No Man’s Sky creator Sean Murray has shared some interesting stories about their ambitious space exploration adventure.
Appearing on the excellent IGN Unfiltered, Murray told a few stories, including how the game was almost cancelled – and something about Kanye West (because that guy is everywhere).
Murray revealed how he actually nearly backed out of showing the first No Man’s Sky trailer at the VGX awards show in 2013. Apparently feedback was not encouraging after showing the game to colleagues, so Murray was hesitant to show it at the event.
Thankfully, organizer Geoff Keighley told Murray the trailer was already built into the show, and thought it was good enough to put out. Murray agreed, and as you might remember, the trailer blew everyone away.
Unfortunately, just a few weeks after the first No Man’s Sky trailer in December 2013, a flood hit developer Hello Games’ office. The game was backed up, of course, but that didn’t stop the team losing a fair amount of work. This is when Murray considered cancelling the game.
He explained:
I think if we hadn’t announced the game–I nearly backed out of it–I think if we had backed out of it, and then had been flooded, it’s hard to know…I think we might have canned No Man’s Sky. Because we would have been feeling really unsure of it. When we were trying to back out of it, we were like, ‘What have we been doing?’
However, Murray eventually came to see the flood as a bit of a blessing in disguise, as the team decided to really push forward with No Man’s Sky from then on. The team of 10 was then divided into two units, with one team of six toiling away on the game in secret, while the other four worked on the Joe Danger series.
Apparently there was a bit of an odd dynamic between the team until the flood – They all worked together to clean out the office, build new PCs, and more, which helped the team reconnect and work together better.
Murray also discussed some of the celebrity interest in No Man’s Sky at E3 2015. Director Steven Spielberg was among those to check out the game, but Kanye West (sadly) missed out. I know. I’m broken up about it too.
While West was prowling the show floor, checking out games, Hello Games didn’t actually have a booth on the floor. That, unfortunately, is why Kanye never got to see the game. See? He was involved in his own way.
No Man’s Sky is due out for PS4 and PC on June 21 in North America, June 22 in Europe, and June 24 in the UK.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.