Learning about business through procedural generated hype

A couple of weeks have passed since the release of No Man's Sky and it's safe to say that things have gone less than expected for both prospective players and developer Hello Games. I did not bother purchasing the game due to the lack of pre-release reviews and the litany of scathing reviews from day one and onward. But I must say that the release of what some argue is the most hyped game of all time has had a silver lining, at least for me. I've learned a lot about the core of keeping a business alive through watching Hello Games flounder through this.

Photo courtesy of Reddit user u/vitalityvswisdom

I've worked at different levels of many different types of business, some more successful than others. Starting my own business has proved challenging but never impossible. By no stretch of the imagination am I an authority on what it takes to run a business, I am just a gamer and more specifically I was in the heart of the targeted audience for this game. 

Hello Games was an established business that has delivered on interesting products in the past. No Man's Sky is being considered a failure because the folks at Hello Games failed to deliver on their promises. The issue with this game is that throughout it's development no promises were made. Ideas of what the game had so far were shown and the procedural nature of the universe had been discussed ad-nauseam. Outside of that Hello Games was very vague about what this game was, if it was multiplayer, and why we as gamers should want to play it. This mystery was pushed to the edge by developer Sean Murray who had a propensity for skirting questions in an effort to avoid spoilers. Now we know that it's not really multiplayer and that outside of the mining grind there isn't much happening in this universe of random algorithmic life.

Conducting a hype engine is a fascinating business model but we've seen that it isn't a sustainable one. Within 24 hours of it's release No Man's Sky saw more than 200,000 active players on Steam at the time of writing (less than a month after release) there are just over 6,000 players in game. Hello Games failed to promise anything about this game and delivered even less. They let the imagination of gamers run their product to the top of every most-anticipated list and then what we saw was wanting. We never knew what this game was so each prospective gamer filled in the blanks surrounding this procedural universe with the game they'd like to see. Turned out there wasn't much in those blanks following release. This frustrated a lot of folks who shelled out $60 for a product that felt a quarter of the way done. 

 Just for my own sake I'm putting this in terms of a restaurant because that's the business I know best. A new place is opening in the hip downtown part of your city. You are told it will involve quality meats but outside of that nothing. Will it be a steak house? A sandwich shop? A BBQ joint? Everyone's imagination runs wild and on opening day a line stretches around the corner. The doors open and the first handfulls of people are treated to their authentic fried spam sandwiches. This spam joint offers no sides or drinks. The first couple people are shocked, excited, and disappointed; the proceed to inform the other people in line just what they are waiting for. A fair amount of people stay in line because, well they've never had a spam sandwhich before and they are already here, but for the most part everyone leaves and in a month's time the spam place's building is looking for a new tennant.

Hello Games taught me a lesson that I hadn't necessarily applied to all my past business ventures. When you are putting business together be specific about what you intend to deliver. And if you intend to charge top dollar for a product make sure you can deliver at least some of what people expect. Most gamers now admit No Man's Sky does have it's moments of serene enjoy-ability and that it isn't a totally worthless product. I just think it's safe to say that a majority of buyers would love $40 of their $60 back until this lush an populated universe gives us something to do.