If you don’t want a game spoiled for you, then don’t go into threads where people are discussing the story. If you don’t want to set expectations for a game too high, then don’t participate in hype threads with people throwing out all kinds of crazy hopes and dreams for a game; hopes and dreams that could never feasibly come to fruition. If you truly want to experience a game fresh, you have to go in blind. It’s that simple.
That seems like pretty common sense stuff, only common sense is a fairly rare commodity these days. Patience is rarer still, and it’s impatience and imprudence that are ruining No Man’s Sky for so many people right now. There’s a clown on Reddit by the name of “Daymeeuhn” apparently spoiling the game for everyone. It’s not Daymeeuhn’s fault, though – he’s just an attention junkie with no sense of restraint. Everyone mourning their shattered expectations have only themselves to blame.
If you’re not up to speed, let me catch you up. Daymeeuhn (again, that’s his handle on Reddit) spend almost $1,300 USD on eBay procuring an early copy of No Man’s Sky . He began posting gameplay videos to Twitch, YouTube, and Dailymotion, but those videos have been removed either by admins or by Daymeeuhn himself. Though he may not be posting premature “Let’s Plays” anymore, he is still very active on Reddit. Most recently Daymeeuhn revealed that he had beaten No Man’s Sky after 30 hours (or thereabouts), and has found numerous bugs. He also detailed how to acquire and sell certain items that effectively exploit the game’s economy in order to purchase the best upgrades for your ship.
Predictably, the response from everyone eagerly awaiting No Man’s Sky has been terrible. Some people claim that they’ve canceled their pre-orders, utterly heart-broken that they game they thought would take several months at least to beat took one man about 30 hours instead. Many more have voiced their concerns over the reported bugs and exploitable economy. Most have ravenously consumed every little morsel of information they lay their eyes on, not content to wait a week and experience the game for themselves. All of them are ruining the experience, and it’s silly for two reasons.
The first reason is practical. The No Man’s Sky we’ll be playing a month from now – hell, even a week from now when it comes out – will be very different from the No Man’s Sky that Daymeeuhn is describing. Day-one patches are more common than not these days, and with a game of this nature, largely composed as it is by semi-random algorithms, glitches and bugs are bound to occur. Those will take a few months to fully stamp out. Hello Games is a small studio, and they’re about to release their baby to potential millions of new play-testers. Don’t worry about the broken economy, either. Sean Murray and his team care way more about their game than you do, and they want it to be perfect.
The second reason all this doom and gloom is silly is, again, common sense: you don’t have to look at any of this information or participate in any of these discussions. Before reporting on all of this mess I knew absolutely nothing about No Man’s Sky , and I intended to keep it that way. Assuming that you don’t cover all of the latest gaming headlines for a living, you should be perfectly capable of engaging in a media blackout until No Man’s Sky , or any game you’re looking forward to for that matter, finally arrives. Computers are really neat the way they only show you what you click on, and your eyes are super cool because if you don’t look at something, you won’t see it. Fancy that.
It’s all melodrama, anyway. This Daymeeuhn fella claims that he took the time to do some site-seeing, but it’s clear he was trying to finish the game as soon as possible. You’re about to embark upon a mission to explore a procedurally generated galaxy filled with millions of planets. If you were excited to spend months exploring the galaxy before making your way to the center, make no mistake: you can certainly do that. I think No Man’s Sky will cater to the budding space frontiersmen next week and surprise us all. Check back next week when the game actually comes out for our review here at CheatCC, and get the lowdown from someone playing the game the way the developers intended.