
How No Man's Sky Is Like Reading - tdonia
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/no-man-sky-is-like-reading/495554/?single_page=true
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dmreedy
> So maybe it’s not such a New Thing. What is a game like No Man’s Sky,
> really? A set of symbols that specify a world but do not themselves
> constitute it. A rich grammar that’s inert without the trigger of human
> attention. > >Doesn’t that sound like something else? > >It sounds like a
> book.

This is the author's thesis, even if it is, arguably, the only time the
thought crops up in the piece.

It strikes me as so empty and abstract as to be "not even wrong". Yes, a book
is an inert object that needs to be combined with a very specific decoding
mechanism (namely, a human) in order to derive semantics. This is also true of
shoes. In fact, most things surrounding the human experience are (under
certain, current, postmodern-leaning interpretations) stripped of their
meaning in the absence of their human meaning-givers. This is the heart of the
problem of semantics, and the duality of encoding/decoding. Would the author
agree that No Man's Sky is like shoes? If not, then this claim could be
restated as, "No Man's Sky is a thing that humans made". Which is delightfully
tautological.

To follow, I'm not convinced that the extent to which No Man's Sky is
procedurally generated is anything but orthogonal to its status as a "thing to
be interpreted". Does the author also think that Minecraft is like a book?
What about DOOM? Most modern games that are not strictly deterministic have,
at their heart, some set of emergent semantics that are the byproduct of
algorithmic world-grammars, be it procedurally generated landscapes or
responsive AI. I'm not sure what bearing this has on 'worthiness of
interpretation'; one could, I suppose, try and link this to the ongoing
conversation about the relevance of author intent, but that is a deep (albeit
interesting) hole, and I'm not really sure how the author's examples point to
this being their intention.

I shouldn't succumb to snark, but I can't resist here. This article strikes me
as an attempt to intellectualize a cognitive dissonance. "No Man's Sky is a
priori -worthy-, because that's what is said. But I'm not having fun".

~~~
coldtea
> _It strikes me as so empty and abstract as to be "not even wrong". Yes, a
> book is an inert object that needs to be combined with a very specific
> decoding mechanism (namely, a human) in order to derive semantics. This is
> also true of shoes._

I find this argument to be "not even wrong" (not really, I see some point in
what you say, but I just wanted to convey how bad is this "outright dismissal"
it attempts to the author's points).

The shoes don't give us back a narrative/plot from the semantics we derive for
them -- No Man's Sky does.

So the author's point has some merit in pointing out this, even if he doesn't
qualify fully what kind of semantics he means (not the crude semantics we get
from interpreting "most things"). The nature of the game's derived semantics
make it more like a book than a pair of shoes or a t-shirt with a slogan.

~~~
dmreedy
I will admit I was overstating for comedic effect, and that was somewhat
unfair. However, I disagree with your defense here.

I would say, semi-seriously, that one can definitely find a story in a pair of
shoes. It may not have quite the same complexity as the story found in a book,
but I'd be careful to avoid implying that that somehow makes it less. Consider
the job of an archaeologist/anthropologist, for example.

However, I'll concede you that there is a possible hierarchy of things that
convey 'more' (ehhh...I hate to use that word here, but for lack of a better
one at the moment) semantics. And that No Man's Sky could be placed higher on
that hierarchy than a pair of shoes. Even given that premise, I don't really
see any strong arguments presented in the piece that No Man's Sky is any
different from any other game in that sense.

------
mevile
> But the planets all harbor the same kinds of structures. The same alien
> remnants. You do the same kinds of things on all of them.

Watching this game on twitch and going from one stream to the next I was left
with thinking exactly this, it's all the same, and it's all a grind. The
game's procedural generation creates superficial visual differences. It
doesn't create anything non-visual worth exploring. Outside of wondering what
the next thing looks like, what is there to be curious about?

They should add procedurally generated problems to solve in the environment
that can affect your life in the game. Different environments requiring unique
ways to survive, perhaps some not even solvable. There could be online
discussions about particular dangerous places about how one could possibly
create a habitable solution for exploring them.

~~~
oms1005
There are, though. Some planets and moons are poisonous, at least. Overall,
the game to me is a lot like starbound, or a less-fulfilling Terreria.

~~~
weego
It's less fleshed out than starbound was at its early access release though
which is saying something.

~~~
k__
Did the Starbound devs get their bugs and performance fixed now?

I stopped playing it after they included a game-in-game instead of making the
game playable...

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's better now.

And if No Man's Sky is worse than Starbound then honestly I think I don't want
to play it. Starbound is still on the level of "fun at first, but quickly
getting repetitive" in terms of procedural generation. It's much more engaging
than it was - but that's because authors invested a lot of time in adding non-
generated content.

My complaint about all the attempts at procedural generation I've seen so far
is that they lack _depth_. You have plenty of randomized stuff on one level,
but obviously repetitive patterns on a meta-level. Take Starbound, again, for
an example. Sure, on every planet you'll encounter a slightly different set of
creatures - they may differ in sprites, stats or attacks. But after visiting a
few worlds you quickly notice it's always the same combo of one non-hostile
ground critter, one weak and one strong hostile ground critters, one or two
flying critters...

~~~
drabiega
I find No Man's Sky to be much more engaging than Starbound, but I attribute a
lot of that to it's newness.

I really liked the concept of Starbound and the games it descended from, but
it didn't really feel like it added anything to the formula.

No Man's Sky certainly inherits a lot from that genre, but it feels
substantially different and it's been engaging for me in a way that the genre
hasn't since I first started playing Minecraft.

------
evo_9
Hmm... interesting how much hate this game is getting on here, I guess that's
how it is (reviews are similarly polarizing).

For me the game is perfect. I love the slowness of it all. I love just being
able to go where I want. I discovered by accident that mining asteroids in
space is quite lucrative. I've spent the past few nights doing exactly that
and for some that's a grind; for me it's a peaceful, relaxing way to spend my
evening. I managed to earn enough to buy a much larger ship that looks amazing
and it's been fun sharing pics of her with my nerdy friends also playing.

But beyond all that this game feels like stepping into artwork from Heavy
Metal magazine circa 1978. As a kid that would lay awake in bed at night
dreaming of what it would be like to step inside a Mœbius painting, this game
nails it.

I get that this isn't for everyone but some of us, esp. those that grew up
playing pen & paper RPG's like Traveller in particular, yeah good stuff!

~~~
drabiega
I've been taken aback by the amount of vitriol spewing forth from the internet
in regards to No Man's Sky these past few days. I get that it's not for
everyone, but it's been a little overwhelming to have so many people going out
of their way to tell everyone how bad the game is because it doesn't pander to
what they want it to be.

~~~
gorbachev
It happens to every high profile video game these days. The basement dwellers
come out in full force every time a video game release is even 5 minutes late
or if there are any issues with it.

Anyone with half a brain these days knows not to put money down on a pre-
order, wait for peer reviews or accept the risk of severe delays and quality
issues at launch. But apparently some people just never get it.

------
nlawalker
The ability to explore a huge, living world/universe in a game sounds great on
paper, but I find that it almost invariably leads to shallow games - the _real
world_ is also big and sparse, and so the "alternate life" you end up living
in the game ends up being as dull and routine as real life can be.

 _Density_ is where the fun is at. The world doesn't need to be _big_ , it
needs to be _intricate_ : packed with interesting characters, interactions and
stuff to do. Big spaces are good for battlefields and pretty vistas, but don't
make for fun "live another life" games. The first Deus Ex figured this out,
Human Revolution refined it and it sounds like Mankind Divided has distilled
it even further.

~~~
MattyRad
I highly recommend the original Dark Souls from your description, if you
haven't played it already. And in contrast to NMS's lonely, existential
galaxy, Dark Souls's (subjective) plot tells a very human story.

~~~
evo_9
Interestingly the only other game(s) I play at this point are Dark Souls
(series) and Bloodborne. I'm not suggesting NMS is similar at all but for what
it's worth Dark Souls (particularly 1) is probably my all-time favorite game
and I regularly replay through the entire series.

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erikb
I'm not sure why the game has so much hype. We already seen games like this,
just in 2D. In some regards one cannot even hope to get the depths of a Dwarf
Fortress or Nethack out of this, since these games were - although ugly -
developed with an inherent desire for complexity. This one here is a product.
A product needs to be efficient. You need to spend limited ressources to
create a limited experience, and also spend some of your resources on
marketing.

It probably is not a bad game. But it's simply impossible to have the depth
that people imagine into it. Maybe if the developers find other ways to
refinance the next ten years and continue working on adding more details,
objects, animal attributes, ship parts, crafting trees, etc.

PS: I'm really really disappointed that this game has taken so much from Out
There and Out There is not even mentioned anywhere in the website, the
marketing or the media coverage. Out There is an incredible indie game and
should get the praise it has earned if it is so good to even motivate other
creators to copy parts from it. (I'm not related to the Out There team. Just
love playing the game)

~~~
of
Not to mention one of my favorite games, Noctis:
[http://anynowhere.com/bb/layout/html/doors/local/frameset_no...](http://anynowhere.com/bb/layout/html/doors/local/frameset_noctis.html)
Which, as far as I know about No Man's Sky, sounds like a very similar game,
but made many years before, without combat and inventory.

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smnscu
Dunkey dissects this game very succintly. As expected, generated universes are
not that fun.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgfxo3CLdNM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgfxo3CLdNM)

------
proc0
I keep reading mixed reviews on the game. I want to play but so far have seen
nothing but the hyped videos of playing for the first time. I'm wondering how
the game will pan out once you have people who know how to exploit it, which
will change the landscape for newcomers.

~~~
badlucklottery
>I keep reading mixed reviews on the game.

I think a lot of it depends on how much of the contributing genres someone has
played before.

If you've played minecraft/terraria/etc. you'll find the gathering and
crafting systems to be very simple and the creative component to be missing
almost entirely.

If you've played a lot of shooters, you'll be circle-strafing the brain dead
creatures/robots to death no sweat.

If you've played any space flight games, the ship-to-ship combat is about as
easy as it gets.

If someone isn't familiar with one or more of those genres coming in, it would
probably feel extremely fresh and interesting. If someone is very familiar
with them, they'd probably be frustrated with how under-developed each piece
is.

~~~
proc0
So it's for casual gamers, is what you're saying?

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cloudjacker
That awkward moment when you make procedural generation a selling point

Oops

------
Aelinsaar
If someone wrote a book that was as shallow as this game, it would be a $.99
affair on Amazon. No characters, no story to speak of, no meaningful
interaction or progression, and I found that after a handful of planets, it
was really clear how Mr. Potato-Head "The Game" worked.

I don't see how it's like reading, when a book offers you a story and then
asks you to imagine accordingly, with something that offers you synthetic
imagination and asks you to come up with a story.

~~~
lotyrin
I feel like this is a really good point. These "synthetic imagination" engines
with thin plot are exactly backward. The human capacity for imagination is
better than the machine's, but we seek novel narratives, something this could
have provided but fell short.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Exactly, and the machine isn't telling a story, it's just running the numbers;
something humans are very good at identifying given a bit of time. I'm not
sure how cutting the scale way down, and adding some more human touches
wouldn't have improved matters tremendously, but then, that would be a
different developer skillset.

