[numo16]

I read an opinion piece[0] recently that suggested one of the (many) reasons that No Man's Sky was so poorly received at launch was due to the fact games have commonly been boiled down to constant action and "gotta beat the game" mentality, and that players don't know how to just explore and enjoy games as an open-ended single player experience.

As someone who plays almost exclusively single player games across a vast numbers of genres, I enjoyed No Man's Sky's "exploring and discovering the unknown" game play at launch and have ever since, as they add more and more content.

0: http://www.thegeeklygrind.com/opinion-no-mans-sky-doesnt-mul...

[setr]

I’m pretty sure the bigger issue was that it was a very weak simulation, with relatively little interaction. Exploring a simulation/procedural generation is not about getting to view the infinite permutations that randomness gives us — it’s to explore the rules that create the simulation, and then to manipulate those rules.

The reason sim city and dwarf fortress are intersting, and NMS and Spore were not, is because the simulation is sufficiently expanded as to be worth manipulating (while of course not being so expanded to hinder understanding your manipulations; this is the craft); whereas NMS and Spore had very trivial rules: they didn’t really have any. Which is also why when Dwarf Fortress breaks down, its interesting, while in NMS, it’s pathetic.

Note that I’m only referring to NMS on release; though I doubt the simulation has been developed since (I’d bet that the game has since gotten prettier worlds, but not more interesting ones)

Tldr; it was poor simulation/generation game, regardless of whether the current market has ADD