to be highly affected by that loading screen. Even if it's only a few seconds, like it hopefully is, that segmentation is a momentum killer, and that kind of sucks.

On the complete other end of the pendulum, we have combat. Yes, we've all commented on how wooden the Starfield combat looks, especially with that pathetic excuse for a combat slide; but lest I need to remind you, NMS combat is an afterthought of game design. The same mechanics that go into using your mining laser are retrofitted into a clunky feeling gun system that, after several years of patches at this point, I'm convinced is far beyond help. At least if things in Starfield are shored up to the level that Fallout 4 was we can expect to have the odd thrilling gun fight under the right circumstances because F4 is a half decent shooter at it's best moments; No Man's Sky makes ground combat a chore and flight combat, though slightly better feeling, doesn't yet have the depth to sustain dedication play. And the word 'yet' is a key to my next major point.

Hello Games has no other real obligations beyond No Man's Sky. We've heard trickle that they have a new ambitious project in the works, but NMS is their baby for now and presumably the distant future. That means it is a live service, constantly evolving and improving whilst Starfield only really has one moment to stick it's landing. There will be DLC probably, and patches to fix the most glaring bugs, but the makeup of the world is unlikely to significantly change from the actions of the developers. NMS has it's limitation of what it can be, and I think Starfield will forever be a better combat game, but the future for NMS is limitless whilst Starfield has a coming finish line ahead of it before Bethesda have to move onto their next game. Fingers crossed they pull a Skyrim and make a game worthy of being played for the next decade; but that is a tall ask for a brand new IP even made by a big company. If you want future prospects, maybe NMS is more the way to go.

And finally there's the interaction with the world and fiction of the game world. NMS falls hard on it's face here and I think it always will. There is no sense of cohesion anywhere in the galaxy and there's no real place to insert lore or character in a world designed to be given value almost solely by other players. Just like with Fallout 76, the limit of NMS is the society that players create, only there's considerable limits to exactly what players can establish. Can we set up ingame ecosystems? No. Build trade outposts? Nope. Found bustling towns? Negative. There will never be a semblance of a world to immerse yourself in within the fiction of NMS, beyond the fantasy of being an intrepid explorer with no plateau ever in sight. Starfield has that fictional world, with it's factions, cities, history and people. There's something to immerse yourself within in the Starfield world and that slight reaching out by the game to meet the reaching from the player is probably going to make a world like this more appealing to those who like their immersive worlds to lose themselves in.

So there are similarities between the two games and Bethesda themselves seem to be trying to sell Starfield as a successor to NMS, whether they acknowledge that or not; but I believe that the two games are built to serve differing consumer bases. NMS feeds a gameplay loop of exploration, not always for exploration's sake (when the resource table is concerned) but it offers little more than that. Bethesda is making more of a world to interact with and care about, something that plays at, although I suspect will fall short of, an expansion on the Freelancer formula. Which yes, in a way means that if it ever is actually made, there will be a place for Star Citizen in this new ecosystem of space games too. In conclusion, there's no reason to butt the heads of games that can be totally perfect neighbours in the industry to come.

Worlds I want to live in: Part IV

They slip away

Another rough day of a rough month in a rough year, so I wanna unwind by pretending to be literally anywhere else than here. (That usually does the trick.) To this avail I've gone and cherry picked three fictional world spaces from video games (That's right, no cheaty movie entries this time) in order to determine both the positives and negatives one might have to endure from moving there. Obviously, another important stipulation to remind everyone of is the fact that this thought-experiment is only valid when we put ourselves in the shoes of the everyday nobodies who go about their everyday, rather than the superpowered heroes of those stories. That way we're judging the worlds from the merits they offer rather than for the abilities of the hero.

That being said, there isn't much to really say about the 'hero' of No Man's Sky, and that's because everybody in that universe is just as insignificant as the next man. NMS' universe consists of several galaxies worth of random and ultimately purposeless planets that all seem to follow the rough shape of our own Milky Way. (Not being an astrologist I cannot attest to whether or not Galaxies could feasibly look any other way, but I find myself dubious.) On those worlds, or around them, consist a surprisingly small number of alien races with rather recognisable characteristics to them. You have the machine species known as the Korvax, who are scientific and logical; the bird-like Gek who are avaricious and mercantile; and the Mammalian Vy'keen who believe in honour and combat. Amidst them are those known as the Travellers and the Anomalies who appear to be a collection of humanoid species of different shapes and sizes that are all struck with the inexplicable urge to travel.

Most of NMS' society exist as small outposts in space stations in most systems or as literal nomads in huts on random planets. All they seem to do all day is buy and trade items in order to sustain themselves whilst going about a seemingly meaningless existence. That was threatened, however, by the arrival of the Sentinels; mysterious robots that infest planets through wormholes and appear to attack those who harvest precious supplies or whom disturb long abandoned resource depots. No body can quite determine what it was that built these machines, only that they poise a mild nuisance in everybody's day-to-day and makes life just that tiny bit more difficult. (Unless you provoke them, that is, in which case you're in for a titanic world of pain.)

On the up side, NMS is the ultimate freedom fantasy where literally nothing you do has any consequence apart from death. Everybody lives as their own boss and nobody feels inclined to work or provide for families or any of that nonsense. Life is all about the adventure, baby! Folk live their lives flying from station to station trading ship parts, upgrading their tech modules, pawning off minerals and just generally doing sweet FA. As far as a slacker's dream goes, NMS's universe is perfect. And the best part? You'll spend most of your days completely out of harms way due to the fact that sentinels only really attack those who annoy them first and no one posses the personal drive to do anything as drastic as: 'commit a crime'. I suppose this could be looked upon as a utopia from some perspective.

Now for the negatives; you live without any purpose in a life inexplicably devoid of even the most basic amount of structure. There is no infrastructure, no government, no central ruling powers, no gods, no familial units, no ambition and no end in sight. Everyday you have to explore in order to gather the resources to survive and none of that comes freely. It's as though you got stranded on a desert island which took you years of scrounging and persevering to escape from only to find out that everywhere else in the world is a desert island too. You won't be fighting killer robots too much, but you will be fighting starvation and suffocation from birth to death. (What a life to live.)

Having recently picked it up again, I was surprised to find out that I hadn't yet judged Dragon Age's Thedas in this list, which is crazy to think about knowing how much I love that world. Firstly, I feel it's important for folk to know that Bioware agonised over what to call the Dragon Age setting so much that they opened up a thread to the public for ideas, before realising that they had their name in the title of the thread the whole time. (because THEDAS is THE Dragon Age Setting. Neat, huh?) And secondly, I love this world because it's customs are made to reflect our own in a medieval mirror such to the point where ever major continent to based off of a European country. Ferelden is England, Orlais is France, Antiva is Spain and Par Vollen is... Soviet Russia? (I haven't figured all of them out yet.) However, this is still a world of magic, demons and monsters; just to keep things interesting.

Unfortunately, things aren't all sunshine and rainbows over in the land of Thedas and the world has been in a cycle of world ending threats for the crime of threatening the throne of god. (At least, that's how the story goes. It sounds like allegory at first, but one of the bigger later villains claims to have actually done the deed, so who knows?) As a result, a dark and foul race known as the Darkspawn were called upon the land led by a godly Dragon known as the Archdemon. They pillaged the land in hopes of killing all things, only to be barely stopped by the Grey Wardens. (An order of specialised militiamen) The rest of the Dragon gods live buried underground, and the remaining Darkspawn are down there too, digging in order to find and awaken their next war king. Every time this has resulted in a Blight which has cost the life of thousands, and that is a fear hanging over everyone in this world. (And I haven't even got to the positive yet)

One the good side of the news, you live in a fantasy world that has all the trappings one would expect from such an environment. There is magic, underground dwarfs, recently enslaved city elves, annoying Dalish elves, werewolves- Wait, I should focus on positives. Healthcare has taken leaps and bounds due to alchemy which can feasibly cure any wound, personal defence isn't frowned upon so you keep a knife in your shoe (is that a good thing?) and the lands around you are unmuddied by huge choking industrial cities because they don't exist yet. You can live in the familiar marshes and fields of Ferelden or the decadent halls of Val Royeaux in Orlais, never once feeling too far from the home you left.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of negatives to consider too. Sure you have magic, but you better not be unfortunate enough to be born with a proficiency for it, otherwise you'll find yourself incarcerated by the overly-religious fascist government known as the Chantry. The streets are lousy with creatures and bandits that are happy to kill you dead for looking in their general direction, the means at your disposal are bound to be barely liveable given the wealth disparity and general xenophobia mixed with group infighting means you'll have to pretty much be on your toes anywhere. All that pales in comparison to the fact that at any point a Grey Warden could show up at your door with a summons and automatically conscript you to their army for fighting off the Darkspawn. (A thankless job that invariably leads to a early, painful death.) So perhaps consider somewhere else for the vacation.

Like Final Fantasy 7's Gaia, for example. A particularly relevant video game world in today's day and age given the recent console exclusive. And it's a famous world in it's own right due to the way how it manages to be one giant environmental-PSA without being overly explicit. Don't believe me? Take a look at the place: you have the giant industrial city of Midgar with it's choking air of pollution causing a perpetual night over the land (actually, I think you see light in the remake so I guess they changed that) This place is bought and paid for by the tyrannical SHINRA organisation who seek to starve the world of MAKO energy, which is the physical manifestation of the planet's life-stream. Essentially Gaia is a world who's sole defining characteristic, the endlessly iconic city of Midgar, is singlehandedly destroying all the world's natural resources and causing a very real end of the world. (Eat your heart out, Ferngully.)

Of course, Gaia is much bigger than the steamy-cyberpunk city of Midgar. In fact a great many number of villages and towns dot her plains, all of which are frequented by everyday folk doing their best to get by and not be too intimidated when SHINRA come to kick down their doors cause I guess they own everywhere at this point. Things start to get a little worse for the people of Gaia, however, once AVALANCHE start causing trouble all over the world, prompting SHINRA to become full-on dictators. Soon their machinations set in motion an 'end of world' event, wherein giant godly death monsters known as 'Weapons' start tearing up the countryside. Then there's this meteor, and a one winged angel, and let's just say it's a miracle that the planet is still standing by the time AVALANCHE disband.

On the positives for living on Gaia, you'll be living in a functioning society of folk who are always in work, because SHINRA have a placing for everybody! (Try to ignore how dystopian that sounds for this section.) Magic exists, and summoning + Materia means that everyday nobodies can gain temporary magic abilities. (Meaning you'll no longer have to pay for the gas bill, you can heat your food up by hand!) Plus, you'll be living in a world with those adorable bird-horses; the Chocobo's, who are the perfect best friends for anyone. I would never personally get a traditional house pet but I would adopt one of those guys in a heartbeat, just as soon as I figure out how to ride one...

Now for the bummer end of the argument, and this one is a bit of a doozy. So sure, you live in a world of crazy advancements but you do so in abject poverty along with everybody else. Materia have the potential to change your life, but they are insanely expensive and all controlled by SHINRA who certainly don't want them getting in the grubby mitts of their workers. No one location is really completely safe and there's a decent chance you'll find yourself as collateral damage in one of AVALANCHE's 'freedom strikes' because those guys tend to act without ever really considering the consequences. Remember when they flattened a whole eighth of the city? Wonder how many of those casualties were SHINRA?(Actually all of them, probably, as SHINRA are the biggest employees on the planet, but you know what I'm getting at.) On the off chance you survive all that, don't celebrate yet. Sephiroth will bring chaos to all the globe and it's only a matter of time before the calm peaceful life you've built for yourself comes crashing down spectacularly.

You know, coming to wrap this up I've come to the realisation that I'm much better at pointing out the flaws in these theoretical vacations then I am at picking up the positives. I suppose it makes sense; afterall, what the hell do I know about what makes for a fulfilling life. (What does anyone know?) Either way, I've counted through three more worlds for your consideration and have a special themed version of this blog for next time. I honestly think this is probably my favourite series going right now so I'll keep riding it until I either run out of steam or have as many entries in it as there are Final Fantasy games. Which shouldn't be too hard seeing as how there are only... 32 not including spin-offs or mobile titles?! (Maybe not that many...)

My love/hate relationship with the almighty hype train

Hype, the final frontier

We've all been there; anxiously nashing their teeth in the wake of the upcoming release of the latest series of your favourite show, a new exciting movie or, to keep things on-brand, that new video game that's caught your eye and captured your imagination. In the right circumstances it can be a wondrous time where myth and legend swirl your mind as though anything can happen and you're expecting it all. Perhaps the mystery is what grabs you or perhaps you know exactly what to expect and just need it to be here now else you won't ever quite feel complete. Although it can also be a time of soared expectations and inevitable disappointments, wherein all that waiting and anticipation is doomed to result in a mediocre reception on release day, and you partially have yourself to blame for that. This, in a nutshell, is the dichotomous hype train. Toot Toot.

As one becomes ingrained in a community or a 'fandom' around a specific field of interest, it seems inevitable that you'll also catch the hype bug. In relation to gaming, if you're a fan of exploring worlds and playing new games then it's inevitable that you'll eventually hear an idea or concept for something upcoming that tickles the old taste buds. Typically, this might result in you thinking about that new title in your mind and trying to envision what secrets it might hold, where the developers might expand upon their previous works and how great it will feel to get your hands on. (Yes, I know I just defined 'Hype' to you. No, I will not apologise, I couldn't help myself.) This is good for developers and publishers, because it means that they've provided a suitable enough amount of marketing and presented it well enough to ingrain an idea into your head, and at it's most basic level that's the ultimate goal of all marketing. Hype is what allows for creatives to keep the excite for their games alive from the time of announcement to the time of launching without showcasing every little secret that game has to offer, it can make communities self perpetuating and fan-bases last decades but, as I hinted at, it can also have a negative impact too.

As Steven Spielberg was well aware of during the creation of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', and Chris Chibnall seemed pigheadedly unaware of during the crafting of Doctor Who season 12; the power of imagination is a story telling machine without peer. The whole expression 'less is more' is built around that truth and as such many writers and story tellers know that when it's possible it is much more effective to leave an open mystery than it is to close that gap, because nothing you can write will ever be better than what the reader can envision in their mind's eye. Unfortunately, imagination is the same fuel that 'the Hype Train' runs on, and that can lead to some substantial problems down the line. (Is the 'train' analogy getting old yet? I don't think it's old yet.) Hype forms around the mystery of the unknown, and when imagination is allowed to swell untempered, it can create an idealised expectation in someone's mind that will never be matched by the final product, leading to inevitable disappointment. For a gaming example of this just look to 'No Man's Sky' which was a title who's premise ran away with itself when the audience fell in love with it. (I mean, it didn't help that Sony were hoisting the title up as the next coming of Christ.) The Hype proved so infectious that even Hello Games caught it when crafting their trailers full of things that they hadn't yet been implemented, but the team just assumed that they'd get around to them, and their CEO Sean Murray, who went around to every single press event on the planet earth confirming features about the game that were still in the 'talks' stage. (Many of which were dropped.) And we all know what eventually happened with that game... it's kinda good now, but it took several years to get there.

Personally, I have experience with both sides of that Hype Train. (Although I'm so stingy that I rarely end up getting lumped with 'Buyer's remorse'.) Although this is likely not my actual first, the first time I remember being hopelessly caught up in hype-mania was all the way back in 2011 during the lead-up to Skyrim. Or to be accurate, in 2010 not too long after that year's E3. For reasons that would be too long to get into (Although I'd personally attribute it to the talented writing skills of Andy Farrant.) Skyrim was the first fantasy product that I really gelled with in a serious way. I read the preview about this game probably hundreds of times over and the second that I saw Bethesda's E3 presentation for that year I was wholly sold on the product. From that point onward I was literally marking down every single day until that game's release and absolutely could not function every day without it. (Which, considering that the game came out in November, likely means I knocked at least a decade off my life expectancy with all that anticipating.) On the day of the game's launch, which I had actually preordered for (Yes, that was my first Pre-order.) I ended up getting a detention in English which almost tore my soul from my body. I had waited this long, only to be held up over some missing homework? (Safe to say, I never looked that particular teacher in the eye ever again.) But when I finally got my hands on the game, at least I was satisfied. (Hell, I still play Skyrim, so the hype worked out for me I guess.)

However things don't always go that... Well? (Could that story be considered as 'going well'?) and sometimes all we are left is are products which we got our hopes up for only to have them be callously crushed by the hand of reality. For that there are so many examples off the top of my head; Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed: Unity, Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Di- what do you mean I'm focusing entirely on Ubisoft games? Oh right... And Fallout 76. Whilst I cannot say that I personally was sold on all of these games hook-line-and-sinker, I definitely know of certain groups of people who were and consequently were gutted when those games failed to deliver. I will say that I did have my hopes up for Wildlands, so that one honestly did get to me. (I even dared to hope for Fallout 76, fool that I am.) So with this possibility in mind the question that I'm left is simple; is the concept of 'hype' worth the fuss?

One of the things that I love about 'hype' is it's ability to unite people over the love of a shared medium and/or product. I don't go out much today, but back when I had to I found myself occasionally drawn into unexpected conversations with people that I would never typically rub shoulders with. I remember going back and forth about the possibilities of Hyrule Warriors and that exciting teaser for the game that would eventually come to be known as 'Breath of the Wild', and it was Hype which facilitated that sort of discourse. Additionally, Hype allows us to get excited about the realm of gaming even when there's nothing coming out, in fact, for the last 20-odd years gamers have only made it through Summer because of hype, with those months typically being devoid of all except that year's E3. And I think that as long as one remembers to stay realistic than there's no harm in making guesses about what a future game could hold, it's actually quite fun.

But by that same merit it is all too easy for hype to descend into something less healthy once it becomes an obsession. Games which are announced too early or which fall into a development nightmare are often infamous for relying purely on hype to keep things alive, which can be a huge detriment in the long run. Fans find themselves building up their idealised version of the game to the point where they become irrational and inconsolable. Just look at Disney's tenure with the Star Wars franchise. They piggybacked off of the original trilogy of films which, by that point, was nearly 40 years old. Logically, there was no way they could continue that story in any way that could be satisfactory so the quality of the next two titles were practically inevitable. (One could argue how that's no excuse for how bad they ultimately were, but that's neither here nor there.) Some games are still stuck on that hype train and have a army of fans following them that have practically been driven to the limits of their sanity because of it, just look at the Star Citizen community. Those people truly believe that Cloud Imperium is on the verge of delivering the next gaming revolution despite all evidence to the contrary, and at this point it feels like those folk are too far gone to consider otherwise. They invested so much themselves, whether that be emotionally or financially, that they can't fathom looking at the dumpster fire that they've jumped into else they'll realise that they wasted all of that investment.

So is the 'Hype Train' good for the gaming world? Yes and No. I'd argue that a little bit of hype is great for any upcoming project, and half of the fun of creating a cool name game is figuring out how to inspire the imagination of your audience with it, so no harm no foul. However, just like with all things in life, over exposure leads to dependence and that is a relationship that is ultimately beneficial to no one. As you can see, I find it hard to come down on one side of this issue and that just might be the point; how could you possibly do anything about the concept of people getting excited, even if it is ultimately wrong? Well, you could do a 'Lena Luthor' and strip everyone of emotions that you consider to be 'unhealthy' through Project Non Nocere, (Jesus Christ, I just made a 'Supergirl' reference. Please kill me.) or you could just except that hype happens and just search for a way to come to terms with that. Either way, I won't stop hyping up Resident Evil 3 next month and the Internet won't stop hyping up Cyberpunk this October, so we all better just suck it up.

Servicing a live service

Ten year plan!

I have been critical of live services in the past, extremely critical, in fact; "Burn all live services to the ground" kind of critical. And although I have no intention on shifting my stance in that department, I would be lying if I didn't admit that the idea of a 'Live Service' does tickle me some. Heck, in the 'Mods' blog post I detailed how much I enjoy an experience that I can come back to time and time again, what is a 'Live service' if not exactly that? Of course, there a few extra factors that are put into these types of games that make the deal raw, but today I want to be a little more positive, I want to focus on the effort that goes into maintaining these games.

When a game is announced as a live service; a few things become readily apparent to the user base off the bat. The game will feature some form of monetisation in order to support development well past the initial influx of game purchases and the story of the game will, inevitably, be an incomplete one. The former can be overcome with the mindset of 'well I'll pony up a bit now and then depending on how much I think the developers have earnt it with my time' whilst the latter still bugs me and has me thinking about the whole 'Sequel-itis' epidemic which is threatening to sink Hollywood. (And just might.)

Behind the scenes, a 'live service' model means that the initial game will be worked on by a full staff just like any other game. However, once the launch period is over and done, the main team has to move onto their next project, leaving behind a much depleted B-team to keep the lights on and handle updates. This is never a move that is made readily apparent either, developers try to make the audience think that they devote their full force behind that game for the rest of it's life cycle. (despite admitting to active development on new products... nevermind, gamers are idiots, I'm sure we'll never notice) Therefore, that B team is given the monumental task maintaining the game, whilst managing the community and working on brand new content, no small task.

The pure act of maintaining the game is one that can become someone's full job. Modern games have so many moving pieces and aberrant bits of code that have been touched by so many hands, that it is almost inevitable that the final product ships with bugs. Due to the push from publishers to maintain the same development-to-release window that they've held for the past ten years (2-3 years), often there is little time to completely clean the files before launch day. Once players are actually on the game, that task becomes monumentally more difficult. Imagine trying to fix the slats of a bed whilst an entire playground of kids jumps up and down on the mattress, and you'll be envisioning their struggle. Not to mention that, when new content is added, often a whole slew of bugs follow, making the job feel like trying to build a dam against the ocean.

Fallout 76 is a prime example of what happens when the ocean often wins. There are golden periods, two to three weeks after new content launches, that this game is actually playable; mostly, however, we have a product that breaks down more an Alfa Romeo. (Car Jokes!) Recently, Bethesda lite (as I call the team behind FO76) released their very first new vault raid to the public. The stage was set for a whole revolutionary change to the Fallout world, they even made sure to soft launch it on PC first for an opportunity to iron out the kinks; but then the raid dropped and everyone's game broke. I'm talking instant, perpetual crash screens; back to the days of the game's first release. Bethesda lite tried to institute 'instancing' technology into the game in order to make raids more manageable, but instead they managed to make the servers more skittish then your average Abra. (Pokemon Jokes!) Maintenance is not a job to be taken lightly.

Managing the community is another, often overlooked, variable in all of this. The type of community that you foster with a live service is fundamentally different from the type you see with a normal game. In normal releases, players will talk about the things they like about the game and the things they wished were improved, all you have to do at that point, from a managers perspective, is encourage the positivity and report the bugs back to the team. In a live service environment, your average community manager better be ready to be hit with complaints 24/7. These masses have been sold on the premise that their opinion can help shape the future of the game and they don't take that responsibility lying down. Whenever there is something contentious about the game you'll find thousands of comments telling the developers to do a slew of different things in order to fix it. At that point a community manager has to get the pulse of the public whilst trying to stop people from murdering each other over the Internet.

Another important element that comes into play is the establishment of the projects' perpetuity. The second that a game's community manager goes dark, the narrative runs crazy amidst the community about how the product is on Death's door. Just look at Hello Games' Reddit after the release of No Mans Sky. Sean Murray told everyone to go quiet so that they could focus on the game and in the mean time the community tore itself apart with speculation. There were posts accusing them of lying, posts claiming that Sony had cut all ties with them and even posts claiming that Sean had taken all the money and left the country. Without the voice of a developer to reassure them, rumors ran rampant and sunk the company's credibility. If they hadn't released some solid updates in the next few years (Nothing near what was originally promised but things that were enjoyable enough.) NMS might never have recovered.

Finally there is the most important aspect of a live service. The biggest promise that all of these types of games make is the assurance that the game will be languished with new content forever. This tickles the fancy of those who want to live in that video game world they love so much, or those who just like to buy one game and see how it's changed several years down the line.To this end, most live services tote around a 'road map' of promised content in order to keep fans salivating and put the developers on a time limit. During the lifetime of the game, developers will be expected to give fans everything from content as small as events to things as monumental as world changers, and they better be able to deliver.

Breaking the promise of a roadmap seems never to cross the minds of fans, despite how easy it is to do. Roadmaps cannot foresee development concerns or hold ups, so no one should be surprised when changes are made. Yet when it happens, not only are fans surprised but often deeply offended. When Anthem first launched in an incredibly compromised state, diehards stuck with it due to the tantalizing roadmap that seemed to promise that the game would resemble a finished product in a year or two. This roadmap was, however, clearly penned in a time before the release, because anyone could see that Bioware lite had a monumental amount of work ahead of them to make the base game likeable. Steadily, Anthem began to roll past roadmap due dates, much to the dismay of fans, before Bioware lite just subtly blitzed most of the roadmap in an incident we have come to know as: The blip. (MCU Jokes!) When you have a live service that is so buggy and incomplete that you have trouble stitching the pieces together after launch, all you are left with is an incomplete game, and fans will most certainly notice.

Embarking on the 'live serivce' adventure, is an incredibly risky proposition for any developer to undergo. When it goes well, you may have secured a profitable endeavour for the next couple of years, just look at the recent two Assassin's Creed games. When it goes poorly, you risk sullying the reputation and consumer respect of even the most venerable studios, a la Bethesda and Bioware. I can't say whether or not the model is healthy for the industry as a whole, I lack the imperative data to make such a statement, but I can cast a critical eye and see that the practise does not look sustainable. Each product requires teams to spread themselves more and more thin, to the point where you either grow too fast to maintain quality, or too slow to keep everything running. That being said, these types of games still make 'stupid money' (I'm really getting millage out of that 'TMNT' line.) so we won't see them ramping down anytime soon.

How not to deal with a backlash. Starring: Respawn

Why are you all booing, I'm right!

Yesterday I penned a blog in which I went over the recent controversy that was raging across the fanbase of Apex legends. At the time is was all; extortionate price points, greedy tactics and empty apologies; but as bad as all that sounds, and it was bad, for my money it was the response from Respawn Entertainment that really caused the damage. Before I do get into this, I would like to let everyone know that I have great respect for developers, especially the Respawn team, they have delivered fantastic games for as long as I can remember and rarely receive the credit they deserve. I was happy to see them finally have a hit in Apex Legends and wish them all the best going forward; that being said, my respect does not blind me to ugly mistakes or deafen their honeyed words. Over 24 hours have transpired since the last development has been issued in this matter and so I think I'm clear to discuss it today.

For those who are unaware, Reddit is one of the most vocal Internet forums within which to discuss fandom. They call themselves the frontpage of the Internet, rather pretentiously, but given their relevance you could argue that the title is an apt one. This is because Reddit offers access to thousands communities on a platform that is, ideally, unbiased and without an agenda. Many casual fans (Or those with communication difficulties, like myself.) find it difficult to engage on official forums as they appear to be rife with overbearing reverence and rarely any critical thought or analysis. Therefore these people tend to head to neutral ground, like Reddit, in order to share their thoughts. (Unless you are a Star Citizen critic, in which case, no forum is safe for you.) Due to this, many community managers for companies know that Reddit is an important place to focus their attention to get an idea on what the community thinks, they may not be representative of the entire player base, but if your going to get unbiased feedback anywhere, it'll be there. Now that I'm done unintentionally belittling your Internet acumen, let me get into details.

As I mentioned before, the Apex Legends subreddit was in quiet the tizzy over the pricing of items in the Iron Crown event, and many were very hostile in their criticisms. Things died down for all of half an hour when Respawn proposed reparations but quickly flared up again once people realized that the studio had completely ignored the crux of their ire. Those who looked at the Reddit at that time could find a slew of posts urging compatriots to neither spend on the event nor let up on their criticism, believing that if they don't speak up then nothing will change. (Which is often the case with the additional caveat that: things usually get worse.) 

In all this fervour there were a few posts and comments that crossed the metaphorical line. Death threats and personal attacks are clearly undeserved and hyperbolic, but are also issued by those unfortunate individuals that most usually ignore in the community so as not to muddy the issues at hand. Clearly no one told this to the Respawn team.

During all of this discourse, comments started popping up from accounts belonging to a couple key members of staff; namely Executive producer, Drew McCoy and Community manager, Jay Frechette. Now, when developers of this calibre take to the discussion you could be forgiving in expecting some high tier damage control in the works, however that isn't what happened. Drew, who penned that apology that everyone tore into for being disingenuous, made several regrettable comments that did not help their case. Most notably would be the message in which he expressed. "I've been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren't complete ass-hats to developers and it was pretty neat. I forged a bunch of long lasting relationships from back then. Would be awesome to get back there, and not engaging with toxic people or asking 'how high' when a mob screams 'jump' is hopefully a start."

 Now, disregarding the way in which this comment completely ignores the issues at play by simply labelling the backlash 'Mob mentality', (Because customers are too stupid to be disgusted on their own.) I do believe that Drew had aimed this comment more at those unfortunate individuals I mentioned earlier than at the majority of folks. The problem is that, since those people go ignored by the majority, all anyone saw was the comment that Drew made which, contextless, reads as tone deaf and pretty awful.

This tone persists throughout the responses with Drew making seemingly asinine comments in response to posts that get lost in the horde. He also went onto to calling someone a "Dick" (Who left a pretty passionate, if profanity laden, paragraph), then boasted about how he only read the first sentence of that message and the last, not unlike how a highschooler would. Jay came to Drew's defence by issuing nothing but pure sarcasm, enraging the community that he is professionally obligated to manage.

This all looks pretty damning for Respawn's part, but I will come to their defence in that I can understand where this is coming from. This team have worked so hard to create Apex and they care intensely about everything they do; so when they start to see their own community descend upon them and start ruthlessly admonishing their direction, it's difficult from them not to take it personally. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that the actions the Jay and Drew were standing up for are frankly indefensible. You can publish all the apologies and denials that you want, but actions speak so much louder than words, and Respawn still are yet to act.

There have been a few that have come to the defense of these practises, including some influencers (A few of whom are financially tied to the lootbox community.) The arguments generally follow the same lines; "the game is free, be grateful!" or "These prices aren't for you, they're for big spenders." Drew shared similar statements when he claimed that their these price points don't affect the majority of community, uttering the much-memed words "Most of ya'll are freeloaders, and we love that!" I find that discourse in this issue tends to get derailed so I want to express my opinions on that particular matter.

Before I do, however, I would like to address the controversy behind Drew calling the fans "Freeloaders." Reddit exploded at this comment, accusing him of belittling the fanbase for not ponying up, but I have to say, this is the point where I get off the outrage train. Given the context I just shared, you can clearly see that he awards the title in a joking, irreverent way; to call this an attack on the community is frankly absurd. The man made a joke, some could argue it to be in poor taste given the backlash, but that doesn't make you right to take his words and run with them. If anyone wants to convey a message of stern disapproval over Apex's pricing structure it is imperative that they don't get distracted from the issue with silly tangents like the "Freeloaders" comment. Besides, that doesn't even touch on what is truly wrong with this message.

You see, Drew and these influencers seem to operate on the assumption that just because these heavy price points are not forced upon the general community, that makes them harmless; whereas I would argue that this is not the case. Firstly, I'm not sure when it became acceptable to ignore the ill effect something might incur just because it's more likely to harm someone other than yourself. Sure I'm not the most empathetic individual in the world, but I still can't stomach it when I hear stories of people financially crippling themselves from microtransaction's and addiction or children flushing their parents money on lootboxes. (Like I covered a few weeks back.) I'm not sure how Drew or those YouTubers can stomach it either.

Then there is the assumption that these actions do not affect the wider audience. But they do. Because of a little word called: Precedent. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was one of the earliest games to overload their digital marketplace with micro-DLC for a negligible price. No one realized what this system was and thus didn't push back against it. COD raked in huge swaths of money and now we have microtransactions in every game. Same thing with Season Passes, Lootboxes, Timed offers, timewalls/paywalls and Sequel-itis. It takes an outright rejection from the consumers (Like with Battlefront 2's lootboxes) to affect lasting change.

After all of this chaos erupted, CEO of Respawn, Vince Zampella, issued an apology on behalf of his developers. Whilst he claimed that he would always stand up for their right to push back against abuse, he acknowledged that a few of them crossed that ol' proverbial line and promised that communication would be more respectful in the future.  The sentiment was nice, but the seeds of discontent have already been sown into the community and sown deep. If people were upset with Respawn before, they still stuck up for the company because most just assumed "Hey, it's probably an initiative from EA. They're hands are likely tied." After this response, however, the community are downright mistrusting of Respawn, now they understand that this ugly monetisation scheme represents the vision that the studio have for the game going forward.

This situation reminds of similar debacles between developers and consumers such as No Man's Sky, Anthem and Fallout 76. They all underwent similar backlashes and found that when attempts were made to quell the storm, no one listened. Ultimately, this may be a response to the way how the gaming community have grown mostly immune to corporate speak in recent years. It has been abused by companies (Who shall remain nameless) so frequently that now it actively enrages people to hear such canned platitudes. It was only when the teams behind games like NMS and Fallout 76 started to prove their sentiments through actions that people actually started to listen to them. (Anthem is still working on that part.)

Recently, Shaun Murray (CEO of Hello Games, creators of No Man's Sky) shared his opinion on what game's companies can do in the midst of controversy. He claimed that the best choice is to go radio silent, because otherwise you only serve to make things worse. Some would disagree and say that this is the way you make people assume that you've abandoned the project and moved on. I find this particular back and forth fascinating as it delves in psychology and the relationship between the artist and the consumer. So many factors go into both sides of the argument that you could literally hold this debate for hours. One thing all sides can agree on, however, is that whatever you do, don't respond like how Respawn did. 

The Best and Worst of Procedural Generation

Rise of the Machines.

You know, Game design is a really involved process. Every step of the way you are met with complications and tribulations as you attempt to (I love this analogy) build on top of wet concrete. So much development time gets chewed up by iterating and reiterating and shaping and reshaping fundamental design elements, that it can be overwhelming for unprepared development teams. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if one of those main development tasks could he handled by an independent entity. Not a contractor per-se, something more reliable with less overheads. Something like a computer. Instead of dedicating time to make a worldspace you could leave it to an algorithm to... procedurally generate.

Obviously I am being factious. Some game companies do utilize procedural generation in their games and the process is not quite as simple as a set-and-forget kind of thing. At least not if you intend for the final product to be presentable. A lot of work and oversight needs to go into the creation of a procedural generation system to ensure that it is creating content that is viable, bug-free and worthwhile for the player. When developers put in the time to set it up, the result is spectacular. Procedural generation is capable of creating much more than is feasibly possible with a limited workforce or creating the right conditions for potentially endless replayability.

Taking the leap to trusting the work of an algorithm can be daunting to some. Afterall, some of the fun of game design is knowing exactly how everything you've made fits together, like solving a huge, 4d puzzle; when you leave a portion of that work up to a computer, suddenly you add an element of uncertainty to that equation. If the possibilities of your procedural generation algorithm are endless, than how can you be sure to account for everything that could potentially go wrong?  Because of this factor, it is still considered a risky venture to implement procedural generation systems, ensuring those systems are a rarity in the modern AAA market.

Procedural generation does have a very long history in game development, longer than some people think. Not always a successful history, mind you, but a storied one at least. For the purposes of this blog I want to go back to some of the standout games to feature procedural generation and see how successfully they are implemented. That means that for every game I mention there are likely at least 10 more from that timeframe that I have skipped over, intentionally or otherwise. I have just taken the liberty to choose some games that I either have history with or a connection to. That being said, remember when I mentioned how I used to be a huge Star Wars nut? Would you believe that they made a Star Wars game that prominently featured procedural generation? Well they did.

'Star Wars: Yoda Stories' is an old school, topdown action-adventure game from the age before the prequels. Released in 1997, 'Yoda Stories' tells the tale of Luke arriving on Dagobah to complete his training under master Yoda. "Oh", you may think, "like that level from Lego Star Wars 2 then". No, and don't you ever make that comparison again! The game starts as you land in your X-wing and are forced to navigate the confusing locales in order to discover the home of that beloved little goblin. And when I say 'confusing locales' I'm not just referring to that fact that planet is a literal swamp. I mean 'confusing' because the game is ugly as sin and the environments are mind-numbingly repetitive. Once you do find Kermit's height-impaired little brother, that is only the start of your woes. Yoda then proceeds to send Luke on a fetch quest for some useless macguffin that might not even be on the same planet as you. Then rinse and repeat until you're too brain dead to operate the keyboard anymore.

"Sounds like you don't like this game." Why yes it does, voice in my head, well noted. "So why did you bring it up?" Well you see, the environments that the player are forced to roam through seem so uninteresting and boring, to the point where you just couldn't imagine a human being actually designing it, and that is because no human being did. Indeed, Yoda Stories' 'game selling' feature was the fact that it's levels were entirely procedurally generated, meaning that you could play again and again and never encounter the same level twice. (Why you would ever want to play again is beyond me, but the option is there.) This little gimmick would be nice if the algorithm was given enough direction and tools to make areas that felt somewhat distinct, but alas either 1997 programming tools were too rudimentary or the developers just didn't care enough. Whatever the reason, we are left with a game that is historic, but pretty decently awful.

Wait, the same game director who made Yoda Stories made another Lucas Arts published game a year beforehand? And it features another timeless property? Well that game can't be bad, right? Afterall, if it were, there is no way Lucas Arts would have hired him again within the space of a year, would they? 1996's 'Indiana Jones and his desktop adventures' is a topdown, action adventure- wait a minute, this seems familiar. That's right, it is essentially the exact same game with different a different coat of paint. However, this time the creators tried to push the 'procedural generation' aspect even harder then before; slapping possibly my favourite ever splash-text on the boxart: "Literally Billions Of  Possible Games!" Is that right? Billions, huh? Technically correct if you count one rock being slightly to the left as a whole new game. It's just a shame that all of those game's are terrible, isn't it.

Before we speed ahead, let's go back a bit. To a game that birthed on of my personal favourite franchises of all time: 'The Elder Scrolls: Arena'. Long has my love-affair with The Elder Scrolls blossomed. Starting with Morrowind and eventually stretching to every single main-line entry of the series. But none of that history has made me biased, when I first approached Arena I made sure to put all that aside and judge the game from it's own merits. As such I managed to enjoy Arena for the old school, rudimentary, hack and slash that it was. The dungeons became a little unwieldy in the later levels but my overall impression was that it was a solid game that could very much stand on it's on. (In fact, it sort of does stand on it's own; considering how little story and lore the game shares with it's successors.)

One element of the game that I didn't enjoy was the experience of attempting to grind. Many of the end-game locales require the player to seriously beef up before tackling them, which leaves the player in a bit of a predicament. You see, whilst you were able to use the map to travel to story-relevant areas and cities, there is no way to use the map for tracking down optional areas to conquer. Adventurers had to use their initiative and wonder out into the wilderness hoping to come across old ruins. (Or just stalk the town's streets at night, as then they become dripping with hostiles. Apparently, no one ever told the city guard to take shifts.)  The problem with this approach is the fact that the gameworld is big. Ungainly big. As in, before ESO, this game was the only one in the franchise to encompass all of Tamriel. Hearing this might may you think "Wow, how did early Bethesda manage to craft an entire continent?". Well, I featured the game on this blog so you can likely figure it out. The Elder Scrolls Arena utilized a procedural generation algorithm in order to craft it's open world. The result is an open world that would take weeks to traverse (In real time) and a random assortment of side-dungeons that honestly aren't worth the effort to clear. Like many early randomly-generated games, Arena's execution falls a fair bit short of the team's aspirations. Luckily the base game is solid enough that this failure didn't sink the game and now we have Skyrim so I'd say the world is mostly better off.

The next game is legendary enough to likely need no introduction or explanation, but I enjoy self-imposed redundancy, so here we go. 2009 saw the release of the biggest indie title ever, Mojang's Minecraft. Since then, millions of players have been won over by Minecraft's promise of unrestrained creativity where you can make the game whatever you want it to be. (Providing you want it to be a game about building things.) It's social proliferation has reached such a degree where the game has managed to survive being run through by traditional media and still come out the otherside smelling of roses. Minecraft even pulled of the greatest trick any game can pull, being dethroned from it's 'most popular' podium by newcomer Fortnite, only to crawl it's way back 'On The Waterfront'-style in a comeback story for the ages. (Once which everyone tells differently, by the by.

I mention Mojang's opus here because Minecraft was the very first game I played in which I noticed and appreciated the procedural generation element. In Minecraft, the world in which you inhabit stretches out for all eternity. (Or at least until you travel 7784 miles away from spawn. which you ain't gonna do be accident.)  This means that the player can wonder the world and explore it's vistas in perpetuity. This algorithm is one that Mojang have spent the last 10 years perfecting, in order to ensure that the world it generates is always worth looking at. For my part, I still see the odd extreme hill that still blows me away even after all these years. The infinite world also means that the player has access to infinite resources with which to build with. Minecraft is perhaps one of the best examples of procedural generation implemented and executed perfectly. It enriches the game and truly makes it feel endless. (In a good way.)

There is one genre in particular makes use of procedural generation as part of it's MO. Rougelites and Rouge-likes like to change up their playspace each time the player dies in order to keep things feeling fresh. And it's necessary for a game genre built around the concept of the player dying and starting again over and over.  Rougelites in particular often use a 'room-based' navigation system in order to allow for random generation to affect each 'room' separately and string them together into one unique dungeon. The Binding of Issac, Moonlighters, Spelunky and many more all rely upon robust algorithms mixing things up constantly. Randomized layout, enemy placement and item generation assures that no one is ever relaxed when tackling a new run.

This implementation is the similar to the way Diablo and it's successors use procedural generation. In Diablo, the player is tasked with battling their way down through hell and slaying the titular demon of damnation. The kicker is that the plethora of dungeons that the player goes through, are all computer generated, as is their enemies and the hoards of loot said-enemies drop. This is another necessary implementation as Diablo is designed to be replayed over and over as the player engages in the gameplay loop of perpetual self improvement. Diablo-esque games like Path of Exile and Torchlight make use of similar systems in their send up to Diablo.

A few of the examples I have already bought up have been about developers using algorithms in order to circumvent a potentially impossible workload. Although, I think no company embodies this ideal as perfectly as Hello Games with their title, No Man's Sky. NMS is a game that will be forever tainted by the fact that is promised the stars and gave the moon. But to be honest, even in apparent failure, Hello games achieved something spectacular. Describing the size of No Man's Sky is hard, so I'll just quote the official Wiki "The universe of No Man's Sky (is comprised of) 255 unique galaxies, which in turn comprise around 3 to 4 billion regions, each of which contain more than 122 and up to hundreds of star systems. All star systems feature from 1-6 planets and moons, and usually a single space station." One quote from one the developers was floating around about how 'if you were to visit one planet every second, you would die before experiencing half of a single galaxy."

Technologically, No Man's Sky is an absolute marvel only possible through advanced and refined procedural algorithms. The problem is that NMS relies on the generation a bit too much. With all those planets available, there are bound to be a few that aren't worth visiting, the problem is that NMS planets are so similar that it isn't long before none of them are worth visiting. That's a little bit of a problem in a game that is specifically deigned around the idea of exploration. If the player has seen everything by the 10th hour then they sort of lose the incentive to keep travelling. In recent updates, No Man's Sky has shifted the focus from 'constant exploration' to the much more gamplay-sound mentality of 'builidng a home'. Taking a page out of Minecraft's book they've managed to make the game feel much more worthwhile. However, I still play the game as my background for podcast time. (Like the freak I am.)

Here's one that you might not have known; 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' was originally supposed to have a procedural generated element to it just like No Man's Sky. Back when Bioware were still figuring out what the game would look like, the choice had been made that the Andromeda Galaxy would be inhabited by completely random planets created on the spot. That's why much of the game's dialogue revolves around your family having the 'hearts of explorers' despite the fact you only see 5 planets and spend most of your time shooting people on them. Bioware wanted to allow players to colonize whichever worlds that they saw fit to, essentially allowing us to decide the future home of humanity.

This would have been the first AAA game to make significant use of procedural generation had the idea made it to inception. Unfortunately, the idea was left on the cutting room floor after it became apparent that 'the randomly generated planets would not meet Bioware's standard of quality'. Given how those same systems worked out for NMS and The Elder Scrolls: Arena, I have to say the logic is sound. However, I still can't help but think that if a big budget studio were to put their weight behind a galaxy generator we could get something worthwhile; heck, Bioware must have thought the same thing if the idea made it to a pitch room. I think the real reason it was scrapped it because the publishers got cold feet. You can never be sure of how a computer-run development would turn out so EA likely thought it was better not to take the risk. Either way, it's a darn shame that we won't see a space game push the boundaries of tech in such a cool way for a while, if ever.

As I have said a few times in this blog, procedural generation is a risk. When you leave the shape of your creative endeavour to be decided by fate, you either end up simulating the chaos of nature or the soullessness of a computer. Few are willing to put their work on the line like that, but those that are can sometimes change the way we look at games. Minecraft was originally conceptualized as one prebuilt world that players would mess around in, allowing the players some degree of freedom but nothing close to what they have today. With procedural generation in Minecraft, every world feels unique to the player that inhabits it; they don't just become their world's architect, they become it's arbiter. It's a subtle difference but one that completely shifts the player's personal relationship to that world. Now, of course, not all procedural generation systems have that exact effect, but they all lend a touch of uncertainty that cannot be captured in any other way. As we move into the age of the Scarlett and PlayStation 5, I find myself optimistic for the future of computer generated content in games. The better the tech, the better the scope to create something bigger and more diverse than any human brain could ever envision. Who knows, maybe one day we'll get an AI advanced enough to create an entire game by itself. True, at that point the thing will have likely transcended human scope and will hence become Skynet, but at least we'll get one kick-ass game before we all get annihilated by our robot overlords. 

SPACE!!!

Isn't it cool?

You might have seen how last Friday I discussed video game aliens. Well today I thought that I might as well take that topic to it's homeground: space. For a long time space-bound science fiction was my favourite genre of fiction, so you can imagine how many spacey games I've played in that time. For one, I used to be an ardent Star Wars fan and it wasn't for the glow sticks. I loved the star ships and space stations that the Star Wars universe provided, and I loved any game that allowed you to explore that space. Heck, I played the The Old Republic just because the player's home hub was a spaceship. That's how obsessed I was.

Nowadays, Science fiction isn't quite the be-all end-all for me anymore. At some point I became infatuated with high fantasy, although that took quite a blow after how Game of Thrones ended. (But I suspect that love affair might flare up again pretty soon after watching the trailer for Netflix's 'The Witcher'!) However, I never forgot my old favourite genre and have always come back to it in those times when I needed that extra layer of escapism. Afterall, what says 'disconnect from earthly troubles' like being off the earth all together? And yes, It is healthy to hide from your problems in a fictionalized simulation of space. (I may need a psychiatrist.)

Speaking of simulations, one can hardly go on about Space games without bringing up that one sub-genre that all the most hardcore space gamers talk about: 4X. Which stands for: Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. (Feel like someone messed up the acronym there...) To be fair, 4X games don't necessarily have to take place in Space, but all the best ones do. This sub-genre covers games like: Stellaris, Endless Space, the Civ games and Sid Meyer's Alpha Centuri and those games are characterized by their reliance on strategy. In these games, players are typically put in control of a race of people and told to help them grow and prosper in a competitive environment against other races of people. What ensues is a competition of wits, diplomacy and, inevitably, who has the bigger gun. Space games capture this genre so well because they allow players to push the limits of humanity to ends that we can only dream of, vividly sparking the imagination. Winning usually requires players to engage critical analysis and to find a way to solve problems that precludes brute force. Most of the time, anyway. I can only imagine what one of these games must be like in multiplayer; fun, but a good way to strain a friendship.

"But what about the actual simulations", I here you ask. "I want to be in space, I want to fly my own spaceship, I want to be the captain of my destiny!" "Or maybe I just want to be a space trucker." Well for folk like you, and me, we have the space-flight simulation games. There was a time when I couldn't sleep soundly without a good hour session of 'Elite: Dangerous' to put be in the right mood. I know, a game with a name like 'Elite: Dangerous' hardly sounds like the most relaxing thing in the world, but trust me when I say: that game is true zen. Or at least it was the way I used to play it. I'd imagine that career bounty hunters might have a rougher go of things. And that's the beauty of Space flight simulators like Elite, they allow you play at your own pace. You can spend your time hunting down enemy ships, smuggling illegal products or, if you're me, cruise around space as an intergalactic courier. On those nights I would turn off all the lights, sit back in my chair, and just jump from star to star losing myself in my own head. Bliss.

Of course, Elite: Dangerous isn't the only Space-flight Sim. Just the best. (In my opinion.) There is also the infamous: No Man's Sky. A game which promised the sky and delivered space. A lot of it, but not much in it. Even now, with the game having been lovingly supported and updated by Hello Games for 3 years straight, the whole thing still feels pretty barebones. Luckily for me, barebones was all I was looking when I picked the game up last year. Yet again all I wanted was to cruise around space, only this time I listened to podcasts. (Maybe I just need a holiday.) There isn't much to the game from a gameplay perspective and the story starts with an intriguing hook but meanders into pomposity by hour 5, but I only really stick around for the exploration anyway. So I enjoyed the game.

That's all the space flight games I can think of. No more come to mind for me. Oh, there's the old Elite games, Star Raiders and Trade Wars, but they're all from the first age of space Sims. Still great games, but all too early and unable to take advantage of modern computing, unfortunately. Don't forget 'Wing Commander', those games were great! Mark Hamill even showed up in one of them. What's that? I'm forgetting a game? One of the most successful kickstarters of all time? And it also has Mark Hamill? Well, could be that I just don't want to talk about Star Citizen right now. It's not that I'm one of the people unluckily enough to be aboard the hype train for this long overdue project, or that I'm scared of all the defenders still suffering the effects of their sunk-cost fallacy. Star Citizen just really pisses me off. That topic really deserves a whole blog dedicated to it, so I'm going to leave it alone with my stern disapproval for now.

Onto less contentious topics, would you believe that I am currently playing through a space game right now? For the past few weeks I have been playing,and enjoying, Double Damage Games' Rebel Galaxy. It's a decently fun western-themed space game with simple, easy to grasp controls and some fast paced action. This may be the only space Sim in which I actually don't just go around exploring. Though I suppose that isn't really a valid way to play for this game, anyway. Rebel Galaxy makes the whole 'Space genre' feel like the high seas by doing away with the 3D maneuverability of space and having everyone travel on the same elevation, making mid-space collisions actually possible. Also the game's music sucks. But hey, you can't have everything.

The future holds some titles that promise to explore space, as though the great black has come back in fashion of late. Borderlands 3 has ditched the world space of Pandora and Sanctuary to emigrate to a space station from which you travel to you mission spots. The Outer Worlds also features several worlds and allows for ship travel between them. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order's gameplay trailer seems to tease the chance to fly your ship to new planets; though I suspect that will just be a cutscene transition. And then there is the most intriguing of all, Bethesda's mysterious: Starfield. A game we know next to nothing about, except for what fuel the space ships will be using. But that's enough to get me thinking about Skyrim in space, so I'm happy.

Finally, I want to bring up a game in which there is no Space at all. So how is it relevant? Well, it isn't. But I'm just distraught that I forgot to include it in my Alien's blog. X-Com: Enemy Unknown is a strategy game about defending the earth from extraterrestrial invaders that have come here for the sole purpose of ruining humanity's day. You control the X-Com military initiative as you struggle to manage your budget, resources, your soldiers and the goodwill of your funding nations. Gameplay consists of turn-based tile combat which is all about positioning and luck. And the aliens come from space, so there's that.

The exploration of space is one of the last great adventures that man has yet to truly conquer, that and the sea, I guess. We can only dream about what it is like to soar amongst the stars and to exist as a race of space nomads. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will quite get there in our lifetimes, but we may just hit Mars in the coming decades, and that's a pretty big step. Until humanity is advanced enough to shake off their earthly bonds and take to intergalactic travel, we have the world of gaming to give us a glimpse of what we can expect to find, and who we can expect to meet out there. But maybe I'm wrong and we're closer than I think. Maybe we can all look forward to a future in the stars in a handful of decades. With the unpredictable growth of technology and the understanding behind it, it is genuinely impossible to predict how far humanity will evolve in how short of a time. I do know one thing for sure; if I'm going up into the endless dark, I'm gonna need to bring a heck of a lot of Podcasts with me.