The Polarizing Developer Defends Himself & His Team
No Man’s Sky is one of the most divisive games of this console generation and most of the polarizing discussion surrounding the 2016 game is whether or not its lead director, Sean Murray, lied or made misleading statements about the game’s features (such as the existence of some kind of multiplayer) before it was released.
Recently, in a series of interviews, Murray defended himself by saying that he was “naive” and “overly excited” when speaking about No Man’s Sky pre-launch. Murray offered the same defense for his developer team when he recently talked with Waypoint.
“We definitely messed up a whole bunch of communication,” Murray told The Guardian. “I’ve never liked talking to the press. I didn’t enjoy it when I had to do it, and when I did it, I was naive and overly excited about my game. There are a lot of things around launch that I regret, or that I would do differently.”
Murray also spoke about the harassment and multiple death threats the developer team at Hello Games received after the release of No Man’s Sky. He mentioned a particular instance when someone sent him a death threat over butterflies not being in the retail version of the game despite being present in the game’s original trailer.
“I remember thinking to myself: ‘Maybe when you’re sending a death threat about butterflies in a game, you might be the bad guy,'” Murray said.
On the topic of his pre-launch comments regarding multiplayer in No Man’s Sky, Murray told Eurogamer, “We talked about things during development for four years. We talked about the game way earlier than we should have talked about the game.”
“When we were first talking about it, in the real early days we were talking about – you can see in those early interviews – these aspirations,” Murray explained. “And then as we moved through development certain things became reality.”
However, Murray said that multiplayer was one of the features that his team was “fighting to get into the game until the last breath”.
The upcoming No Man’s Sky Next update brings multiplayer to the game and is scheduled to launch on July 24th.
What do you think of Murray’s explanations? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
Sources: The Guardian, Waypoint & Eurogamer