This interview first appeared as part of an italian gaming website's coverage of Gamescom. I have taken the liberty of translating it from italian to english through the magical use of google translate. Though it is great technology there were many issues with the translation, so in the end I had to fix it up a bit to make it more coherent. This article originally appeared HERE.
Last month, on the occasion of the Cologne [Germany] GamesCom, we got a clearer idea of what it is and how it will work: No Man's Sky. Expected (for now) only on the PlayStation 4, the ambitious exploratory gameplay of Hello Games is gradually taking shape, and in our article we have tried to answer many of the questions and doubts of those who follow very carefully the project. Also at the German fair, however, we spent a few more minutes in the company of Sean Murray, co-founder of the British team, chatting and joking about the background of the development, user expectations and vision of the team.
THE INTERVIEW
After the announcement of No Man's Sky you come under the spotlight as there has never happened before. Between the pressure of users, the amount of work to do and having to talk to the press, this must be a whole new universe for you. How are you coping?
There is a huge pressure, that's for sure. I think it's pretty obvious since we are a small group. We are building a game that has attracted the interest of users, a game that people want, and that's great. Can not complain. But if No Man's Sky proves to be a failure, users would have someone against whom to point the finger. With huge projects like Assassin's Creed or Watch Dogs, no one knows who is really to blame.
In that case people complain with Ubisoft as a company. Rarely with specific people.
That's right, if by chance you did not like Watch Dogs do not have someone to complain about. In our case, we are so few who know that if we fail, we will have been necessarily our fault.
In short, the issues is that if the game turns out to be bad you can not leave your home?
[Laughs] Exactly. During the GamesCom, one of the journalists approached to take a picture with us. I was not prepared for such a thing. And now I keep imagining this guy that, if the game does not please him, and one day will cover the photo and think to leave the house to go buy a sniper rifle [Laughs]. In short, there is definitely a lot of stress. I must say that, although we had a lot of visibility, there is still much to do. The trailer that we showed at E3 had received 800,000 views on YouTube. It is so, and for an indie game is hard to get to those numbers. But a title really successful, like Assassin's Creed, has about 20 million views: what I mean is that the interest in No Man's Sky is still limited to the hardcore gamers, those who follow the presentations and E3 are held updated. We still have many reasons to talk to reporters and the people to know the game around.
And I imagine it's much more difficult to explain a game like No Man's Sky than a Joe Danger ...
Absolutely. It's tough. Also it may seem strange but I'm a shy person, I hate making speeches in front of an audience of people. I'm not capable, but there is a team of people who are working on this game and I have to respect their commitment. It's also nice to see the reactions of people: someone who is excited to see what we do is fun and it pays off. It's just that I do not like speaking in public.
So get on the stage at E3 must have been a walk ...
[Laughs] Yeah, I was a wreck. We were backstage and I did not utter a word for hours. I saw how cool Far Cry looked and I was panicking because I did not know how people would react seeing our game. At the end of the reception has been positive, but at that time we could not know.
Chatting with Sean MurrayDurante presentation here at Gamescom've tried to explain a bit 'how it works No Man's Sky from a technical point of view. Perhaps for a small roguelike is much easier to adopt a formula procedural. With a universe so vast you are not afraid that something might escape out of hand?
Sometimes I feel almost compelled to prepare people before the exit. I'll give you an example. At the beginning of the game, everyone will start from a different planet and that we will not have made us a hand. We will not have the faintest idea of what will be the experience of the players in those first few minutes. We checked out a few small things, just to make sure that someone you do not find yourself trapped in a ditch just as the game begins. Not many developers have experienced the anxiety that exists in publishing a game where each person starts from a completely different screen. And this is scary and exciting at the same time.
Unpredictability also surrounds the creatures, and in fact during the presentation we have seen some really strange things. Do not you feel the weight of having sacrificed the artistic control and the pleasure of creating the design of an alien or a monster for having consistently random results?
You're absolutely right. Our main artist is Grant Duncan, who had previously worked with Joe Danger in the past. From the beginning, Grant and I have had several discussions about it. Because our biggest nightmare is to create something and see it appear in the game in a different way from the way we thought. It is a continuous exchange of views between myself, I've got a more mathematical mind, and he, who has a more artistic. A lot of times he came to me saying, "No, this is not how I wanted it to be." A simple example. Some time ago we had a tree, but Grant wanted to draw the flowers at the base. So I created a system that populated the base of trees with small flowers. And the next day all the trees of the entire universe had flowers next to the trunk. At that point, however, it was too much and it seemed like a fairy tale world, so we had to lose the hand and remove any of them. What I mean is that, once you agree not to have more than the total creative control, you open up a whole range of new possibilities. No need to carry every waterfall, every river and canyon in each hand. As I always say to Grant: there are lots of games that are made completely by hand; it would be nice to do something different? Would not it be nice to experience? And I believe that we have reached a point that if you look at a screenshot or a video of No Man's Sky, it looks handmade. And this is just about Grant and the fact that it has been continuously critical from the point of view of art. It is as if he had given art lessons to a machine.
The creatures they have shown us they were hybrids, but with the familiar traits. For example, with a head of a hippopotamus, and the body of a turtle. They will all be so?
Actually we have several creatures that are much more alien, but we have not yet shown. One of the reasons is that we want to be able to surprise those who play in No Man's Sky. Then there is also the possibility that we will never show them. Furthermore, the fact that many animals are part of a family is desired. When we started development, things were much more random, the monsters were really aliens, to the point that it was almost annoying to play while he was surrounded by things difficult to understand. There were small but incredibly powerful animals, or underwater sections where the water looked like a completely different type of liquid and crazy. We also decided to make up a lot of the science fiction of the 60s and 70s, where the environments were many familiar elements. Watch things like Star Wars and Star Trek for example: Tatooine looks like a place on Earth. At first we were inspired by a different kind of science fiction, the most insane and ridiculous, that winked films of the 30s there were strange alien tentacles, brains flying and other things completely alien. And those things are alienating, because you do not have reference points. They are creatures that do not exist in our universe: if there was life on another planet, we would expect to see more and evolve features such as eyes, legs and things like that. In short, there are rules in our universe, and when you go outside of these rules it becomes all too weird. It is the concept of true science fiction.
About the concept of science fiction. During his talk at GDC Europe, Pietro Righi Riva di Santa Ragione has defined science fiction as a "journey to the pursuit of knowledge", to something unknown that deserves to be discovered. From this point of view games like Mass Effect and Gears of War, according to him, would not qualify as science fiction. What do you think?
I think he is absolutely right. For a couple of reasons: first, science fiction does not necessarily mean futuristic. Rather, it means alternative. It means taking our universe, change a single rule, and see what causes reactions. A good work of fiction makes us think about ourselves, about what we are or what we might be; is informative, just like traditional books or scientific films. Science fiction tries to explain what could happen if we changed the rules that we know. But I think that in games there is a tendency to take a theme or current scenario and simply toss it into a futuristic setting. Get Halo. I love Halo, I love it, but it is how the conflict in Afghanistan or in Iraq revived in a sci-fi scenario. It's war, but in the future. It is not science fiction. With No Man's Sky we try to do something different. What would happen if every human being on the planet was able to get in the car and travel into space? What would happen if each of us could easily make a day trip out of Jupiter, or go outside of the solar system? How would it be? And it is a little what we try to answer with our game. Everyone starts from the edge of the galaxy, each from a different place and at that point we'll see what happens. People will begin to interact with the universe, but we do not know in what way. The map will be completely unexplored at the beginning: Players may choose to share or not their findings; could follow the advice of others and go only in areas already explored, or they may scatter randomly in the galaxy because nobody wants to go to places where there is already someone else. Find out how the players will accept the challenge will be interesting. It will be fun. It is something that we absolutely have to experience. I can not promise it will be great, even if we give it our all. But in any case it will be something new and intriguing.
THE INTERVIEW
After the announcement of No Man's Sky you come under the spotlight as there has never happened before. Between the pressure of users, the amount of work to do and having to talk to the press, this must be a whole new universe for you. How are you coping?
There is a huge pressure, that's for sure. I think it's pretty obvious since we are a small group. We are building a game that has attracted the interest of users, a game that people want, and that's great. Can not complain. But if No Man's Sky proves to be a failure, users would have someone against whom to point the finger. With huge projects like Assassin's Creed or Watch Dogs, no one knows who is really to blame.
In that case people complain with Ubisoft as a company. Rarely with specific people.
That's right, if by chance you did not like Watch Dogs do not have someone to complain about. In our case, we are so few who know that if we fail, we will have been necessarily our fault.
In short, the issues is that if the game turns out to be bad you can not leave your home?
[Laughs] Exactly. During the GamesCom, one of the journalists approached to take a picture with us. I was not prepared for such a thing. And now I keep imagining this guy that, if the game does not please him, and one day will cover the photo and think to leave the house to go buy a sniper rifle [Laughs]. In short, there is definitely a lot of stress. I must say that, although we had a lot of visibility, there is still much to do. The trailer that we showed at E3 had received 800,000 views on YouTube. It is so, and for an indie game is hard to get to those numbers. But a title really successful, like Assassin's Creed, has about 20 million views: what I mean is that the interest in No Man's Sky is still limited to the hardcore gamers, those who follow the presentations and E3 are held updated. We still have many reasons to talk to reporters and the people to know the game around.
And I imagine it's much more difficult to explain a game like No Man's Sky than a Joe Danger ...
Absolutely. It's tough. Also it may seem strange but I'm a shy person, I hate making speeches in front of an audience of people. I'm not capable, but there is a team of people who are working on this game and I have to respect their commitment. It's also nice to see the reactions of people: someone who is excited to see what we do is fun and it pays off. It's just that I do not like speaking in public.
So get on the stage at E3 must have been a walk ...
[Laughs] Yeah, I was a wreck. We were backstage and I did not utter a word for hours. I saw how cool Far Cry looked and I was panicking because I did not know how people would react seeing our game. At the end of the reception has been positive, but at that time we could not know.
Chatting with Sean MurrayDurante presentation here at Gamescom've tried to explain a bit 'how it works No Man's Sky from a technical point of view. Perhaps for a small roguelike is much easier to adopt a formula procedural. With a universe so vast you are not afraid that something might escape out of hand?
Sometimes I feel almost compelled to prepare people before the exit. I'll give you an example. At the beginning of the game, everyone will start from a different planet and that we will not have made us a hand. We will not have the faintest idea of what will be the experience of the players in those first few minutes. We checked out a few small things, just to make sure that someone you do not find yourself trapped in a ditch just as the game begins. Not many developers have experienced the anxiety that exists in publishing a game where each person starts from a completely different screen. And this is scary and exciting at the same time.
Unpredictability also surrounds the creatures, and in fact during the presentation we have seen some really strange things. Do not you feel the weight of having sacrificed the artistic control and the pleasure of creating the design of an alien or a monster for having consistently random results?
You're absolutely right. Our main artist is Grant Duncan, who had previously worked with Joe Danger in the past. From the beginning, Grant and I have had several discussions about it. Because our biggest nightmare is to create something and see it appear in the game in a different way from the way we thought. It is a continuous exchange of views between myself, I've got a more mathematical mind, and he, who has a more artistic. A lot of times he came to me saying, "No, this is not how I wanted it to be." A simple example. Some time ago we had a tree, but Grant wanted to draw the flowers at the base. So I created a system that populated the base of trees with small flowers. And the next day all the trees of the entire universe had flowers next to the trunk. At that point, however, it was too much and it seemed like a fairy tale world, so we had to lose the hand and remove any of them. What I mean is that, once you agree not to have more than the total creative control, you open up a whole range of new possibilities. No need to carry every waterfall, every river and canyon in each hand. As I always say to Grant: there are lots of games that are made completely by hand; it would be nice to do something different? Would not it be nice to experience? And I believe that we have reached a point that if you look at a screenshot or a video of No Man's Sky, it looks handmade. And this is just about Grant and the fact that it has been continuously critical from the point of view of art. It is as if he had given art lessons to a machine.
The creatures they have shown us they were hybrids, but with the familiar traits. For example, with a head of a hippopotamus, and the body of a turtle. They will all be so?
Actually we have several creatures that are much more alien, but we have not yet shown. One of the reasons is that we want to be able to surprise those who play in No Man's Sky. Then there is also the possibility that we will never show them. Furthermore, the fact that many animals are part of a family is desired. When we started development, things were much more random, the monsters were really aliens, to the point that it was almost annoying to play while he was surrounded by things difficult to understand. There were small but incredibly powerful animals, or underwater sections where the water looked like a completely different type of liquid and crazy. We also decided to make up a lot of the science fiction of the 60s and 70s, where the environments were many familiar elements. Watch things like Star Wars and Star Trek for example: Tatooine looks like a place on Earth. At first we were inspired by a different kind of science fiction, the most insane and ridiculous, that winked films of the 30s there were strange alien tentacles, brains flying and other things completely alien. And those things are alienating, because you do not have reference points. They are creatures that do not exist in our universe: if there was life on another planet, we would expect to see more and evolve features such as eyes, legs and things like that. In short, there are rules in our universe, and when you go outside of these rules it becomes all too weird. It is the concept of true science fiction.
About the concept of science fiction. During his talk at GDC Europe, Pietro Righi Riva di Santa Ragione has defined science fiction as a "journey to the pursuit of knowledge", to something unknown that deserves to be discovered. From this point of view games like Mass Effect and Gears of War, according to him, would not qualify as science fiction. What do you think?
I think he is absolutely right. For a couple of reasons: first, science fiction does not necessarily mean futuristic. Rather, it means alternative. It means taking our universe, change a single rule, and see what causes reactions. A good work of fiction makes us think about ourselves, about what we are or what we might be; is informative, just like traditional books or scientific films. Science fiction tries to explain what could happen if we changed the rules that we know. But I think that in games there is a tendency to take a theme or current scenario and simply toss it into a futuristic setting. Get Halo. I love Halo, I love it, but it is how the conflict in Afghanistan or in Iraq revived in a sci-fi scenario. It's war, but in the future. It is not science fiction. With No Man's Sky we try to do something different. What would happen if every human being on the planet was able to get in the car and travel into space? What would happen if each of us could easily make a day trip out of Jupiter, or go outside of the solar system? How would it be? And it is a little what we try to answer with our game. Everyone starts from the edge of the galaxy, each from a different place and at that point we'll see what happens. People will begin to interact with the universe, but we do not know in what way. The map will be completely unexplored at the beginning: Players may choose to share or not their findings; could follow the advice of others and go only in areas already explored, or they may scatter randomly in the galaxy because nobody wants to go to places where there is already someone else. Find out how the players will accept the challenge will be interesting. It will be fun. It is something that we absolutely have to experience. I can not promise it will be great, even if we give it our all. But in any case it will be something new and intriguing.
If there are any italian speaking fans of NMS out there and they would like to more properly translate this interview, send it to me I'll replace this one with the revised translation.